Cleo jabbed the magic button the millisecond the mug was in place and ready and waiting to receive coffee; after three years at this place she’d perfected the timing.
Gray – Oakland Academy’s favourite history teacher – was also ready and waiting, holding out the plastic carton of communal milk, slipping his own mug in to replace Cleo’s on the machine’s drip-tray as soon as he could. It was pretty indecent the way they fled their classrooms at the break-bell – faster than some of the kids – but twenty minutes was a very short time to get sufficiently caffeinated of a mid-morning.
Caffeine was required even more fiercely than normal this morning: firstly, it was a Monday, and secondly, Cleo still felt vaguely hung over from going out on Saturday night. She hadn’t even been feeling it, but by merit of Cole being both a best friend and turning thirty, she hadn’t exactly been able to take a rain check. She needed to have a word with herself about automatically going for the house wine; it was always the sulphates in cheap plonk that got her like this (she also needed to have a word with herself about going out for a nice, grown-up dinner and ending up barefoot on a sticky dance floor come two o’ clock in the morning).
In companionable silence Gray and Cleo made their way over to their spot. It wasn’t much to speak of: two old chairs that had long ago been removed from a classroom for being unstable, and next to the equally ancient staff room printer, which gave off an alarming amount of both heat and noise. But in the grand scheme of things they were both relatively new to Oakland Academy and you had to put in at least a good decade there to get one of the chairs that still had padding.
‘Good weekend?’ Cleo asked without preamble, taking a determined gulp of too-hot coffee, using her free hand to check her Facebook on her phone as she spoke.
‘Can’t complain. Few pints. Domino’s takeaway. Liverpool won their game.’ Gray checked his phone for notifications too; they had the speedy break routine down to a fine art. ‘How was Saturday night?’
‘I don’t remember the last few hours of it,’ Cleo admitted ruefully. ‘Although there are some pictures on my friend’s phone of me joining in with what I can only assume was the Macarena right towards the end.’
‘A success, then,’ Gray grinned. ‘I wish I’d seen that. I love Drunk Cleo.’
Cleo buried her blushing face in her mug. This was Gray’s first year teaching at Oakland and she’d managed to keep her cool for precisely one term before getting plastered, arguing loudly with her head of department about politics and up-chucking amuse-bouches all over the new guy ‘Graham’s’ novelty Christmas jumper. It wasn’t all bad, though – since then they’d been best work buddies. Everyone needed one.
‘Well the birthday boy had a good time, so definitely a success.’ She held out her phone to Gray, her gallery open, so he could scroll through some of the pictures she’d taken Saturday night.
‘Nice dress.’ Gray gave easy compliments; Cleo almost didn’t notice them any more. ‘Any tension with the Queen Bea?’ he asked. Cleo winced; she sometimes wished she didn’t tell him quite so much about her life. (At least not so much that he had nicknames for her friends.)
‘The Queen was on her best behaviour,’ Cleo retorted primly. ‘She hasn’t made a scene in years,’ she admitted, grudgingly.
‘Hmmm,’ was all Gray offered, carefully non-committal (she obviously bitched about Bea a little too often).
Cleo sighed. Her coffee – much like her break – was half gone. ‘What have you got now?’
‘Cuban Missile Crisis with the Year Elevens,’ Gray answered. ‘I’m sure they’re all already queuing at the door in fevered anticipation. You?’
‘Factorising expressions with the Nines.’
Gray gulped down the remnants of his drink and grinned. ‘I wonder which of our lessons these kids will actually need most in real life.’ It was his usual tease. ‘Cos, you know, most phones have a calculator on them now, love.’
‘Yeah, and the Wikipedia app too,’ Cleo shot back, downing her own coffee. ‘Your turn to do the washing up, love.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Gray gathered up the mugs. ‘Nag, nag, nag.’
‘See you at lunch?’ Cleo asked, as she swung her satchel up onto her shoulder and Gray moved across to the wonky kitchenette to swill their mugs out in the sink.
