for a drink by the time we finally made for the pub down the road.
‘You know what I really want?’ Ellie asked as we carried our wine to an empty table. ‘Cake. I could murder a slice of gooey chocolate gateau.’ She licked her lips thinking about it.
‘I could eat two slices,’ I said. Lately my appetite had been colossal. ‘With ice cream.’
‘God, don’t!’ moaned Jane. ‘I haven’t had anything sweet all week.’
‘You’re not still on your stinking wee cereal diet?’ Pixie said. ‘Love, give it up. There’s no reason to put yourself through something that clearly doesn’t work.’ When Ellie protested this rather blunt statement, she said, ‘What? Jane has said as much. It’s been over a month and she hasn’t lost any weight.’
‘I gained a pound,’ Jane confirmed. ‘But I’m going to try something new. Katie, you might know about this too, from work. It’s called Alli. Have you heard of it?’
‘We don’t sell any diet aids.’ I made a mental note to ask the science types around at the office about it anyway.
‘You take it with meals,’ she explained. ‘And it keeps your body from absorbing fat. The best part is you can eat whatever you like!’
‘It sounds too good to be true,’ Ellie said. ‘Is it safe?’
‘I bought it at Boots, so it must be,’ she said. ‘This could be the miracle I’ve been looking for.’
I hated seeing Jane get so excited about the latest fad only to be disappointed.
‘Are you finished?’ Pixie glared at us. ‘Jesus, will you listen to yourselves? We may as well just go to Slimming Zone. It’d be cheaper and we can have the exact same monotonous conversations. Aren’t you tired of always thinking about what you ate yesterday, what you can eat today? It’s exhausting. I quit Slimming Zone to get away from all that and you’re bringing it with you on our nights out.’ Her look softened. ‘Ladies. We are more than the sum total of our BMIs. Honestly, I’m sick to death of it all. Aren’t you?’
Actually I was. And Pixie was right. We had better things to talk about than our waistlines. ‘Well, I thought that film was a load of old donkey’s bollocks.’
‘How can you say that?’ Ellie asked. ‘It was beautiful.’
‘It was boring.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Pixie said. ‘Donkey’s bollocks aren’t boring.’
‘Not all films move along at the pace of Love, Actually.’
Ellie knew I judged all cinema against the Richard Curtis classics.
I shrugged. ‘That storyline was Jurassic. Glaciers move faster.’
‘I thought the main guy was hot,’ Jane said.
Ellie made a face. ‘He didn’t look well-bathed.’
‘And with that seventies porn moustache?’ Pixie laughed. ‘But I suppose you also like Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot.’
‘Do you also have a thing for seventies porn, Jane?’ I asked.
‘Bow chicka bow-wow!’ Ellie said. ‘It’s making a comeback you know.’
‘Seventies porn?’
She nodded. ‘It’s vintage now that everybody’s waxing off all their body hair. Some men still like a full muff.’
‘How do you know that? Does lovely Thomas like a hirsute woman?’
She blushed to her roots. ‘I read it in Cosmo. And I know where this conversation is going, so don’t even bother.’
‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ said Jane. ‘But you’re the only one around here with an active sex life. I love Andy but with two children, we’re lucky if we remember to kiss good night. I’m afraid you must share with the group.’
But Ellie wouldn’t be drawn down that road. ‘Jane, something tells me that you’re protesting too much. You and Andy are probably still ten times more romantic than the rest of us could hope to be.’
‘Infinitely more,’ said Pixie. ‘Speaking for myself.’
Jane had one of those relationships that inspired envy in both singletons, the smugly wed and, as Pixie just proved, the extremely disgruntled. Andy was practically an urban legend, a type often discussed but never seen in real dating life: intelligent, funny, sexy and kind. His equanimity was legendary, but then Jane was just as warm and supportive. Whenever she talked about how she and Andy met, she grinned like a lunatic. It seemed a match made in heaven.
It had actually been a match made in Ibiza, sweaty and knee-deep in foam. Jane was there for her cousin’s hen weekend. Andy was there hoping to snog hens. They danced into each other in the early hours of Sunday morning and by the time they kissed at the airport that night they knew their good-byes would be hellos within the week back in London.
Holiday romances rarely work out, but Andy and Jane weren’t your normal twenty-three year olds. Only two years into her fledgling BBC career, Jane had already bought her own flat. She had a pension and knew exactly what she wanted in life. Unlike most of her friends, whose views on procreation were ambivalent at best, Jane wanted a big, noisy, happy family like the one she came from.
Andy’s future was no less clear, and just as clearly focused on having a family. He was an IT programmer, weekend rugby player, and the friend that everyone trusted with their spare keys. Within a month, he had Jane’s keys too, and she had his. They were deliriously in love with each other and tried their best not to be smug about it. They spent the next two summers taking most of their holiday to go to music festivals and on Jane’s twenty-fifth birthday, they married in a small summer ceremony in Jane’s hometown. Her birthday party cum wedding reception was a huge BBQ in a muddy Suffolk field. Jane wore wellies with her dress. Her wedding photos, which she kept all over the house, looked like they were ordered straight from beautifulbohemianweddings.com.
Children were always part of their plan and they didn’t waste time. Andy knew Jane would be the most perfect mother, and told her constantly how excited he was to see her holding their very own baby one day.
Unfortunately though, nature wasn’t taking direction from Andy. As the months passed and her periods remained regular, Jane started to suspect something was wrong.
Of course, being Jane, she read every book, article and blog she could find. There had to be a way to fix what was clearly broken. She’d always been fit. She ate healthily, took her vitamins, avoided preservatives and mercury-laden tuna. Was she too healthy? Maybe the body functioned best in the middle of the range rather than at the extremes.
Everyone around her seemed to be getting pregnant. Even the teenage daughter of the corner shop owner was knocked up, the stupid girl, and her cousin, the hen weekend raver, was already pregnant with her second child.
At first Jane loved seeing her cousin, but as the months passed it got harder to smile convincingly when she held her cousin’s tiny baby. With every sniff of that delicious little head, Jane felt more despondent, and surer that her insides weren’t functioning like everyone else’s. She didn’t tell Andy about her fears. She wasn’t about to blow his illusion of her perfection so early in their marriage. So she kept it to herself, and it festered.
Andy was the first to bring up the ‘I’ word.
‘But we’re young,’ Jane said, panicking to hear her biggest fear from Andy’s lips. ‘We can’t be infertile.’
‘I’m sure we’re not,’ he said, smoothing the hair from her face. ‘There’s probably a very simple explanation.’ His IT-programming brain knew there must be an answer for this run-time error. ‘Maybe we should just get checked out to make sure everything’s okay. If you like, I can make appointments for us.’
Dear Andy was willing