And that we do. I may scream. People look up from below to see what that sound may be. Mum looks very alarmed from down there. I won’t drop the baby. Have more faith. The rush of air between my ears, the thrill, the speed, you forget the joy of a slide, the static on Maya’s hair. This is bloody brilliant. But as I get to the bottom, there’s a strange sound. Almost like an explosion. People inhale deeply with shock. That man with the cane stands there over us as I sink slowly into the ground.
‘How old are you?’ he says in a voice not befitting his posh outfit.
Seventeen in my head, actually thirty today since you’re asking. Did you not get me a gift?
‘Not for ages twelve or over, you’ve burst my sodding slide.’ I know because I’m no longer on a cushiony soft surface but have hard ground under my back. He then looks down at my chest. Perv. Oh. It’s more than that, I’ve landed quite awkwardly and had a bit of a nip slip situation. Maya cups her hands around her mouth and giggles.
‘BOOB!’ Joe shouts loudly, smiling.
I didn’t drop the baby though, that’s because I’m a bloody excellent aunt.
15
‘So you’re banned from Kew?’ Darren asks me, laughing into his cocktail.
‘Well, not the town of Kew but I suspect we won’t be going back to the Queen’s Royal Gardens any time soon.’
‘Only you could get yourself into that sort of trouble, eh?’
‘Not me, the whole fam.’
Fam. That’s a new word I’ve learnt from the past decade that seems to be a part of modern vernacular. My fam. My bloody awesome fam. After I burst a slide, showed a bunch of families my nipple and everyone laughed, Meg was threatened by a balding man in a Barbour coat (whatever), we all shouted our best insults and the babies learnt many new words. It was the best birthday present I’ve ever received bar the time Beth gifted me her old Reebok pumps. But then the crowd dispersed, we all found a pub garden and had a merry dinner almost as some sort of victory feast for taking on the playground bullies of Kew.
When the last pint was ordered, we then did what we’ve apparently been doing for years, we went back into our corners of the world, to live the different strands of our lives in different houses, with all our new extra family members. It was the saddest of times but we masked the sadness with alcohol and the knowledge that we’d just lived through another family anecdote to wheel out in years to come. I won’t lose them all. Beth is still on maternity leave so is going to stick around and Meg says she’ll pop down on the train every so often but the girl band are embarking on solo projects for now. They will rise through the charts once more, no doubt, and come together for the odd reunion tour.
‘You do like flashing. It’s your thing. I’ve seen your boobs more times than is really necessary and we’ve only been intimate once,’ Darren informs me.
‘What did we do?’ I ask curiously.
‘We had drunken half sex where you don’t even know if it counts towards your numbers because you’re so pissed and you don’t even know if it went in properly.’
I knock my head back in laughter at him recalling it so frankly. I like Darren. Not inthatway but he’s been round to Mum’s occasionally to have a cup of tea and he seems invested in me and my life and wanting to get it back on track. But also not in that way as, since my accident, he and Cass seemed to have formed a relationship. From the sounds of it, the trauma of potentially losing me forced them together one evening and they’ve been inseparable since. Presently, they’re at the night-away stage of their relationship where they shared a bathroom and didn’t freak out at hearing the other poo.
‘So you and me never did more than that?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I was so in love with you at one point but you are an uncontainable force, Lucy Callaghan. It would take a larger-than-life man to be able to fit into that orb.’
‘Like Madonna?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I’d have been a rubbish Guy Ritchie.’
Cass comes back to the table with a tray of shots and drinks and puts an arm around me.
‘So… I guess we should say happy belated birthday?’ Cass says, holding a shot glass aloft.
I pick up a glass and toast them both. ‘To thirty…’ I down the sambuca shot and let it scorch the inside of my throat. This should be bigger, shouldn’t it? It was supposed to be drinking, dancing and general carnage in a field until the sun came up on my thirtieth year. But it was all scrapped because of that blinking bus. Instead we replaced celebrations with family picnics and I’ve opted for quiet drinks with a select few. However, Darren and Cass serve a different purpose here too.
‘So, is she coming?’ Cass asks, looking at her watch.
‘I told her eight.’
‘She was never very reliable,’ Darren adds with a hint of disdain in his voice.
‘One would think you didn’t like her?’ I ask. Cass laughs.
Tonight, I’m meeting Imogen, who I apparently had been half seeing before the bus. Well, that was my impression from the many times we’d shared pictures of our genitalia with each other but, according to Darren, it was more of a friends-with-benefits arrangement. I’ve been doing this a lot recently, having casual drinks and coffees with people from my contacts list who I believe I’ve slept with. Leo was the Batman fella I shagged in Emma’s utility room at Beth’s birthday party. Apparently, I threw a cake at Emma that evening. Leo was lovely and, apparently, we had three months of wild healing sex before I broke it off in the nicest possible way by setting him up profiles on many dating sites through which he found his current girlfriend, Natalie, who works in marketing and whose only flaw seems to be that she doesn’t like baked beans.
There have been other meet-ups. There was a man who cried because my situation made him think about the fragility of life and everything he hasn’t achieved in his own, and a banker who apparently was heavily into his kink and left me with a business card saying he’d love to come round and clean my house while I shout abuse at him. I live with my mother, I thought. Mum might like that though, especially if it gave her a break from the dusting.
