Playgroups and Prosecco

by Jo Middleton

  I caught Flo watching a YouTube video about how to descale a kettle. Are we at a point now where she will literally watch anything?

  ‘Why don’t you watch something that might be useful for your actual life,’ I suggested, ‘like a video about Macbeth or simultaneous equations?’

  ‘This is interesting,’ she said, not looking up.

  I wouldn’t mind if she actually descaled the kettle. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever descaled the kettle. Perhaps I need to watch the video.

  Thursday 20 December

  Instagram illusions shattered – 1, badly. Daytime glasses of prosecco – 3. (But in paper cups so barely count.)

  Chapter One parent group Christmas party day!

  The grown-up Christmas theme went down extremely well and we had more people than we’ve ever had before, including a couple of dads, who caused quite the stir. (One of them, Oliver, is single, and, as Lou described him, ‘a bit of a dish’.) We all crammed in and ate Wotsits and Matchmakers and pre-cooked cocktail sausages out of the plastic box. We drank prosecco out of paper cups and I made Dylan come upstairs so we could raise a toast and say thank you for letting us invade his bookshop.

  ‘It’s your bookshop now too, Frankie, don’t forget,’ he said, smiling and raising his paper cup.

  A few of the mums looked puzzled and Dylan told everyone about the new job and how pleased he was that I was going to be there from the New Year and everyone clapped and raised their cups again.

  It felt like a long way from the Busy Beavers Christmas party I went to last year where I sat on my own in a corner with a mini gluten-free mince pie while Cassie made the children line up in alphabetical order to be given ‘gender-neutral’ gifts by what I think was her husband, forced unwillingly into a Santa costume.

  Everyone was talking about Sierra’s New Year’s Eve party. Apparently, someone messaged the Busy Beaver’s WhatsApp group about it and loads of people have said they are going to come. Cassie hasn’t replied to Sierra’s invite.

  Over a second paper cup of prosecco I complained to Sierra and Lou about @simple_dorset_life doing a disappearing act.

  ‘Ah,’ said Lou, ‘I may have a bit of a confession.’

  It turns out that Lou WAS @simple_dorset_life! It makes total sense now, of course, all that buckwheat and yoga, plus the picture that looked suspiciously like Sierra’s garden after we’d been at her house, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

  ‘But hang on,’ I said, ‘you were always talking about how marvellously happy you were with your perfect family and perfect husband – what was all that about?’

  Lou sighed. ‘I guess I just wanted it to be true,’ she said. ‘Or at least I thought I did. But this year, the more I’ve hung out with you guys, the more I’ve realised that my life is actually pretty OK how it is, without the Instagram filter.’

  Sierra raised her paper cup. ‘I’ll cheers to that.’

  Friday 21 December – last day of term

  Thank God. Everyone is exhausted.

  I’ve decided I’m going to shut my diary for a week over Christmas and just eat Toblerone and play games and not be so bloody introspective the whole time. Ian is coming here on Christmas Eve so we can do Jess and Flo’s stockings in the morning, and then he’s staying through until Boxing Day.

  For now, though, I’m going to open the Harveys Bristol Cream and a box of mince pies and spend the evening watching crappy TV while I go through the Christmas Radio Times with a highlighter. I don’t even care that I always forget to look at what I’ve highlighted.

  Saturday 29 December

  Christmas week in numbers (approximately):

  Glasses of prosecco: 8

  Glasses of prosecco disguised as Buck’s Fizz (so basically fruit juice): 14

  Elizabeth Shaw mints: 281

  Mince pies: 23

  Hours watching Christmas TV: 31

  Fucks given about the above: Big Fat Zero

  Monday 31 December

  Amazing new best friends – 2. Regrets about 2018 – 0. High hopes for 2019 – many.

  New Year’s Eve Party Day!

  I had a brief moment this morning when I wondered if I’d really be able to stomach a load of booze and Christmas snacks at Sierra’s. I forced myself to have a cup of tea and a chunk of Toblerone, though, and felt much perkier. That’s the thing with Christmas – it’s when you feel most like you might actually be sick if you eat any more that you need to power on through and eat a turkey sandwich. A bit like life, I guess.

  We FaceTimed Mum and Dad before we went out to wish them Happy New Year in advance. They’d been in two minds about coming over this Christmas, but Dad isn’t such a big fan of travelling any more, plus they have friends in the town who own a restaurant and they put on a big Christmas dinner for all the expats and are doing a New Year’s Eve party, too. We’ve made plans to go over in February half-term, which we’re all really excited about. Parents’ box double-ticked for the year.

  We arrived at Sierra’s at about 4 p.m. A tall, dark man wearing a Rudolph jumper opened the door. He was dashingly handsome. I had a bit of a ‘Bridget and Mark Darcy at the turkey curry buffet’ moment and spluttered a bit before he helpfully stepped in.

  ‘I’m Clyde,’ he said, smiling and holding out his hand. ‘You must be Frankie? Sierra has told me all about you.’ On cue, Sierra appeared behind him.

  ‘Frankie!’ she said, waving a bottle of prosecco in one hand and what looked like a mini quiche in the other. ‘Off you go, Clyde – get the woman a drink!’ She smiled up at him and he positively glowed in her presence. She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss before ushering him into the kitchen. We stood in the hallway while I hung up our coats.

  ‘Well, Clyde is a bit gorgeous, isn’t he?’ I said, once he was in the kitchen, out of earshot.

  ‘Isn’t he?’ said Lou, who had appeared behind Sierra. ‘She’s kept him well hidden.’

