The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020!

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  ‘Turn it round,’ said Rory, so I lifted it from the box and found my initials stamped on the other side. FAF in gold capitals.

  ‘I thought it was time you got rid of that revolting rucksack,’ he said, ‘so this is a proper handbag to say I love you. I love you, Florence Amélie Fairfax.’

  ‘Wow,’ I murmured, running my thumb over the initials. ‘Thank you. This is crazy generous.’

  Rory shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. Not for the woman I love.’

  He kept saying it and I wasn’t sure what to reply. This was the moment I’d dreamt of. A handsome man, my boyfriend, was sitting in front of me saying that he loved me. In the films, this was the moment when violins started up, the camera zoomed in on the lovers’ faces, the other person said it back and then they kissed, lips and noses pressed up against one another’s faces so hard you wondered if they could breathe. And yet here I was, in the same situation, and all I could think was: is it too greedy if I have the cinnamon roll as well as the pain au chocolat?

  ‘Thank you,’ I said eventually, ‘I’m honoured.’

  Rory leant back in his chair. ‘You’re honoured? Is that all I’m getting?’

  I winced. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just a lot to take in this morning and I don’t want to be flippant about this. I want to say it when it’s right. Not when I’m…’ I gestured at my dressing gown, flecked with croissant flakes.

  He nodded but looked so crestfallen I felt guilt pluck at my heart. ‘I love this though,’ I said, running my hand back over the bag, as if loving his present would make up for it.

  ‘Do you really?’ he said, looking more hopeful.

  I nodded but I actually didn’t. A crocodile-patterned bag was the sort of thing Patricia would like. I couldn’t carry my cheese and tomato sandwich to work in this monstrosity. What if the pips leaked on the suede?

  ‘Can we go upstairs?’ he asked.

  ‘Really? Now? Like this?’ I said with a laugh, relieved to be off the topic of both love and handbags.

  ‘Absolutely like that. I think it’s the pinkness and the fluffiness of the dressing gown that’s doing it for me.’

  ‘But what about Harry? I can’t leave him here, on his own.’

  ‘He can’t join in, sorry.’

  In the end, I put Harry back into his box, on his new bed, and carried it upstairs. But I put the box in the bathroom because I didn’t think Harry needed to see what we were about to do and I was still haunted by the memory of Marmalade’s tail on my feet. I brushed my teeth – mindful that I hadn’t since Mia and Ruby threw me into bed last night – and pulled the bathroom door almost closed behind me.

  Rory was already lying on my bed. I climbed in next to him and laid my head on his shoulder, before he slid his hand underneath my chin and ran his thumb over my lips, parting them a fraction. ‘I love you,’ he said, before kissing me. I still didn’t feel that chipper. My stomach was rolling like a battleship and the coffee had doubled my heart rate, but it’s funny how sex can make you forget a hangover.

  Or it would have been funny, if, at the exact moment that I started feeling a tingling in my feet, the heat spreading up my legs, I didn’t imagine Zach’s hand between my legs, instead of Rory’s.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I said, as the wave of heat continued to flood upwards.

  ‘That’s it, my darling,’ whispered Rory, ‘that’s it. I’ve missed this.’

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ I repeated. It was partly a response to the hot sense of release that I could feel growing as his finger pressed harder. But it was mostly the shock of seeing Zach in my head at that very critical moment.

  What was he doing in there?

  I was still feeling wobbly about this hallucination when I went for my final appointment with Gwendolyn that week.

  Unfortunately, she now seemed to think we were such good friends that I deserved a hug. ‘Florence darling, welcome!’ she said, pressing my face to her chest so hard it was as if she was trying to take an imprint of it.

  I mumbled ‘hello’ into her nipples. She was wearing a red mohair jersey tucked into a tulle skirt with purple tights and her green Crocs – she looked like a large child who’d got up that morning and ignored her wardrobe in favour of the fancy-dress box.

  She released me and we sat.

  ‘How are we? Is the relationship progressing?’

  I nodded and answered cautiously, ‘Yeah, I think so. He said that he loved me.’

  She kicked her Crocs in the air and clapped at the same time. ‘Ah, I’m so pleased!’ Then she cocked her head. ‘But why so glum, Florence poppet? You look like you’ve just swallowed a snake.’

