Prologue
The previous September
They took a day off and went with her because in the three million years they’d all been friends, it was the first time Helen had ever asked them a favour. That was how Elizabeth came to end up carrying a picnic basket in a grassy middle of nowhere, watching one of her two best friends wriggling out of her drawers and about to sit on the giant appendage of a club-bearing man carved into an alien county hillside.
‘Hels, are you actually right in your head?’ she asked.
Janey said nothing but her equal disbelief showed in the dropped-open jaw as Helen stuffed the discarded pants in her handbag and then sat down squarely and triumphantly on Mr Big’s phallic enhancement.
‘Now if I had told you what I wanted to do, would you have come?’ she said. ‘I don’t think so! You would have tried to talk me out of it, wouldn’t you?’
‘Too bloody right I would,’ said Elizabeth, whilst thinking, She’s lost it.
‘And this is the something you needed to do that is really, really, really important then?’ Janey asked, her eyebrows raised as far as they could stretch. ‘Dragging us halfway across the bloody country to see a chalk drawing?’
‘Aw, come on, we’re here now. Just sit down and have a sandwich,’ said Helen, straight-backed and sitting there as if she was waiting for something extraordinary to happen.
‘Where are we, like?’ Janey looked at the surrounding countryside, dominated by the thick white outline of the naked man with the enviable asset. ‘And more to the point – why?’
‘Oh, I’m having a sarnie, I’m flaming famished!’ Elizabeth decided. She was almost brain dead with tiredness, even though she had spent most of the long, long journey snoring on the back seat. She threw herself onto the grass next to her knickerless friend and dragged the picnic basket purposefully over. Janey huffed in a ‘can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ sort of way and grudgingly followed suit, muttering something about them all being bonkers.
‘He’s an ancient fertility symbol,’ Helen explained.
‘I’d never have guessed!’ said Elizabeth, ripping so hungrily into a giant sausage roll that the chalk man almost winced.
Helen went on, ‘Well, I was watching this programme a couple of weeks ago about how all these women who hadn’t been able to conceive came here as a last resort and sat on his … well, here, for a while, and seventy-eight per cent of them – that’s seventy-eight per cent of them – became pregnant.’
A dramatic silence ensued in which Helen waited for the others to be impressed.
‘Well, I have to say it and I hope you’ll excuse the pun,’ Elizabeth spat through a flurry of pastry flakes, ‘but that is positively the biggest load of bollocks you have ever come out with.’
Janey laughed derisively at the same time. ‘Oh Hels, come on!’
‘I know what it sounds like, that’s why I didn’t tell you where we were coming,’ Helen said, her voice fighting off a wobble, ‘but if I don’t get pregnant soon, I’ll die. I want a baby so, so much. Believe me, you two have it a lot easier not wanting children, but I don’t care who laughs at me any more, I just Want. A. Baby.’ Then she turned her head suddenly skyward, blinking hard, a little ashamed at her outburst but more than that, hurt that they of all people were mocking her.
Janey and Elizabeth exchanged the slightest of glances but each knew what the other was thinking. She’d always been so light about the fact that she hadn’t caught on. How many times had she led their joking about it? Neither of them had had the slightest idea that her pain ran so deeply.
Elizabeth plunged her hand into the picnic basket again, in a brave effort to break the heavy silence that had descended upon them like a thick, depressing cloud.
‘So, let’s have a good look at this lot. What have you made us then, Hels? What feast have you concocted this time?’
‘There’s egg and cress, beef and horseradish, goats’ cheese and tomato …’ Helen began to reel off, dabbing at her eye, trying to make it look as if she had something in it ‘… sausage rolls, spicy scotch eggs, chicken filo parcels, lemon Swiss roll, banoffee tarts, Victoria sponge, crisps, Twiglets, there’s a red hummus and onion dip, strawberries dipped in dark chocolate and there’s some Diet Coke and wine.’
‘That all?’ said Elizabeth and Helen blurted out a laugh and the mood was lifted once again.
Aw bless, thought Elizabeth, as she spotted all the little flags on the sandwiches; everything was homemade. Who the chuff could be bothered making real puff pastry these days but Hels? If she did have kids, their sandwich boxes would be the envy of the school.
That little thought bubble gave her another taste of her friend’s desperation and how very severe it must be to trick them into travelling so many miles to do something as ridiculous as this. How had she missed this before?
‘Pass me an egg and cress, would you, please,’ Helen said, all tears abated.
‘When are the fish and Disciples arriving?’ Elizabeth asked, rummaging deep before handing over the clingfilmed triangle bearing an egg and cress sticker.
‘I know you’re a pig … I didn’t want you moaning that I’d dragged you all this way and I hadn’t fed you,’ Helen said, managing a little smile.
‘I’ll have a beef, please, and pass the plonk seeing as I’m not driving,’ Janey said with a deep sigh. ‘Tell me you haven’t forgotten an opener.’
‘It screws,’ Helen said.
‘That’s appropriate!’ Elizabeth snorted and got her usual disapproving look from Janey.
The latter then gasped suddenly and said, ‘Oy, I hope we’ll be all right, sat here on this bloke’s genitals. I can’t afford to get pregnant.’ She looked worriedly down at the segment of chalk line disappearing up her skirt. ‘My Head of Department is about to peg it – I’m in line for his job.’
‘Oh nice!’ Elizabeth said, batting back some disapproval for a change.
‘Cough, cough, cough – I’m sick of listening to him,’ Janey went on. ‘That’s a lifetime of fags for you,’ and she nodded a warning in Elizabeth’s direction. ‘I think they’ll get rid of him in an early-retirement swoop – he’s been with them for about four hundred years so he’ll get a good pay-off. Mind you, he’ll probably spend it all on Bensons, knowing him. It’s only a matter of time before the vacancy comes up; he’s always flaming off ill and I’m running the place as it is so I don’t want any surprise sprogs knackering up my career hopes, thanks very much.’
Helen tilted her head. ‘Well, all I can say is that not all of those women on the TV programme took their pants off when they sat on him.’
‘Oh great!’ said Janey, shifting her bottom off the white line. Not that she believed in stuff like that, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.
Elizabeth poured herself a glass of the wine and reclined to let the gorgeous September sun shine down onto her face. She was too comfortable to move from her position on the ancient willy. Mumbo jumbo crap, she thought inwardly, but she was here now and might as well enjoy it, as it really was a cracking day for a picnic.