‘I’ll be here.’ Gray grinned at her over his shoulder.
* * *
Any working week that started with you pissing on your own hand and then coming in to a hundred and eighty-five ‘‘urgent’ unread emails should really be considered a write-off from the get-go, thought Sarah. She sat blankly at her desk, clicking about Outlook at random and assigning emails with varying flag colours in case anyone was watching her, but taking nothing in.
She’d been a lot better this year. She didn’t test willy nilly any more. She’d been pretty sure this time. She’d had an inkling. When her period hadn’t made its appearance on Friday, as expected, she’d remained quite placid – her cycle sometimes varied a few days each way – but still she’d made an extra special point of not having anything to drink on Saturday night when they’d all gone out, hadn’t ordered pâté as a starter even though it was her favourite; better to be safe than sorry. She’d waited patiently throughout all of (a still period-free) Sunday, fancying she was already experiencing the mythical centred serenity of pregnancy. She’d waited until Monday morning, in fact – she’d read countless articles about how you’ve got more of the pregnancy hormone there in your urine in the mornings – before taking that little plastic stick into the bathroom with her.
So then. Another singular line of failure. No tiny little life to avoid wine and pâté for after all. Another inkling turned out to be so much delusion. And still no period. Maybe they’d just packed in altogether. After all, what was the point of an unfertile woman menstruating at all? Sarah was only glad she hadn’t shared her stupid inkling with Cole this time, but – maybe – it was time to talk to her husband about the elephant that wasn’t in the room.
Raina, the PA to the other CEO, sat opposite, impossibly hefty at the best of times, but currently seven cruel months’ pregnant, moaning about something – probably her back, or her swollen feet, or the fact she’d been up six times in the night to have a wee. This was going to be Raina’s third child under the age of five; she’d basically spent the entire time Sarah had known her either on maternity leave or largely pregnant. Sarah found it difficult to be solicitous to her at the best of times; today it was near-impossible. So she just sat and clicked and flagged.
A new calendar request slid into the corner of her screen and Sarah clicked to open it on reflex: Kim the office manager was kindly reminding one and all about Raina’s baby-shower lunch on Friday via the use of a picture of cartoon baby sat atop a pyramid of building blocks spelling out MUMMY. How precious.
Instead of responding Sarah, clicked onto Google and determinedly searched for ‘fertility enhancing superfoods’.
* * *
It turned out putting her phone on vibrate wasn’t good enough: Bea was slowly being driven insane by the irregular buzzing from her handbag. Something was going on, but what? She tortured herself with images of Nora waiting in the rain outside of Bea’s empty flat, bedraggled and crying – the wedding off – sending text after text to her unresponsive best friend, wondering where she was … Okay, so that was all fairly unlikely, but still. If her date didn’t need to go to the bathroom soon, Bea might just have to suck it up, apologise for the poor date-etiquette and check her damn messages.
‘Oh, we’re at that age, aren’t we?’ the man opposite was saying, rolling his eyes with good humour. ‘For the past few years my entire summers have just been stags and weddings!’
‘Totally,’ Bea agreed. ‘But at least this is two best friends in one swoop for me, so at least it’s a more efficient use of my time.’
‘Isn’t it a bit weird for you?’ her date asked. ‘That your two best mates randomly shacked up?’ Bea considered the question over a mouthful of wine (ignoring the new buzzing from the depths of her handbag).
‘I guess it was weird at first,’ she put it lightly. ‘Me, them and our other friend have been joined at the hips since we were so tiny.’ She dropped her voice conspiratorially. ‘To be honest with you, it was a bit like being told my brother and sister were shagging,’ Bea laughed. ‘But it obviously wasn’t so weird for them,’ she conceded with a smile. It had been sixteen months, one pregnancy scare, two very temporary break-ups and a huge engagement ring since the night Nora had told her she was in love with Harry, and Bea and Cole had agreed that while it would never not be a bit weird it was lovely to see them so happy.
