The Plus One

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  ‘OK, OK, next one,’ said Sal. The question appeared on the screen: ‘Where is the weirdest place you’ve had sex?’

  Lex laughed. ‘My parents’ bed. One hundred per cent. They were away. It was Hamish’s idea, it seemed kind of funny at the time.’

  ’Course it was his idea, I thought to myself.

  Sal pressed play again and Hamish’s face brightened at the question. ‘On the highest road in the world. In the Himalayas. Well, not actually on the road… more like on the side of it. In a tent.’

  ‘Lex!’ I turned to look at her. ‘When did you guys do that?’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  She frowned. ‘He’s talking about another girl. This girl he met on his gap year.’

  I looked at Sal. Then back to Lex. ‘Huh?’ I said. ‘Surely the question was the weirdest place you both had sex? Together?’

  ‘That was the question,’ Sal replied. ‘I just thought it was funny to include this.’ She paused and squinted at Lex. ‘Not funny?’

  ‘Not that funny,’ she replied, quietly. ‘It would be nice if he got one question right.’

  ‘OK, let’s forget that one and carry on.’ Sal pressed play again.

  The next question was ‘When did you know you wanted to marry Lex?’ Hamish, luckily, managed to claw a few points back with his answer. ‘It was Christmas, after we’d been going out for four months. And I was at my home, she was with her parents. But all I wanted was to be with her. And I knew that I wanted that for all my Christmases after that too. In our own house, with our own kids. So I told my parents that day.’

  ‘Awwwwww,’ cooed everyone.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Lex, blushing.

  Then there was the favourite position question, an old favourite, which Hamish claimed was ‘reverse cowgirl’. Men often pick reverse cowgirl in this game, I’d noticed. They can’t say missionary because they worry that makes them like the local vicar who does it with the lights off. A few men go for ‘doggy’, but that often goes down badly because it gives off a get-in-the-kitchen-and-fetch-me-another-beer vibe. Reverse cowgirl suggests a more democratic process. She’s on top, so, you know, three cheers for feminism, but she’s facing away from him so it’s slightly spicier than normal. Personally, it was the climbing on bit of reverse cowgirl that I found off-putting because it involved waving your bottom right in their face like a reversing dumper truck. And surely that is nobody’s best angle? Certainly wasn’t mine.

  And so it went on. What was Lex’s best body part? (He said eyes when he really wanted to say tits because Lex has great tits but he wimped out and went for the ‘sensitive’ option.) What would she save in a fire? (He said himself; she said her vintage McQueen jacket.)

  I wondered briefly whether Jasper would get any of these questions right. Would he be able to recall what I wore on our dinner at the Italian? What bit of my body did he like best? And did he know that my worst, absolutely pathological fear was about swallowing spiders in my sleep? I doubted it. The only person who knew that was Mum. And Bill, actually. Not that either of them would be able to answer the favourite position question. Thank GOD. Once, ages ago in the pub, Lex said hers was on the kitchen table in her flat, which always made me feel alarmed when I went for dinner there. I briefly wondered what Bill’s was and then felt embarrassed.

  ‘You all right, Pol?’ said Sal.

  ‘Mmm, yep totally,’ I replied.

  ‘I can’t believe he talked about where he had sex with someone else,’ said Lex, shaking her head.

  Sal shot me a look. ‘Oh, he just wasn’t concentrating. You know what boys are like. Morons. They just say the first thing that comes into their heads.’

  ‘Especially if it’s about sex,’ I said.

  ‘Especially that,’ added Sal.

  ‘Yeah, but he didn’t get the one about when we said we loved each other either.’

  ‘He was just confusing it with another time,’ said Sal. ‘Shall we open another bottle?’ She stood up and went to the fridge.

  Lex looked like she was close to tears. ‘I just wish he’d thought harder about it.’

  ‘Anyone for a crisp?’ said Rachel loudly, holding a bowl in the air.

  ‘But how difficult is it to remember when you first say you love someone?’ said Lex.

  ‘I wonder if I should put the lasagne in?’ I said. ‘How hungry is everyone?’

  Everyone murmured back that they were, indeed, hungry. ‘And let’s have some music,’ I added.

