Thirty - Four

Nicky yawned as she shuffled into the kitchen, scratching her head sleepily. Vanessa was at the breakfast table, noisily slurping the remaining milk from the bottom of her cereal bowl.

‘Anything for me?’ Nicky asked, indicating the pile of unopened mail on the table.

‘Don’t think so. You expecting anything?’

‘Well, no, not really. Maybe a postcard from Mummy.’

Vanessa smirked. ‘You don’t deserve a card from her, after what you did.’

Nicky slumped into a chair opposite her sister. ‘Oh, don’t remind me. I’ll always feel guilty about that. Till the day I die.’

‘No, you won’t. This time next year you won’t give it another thought..’

‘Oh, well,’ Nicky nodded, with a small sigh. ‘You’re probably right. And at least it wasn’t a total disaster. I wonder where they went in the end.’

Vanessa shrugged, pushed her cereal bowl aside and picked up the mail. ‘Junk mail, bill, bill, junk mail,’ she chanted as she sorted through them. ‘Ah, but this looks like an invitation.’

‘Who’s it for?’

‘Me!’ Vanessa tore open the envelope and tugged out a gold-edged card. ‘It’s a wedding invitation.’

‘I couldn’t face another wedding right now,’ Nicky said.

Vanessa sniggered. ‘Especially this one.’

Nicky stared at her sister, frowning hard. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘My friend Mariaa’s getting married to Jason.’

‘Jason?’

‘Yes, you know, that slime-ball you went out with for a while.’

‘I didn’t know you knew Jason.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry - I should have told you. bumped into him by accident in the pub one day, and I introduced him to Maria. They started going out together. I should have told you, I suppose. But I thought you’d be upset.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve known Jason and your best friend were going out together all this time, but you never said anything.’

Vanessa shrugged carelessly, then looked her sister straight in the eye and smiled. ‘It’s a small world,’ she said.

***

Ted crept around the house in case he woke the baby, who was sleeping peacefully in the nursery. She seemed to do nothing but sleep. After the birth, it was a sudden gut-wrenching anti-climax. Every so often, he tip-toed into her room to make sure she was all right, and to convince himself she was real, but all she did was sleep.

Having spent most of the morning getting the house ship-shape, Ted now felt exhausted. Marjorie was upstairs, running herself a bath, and he thought he might indulge in a quiet sit down with a read of The Tempest.

Marjorie suddenly appeared in the living room doorway, holding up an empty champagne bottle as if it was a urine sample. ‘What’s this?’ she demanded.

Ted could feel the blood drain from his face. How had he overlooked the bathroom? He’d been shaving and showering in there for the past three days, so how had he missed it? Too much on his mind, probably. What with the baby, seeing Donald, and having to work a late shift. Perhaps it was the tiredness. How on earth had me missed a champagne bottle standing on the edge of the bath. But there it was. Now that Marjorie had confronted him with it, he could see in his mind’s eye the champagne bottle glaring obviously at him from where he and Donald had...

‘Well?’ said Marjorie.

He realised the silence had stretched to an unbelievably unrealistic length while she waited for his explanation.

‘I ... um ...’ he began. ‘I just wanted to wet the baby’s head.’

‘You drank a whole bottle yourself?’

Ted nodded silently.

Marjorie’s lip curled triumphantly. ‘Then why are there two glasses in the bathroom?’