  ‘He is gorgeous,’ said Sierra through a mouthful of quiche, ‘although he does a pretty good job of keeping himself hidden normally. If he’s away as much next year I may have to open a B & B just for the adult company.’

  Sierra was just closing the door when the bell rang. It was Cassie. She was on her own. All three of us stared at her. She looked kind of awkward.

  ‘Hello,’ she said eventually, ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming? Everyone else at home has Christmas flu so I had to cancel our party. Not that many people were coming,’ she added, looking a bit sad. ‘So, well. Here I am.’ She held up a bottle she was carrying. ‘I have Aldi gin?’

  The gin broke the tension and Sierra held out her hand, pulling Cassie in for a hug. ‘Get yourself in here,’ she said. ‘Talk to the handsome man just through there in the Rudolph jumper – he’ll get you a drink.’

  We went through into the living room and I spotted Oliver, the single dad who came to the Christmas party, chatting to some of the Chapter One mums. He was wearing a Father Christmas hat.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ I asked Sierra. ‘He’s only been to one group!’ Sierra and Lou exchanged glances.

  ‘We just thought he seemed nice,’ said Lou, not at all innocently, ‘and he mentioned that he didn’t have any New Year plans.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said, ‘I see what’s going on here.’ They laughed. ‘Bit of casual Christmas matchmaking, is it?’

  ‘Well, you did sneak him a few glances at Chapter One,’ said Sierra, ‘and you never know – magic of Christmas and all that. Perhaps he could be your “midnight Omsk time” kiss?’ I made a mental note to position myself strategically later on.

  At about 5.30, half an hour before midnight Omsk time, Sierra, Lou and I were in Sierra’s kitchen, about to taste test the two batches of Christmas brownies that Lou had brought with her.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Lou, ‘I bet you a round of gin and tonics that you can’t tell which of these is the full-fat, full-sugar version, and which is made with Medjool dates and grated cou
rgettes.’

  We both eyed them suspiciously. They looked the same, but no one really wants the first thing they eat in a brand new year to be a mouthful of fake vegetable brownie, do they? Flo came into the kitchen. She was wearing a party hat, carefully so as not to mess up her hair. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re about to try and spot which of these brownies is made with courgettes,’ I told her.

  ‘Let’s do one each,’ said Sierra, ‘that way at least one of us gets a decent one.’

  It seemed fair. In lieu of a coin we tossed the cap of a tonic water bottle.

  ‘Heads!’ I shouted. We all looked at it. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t have a head does it? Ah sod it, I’m having this one,’ and I reached into the Tupperware nearest Lou for the brownie that looked like it had the most calories. Sierra took one from the other box.

  ‘Sorry, Frankie,’ said Sierra, spraying me with brownie crumbs, ‘I reckon you’ve got the courgette one because this is amazing. I can practically feel the butter smearing itself into a warm layer on my thighs.’

  ‘Hang on, though,’ I said, ‘this one’s ace too. Lou, can courgettes and dates honestly taste this good?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Lou, ‘who am I kidding?’ She reached for her glass of prosecco. ‘I used butter and sugar in both of them.’

  Jess came in carrying my phone, which was a bit worrying as I didn’t know she’d taken it. ‘Can I take a picture, Mummy?’ she asked, taking one before I’d had chance to say yes. I took the phone from her and looked at the photo. Sierra had her mouth half-open, full of chocolate brownie. Flo was laughing, pointing at her. Lou had her glass raised and her arm round my shoulder. I looked happier than I remembered seeing myself look in a long time.

  ‘Well, that’s definitely one for Instagram,’ I said.

  I wrote the caption:

  Sod the courgettes. #blessed #fullfatbrownies #passtheprosecco

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly a massive thank you to everyone who has ever read my blog. Without you I would never have been able to grow my blog into something that would one day lead to my editor at Ebury, Gillian Green, emailing out of the blue to ask ‘Have you ever thought about writing fiction?’ Thank you to Gillian for deciding to take a punt on me, even though I responded to that question by telling her that I had once written 15,000 words of a murder mystery but had had to stop because ‘I didn’t know who did it and I didn’t have any clues.’ Thanks too to the whole team at Ebury for their help and support turning my words into a real-life book.

  Thank you to my family WhatsApp group, my daughters, my mum and my sister Annabel, for their constant encouragement – ‘how’s the book coming along?’ – and to my three cats, Endeavour, Humphrey and Camille, for hanging out on the bed with me while I worked through edits. Thank you to Tinder for providing me with a seemingly endless stream of sad-looking men holding giant fish – invaluable for research purposes – and to my writing dream team, Debbie, Gemma, Lou and Sophia, for midnight sausage sandwiches and ongoing moral support – ‘Have you finished the Arvon wine yet? That might help.’

  Thank you to Lucy for offering thoughtful insight and inspiration – ‘Just write about all the shit we did when our girls were little?’ – and to Kathie for sharing the real-life story that inspired poo-in-the-fountain-gate. Thank you to the tutors on my Arvon writing retreat – to Chris Manby for helping me to give the book some much-needed structure and to Mike Gayle for noticing that Frankie wasn’t initially terribly nice to her ex-husband – ‘Is this why I am single in real life, Mike?’

  And thanks for buying my book! I hope you enjoy reading it as much (ideally more) as I enjoyed writing it.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781473565678

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  Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,

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  London SW1V 2SA

  Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © Jo Middleton, 2019

  Cover: www.headdesign.co.uk

  Jo Middleton has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  First published by Ebury Press in 2019

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781529103366