There Goes the Bride

by Holly McQueen

  She skewers me with the kind of glower that would terrify me if I were prone to being terrified by these kinds of things. But I’ve had difficult clients before—although Vanessa is up there with the worst of them—so I hold my nerve and just give her a wide, bright smile.

  “You have a great palate, though,” I tell her as I pretend to sprinkle a pinch of sea salt into the mayonnaise. I’m working on the basis that compliments might placate her and thus divert her attentions away from my recipes. “Try this now and see if you’re getting more lemon taste in there.”

  She tastes the mayo with the kind of concentrated, suspicious expression most of us would reserve for the rare occasions when we’re defusing a nuclear bomb, and then pronounces it “much better. I knew there was something wrong with it before.”

  “Well, thanks for the assistance.”

  “Now, I’ve had a taste of the game terrine, haven’t I? That was decent enough … and I’ve tried the duck liver pâté and the quiche lorraine … both fine …”

  “You’ve tasted pretty much everything I’ve cooked, Vanessa!” My smile feels like it’s stretched to the snapping point. “And I really don’t think your guests are going to be disappointed!”

  “No, no, the food is good.” She doles this out more like a warning than a compliment. “Still, I knew you’d do a decent job after I tasted your coq au vin at the Wilsons’ twentieth anniversary party.”

  “Oh, that’s how you knew about me. Harriet Wilson.” Another one of my more difficult clients. I should have known. “I’m always glad to get business through personal recommendations!”

  “Well, if I’m happy with how everything goes tonight, I’ll put you in touch with my next-door neighbor. She’s just been let down by some caterers she’d booked for an end-of-term charity do at her children’s school. It’s terribly short notice, of course, but I’m sure you could do with the business.”

  Now the smile has stretched way beyond snapping point. My face feels like the cuff on an old sweater that’s been pulled out of shape for so long that it’s gone baggy and saggy, never to return to normal.

  “Actually, I’m extremely busy at this time of year, Vanessa. But of course, if I have the time to do your neighbor’s event, I’d be glad to …”

  We’re interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell at the same time as there’s a whimper from the baby monitor. Vanessa, with the air of a woman who is happiest when multitasking, instructs me to carry on what I’m doing while she both gets the door and checks on the babies. Then she heads out of the kitchen, muttering dark threats, as she goes, about the vanishing nanny.

  This will just about give me time to return Mum’s call—sorry, her four calls—and give her firm instructions to back off for the evening.

  She’s called at least twice a day for the past week, ever since she gleaned from Polly that the two of us had what Mum is calling a contretemps. Ostensibly her concerns are about whether or not we’ll be speaking by Christmas Day, but I’m pretty sure what she’s really angling to find out is what the contretemps was about. After all, there’s nothing she loves more than a family drama. And nothing she hates more than feeling excluded from one.

  “Mum, hi, it’s me,” I say tersely into the phone. “Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t answer, but I’m working at the moment, and …”

  “Oh, Bella, you’re always working. Honestly, darling, there are more important things in life than the constant daily grind, you know.”

  “It’s not a grind. I love my job.”

  “Yes, and don’t we all know it? If you spent half as much time nurturing your relationships as you do your career, you might find you’re in a much happier place in your life. And talking of relationships, how are things between you and Polly?” Her voice purrs; I think she’s proud of her subtlety. “Are the two of you speaking yet? I only ask because Christmas is going to be ever so miserable if you haven’t worked out whatever problem you …”

  “We’re speaking.”

  “Oh!” She sounds surprised, not to say a bit pissed off. “Polly hasn’t said so.”

  “No, well, it was only yesterday.”

  Yesterday I called Polly to see whether or not she still wanted to come around to my place for Christmas Day; she said she’d love to. Both of us left it at that. It wasn’t exactly a huge kiss-and-make-up, but there’s no harm in letting Mum think that it was. Besides, I’m not going to give Mum any of the real information—that it looks very much like her younger daughter has opted to become a lesbian with a mystery “friend” named Julia—until I’ve had the chance to talk to Polly about it myself. And that’s a conversation I have no idea how to bring about.

