A few months earlier, Bea had let herself slip past thirty with absolute minimal fuss. After all, the only real difference between that birthday and the ones either side of it was that her mother Hannah had felt obligated to actually send her a card (the so-called ‘milestones’ tended to have that effect on her). The actual day had been a Tuesday, and Bea had gone to Nora and Harry’s for a home-cooked dinner, Eli making up the four. They had her favourite meal (spaghetti carbonara) and played her favourite board game (Articulate) and sank several bottles of her favourite wine. It had been low-key and intimate, like all of Bea’s most favourite things.
Meanwhile, Claire was now turning 31, and it was more of an operation than Nora’s bloody hen do. She’d booked out an area in one of the swankiest bars in Shoreditch, and was demanding all ladies in attendance do so sporting an ‘LBD’ (Bea assumed this meant Little Black Dress, and not the dementia disease her grandmother had had when she was younger). Bea – far more at home in a pair of skinny jeans and killer, colourful heels – had stood in generalised agonies in front of her fruitless wardrobe until she’d settled on the black jersey dress with the lace panel across the neck that she usually wore to funerals, obstinately teaming it with a pair of heels in watermelon-pink.
She loved Claire, she did, but these events were becoming so much of a faff. They’d have a booth reserved, yeah, but it would be way too small for everyone to sit down, and people would end up eating with plates balanced precariously on their knees, or slipping off the corners of the table. The drinks would cost about £14 each, and consist mainly of crushed ice and over-large sprigs of mint. The music would be obnoxious and booming and blare over any attempts at conversation. Meanwhile, the twenty-two year olds in eye-wateringly bodycon dresses would get served first at the bar and block the access to the sinks in the Ladies while they took endless mirror selfies. Bea glanced longingly at her bed before slipping her tired feet into their heels and trip-tropping her way along the corridor to the kitchen.
Kirsty, her flat-mate of the last few years, was wearing a Marvel Avengers tee, pyjama shorts and odd socks and was midway through making a cup of tea. Bea tried to control her jealousy.
‘Wit-woo!’ Kirsty called admiringly, as she turned her back to the kettle to better take in her dolled-up friend. ‘You look lush! Super sophisticated. And I love the shoes.’
‘Cheers!’ Bea did an exaggerated spin, like she had reached the end of a catwalk. ‘It’s Claire’s birthday and you know what she’s like about people dressing up.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Kirsty rolled her eyes. In many ways she’d been the perfect flat-mate for Bea over the years because, unlike everyone else Bea seemed to meet, she had never been subsumed into the larger social group. She could bitch and moan and gossip about all of her besties with Kirsty without fear of it ever getting back to them. ‘Where is it this year?’ Kirsty asked.
‘Some new place out east,’ Bea answered dismissively. ‘I can’t remember the name. It’s all in lower-case though, and you have to give a password to get in. The password is “Calloo Callay”. They serve ‘deconstructed cocktails’ …’
‘Bloody hell!’ Kirsty laughed, stirring sweetener into her tea. ‘I hope you’ve activated your overdraft.’
‘I know,’ Bea groaned. ‘Well, Eli is coming here first and we’re going to have a quick pre-drink sharpener so we don’t have to spend quite so much there.’
‘And Eli isn’t the one who you…?’ Kirsty trailed off meaningfully. Bea sighed.
‘No.’ Kirsty did this on purpose just to be annoying; as much as Bea rued the night she’d slept with Cole, she might rue the fact that Kirsty had caught them together the next morning even more.
‘Ah, Eli’s the friend one,’ Kirsty clarified, knowingly.
‘They’re both “friend ones”,’ Bea shot back, pulling her phone from her beaded clutch bag to check the time. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your Netflix commitments.’
‘Message received, loud and clear!’ Kirsty laughed, returning the milk to the refrigerator. ‘I’ll make myself scarce. Enjoy your poncey bar,’ she called over her shoulder as she made her way to her bedroom and waiting laptop. The bell for the flat buzzed and Kirsty, much closer to the front door, pulled it open before Bea could even make a move towards it.
