Page 35 of Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?
‘I thought you might still be here,’ she says, clutching her phone.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
‘The rapper. You said Joe did some album cover thing for a rapper. Is this her? Because that’s Joe. That’s definitely Joe.’
She turns her phone towards me and sure enough, it’s the album cover Joe posed for.
‘“Best debut British rap album I’ve heard in years” says Jay Z,’ Lucy quotes.
‘Who?’ Emma asks. We ignore her as Lucy comes to sit next to me and we read the article together. Special K is duetting with Stormzy, has festivals lined up and she’s the new face of Missoni. And in all her pictures, there’s Joe just sitting there keeping it casual. Lucy and I stare down at him happily suckling away on my breast. He looks up at us.I’m just having my breakfast, ladies. Nothing to see here.
By the time we get back to our flat, it’s been almost an hour and I find Will sitting in the communal corridor having a cup of tea with Paddy. He looks relieved to see me but the fatigue and hangover sit heavy in his face. Hardly surprising given he slept like a stray dog outside his brother’s house. He takes Joe and pulls faces at him while I dig around for my keys.
‘Look at you in a dress,’ says Paddy.
I twirl for him. ‘I let the legs out once a year, it’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of event,’ I say jokingly. He takes Will’s mug and winks at me.
‘Did you lock him out again?’ he says.
‘I think we’re just ill-rehearsed at this going out lark,’ Will replies.
‘Well, a relaxed Sunday is what you both need. Give us a shout if you need anything.’
I nod and we both struggle getting the car seat through the front door. Inside, the air is flat and stagnant. There’s none of Emma’s fresh linen smell. The sofa is lined with a pile of dry but unpressed baby clothes and remnants of me getting ready for a night out: hairbrush, make-up and random coins and crap that didn’t make it into my handbag. I put Joe down on the floor as Will embraces me from behind.
‘God, I am so sorry. I’m such an idiot.’
I pat his hand. Joe looks up at us curiously.Who are you two people? What happened to you? You look like a scarecrow.I pick at some bits of grass from Will’s hair.
‘I should have waited,’ I say.
‘I should have left,’ he replies.
He parts our embrace to smile at me and then sorts through a plastic bag in his hands. ‘I asked Pete to drop me on the high street. I wandered around the supermarket like a tramp just putting random things you like in a basket to say sorry.’
He pulls out an assortment of things: an actual lemon, a Kinder Egg, a Twix, a family-sized trifle, a trashy magazine, a bottle of fizzy water and half a baguette that he’s already had a munch on. I smile at his desperate attempts to make peace when in truth, I’m not angry. I just think it was an ill-planned evening that neither of us were feeling. Will escapes into the kitchen to switch on the kettle.
‘Kat hates me because I threw up on the pavement near their house. She made me clean it with a bucket,’ he tells me.
‘Yikes. What time did you get there?’
‘Four? I just remembered you had the keys and I didn’t want to go to Emma’s, and Pete’s house was closer but then I didn’t want to wake him.’
‘A drunk’s logic then. How was it after I left? How was Sam?’
Will’s voice weaves in from the kitchen.
‘A nightmare. We got through so much drink. Philip was trying to get in her pants but I think she left with that other bloke, Jacques. And it turns out Terry and Giselle are stuck-up twats.’
I want to say I could have told him that. But I hope he did what he needed to help with his work situation and blow off the cobwebs.
‘What about Kiki and Shu, they seemed nice?’
He doesn’t reply as I collapse on to the sofa.
‘Also, Philip lost a whole load of pills in the bar,’ he says. ‘He went mental which confirmed to me that he didn’t give me a paracetamol in the pub.’
‘I may have had something to do with that…’ I shout out towards the kitchen.