  I paused and pressed my lips together before answering. ‘I’m not sure I love him back. How do I know? How do I work that out?’

  ‘Ah, here we come to one of life’s great questions,’ she replied, settling back in her armchair. ‘Almost everyone I see in here is trying to work that out. Whether they love someone, how much they love them, if they love them enough, if they can love them again, if they love someone else more.’

  ‘What do you tell them?’

  She smiled again. ‘I can’t answer that for them, my darling, just like I can’t tell you. It’s not that simple. We can’t pour your feelings into a measuring jug and see where they come up to. Only you can work that out.’

  ‘What if I can’t?’

  ‘Then that might be your answer.’

  ‘But… but…’ I floundered. ‘He has all the things I wanted on my list! And my family like him!’

  ‘Indeed. But perhaps the qualities you wrote on your list weren’t the ones that really mattered?’ she said, squinting at me. ‘Maybe that’s what this process has taught you. And of course your family’s opinion counts, we’re all swayed by our families. But ultimately it’s your feelings that matter.’

  I sighed. Falling in love wasn’t this complicated in Disney cartoons. Then I steeled myself for my next question, opening my mouth before I replied, unsure how to phrase it.

  ‘What does it mean if you’re sleeping with someone but you see the face of someone else?’ I blurted, as my cheeks turned the colour of Gwendolyn’s jumper.

  She frowned. ‘Do you mean…’ she dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘in the act?’

  I nodded. It had happened again that week. I’d stayed at Rory’s on Wednesday and persuaded him to watch an old Bake Off rerun, but halfway through he’d hauled me on to his lap and we’d had sex on the sofa while Prue Leith talked about custard slices in the background. And as I was on top of him, his head bent to my chest, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like if it was Zach’s head there instead of Rory’s. I had to shake my own head to get rid of the idea while ignoring Prue’s voice at the same time. It hadn’t been a relaxing session.

  ‘But that’s all right, isn’t it?’ I added. ‘That happens in relationships sometimes, doesn’t it? My friend Jaz says she sometimes sees Gordon Ramsay when she’s having sex.’

  ‘Whose face did you see?’

  ‘It’s a friend, someone I work with.’ My entire body shrivelled with shame. Saying this out loud made it real, even if I was only admitting it to the overgrown fairy in front of me. But what if someone else could hear? What if Zach had called me and my phone had picked up in my bag so he was overhearing this conversation? I’d have to emigrate to the moon. I leant down and groped in my rucksack to check. My phone screen was black. No accidental phone call.

  ‘What’s he like, this friend that you work with?’

  ‘Lovely. But he’s not my type. He’s untidy and leaves mugs and his motorbike stuff all over the shop. He dresses like the lost member of Linkin Park. And doesn’t even have a proper job.’

  ‘I thought he worked with you?’

  ‘It’s only temporary.’

  ‘But why does that matter? Why do any of these things matter?’

  ‘Because…’ I stopped and looked out of the window. Actually, I wasn’t sure. I’d once read an article about evo
lution which explained that women were attracted to successful men because, when we were scrabbling around caves, the most successful men would have been the best hunters and provided hunks of woolly mammoth for us to ensure our survival, and the least successful men would have got picked off by a wild beast and left us to go hungry. But I didn’t want to date someone like Hugo just because they had a company Mercedes and a pension. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, looking back to Gwendolyn.

  ‘I tell you what we need to do,’ she said, one finger aloft in the air.

  Here we go.

  ‘And that’s a little spell for clarity.’

  Might have guessed.

  ‘Lie down on the sofa and close your eyes. I’m going to do a short incantation.’

  ‘Will this really help me decide?’

  ‘It will,’ she promised.

  I lay down and listened to the sound of drawers opening and closing and a match being struck. Then she placed something cold on my forehead.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s amethyst. I’ve put it on your third eye for clarity.’

  ‘My third eye?’

  ‘It’s a site of mystical powers. Our sixth sense. And take this in your left hand. It’s malachite to stimulate your aura and guard against any negative energies.’

  I felt her press a hard, round object into my palm and closed my fingers over it.

  ‘And this smoky quartz in your other hand to increase your focus.’

  With a crystal in each hand, I lay very still so the amethyst didn’t roll off my head, but the sudden stink of incense made me want to cough. It was like being in Camden Market. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘It’s cinnamon to raise the energy in the room. It’s a very powerful tool, cinnamon.’