  Because right now, assuming that Polly is a lesbian is just about the only thing that makes sense to me anymore. I mean, why else is she emailing this Julia woman—the one whom, after all, Dev told me Polly was cagey about—and calling her all the time back in New York? She’s not emailing any of her other friends over there, not from the look of her email account. More to the point, what about that last email that I read, after Polly turned into Gollum on me? Affairs are dangerous territory, aren’t they … after all the hours I’ve spent with you, I should know that better than anyone. And just to put the tin lid on it, I can’t tell you how much I miss our Thursday afternoons together.

  But for now, I’m saying nothing to our drama queen of a mother.

  “We had a really great talk, actually, Mum, hammered out all our issues …”

  “Issues?” Mum squawks, her drama radar flashing so brightly that I can practically see it down the phone. “What issues?”

  It’s at this point that Anna, who must have been the one ringing Vanessa’s doorbell, finally appears in the kitchen. I mouth to her that I’ll be off the phone in a minute.

  “Oh, you know, Mum, just the usual things sisters disagree about.”

  “But what … I mean, you two never tell me … I’m your mother, for heaven’s sake …”

  “Look, Mum, I’m sorry, but I really do have to go now. We’ll speak later in the week, about exactly when you’ll be coming up for Christmas, yes?”

  She doesn’t reply. She’s sulking.

  “OK, bye, Mum! Great to talk to you!” I end the call and turn my attention to Anna. She’s just back from her usual pre-Christmas Winter Sun break, this year a long weekend in Morocco, and she’s looking sunny and smiley, albeit a rather violent orange shade from the Fake Bake she insists on applying before she goes within ten miles of a tankini. “Thank God you’re here,” I tell her, picking up an apron to chuck in her direction. “You’ve got to make a start on the mousses before madame can come back down and start quibbling over the cocoa percentage of the chocolate …”

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  I drop the apron. “Anna!”

  This blows my news about Polly’s newfound lesbianism out of the water.

  “OK, OK, don’t go getting all overexcited about it just yet!” she squeals, sounding extremely overexcited herself. “I didn’t say it was definite. But I don’t know … we had this absolutely incredible sex our first night in Morocco, out on the balcony … well, kind of leaning over the rail of the balcony …”

  I go to the kitchen door and shut it firmly closed, just in case Vanessa decides to make a reappearance. If she was worried about the sell-by dates on the double cream, she probably isn’t the sort to be happy to have thirty mini chocolate mousses and thirty mini raspberry pavlovas made by a woman who’s recently enjoyed filthy sex on an even filthier hotel balcony.

  “… in fact, it was just like one of the pictures in my book of erotic Victorian lithographs … or wait, was it the Japanese bondage book? … Anyway, I’ll lend you whichever book it was, because you really should try it some time, Bells. I swear to you, it was the most powerful, intense …”

  “Anna, please,” I beg her. “Just cut to the chase. I’m not interested in the sex part. All I’m interested in is the pregnancy part.”

  “OK, then.” S
he takes a deep breath, turns to me, and places both her hands on my shoulders. “Ever since that night, Bella, I just feel pregnant.”

  Ah.

  It’s another Anna Lavery Phantom Pregnancy.

  You see, this is the thing with Anna and her pregnancy saga. It goes in cycles: the depths of despair she was plunged into by Vile Debbie’s baby news is always eventually followed, as night follows day, by this weird kind of euphoria.

  I should have spotted it right from the start, in the intensity of her smile when she arrived. It’s happened … hang on, let me think … at least three times in the past ten months. The first time, she was convinced she was pregnant; the second time, she was not only “pregnant” but also “pregnant with twins”; the third time, it wasn’t just twins, it was a boy and a girl, and she was going to name the girl Ruby, after her great-grandmother, and the boy Ian, after Ian Botham, one of Poor Pete’s cricketing heroes. She’d already picked out the perfect pink and blue Farrow & Ball paints and started planning her trip to John Lewis to set up the two separate nurseries when her period started, three days late.

  That was a really bad one.

  “I even wonder if it might be triplets,” she’s saying now dreamily. “I just have this feeling.”

