I opened my notebook—a pretty one with a pink silk cover, my lists deserved the best—and chewed on my pen.
I’d thought my life was going to be all Volvos and trips to Sainsbury’s, dogs and mortgages and maybe babies in a few years. My friend from yoga suggested I think positively about all the things I could achieve now I was ‘on a different life path’—Buddhists are always saying things like this. For example, I’d always wanted to try lots of hobbies. Languages, maybe. Kick-boxing. That looked like fun and would come in handy with all the awful men I’d probably have to date now I was single. Oh God. Dating.
The thought was so depressing I crawled back under the covers, in my jeans and jumper, and lay there panicking about being alone forever.
After a while of this, the phone rang. It was Emma. ‘Hello! Are you lying in bed panicking about being alone forever?’
‘No. Well, yes, but least I got dressed.’
‘Good girl. Now, can you come over tonight? Cynthia has promised she’ll leave work by seven, and Ian will cook.’
‘Will you help me with my list?’
‘Which list is this?’
‘The list of what to do with the rest of my life.’
‘Of course. I love a good list.’ It was true. It was one of the main reasons we were friends.
I agreed to come over and settled down for a good long worry about life.
I must practise some conversation topics for tonight, I thought. House prices might be a good one.
Emma and Ian lived in Acton, clinging on to the very edge of London under the flight path of whooshing aeroplanes. The flat smelled of curry and oil—Ian was seriously into bikes, both motor and road, and when you went for a wee it was quite normal to see bits of inner tubes in the bath. Emma opened the door in what looked like pyjamas.
For a moment I was confused. ‘Did I get the wrong day?’ I’d like to say this had never happened before, but …
‘No.’ Emma looked puzzled, taking my bottle of cornershop wine, the £4.99 sticker clearly visible. ‘Oh, you mean the onesie. Isn’t it cool? Come out here, Snugglepuss.’
Ian appeared with a pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. He too had donned a onesie shaped like a dog, with little ears on the hood. Emma’s was purple with stars on. ‘Aren’t they great?’ She beamed. ‘They’re so cosy, you wouldn’t believe. We’ve saved a fortune on our heating bills.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said weakly. Onesies? Did everyone except me get the memo about this trend? I remembered when Emma was famed for streaking our graduation ceremony in a protest at the uni’s continued stocking of Nestlé-made Kit Kats. Her boobs had been on the front of the local paper—it was pixelated out, but you could tell it was her by the Danger Mouse pants. Now it was all onesies and pukey pet names.
In the background, an episode of University Challenge was playing, which they were watching so they could keep score on the whiteboard they used every week. On one side it said ‘overprivileged students’ and on the other ‘Emsie and Ian’. They were also hosting me to death. ‘Drink?’ asked Ian, going back to the kitchen. ‘Beer? Wine? Vodka? Meths?’
‘Or water first?’ Emma frowned at the TV screen and shouted: ‘Swim bladder!’
‘Bread? Crisps? This will be ready soon. Potassium chlorate!’
I felt it should be me in the onesie, with them as my helicopter parents. ‘Beer, please. Who else is coming?’
‘I asked Ros, but of course she never leaves her own postcode. The dissolution of the monasteries! She says she’d love to see you soon and lend an ear though.’
Get all the juicy details, more like, while revelling in her own two kids and semi in Hendon. I was becoming very bitter with all the solicitous, coupled-up friends who wanted to mother me. ‘Any sign of Cynth?’
‘Isiser? No, it’s not the eighties.’ Ian laughed to himself. ‘Henry the Fifth! Oh, come on, that was an easy one.’
Emma rolled her eyes. ‘Snugs, that was dreadful, even by your standards. She said she’d leave at seven. Burkina Faso!’
‘Reckon she’ll come?’ Often she didn’t leave work at all, just stayed up all night and sent out to La Perla in the morning for clean knickers. This was called ‘living the dream’, apparently.
However, I’d barely eaten my way through five hundred poppadoms when she turned up, dispensing kisses and clinking carrier bags. ‘Hello, darling.’ Immediately, I felt bad that I had brought only one bottle. But then, I was broke and she could afford to chuck away La Perla knickers, so perhaps everything was relative. I was sure there was a Bible story just like this, except without the undies—Jesus being strictly an M&S guy, I feel.
‘They let you out for good behaviour?’ In the kitchen I could see Cynthia saying hi to Ian.
‘Bad behaviour. Apparently, it’s worth more by the hour. Mmm, smells yummy. I think the last time I cooked we still thought fringes looked good.’
‘Taste.’ He held up a spoon for her to try and she closed her eyes for a second.
‘The Kelvin scale!’ shouted Emma.
‘Mmm. I can really taste the … whatever random ingredient you used that we’re supposed to be able to detect.’
‘Galangal.’
‘Yep. I can definitely taste that, whatever it is.’
‘Björn Borg!’ shouted Ian. ‘God, this lot are really thick this week.’
‘Is it nearly done, Snugs? Fermat’s Last Theorem!’ called Emma.
‘Just about. Honeybunch, don’t use those plates. They don’t match.’
‘We don’t own four that match, Snugs. You broke one last week doing air guitar to “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. The Appalachians!’
‘Oh yeah. They’ve got some on sale at Sainsbury’s. Should I pick some up?’
‘OK, and get some more cleaning wipes. We’re out. Samuel Pepys!’
I tried not to catch Cynthia’s eye during this, partly because I still couldn’t believe this was our rebellious Emma, who’d once refused to shop in supermarkets for an entire year until they started charging for plastic bags. But also because I missed having this with someone, passing words back and forth like dishes, barely listening to what you were saying. Reminding someone to buy milk. All that.
Ian, like many men, required you to make a whole performance of admiring his food whenever he cooked. You had to look at it, smell it, guess what spices he might have used, and only then were you allowed to dig in. Dan and I had given up cooking when things got bad. We were on first-name terms with the Papa John’s delivery man—I’d even given him a Christmas card, to my shame.
‘So,’ said Emma, as soon as she’d finished wiping her plate with naan. ‘It’s Rach’s first night with us alone.’
‘Not really,’ Ian pointed out. ‘She hadn’t brought him out with her for at least the past year.’
‘He was