It might be a bit of a cliché, but Nora Dervan and Beatrice Milton had been destined to be best friends. Their young, first-time mothers had met at the local antenatal class and had immediately hit it off. A few months later their two baby girls were born just seventy-two hours apart. When Bea’s mother returned to work after her maternity leave Nora’s mother, Eileen, had taken on the role of Bea’s childminder, and the two girls grew up as close as sisters – closer perhaps, as they’d never bickered, never fought. (Well, actually, there had been that one time. But they didn’t ever talk about that one time, so Bea was happy that it didn’t count, not really.)
And when the girls had gone to primary school there had been little Harry Clarke, who everyone in their class thought was super-cool because he knew all the best song lyrics and how to count to fourteen in Spanish (and ten in French). The two girls, Harry and his best friend Cole had made a blissful, uncomplicated foursome for the next two decades. Even when they were in their teens the notoriously strict Roman Catholic Eileen didn’t insist Nora kept her bedroom door open when ‘the boys’ were in there.
No, for Nora and Harry, love had waited until the most convenient moment, their hearts not catching on one another until they were heading out of their twenties: the fumbling inexperience and the dramas, the cheating exes and the hassle all done and behind them. It seemed unfairly effortless to a more-than-slightly jaded Bea. For her, love was all tossed and tangled with screaming arguments on rainy street corners; discovered flirty text messages; wilful misunderstandings; late nights spent Facebook-stalking exes with a bitterness in her throat that wine couldn’t mask; men that either loved her too much or never enough.
Nora had tried to explain it to Bea once, that first night. Bea had been so completely floored by the sudden and severe change in circumstances between her nearest and dearest that her first question to Nora (once she’d become able to form words) was to ask if they’d been drunk. That was easier to understand, somehow, that they’d got so plastered they’d forgotten who the other was, who they were themselves.
‘No. It was just like, one day, I saw Harry and I thought, oh, there you are,’ Nora had answered, simply. ‘Do you get it?’
Bea hadn’t been able to get it. So she’d got drunk instead and when Nora left the bar (to go and see Harry, no doubt) Bea stayed to see off the bottle of wine, staring at the pockmarked table top, feeling happy and sad and excited and scared, all at once. And here she was, five hundred days later, with another bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of her, telling a stranger all about how crazy in love her best friends were. Her shoes hurt. She suddenly felt ancient, and so tired.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Bea said finally, grabbing her handbag. ‘I just need to check my phone, it’s going mental.’
‘Yeah, I thought I could hear it,’ her date smiled graciously. ‘No problem. Do you want another drink? Or to share some bar snacks, maybe?’
Bea hesitated. She did want another drink. She did want bar snacks. She wanted to sit here with this nice man for the rest of the evening and find out some of his secrets. She wanted to take him home and take him to bed and wake up with the sunshine, in his arms on Sunday mornings. She was beginning to think, however, that Nice Guy Rob was far too nice a guy for the likes of her. But, hell, surely the universe wouldn’t begrudge her the one last drink.
‘I could have another glass, if you could?’
‘Coming right up,’ he smiled, leaving her with her multiple new messages and heading over to take his place in the queue at the busy bar.
Bea had invitations to join no fewer than nine new WhatsApp group conversations. One was all the bridesmaids with Nora. One was all the bridesmaids without Nora. One was the entire wedding party. One was specifically for discussing the hen do, yet another was for the engagement party Nora and Harry were planning for next month. Bea couldn’t even be bothered to work out what the other ones were for. They were already crammed full of overly emotive messages, pictures and links. Bea did a double-take; she’d assumed they were from Nora, but the invitations were from Sarah. Ugh. Attack of the bridesmaidzilla. This was going to get old, and fast.
Eli had messaged her too, an hour or so ago; Bea clutched at the normality that was a stupid meme image forwarded by an old friend. She was still scouring the Google Image search results for the perfect response to him when her smiling date returned from the bar with her glass of wine.