‘Hi!’ she greeted Eli brightly, pushing the door wide in invitation. ‘Eli, right?’
‘Yeah. Hi Kirsty,’ Eli answered politely, fidgeting with the bottle of wine he was holding by its neck.
‘Sorry, I always get you guys mixed up,’ Kirsty smirked; Bea shot her a murderous look. ‘I’ll get out of your hair. Have a good night, guys!’
‘One of Londis’ finest vintages, madam,’ Eli joked, moving down the corridor to join Bea in the kitchen. ‘You look nice.’
Bea rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you mean I scrub up well?’ She snatched the bottle of wine from her friend. ‘You old charmer.’
Eli plucked it back. ‘Just take the compliment will you. And get some glasses. We’ve got to get going soon.’ Bea obediently fetched down two wine glasses while Eli opened the screw-top on the cheap bottle of plonk.
‘So, how’s hen prep going?’ He asked conversationally as Bea poured generously.
‘There is other stuff going on in my life you know!’ Bea snapped, as she slotted the wine into the shelf on the fridge door. ‘It’s not all about the bloody Dervan-Clarke wedding.’
‘Sorry.’ Eli looked genuinely abashed. ‘Er. How’s work?’
‘I don’t want to talk about work.’ Bea kicked off her heels and sank into one of the little dining table chairs, knowing as she did so that she was only making it worse for herself when the time came to put the shoes back on.
Eli laughed. ‘Okay.’ He joined her at the table. ‘Well, can we talk about my work?’
‘Sure. Shoot.’
‘Well, I got called into a meeting with my boss yesterday.’
‘Wait. Is this a story with a happy ending or a sad one?’
‘Er, happy, I guess.’
‘Good. Okay, go.’
‘So, they chose my design to be used for the headquarters of that charity, do you remember..?’
Bea sat up straighter. ‘Oh, Eli.’ She put her hand over his. ‘Yes, I remember.’ Eli had talked about nothing else for about a month, working hour after hour of pro bono overtime to finalise his architectural plans for an international children’s charity. Bea’s heart strained with pride. How had that skinny, curtain-fringed kid who endlessly doodled in the gridded margins of his maths exercise books grown up to be such a bloody spectacular man?
‘Yeah.’ The tips of Eli’s ears and the plane of his cheeks were flushed an excited pink. ‘My manager said I was really going places with the firm.’
‘That’s amazing! I wish we had something more exciting to be toasting with!’ Bea laughed. ‘But it’s this or water. So, congratulations!’
‘Thanks,’ Eli beamed, clinking his wine glass gently against hers. ‘Does this call for a Bea Hug?’
Bea laughed. ‘Go on then.’ She had always been infamously un-huggy, the opposite of Nora, but Eli had always insisted that made her hugs all the more special. She put her drink down and jumped to her feet. ‘Come here then!’ she grinned, holding out her arms. Eli hopped up and into them, pressing his face lightly against the hair she’d just gently tonged and spray-set. ‘Big, huge, giant congratulations!’
‘Thanks Beebee,’ he murmured into the side of her neck, that old school nickname, just how Cole had done: against her breasts, into her mouth; Bea felt the pooling of lust and shook it off, feeling disgusted with herself. She peeled away from Eli, literally holding him at arm’s length.
‘Anyway, better drink up,’ she nodded towards their abandoned wine on the table, their wine glasses set down so close the globes of the glass were kissing. ‘We’re going to be late.’
* * *
Sarah fumbled with the uncooperative clasp of her necklace, willing it to slide into place already. Finally it did, and she centred the pendant on its chain in the middle of her collarbones. She smoothed her dress out over her hips. Black didn’t really do anything for her: her dark hair and dark eyes popped more against strong colours. But the Birthday Girl had spoken, so Sarah had grabbed an inoffensive black skater-style dress from New Look over lunch the day before.
