“Aves, we love you, but do you remember when you started seeing Eli and you weren’t ready for the full blown coupley thing?” Seph’s hands were making dramatic gestures which meant he was extremely far out of his comfort zone. “You weren’t ready and Eli did everything in your time scales?”
She nodded.
“Talk to him. Tell him your timescales have changed. I think if you would ask him to set a date to get married, he’d be thrilled.” I jumped in, needing to save Seph from anymore declarations of filial love, or the possibilities of knocking something over with his jazz hands.
Ava looked at me with those huge blue eyes. They were a genetic mishap: all the rest of us had brown eyes.
“You don’t think he wants out?”
My sister had never had this before. She’d toyed with men like a cat with a mouse, discarding them when they ran out of flavour. For her to be feeling that Eli was losing interest in her made me want to both feel slightly smug and wrap her up in a room at the top of a tower.
“No, Ava. I don’t think that. I think you’re in a normal relationship where occasionally someone has a priority other than their partner, and life gets in the way, because maybe,maybe, you’re taking each other for granted a bit.” I knew I sounded harsh. Maybe I was channelling Claire.
“Don’t you and Owen do that?”
Seph eyes landed on me. He folded his arms. Grinned.
“Sometimes. It’s inevitable when you’ve been with someone for a while.”
The door opened again before Seph could chirp in, and Jackson appeared, pointing at Seph.
“What the fuck are you doing? Crushing the grapes with your feet for this wine? Marie’s wondering if you’ve started drinking in here and have keeled over in an alcoholic coma.”
“On my way.” Seph did some stupid thing with his hand that had never worked even when he was fifteen and it had been remotely cool.
“We’d better go back. Enjoy this party that you’ve planned and stop worrying. You just need to talk to him.” I pulled out two bottles of champagne and passed them to her. “Come on, we all know you can talk.”
The carnage was only slightly surprising when we got back to the party. Sophie – one of Vanessa’s best friends – had brought the traditional hen party games of pin the penis on the image of Maxwell, and a variety of sex toys that Jacob was giving a sales pitch about.
The image of Maxwell was a life size cardboard cut-out, with him just wearing tight fitted shorts. I hoped that it had been photoshopped somehow, and that hope was the only way I was going to be able to forget that image existed.
Sophie had provided knitted penises in a variety of sizes, one of which was currently stuck on Max’s head.
“Champagne?” Ava offered me a glass.
“No thanks. I might need to drive later.”
She didn’t ask where to, which was a relief as I had no idea where I’d be going. Owen would be at Max’s stag night, which was really an excuse to play poker and drink whisky and I’d be in bed with a good book and a hot water bottle, which sounded like bliss.
No alcohol.
Because there’d been no period.
Just over a month ago, the condom had split. I’d been on the Pill, but the conclusion I’d come to was that it was worsening my migraines, so I’d taken a break to see if it helped.
We’d had rather energetic sex one evening and when Owen went to clean up, I’d heard the immortal words of ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ The solution was for me to take the morning after pill, but for some reason we’d decided to leave it to fate. We were both in our thirties, financially secure and in a relationship that was heading to the alter at some point soon. We wanted kids, but neither of us could get our heads around planning when to start trying for one.
My period should’ve started four days ago and there was no sign of it being on its way. Maybe it really did only take one time. I had two pregnancy tests ready to try out – I just wasn’t sure when to take them – maybe when I knew more about how I would feel. Relieved or disappointed if I wasn’t? Elated or freaked the fuck out if I was?
And I hadn’t told Owen.
I knew he’d be pleased if I was. He adored Teddy and Eliza, and Simone Wood’s little boy, Leo, who we ended up babysitting every couple of weeks. I just needed to be able to manage my reaction for when I told him, one way or another.
“That’s totally too long for Max’s penis!” Claire’s voice rang out.
Victoria had correctly placed what was an obscenely long cock in exactly the right spot.
“To be fair, it’s about right.” She tipped her head to one side. “He’s a grower not a shower, so when you saw himaged sevenI suspect you didn’t get the full picture.”