  I make a noncommittal noise.

  “Of course, if it is triplets, I’ll really have to think very hard about my work hours. I mean, you know I desperately want to carry on working with you, Bells, but if I’m doing round-the-clock feeds and nappy changes, I won’t be in any fit state to come back to work for at least six months. Maybe even a year.”

  I start transferring the mayo into a stainless steel dish and moving the Magimix to the sink. “Well, let’s just cross that bridge if we come to it.”

  “I mean, obviously my mum will help out, and Pete’s mum, too, if she must, but I don’t think time with the grandmas is a real substitute for the kind of attention I’m going to be able to give them, is it? And obviously I’m going to be desperate for your help with them, too—but only if it’s not too upsetting for you, Bells.”

  “It’s not too upsetting.”

  “I mean, bloody hell, if it is triplets, you might even have to take one of them off my hands for me.” She lets out a breathless laugh. “Take your pick, I’ll probably be saying, five minutes after popping them out! Obviously I won’t be able to let you take Ruby, and Pete might have a thing or two to say about you taking Imran …”

  “Imran?”

  “After Imran Khan.” She pulls a face, the first thing that’s wiped away her smile so far this morning. “I know. Imran Lavery. But it’s Pete’s top choice now. He won’t be talked back into Ian, no matter how hard I try. Now, it depends on whether the spare one is a boy or a girl, but for a girl I was wondering about Betsy, and for a boy …”

  “Anna. Stop. Just for one moment.” I’m going to have to word this extremely carefully. “Look. Don’t you think it might be wise to just hold off on a few of these … well, these extremely fixed-sounding plans? Just until you know for sure that you’re absolutely, definitely, no-doubt-about-it pregnant?”

  “Oh, but Bella, if you knew how I feel, you know, inside …” She pats her lower stomach.

  “I know. I’m sure. It’s just that we’ve been here a couple of times before, and the last thing I want you to do is get any false hope.”

  “It isn’t false hope! Ooooh, now I think about it, I had all these weird cravings, on the flight back home, for Marmite and lime marmalade.”

  “Together?”

  “Separately.” She looks crushed. “Shit. Do you think that matters? Because I’m sure I could manage them together … mmm, yes, now I think about it, I do quite fancy them mixed together. Mingled together on a piece of toast, all salty from the Marmite and sweet and sticky from the lime marmalade …” Despite her claims that she fancies this revolting combination, she’s actually starting to turn a little bit green. “Actually, Bells,” she suddenly says, “do you know where the bathroom is? I’m a bit worried I might …”

  She gets to the kitchen sink just in time to be sick, noisily and violently, all over my Magimix.

  Despite the fact she’s practically hopping with delight—“Pregnancy sickness! It has to be!”—I insist that she go and splash her face with some water and then sit down quietly at the table while I clear up the horrific state of the sink. Even though I’m normally rubbish with anything vomity, the thought of Vanessa coming back downstairs before I’ve bleached away every trace of it is enough to make me roll my sleeves up and get stuck in as fast as possible.

  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being behind schedule. This evening Anna and Vanessa between them have both contributed to my being almost half an hour behind with my carefully constructed timings. So it’s probably no wonder that I’m a little bit snappier than usual as I struggle to get the salads made. Or that I’m in such a stress-zone that I only just get the trestle tables loaded up with the food by the time the first guests start to arrive at eight o’clock.

  Vanessa has hired a couple of friends’ gap-year teenagers to help out with the handing around and the clearing of plates, so luckily I can get on with heating the hot canapés in the oven while I leave Anna to direct things in the living room above. Under normal circumstances, being below stairs and cooking away as though my life depends on it is great for my mood. But today, for some reason, I’m feeling seriously grouchy and underappreciated.

  It couldn’t be anything to do with all the baby talk, could it?

  I mean, it would be absurd if it were. Anna isn’t pregnant, for God’s sake. She’s fantasy-pregnant. And even if she were pregnant, my overwhelming emotion would be happiness, obviously. Happiness for my best friend, who’d be finally getting something she’s dreamed about for so long. I mean, I’m not a mean-spirited person. I love Anna, and I desperately want for Anna what Anna desperately wants for herself.