‘You look nice,’ Cole complimented from where he stood in the bedroom door, arms folded across his chest, head slightly cocked.
Sarah looked up at him from where she was fishing underneath her bed for her shoes. ‘Not like I’m in mourning?’
Cole smirked. ‘Maybe you look a little bit like a mourner. A sexy mourner.’ He moved into the room, his big hands possessively stroking over her as she straightened up. ‘Say, what time did we say we’d be at this thing anyway?’
‘Eight.’ Sarah moved away to sit on the end of the bed and slip on her black heels. ‘So are you ready to go?’
‘We can be a little late, can’t we?’ Cole murmured suggestively, sitting heavily on the end of the bed next to her, running those big hands over her again, pressing his face into the bare skin of her neck, his fingers plucking at the hem of that unfamiliar dress.
Sarah hopped to her feet. ‘Not really, no.’ She grabbed up her smaller ‘going out’ handbag from the armchair in the corner of their bedroom. ‘Seriously, are you ready?’
Cole sighed. ‘Baby, seriously, what’s up with you? Are you okay?’
Sarah tossed a lip-gloss into her handbag with a little more feeling than was strictly necessary. ‘I’m fine,’ she intoned, not even bothering to put any real insistence into her voice. Baby. Cole had called her that since day one. She’d used to joke that it was because he couldn’t remember her name, but secretly she’d quite liked it. Recently though, it had started to make her skin prickle, like he was mocking her: baby, baby.
‘Are you sure?’ Cole pressed, ‘because you’re not, you know, acting like yourself.’
‘And you’re the world authority on me being me, yeah?’ Sarah shot, throwing a compact in to join the lip-gloss.
‘Well. Yeah? Sar, I am your husband, you know!’
‘I know.’ And he was, he was. But he’d known her for only two and half years, after all – she’d had the black heels she was wearing for longer than that. And when he said she wasn’t being herself he wasn’t referring to the depression, or the weight loss; he meant that it wasn’t like her to turn down sex. For the last two years she hadn’t been able to get enough. Even on cycle days she knew were non-fertile – well, you never knew, did you? In fact, in recent months, it was Cole who had cooled off their sex life – claiming he felt like a stud horse, a performing gigolo – frowning at his wife as she lay there post-coitally with her bum propped up on a tower of pillows, giving his sperm the downhill advantage.
‘Is this because I said I wouldn’t go to the doctors?’
Sarah gave a bitter little laugh, clipping the clasp of her handbag shut. ‘Look, can we not do this right now? I have been trying and trying and trying to get you to talk about going to the fertility doctor. For weeks. But, right now, we have to go to your friend’s bloody birthday party, so please. Are you ready to go?’
‘I told you I’d go if all your tests came back fine,’ Cole continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘It just doesn’t make any sense for both of us to faff around with it at the same time. So, you know, if your stuff turns up okay, then, yeah, maybe it’s the swimmers – but we can do all those checks then, baby.’
Sarah rounded on him, her eyes flashing. ‘Oh, you want to talk “faff”? Faff’. Well, okay. So, when I go in next week I will need to have a blood test. I will need to have an ultrasound. I’m going to have speculums and swabs and a stranger’s bloody hand shoved up inside me. I will need to be tested for STDs. And then, after all that, they are going to flood my fallopian tubes with dye and watch what happens. And that’s just phase one.
Whereas, all you would need to do, is to wank into a plastic cup. It’s not exactly the same thing, is it? No. Okay, so, can we please go?’
Cole stared at her from where he still sat at the end of the bed, stared at her like he wasn’t entirely sure who this woman in the black dress ranting about wanking was. Sarah felt the indignity bite inside her chest and hated it, hated herself.
‘Sure. I’ll just get my wallet then,’ Cole finally said, meekly, skirting around her as he left the room, like a man giving a wide berth to an unexploded bomb.