  ‘Oh. I only have it on porridge.’

  ‘Florence, quiet please. I’m not interested in your breakfast. I need to summon the goddess.’

  I pinched my lips, frozen in position, hoping that nobody would knock and see me lying on Gwendolyn’s pink sofa, clutching a couple of pebbles with a stone balancing on my face. I’d call the police if I stumbled into a scene like this.

  ‘Repeat after me. I smell the power within.’

  ‘I smell the power within.’

  ‘I see the power within.’ My nose twitched with an itch.

  ‘I see the power within,’ I said, trying to ignore the itch.

  ‘I feel the power within.’

  ‘I feel the power within.’

  Then Gwendolyn read a short, very bad poem, but all I could think about was my nose. I didn’t want to scratch it and earn a scolding so I just lay there contorting my face in an effort to quell the itch. I imagined her acting the poem out like Eugene, flinging her arms in the air, but I didn’t dare open an eye to check.

  ‘Worries be gone, she needs you no more, worries be gone, out of the door. Stresses and strains, worries and strife, leave now, depart, be gone from her life!’

  On balance, I reckon ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ was better.

  ‘Have you finished?’ I asked, after she’d fallen silent.

  ‘I have,’ she said, removing the stone from my forehead and prising open my fingers for the ones in my palms. I sat up and scratched my nose.

  ‘I believe this will help you see your path more clearly,’ she said solemnly. ‘You have a good soul, Florence. I know it will make the right decision in the end.’

  As she clasped me to her nipples again in a goodbye hug, I wished I was as convinced.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I SAID NO PENISES!’ shouted Mia.

  It was the Saturday before the wedding and twenty of us were sitting round a table in a Soho club. It was a new members’ club just for women, Ruby had explained, and we were going to do a ‘fun’ activity before drinks and dinner.

  She’d been very secretive about this activity. No wonder. It turned out to be a class called Milky Moments, which had nothing to do with milk. Instead, a man called Lewis was standing in front of us, explaining that we were about to enjoy a ‘light-hearted’ ninety-minute foreplay lesson. Lewis was a singer from Guildford who ran these classes to make extra cash, he confided to Ruby and me. Once everyone else had arrived, he’d handed out hot pink feather boas, novelty aprons with naked male and female torsos on them, and dildos. This is what had upset Mia: we each had a floppy, rubber dildo on the table in front of us.

  ‘Keep calm and drink your Prosecco,’ Ruby told her sister.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one this big,’ said Patricia, who’d finished her glass and was holding her dildo like a lightsaber.

  ‘That’s what they all say, madam,’ Lewis told her with a wink. He’d draped a feather boa around his neck which clashed with his purple silk shirt.

  ‘Less of the madam, please, and can I have a top-up?’ replied Patricia, putting down the dildo and waving her glass at him.

  Lewis went around the table refilling glasses and we began.

  First came a warm-up exercise. ‘Wiggle your fingers, ladies! We need to get those going. That’s it, mother-of-the-bride, very good. And then we need to windmill our arms, watch the person next to you. There we go.’ Lewis’s pelvis rocked back and forwards towards us as he demonstrated, his arms sawing their way through the air like a swimming instructor.

  There was a mixture of Mia’s friends around that table. We’d all politely kissed and said hello at the start but I’d already forgotten the names. Some were fashiony sorts from her office. They were the most sombre. Dressed in velvet dresses or silk jumpsuits with blow-dried hair, they’d also looked at their dildos with grim horror.

  Then there were the school friends. Less severe, more giggling, they were mostly all married with small children who they’d left at home for the day with Sloaney husbands called things like Biffer and JP.

  Hugo’s sisters – Holly and Henrietta – were sitting next to one another. I squinted at them and tried to remember what they did. One schooled show-jumping horses in Berkshire; the other was a teacher at a London prep school. Henrietta looked a bit like a horse herself – long nose, large forehead – so perhaps she was the show-jumper.

  Plus Mia, Ruby, Patricia and me. Mia had been persuaded into a plastic tiara and a bride-to-be sash even though she’d protested that she was wearing Erdem and the props ruined her outfit.

  After the warm-up, Lewis skipped round the table again handing out sheets of paper and pens and telling us we needed to pair up.

