Page 52 of Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?
Here, have my charity, Beth. It looks like you need it.
She opens the door and scoops up her pissing dog. I wait until her back is turned, and stick my middle finger up at her.
Track Twelve
‘Red Alert’ – Basement Jaxx (1999)
‘Where did Lucy get this dress from again?’ asks Will.
‘A mate at work. Hers was too small, I needed the plus-size version. I’ll breathe in. Just tie up the corsetry bit.’
As if the plus-size thing wasn’t insult enough, Will puts a foot to my back and levers my backside into this dress as I breathe in and he pulls tighter. This is the sound you hear when rugby players fall into a scrum. Flesh pushes its way up and over my cleavage while some of my bodily organs seem to shift into other positions. This is what is needed on my birthday, a complete re-organisation of my insides. Will looks down at some nest of hair beside us.
‘You’re not wearing the wig?’
‘No. It makes me look some madam who ran a brothel through the French Revolution,’ I say.
We’re both dubious about what’s going to happen this evening. A chilled dinner turned into Lucy and Emma increasing the scale of the event beyond the quiet soirée which I had hoped for. So now, we have a sound system, a two-tiered cake and everyone dressing up as something beginning with B. I am not sure whose benefit this is all for but tonight, I am Belle fromBeauty and the Beast. I hope people get this otherwise I am just going to look vaguely regal and full of self-importance. Maybe Will should have gone as the Beast. He’s dressed as a builder instead. It’s a lazy costume option that he literally fetched out of the boot of our car but I won’t lie, it’s slightly arousing. If I could remember what it’s like to feel aroused, that is.
I still can’t quite navigate what’s happening with us at the moment. Last week, when I was at Yasmin’s and he told me he was working late, it became a theme. For most of the week, he’d crawl in through the door past ten and we continued our lives in the same vein. Work, baby, work, box set, takeaway, looking at the baby and wondering why it’s not sleeping, tired as fuck, work, baby. I left him be to stew in his work stress; he did the same as I wondered why Joe had a touch of nappy rash and only wanted to drink from my right boob. This isn’t a tag team situation. We need to deal with our own fires accordingly.
I look at myself in the mirror. I don’t look like royalty. I look like a Ferrero Rocher. It’s very gold. Will steps back to look at me.
‘How awful is it?’
‘It doesn’t look safe. It looks highly flammable. Don’t stand next to any open flames.’
‘Lovely, I have staff at my school coming to this. I’m going to look like an idiot.’
‘You won’t. There’s always some clown at fancy dress who’ll take it next level and everyone can stare at them. Lucy, maybe?’
He’s not wrong. We’ve just left Lucy and Emma in her bedroom next door and I can still hear them laughing in anticipation for the night’s events. Lucy has gone for pink Barbie vinyl while Emma is Bo Peep in a bonnet. It’sLittle Womenvs.Pretty Woman(for which we all blame Lucy).
‘Did I pick up on something before?’ Will asks. He’s been around me and the sisters long enough to know when a fight is brewing and he may be right this evening.
‘Stuart Morton.’
‘Meg’s brother-in-law? The one you…’
‘I didn’t sleep with him. But it turns out Emma now has. He’s working his way around the sisters.’
‘Yikes. Isn’t that incest?’
It happened after Emma visited Meg up North recently but it just makes no sense to me. It went against her straight sister persona and she’s since started a relationship with a new bloke, who is going to be at the party tonight.
So, between that bomb and the general locking of horns she always has with Lucy, I can’t quite focus. When is it a good time to say I don’t want to be here? I should have dropped that in a week ago before they hired speakers and bought one hundred red cups and a pillow-sized bag of sausage rolls from Costco. Looking up at us now dressed as a little bear is Joe, in a travel cot. The idea (wishful thinking) is that he may sleep through all of this. I wish I could crawl in that cot and nap with him.
‘You look thrilled, B. It is your birthday, you know? You could just leave,’ he says.
‘But they’ve gone to all this effort. There’s bunting with my face on.’
‘There is? I mean, you look knackered.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We’re both knackered. Bloody crisis at work too.’
‘How so?’