  So why is my head filled, right now, with the image of Anna floating beatifically around a nursery filled with three plump, pink, sleeping babies? And why is this image causing a sharp, stabbing pain, deep down in my gut? And for Christ’s sake, why can’t I tear my mind off it? Why do I keep returning to this image—a fantasy image at that—and niggling away at every nook and cranny of it, as though it’s an old wound that I really, really want to reopen?

  I mean, I must be going a little bit mad here, or something. Because now that I think of it, I can almost hear a baby crying.

  Shit. I’m cracking up, aren’t I? Properly, totally, cracking up. It must be the strain of the whole adoption—worrying about Jamie’s attitude and whether he’s ever going to put his money where his mouth is—and worrying about how Anna’s going to fall to pieces when she works out that actually, she’s not pregnant after all, and …

  Oh. Wait a minute. Maybe I’m not cracking up after all. Because the sound is coming from behind my vast mound of fresh potato salad. Which is where Vanessa left her baby monitor earlier.

  A couple of moments later, I hear the crying come to a temporary halt, and then the rather brisk tones of Vanessa herself, demanding of her baby exactly why it is that she’s crying, and what she would like her, Vanessa, to do about it. I’m half expecting the baby to reply—for all I know, children from Fulham are reciting poetry and doing their times tables long before they hit their first birthdays—but actually all that happens is that the howling starts up again, even louder than before. I hear the clunky sounds of a cot being leaned into, and a baby being picked up, and then the crying fades out for a moment or so before fading back in again—only this time, off the monitor and in real life.

  Vanessa is bringing the baby down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  “Esme is having one of her moments. I need you to heat up some milk, please, Bella,” she says as she stalks through the door. Since I last saw her lurking around the kitchen complaining about my mayonnaise, she’s changed into a black cocktail dress and spiky heels. Neither of these items of clothing makes it look pa
rticularly easy to balance a baby on one jutting, silk-clad hip, as she’s currently doing.

  And oh my God, what a baby.

  Even though her face is screwed up with the willful energy of a deliberate temper tantrum and turning roughly the color of the ripened vine tomatoes I’ve just used for my bruschetta, she’s just gorgeous. A plump little body and a cherubic little face, topped off with wispy blond hair that only just covers her head and makes her look beautifully comical rather than a fraction too angelic. She’s wearing—of course she is—some totally fabulous kiddie-designer nightwear creation, all white smocking and sorbet-pink embroidery, but she’s wearing it in a manner that suggests she’d be much happier and more at ease in a pair of Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas.

  I don’t usually go all gooey over babies. Not anymore. It’s a habit I’ve rigorously trained myself out of. But looking at Esme, my heart is melting and breaking all at the same time.

  “Bella, don’t just stand there! I asked for some milk to be heated up, please,” Vanessa snaps above her daughter’s roars.

  Her rudeness brings me back down to earth. “Actually, Vanessa, I was just about to get a fresh tray of the Gruyère tarts into the oven …”

  “Oh, well, then, I’ll do it. Of course! Don’t I always end up doing everything?” She strides to the fridge, handing the howling Esme to me as she does so. “Hold her for a moment, will you?”

  This sort of entirely misses my point about the Gruyère tarts.

  But I’m not going to complain about it. Esme is even more rewarding up close and personal than she was from a small distance. In addition to her enchanting plumpness, I can now feel how heavy and warm and wriggly she is, and most of all I can inhale her perfect baby smell: Johnson’s powder, Infacare bath bubbles and … and just baby.

  Maybe it’s just Anna that’s put the idea in my head, with her talk about letting me have one of her nonexistent triplets and all that. But I can’t stop myself from thinking that Vanessa has another one, exactly like Esme, up in a nursery somewhere. And that she’s such a busy woman, with such a hectic life, that she might not only barely even miss Esme, if I were to take her, but that she’d probably prefer it, even. Less stress with unreliable nannies, and one less mouth to feed, and Esme is obviously the naughtier one of the pair, ruining Vanessa’s sophisticated evening like this …