Page 32 of Am I Allergic to Men?
‘I thought the policeman was going to shoot us so I hopped off too quickly and then Danny opened the door in his face and made his nose bleed.’
Grace cocks her head to the side. ‘You did the what now? Did you get arrested for dogging?’
‘It was not dogging. It was two married people having consensual sex.’
‘Outside,’ Grace says.
‘We are all judging me but Emma over there had sex with Stuart,’ Meg exclaims.
‘STUART?’ I squeal, glaring at my straight-laced sister. ‘YOU HAD SEX WITH STUART? SO HAVE I!’
Stuart is Meg’s brother-in-law and the urban legend is that he’s the only man on this planet to have had relations with at least two of the Callaghan sisters, now apparently three. He snogged Beth in a taxi. I slept with him at Meg’s wedding – if you could call it that, we were both quite merry, and I believe he spent most of the time half-mast talking to his penis, willing it to work.
‘Emma had outdoor sex in that instance too…’ Meg informs me.
‘I hate you all,’ she says, pouring herself another glass of wine.
‘Beth gave Will a handjob at a gig once,’ Grace casually says, trying to add to the conversation. We all look over at Beth, still asleep. I can literally see the scars from when they removed her tonsils.
‘I did. I had to wipe my hand down on my coat and the stain never came off,’ she mumbles before curling up into a different position and falling asleep again.
Grace looks over at her calmly. ‘I’m sleeping with a man with a ponytail, sometimes he ties it back with a scrunchie.’
Grace is dryer than a dry Martini served in a sand box. She and Emma won’t play these games but I hope ponytail man makes her happy. She deserves happy.
‘We do have fun. The fun just changed. It’s kids and relationships and work, it’s all just evolved,’ Meg explains. ‘Different things make us happy.’
‘Then I have a question?’ I ask, staring at the quiz show in the background. They have a new contestant on who thinks Asia is a country. He deserves nothing. ‘Why didn’t I evolve? Why didn’t I seek out these same things? I’m looking at Facebook and I just see someone who refused to settle down, some perpetual party girl. Was I allergic to love? Commitment? Men?’
‘That may have been my fault,’ Emma discloses. ‘You saw a lot of what happened there with my divorce with Simon, all the times he’d cheated on me. Beth and Will had a relationship hiccup when Joe was born too. They couldn’t work out parenthood. It was a bit messy.’
‘And then Tom and I had this big rollercoaster relationship, got married and then he died…’ Grace says. ‘So I always felt all of this made you see relationships a little differently. Being some free agent always kept you safe from hurt. I don’t think you trusted love.’
‘Though you did sleep with that one fella who gave you hives so maybe you were allergic to something in that case?’ Emma jokes.
‘Where were the hives?’ I ask, aghast.
All the sisters look mildly hurt that they have to think about this story again.
‘You’re allergic to walnuts, no other nuts, and you two were doing things with a carrot cake. Luce, you made me look at your labia. You made me apply antihistamine cream to it.’
Beth wakes up giggling to hear that story. She shouldn’t be laughing but, secretly, I like that sound.
‘And being this free agent made me happy?’ I ask.
‘The happiest,’ Grace says warmly. The older sisters look like they don’t disagree but seventeen-year-old me feels mildly disappointed that I didn’t strive for something grander. Back then, with Josh, I had plans. I thought about growing old with him and what our kids would look like. I thought about a version of my wedding. It would have involved an open-top bus of some sort, me being a slightly inappropriate bride. We would have danced into the night. It’s a sobering thought to think I leant away from this. I went down another path. This path that seems to be lined with shot glasses and bright glittering lights. I was always easily lured by shiny things but now I worry all of that was just an attempt to not grow old, to be forever young, forever sitting in this living room with my girls and refusing to adult in the real world.
‘Annoyingly happy,’ Meg tells me. ‘The beauty of you was that you didn’t want to fit in a box. So many things define women and you didn’t want that at all. You didn’t want to be a mother, a wife…’
‘You are amazing in that respect,’ Beth adds. ‘I was torn about being a working mum and you always told me to have it all, to not have guilt for doing that either…’ she tells me with a touch of emotion in her voice. ‘And that was everything because I think it makes me happier, a more complete version of myself to have both in my life.’
Deep down, I applaud this version of myself – life guru, Lucy.
‘And you’re universally loved for who you are. You ask any of our girls who their favourite aunt is and we don’t even come close. We don’t even resent you for it,’ Meg adds.
‘Well, I could have predicted that even at seventeen. Do I teach them dance routines?’
‘The worst sort,’ Emma says despairingly.