  ‘Lex,’ said Sal seriously, leaning towards her on the sofa. ‘He said that sweet thing about knowing he wanted to marry you on Christmas Day.’

  ‘He was probably just drunk,’ she replied, throwing her hands up in the air. I winced as Prosecco sloshed over the side of her glass and dangerously close to the beige sofas.

  ‘He was very nice about your eyes,’ ventured Beatrice.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Lex. ‘He only said eyes because he was too embarrassed to say my tits.’ She closed her eyes as her lip started wobbling. I looked at the kitchen clock. It was just after eight and we’d been drinking since midday so tears were probably inevitable. Just, ideally, not from the bride.

  ‘Look,’ said Beatrice. ‘Have a crisp and some hummus. And a glass of water.’

  Lex shook her head and sniffed. ‘Is he even going to remember my middle name at the top of the aisle? Probably not. He’s such a moron. Why am I marrying such a moron?’ We were getting close to hysterical. She picked up a cushion and wailed into it. Everyone made faces silently at one another across the room. I carried on chopping up cucumber for the salad.

  ‘Lex,’ said Sal, squatting on the carpet in front of her. ‘It was just a game. A silly game.’

  ‘You’re like him, you never take anything seriously,’ said Lex. It was muffled because she was still holding the cushion to her face. My knife paused in mid-air as I wondered if her mascara would stain the cushion.

  ‘All right, you don’t need to have a go at me,’ replied Sal. ‘I was only trying to help.’ And then she started crying too. I stopped chopping cucumber and stared at them both. For God’s sake. Now we had two sobbing 31-year-olds. I was quite literally never, ever, ever going on a hen again. Even if it was my own.

  ‘Well, it’s not a help,’ said Lex. ‘I’m marrying a man who is so stupid he practically has to be watered twice a day…’ she stopped to sniff loudly. ‘And you’re egging him on.’

  ‘I wasn’t egging him on,’ said Sal, through her tears, still squatting on the floor. ‘I thought you knew about the sex on Machu Picchu.’

  ‘Himalayas,’ said Lex.

  ‘I don’t care if it was in the fucking Cairngorms. I just thought you’d find it funny.’

  Lex opened her mouth to say something and then started laughing. She fell onto her side on the sofa shaking with laughter. Oh good, now she’d get mascara on the sofa as well as the cushions.

  ‘Sal, I’m sorry,’ said Lex, sitting up again. ‘I didn’t mean any of it. I’m just being drunk and emotional and look at me. And look at you. You never cry.’ She reached her arms down from the sofa and awkwardly hung them around Sal’s shoulders in an attempt to hug her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Sal, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

  ‘Right, everyone,’ I said loudly from the kitchen. ‘The salad’s nearly done. Laura and Rachel, can you guys lay the table. I think lasagne and garlic bread is the answer to all this.’

  ‘What are we supposed to be doing after supper?’ said Rachel, quietly, as she opened the cutlery drawer.

  ‘Well, technically more drinking,’ I said, opening the fridge and looking into it. We still had eight bottles of rosé to get through. And a litre of vodka. ‘But I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

  ‘We could just watch a film or something?’ she suggested.

  So, in the end, although there was a monumental bickering match about which film to watch (someone wanted Bridget Jones, someone else want
ed The Notebook), we settled on Notting Hill and everyone, finally, stopped crying.

  You know in American high school movies when they hire a white clapboard house near a beach for ‘vacation’ and proceed to trash this house with a party involving kegs of beer and red plastic cups and thousands of other students who all take it in turns to shag one another in the bedrooms upstairs? The house looked like that the next morning. Dirty glasses, dirty plates, dirty napkins, dirty jugs, empty bottles of wine, overflowing ashtrays and shoes everywhere. So many shoes. Why were there so many shoes? Had the shoes had sex with one other and reproduced in the night? I tiptoed over the sticky floor like I was crossing a minefield to flick the kettle on and reached for the window behind the sink to open it.

  If I was feeling kind and generous, I would start clearing this all up now. On my own. So that I could get breakfast going and everyone upstairs would be enticed by the smell of bacon and coffee. But I wasn’t feeling that way and, anyway, if I cleared the whole thing up and put breakfast on nobody would realize I’d done it and I wouldn’t get the brownie points. So, I’d make a coffee and watch telly until someone else woke up.