  Henrietta guffawed – she was definitely the sort of woman who guffawed – and held the pen out in front of her. ‘Look, even these have cocks on them!’

  She was right. At the end of my pen was a very small plastic penis. I glanced at Mia. Her face had puckered with disgust.

  Lewis’s sheets were illustrated with a detailed diagram of a penis.

  ‘You have to label all the bits,’ he announced. ‘And there’s a prize for whoever gets the top mark.’

  ‘Come on, darling,’ said Patricia. Since I was sitting next to her, she was my partner. It was like being at school; pairing up with the least popular kid to burn a small strip of magnesium ribbon.

  ‘That’s obviously the shaft. And those are the testicles although they look very small to me. Your father has mu—’

  ‘PATRICIA, I need to stop you there.’

  ‘And look, that’s the urethra,’ she went on, unabashed.

  ‘Chop chop, darling, write it down. How’s Rory, by the way?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, my head bent to the sheet. ‘In Prague with Hugo.’ They’d left for the stag the previous night and Rory had sent me a selfie of them on the plane holding up cans of Heineken. Hugo was dressed as a woman, in a blonde wig with his chest hair poking from the top of a red dress.

  ‘So nice that they’re friends,’ said Patricia, patting my knee.

  ‘And I am glad he’s coming to the wedding. As is your father.’

  I ignored this and wrote ‘foreskin’ in very small letters on our sheet.
Around us was high-pitched shrieking. ‘It looks like a slug!’ ‘No, that’s not the prostate, this is!’ and so on.

  Mia had partnered with one of her colleagues. Luckily, three Proseccos down, she was laughing.

  ‘How we doing?’ shouted Lewis. ‘We all finished?’

  ‘We have,’ cried Patricia, snatching the sheet and waving it above her head.

  We swapped sheets to mark them like school spelling tests.

  ‘Which means in joint first place are Holly and Henrietta, and Patricia and Florence!’ Lewis announced a few minutes later, before handing us our prize: a lollipop shaped like a penis.

  ‘I will enjoy that,’ said Patricia, sliding it into her handbag.

  ‘Mum!’ reprimanded Mia.

  Then came the final part of the class: a foreplay lesson using the rubber dildos. Lewis handed out bottles of lube, threw a packet of wipes in the middle of the table and sauntered around us, offering helpful tips.

  ‘No, Jessica, harder than that,’ he told one of the fashion lot as she ran her manicured fingers up and down her dildo. ‘That’s it, Mia, perfect! Your husband’s a lucky man. Well done, Patricia, that’s excellent technique. But, Florence, oh dear! What’s going on here?’

  I looked up, my hand frozen. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got to grip it, not tickle it! Get your fingers right round it.’

  I frowned at my dildo and held it more firmly. It was like being seven and back in gym class again when I couldn’t do a cartwheel and everybody else could. Except worse, because ropey hand-job technique was much more shaming than not being able to do a cartwheel.

  ‘There we go,’ Lewis said approvingly. ‘The penis is much more resilient than you think, ladies. You’re not going to break it.’

  ‘I wish I could break yours,’ I muttered.

  ‘What’s that, darling?’ said Patricia.

  After the class, Lewis swept away with his box of props and we moved up a floor to a bar. The bottles of Prosecco continued and trays of canapés appeared.

  ‘Can everybody get ready for the knicker game!’ announced Ruby.

  If you don’t know what this is, consider yourself blessed. I’d only been to a couple of hen parties before. One for an Edinburgh friend, another for an old schoolmate. But we played the knicker game at both since it’s become a hen party tradition. It will be mentioned in one of the 273 emails you receive before the event itself and the gist is that every hen has to buy a new pair of knickers for the bride to take on her honeymoon. At the party itself, they’re all put into a bag and the bride pulls them out one by one, guessing who bought which pair. Some will be novelty thongs. Some will have Mrs ‘So-and-So’ stitched on their bottom. Others will be lacy, or leopard print, or huge elasticated pairs which could double as a tent. Ruby had mentioned this in an email several weeks earlier but I’d forgotten until she reminded me that morning. I’d raced back upstairs and scrabbled through the back of my drawer to retrieve the lacy thong that Mia had given me years before. In my defence, it was barely worn and the gusset looked fine.