  I scrolled through Instagram while the kettle boiled. The usual Sunday morning stuff. Pictures of some fried eggs beside the Sunday Times, pictures of someone pretending to be still asleep in bed, pictures of someone’s dog actually in bed, under the duvet, a picture of Lala’s toes, which she’d Instagrammed in the bath and a few memes about hangovers. I sighed and slipped my phone back on the counter beside a penis straw. Still no word from Jasper, which was weird. Or was it weird? Maybe I was just being hungover and needy.

  By the time Sal came downstairs, I was lying horizontal on the sofa on my third cup of lukewarm coffee watching Hollyoaks, a show which never gets less depressing. ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Jesus, look at this place.’

  ‘I know, I couldn’t face doing it on my own. Sorry.’ I looked up from the sofa. ‘There’s warm-ish coffee on the Aga.’

  ‘Cool.’ She reached for a mug. ‘Lex all right this morning?’

  ‘She’s still asleep. I think she’ll be fine. Just tired and overemotional. And we’d been drinking since lunch.’

  Sal poured herself a coffee and lay down on the sofa opposite me. We watched Hollyoaks in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘Sal,’ I said, deciding I needed to get the Hamish thing off my chest, given the scene the night before, ‘if I tell you something, you promise you won’t talk to Lex about it?’

  ‘What?’ she said, looking nervous. So, I explained about the party. About seeing Hamish there. About him asking me not to say anything to Lex. ‘So I haven’t said anything,’ I said finally. ‘But I feel like I’m carrying this great secret. I feel like if it was me I’d want to know. Right?’

  She nodded. ‘You’ve got to tell her. She needs to know. Honestly, Pols. I know it’s an impossible thing, but you can’t just leave it. Imagine if she finds out you knew later on?’

  ‘I know, I know. OK, I’ll tell her. Thing is, he wasn’t technically cheating. He was just… spanking. I don’t know if he, you know, goes any further.’

  ‘Oh please,’ she said. ‘The guy’s a psycho. She needs to know.’

  ‘OK, I’ll tell her,’ I said again, feeling sick about it. ‘I’m just not sure when. Now, shall we cheer ourselves up with a bit of cleaning?’ I looked over at the kitchen sink, piled with smeary glasses and plates. A half-eaten bowl of hummus was crusting next to it. ‘I’ll wash, you dry?’

  ‘Lex, why don’t you go with Pols in the car and keep her company?’ said Sal, when we’d packed up the house a few hours later. Everyone else was getting the train.

  ‘I don’t live anywhere near her,’ said Lex.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Sal, looking pointedly at me. ‘You can talk about wedding stuff.’

  Thanks, Sal, I thought, getting into the car, so hungover I felt brainless. Like a jellyfish. Just the time to have a stupendously awkward conversation. Lex and I would probably both cry and driving back from Norfolk is like returning from Middle Earth. It takes fucking hours. So we’d be crying for ages. Perfect. The perfect end to a hen weekend. The perfect Sunday evening. Crying on the M11. Ideal.

  Lex got in and wound the passenger seat back, then put her ‘bride-in-waiting’ eye mask over her face as I pulled out of the drive.

  ‘I might just have a snooze, Pols, do you mind?’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, feeling like I might be sick. I might actually throw up all over the steering wheel. ‘Can I talk to you about...something?’

  ‘Sure, what’s up?’ She frowned at me and pulled her eye mask on top of her head.

  ‘Oh God, I don’t even really know how to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. I’m just going to tell you, just say it, just…’

  ‘OK, Pols. Can you just tell me? You’re freaking me out.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘OK, so the other day I had to go to a party for work. A sort of fetish party, I suppose. Run by some Italian woman. Peregrine wanted me to cover it so I said I’d go. And I went with Lala. It was in this big house in Mayfair with various people in frankly quite undignified outfits and…’

  Lex interrupted me. ‘I know what you’re going to say. You saw him. Hamish. Right?’

  I was stunned. ‘What? Yes. But what? You know? How do you know? He said you didn’t know he went to them.’

  ‘Pols, can you concentrate on the road? I’m a bit worried about that wall.’

  ‘Sure, sorry,’ I said, straightening up. ‘But I’m really confused. I was psyching myself up to tell you, but you know? You know?’

  She sighed. ‘I’ve known for a while. He’s been going to them for a while.’

  ‘But he said you don’t know about them?’

  ‘I do know. We’ve talked about it. I don’t know why he told you that. He was probably just protecting me.’

  ‘But why? Like, don’t you mind? Isn’t it a bit weird, Lex, that your fiancé goes off to these parties by himself?’ I couldn’t get my head round it.

  She looked out of her window. ‘I know it seems weird,’ she said finally. ‘And it was weird when I found out. But then we talked about it and I decided if that was his thing, if he wants to go off to these parties then fine, he can do that. He doesn’t actually sleep with anyone at them. And if it means he still comes home to me afterwards.’

  I frowned. ‘Lex, you can’t seriously marry…’

  ‘Pols,’ she said, turning to face me, ‘I get it. You’re all independent. You don’t feel like you have to get married. You haven’t thought about the big day and the dress and you hate all that stuff. I get it. I know you. I know you’re not into it. I know you probably don’t even want to be my maid of honour. But do you know what? I do want the big day. I do want the dress. And I’m sorry if you disapprove and it’s not modern enough for you. But I do want that and I do want to marry Hamish. And I do want you to be maid of honour because you’re my best friend, so can you please just be happy. Try and support me?’

  I didn’t think I’d be the one to cry, but I broke and a tear rolled down my face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to say. I guess I just wanted to make sure that you’re all right.’ I wiped my face with a hand.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I promise. So he goes to these parties. And he’s totally fucking useless because he can’t remember when we said “I love you” to one another and I lost my shit last night because I was drunk. But he’s honest with me. We’re probably more honest with one another than a load of other couples I can think of.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, wiping my face again. ‘OK. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry, you idiot,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m sorry I’ve made you cry. But at least we’ve both now cried this weekend, right?’

  I laughed and reached into my bag for a tissue to wipe my nose. ‘Can I just ask one thing?’ I said, a few minutes later, still confused.

  ‘Sure.’
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  ‘How did you find out? About the parties, I mean.’

  ‘I found a pair of leather Y-fronts in his chest of drawers,’ she said, and then we both burst out laughing. We laughed so hard that tears ran down Lex’s cheeks too. So, actually, in the end, it was quite a bonding car journey. I still thought Lex was mad to be marrying Hamish, but if she said she was happy then that had to be that.

  Three hours later, I dropped her at Notting Hill Gate Tube station. ‘Thank you for the best hen ever,’ said Lex, leaning over to hug me.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Get home safely.’

  ‘I will. Are you seeing Jasper tonight?’

  ‘Err, not sure,’ I said.

  ‘OK, well, send my love if you do.’

  ‘’Course.’ I waved at her through the car window and drove back down towards Shepherd’s Bush roundabout. I needed a bath and maybe a tiny glass of wine after that drive, and then I’d ring Jasper. And Mums. Crap. Must ring her too.

  The flat was dark and freezing which meant Joe was out. I threw my bag on my bed, flicked the heating on and started running a bath.

  I called Mums but got her voicemail. Where was everyone? Had there been some sort of apocalypse?

  ‘Hi, Mums. Just back from Norfolk. Fun weekend. Well, mad weekend. But will tell you later. Am having a bath now so if you ring back and I don’t answer, I’m cleansing myself from all the vodka. Hope you’re feeling all right. Love you.’

  Jasper. Should I ring him? I checked the time – 7.02 p.m. on a Sunday. Fuck it, I’d ring him. Silence all weekend was weird.

  It rang and rang and rang and then went to voicemail so I hung up.

  Neither Jasper nor Mums had called back by the time I slithered, still steaming from the bath, directly into bed an hour or so later. At which point I started worrying. Not so much about Mums, who would probably be watching Midsomer Murders with Sidney and a can of chickpeas which the Vikings had brought over with them. I was obsessing more about Jasper. I couldn’t help it. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d had a car crash? Or had been shot in a shooting accident? My head was full of possibilities: a freak lightning bolt in Yorkshire? A fall off one of the castle ramparts? I turned my lamp on again and sent him a message.