‘Ros!’
The knock at the door of my studio was followed by a gurning Ted, weighed down by a cardboard box that was slightly too big for the doorframe. I swivelled around in my chair to watch him shuffle it this way and that, to no avail.
‘All right there?’ I called, remaining right where I was. It was Tuesday and I hadn’t seen a single soul in my cave for more than a week. Whenever I emerged, Gollum-like, to grab something from the fridge, everyone on the main floor stopped what they were doing and watched me, as though I were a Victorian orphan rummaging through their personal snacks. So, no, I didn’t exactly rush to help him out even though my self-imposed rudeness cut me to the bone.
‘Won’t … fucken … fit,’ he grumbled before dropping the box on the floor and kicking it inside. ‘There we go. Where there’s a will and all that. How’s your day going?’
‘What’s in the box, Ted?’ I asked, unmoved by his pleasantries. I’d only been working there for a couple of weeks but I already knew better than to trust a Ted bearing gifts.
‘You’re going to love it,’ he replied. ‘It’s for Friday.’
The other half of my studio already looked like a warehouse, absolutely rammed with cardboard boxes. They were piled so precariously I had to text Lucy every time I went in there in case they collapsed on top of me and no one upstairs noticed. We had posters and flyers and badges and cardboard versions of all of Snazzlechuff’s various masks for the WESC audience to wear, as well as USB sticks, water bottles, mini fans in case it was hot, scarves in case it was cold, and what looked like adorable branded flannels but I had been assured were little, tiny towels that the audience would whip around above their heads to show their appreciation. I had shown my appreciation for them by taking half a dozen home so I could double cleanse with wild abandon. Never had my face been so clean. Ted had spent more on branded merch for a podcast that still did not exist than he had on me. But still, I was getting free flannels so who was really winning?
My boss opened the box slowly, lifting one flap at a time and attempting to make a drumroll sound with his mouth but since he couldn’t really roll his Rs, it sounded more like a wet fart, which somewhat sucked the tension out of the moment.
‘Whaddya think?’ he asked as he yanked a huge, furry tiger’s head out of the box and held it aloft.
‘Ted, did you sacrifice a tiger?’ I whispered as he presented it to me, proudly. It was far too lifelike for its own good. ‘I know the podcast is important to you but those things are endangered.’
‘It’s not real,’ he scoffed, placing it very carefully on my desk where it stared at me, mouth slightly ajar, as though about to say something profound. Like, ‘They’re grrreat!’
‘Why is it here?’ I asked, turning it around to face the wall.
‘Because Snazz’s first mask was a tiger mask,’ Ted explained, as though he were going through the fundamentals of astrophysics with a one-year-old. ‘When he first started out, he wore a tiger mask so I had a new one commissioned in his honour. We’re going to get someone to wear it around the convention to hand out flyers before we record, make sure we’ve got a packed house. I woke up in the middle of the night and it hit me, just like: tiger mask …’
‘Brilliant,’ I replied, wondering if Ted had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. It really didn’t matter either way, but he did need to get out more. ‘I think it’s going to go well, there’s already been loads of interest. A full house is pretty much guaranteed.’
And even though I couldn’t quite believe it, it was true. I’d had more enquiries about this podcast than anything I had ever worked on before. Which was equal parts exciting and incredibly depressing.
‘And Beezer Go-Go and PsychoBang know exactly where they need to be and when?’ Ted asked, absently petting the tiger’s head.
Beezer Go-Go and the questionably named PsychoBang, the co-hosts for our first episode, were both under twenty-one and already worth more than ten million apiece, according to the internet. And to think my mum wouldn’t let me and Jo have a PlayStation because she said it would rot our brains.
‘Everything is ready to go,’ I confirmed. ‘I’ve run through it all a dozen times, we’re sorted.’
‘And you’re scheduled to record the rest of the series next week?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Happy summer holidays, Snazzlechuff.’
‘I’ll arrange something special,’ Ted said, more to himself than me. ‘We’ll get a chef in to cook. Or I’ll fly pizza over from Chicago. He loves Chicago pizza.’
‘Is that even something you can do?’ I asked. Ted gave me the same look you might give someone’s toddler who had just found out you can actually take the things you see in shops home with you.
‘I know gaming isn’t exactly your vibe.’ He added bunny ears to the term to try to make it more palatable. ‘But if this goes well, maybe we’ll, like, have a go at one of your book shows or something.’
‘Really?’ I felt my heart lift.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Ted nodded. ‘We listened to some of your old shows and they’re, like, not shit.’
The highest of praise.
‘You listened to The Book Report?’ I asked, glowing from head to toe nevertheless.
‘Not me,’ he spluttered. ‘One of the nerds that, like, reads. But you know. You’re good.’
I was good. It was validation I needed to hear more than I cared to admit.
‘Get this right and it’s a big foot in the door for you, Ros.’
‘And if I get it wrong, it’s my foot and the rest of me out the door?’ I joked.
‘I love your sense of humour,’ Ted laughed before looking at me with an entirely straight face. ‘But yes, that is correct, I will have to let you go.’ He carefully placed the tiger head back into the box, holding his breath until the tissue paper was replaced and the lid was safely secure. ‘Protect this with your life.’
‘To the grave,’ I swore as he showed himself out.
Once I heard his footsteps tap all the way back upstairs, I poked into the box with my toe, opening the flap and lifting up the tissue paper. It was hideous.
‘Get through this, make it a success, and the Washington situation won’t matter,’ I whispered to myself. ‘No gaming, no teenagers, no Ted.’
The tiger stared back at me.
‘Thanks for the vote of support, Tony,’ I muttered, turning back to my computer.
This week was going to go on forever.
‘OK, so where did you run off to on Saturday afternoon?’ Sumi dumped her full-to-bursting bag down beside her later that evening. I’d tempted her away from work with the promise of treats at the latest addition to London’s thrilling dessert scene, Yo, a café that specialized in and sold nothing but fro-yo. If there was one thing Sumi was powerless against, it was frozen yoghurt.
‘Well, unfortunately you missed my performance,’ I told her, craning my neck up for a kiss on the cheek. ‘Since you hadn’t arranged any entertainment, I thought it might be fun for me to pull that giant rabbit down on top of myself.’
‘Oh, I know,’ she replied. ‘I saw the photos.’
I felt my nostrils flare. ‘Who took photos?’
‘Creepy Dave, Weird Dean, every single one of those pregnant women,’ she counted off the culprits on her fingertips. ‘And don’t look like that because you would have done the same if it was them.’
‘Not if it was one of the pregnant women,’ I sniffed. ‘At least not if she was really pregnant. Did John stick around long?’
‘John?’ Sumi looked up from her phone before slinging it into her bag. ‘I thought he’d left with you two?’
I shook my head. I had decided it was best not to tell her about our conversation or about the kiss. There was nothing to tell so there was no point. It wasn’t fair to put her in the middle of a thing that didn’t even exist. But on the other hand, if I didn’t tell her, I would explode then and there in the middle of the café and that would create such a mess for someone to clean up.
‘I hope you can live with yourself, knowing you missed out on a thrilling fucking game of Stick the Pin on the Nappy,’ she said, glancing over at the next table where a woman with a sleeping baby strapped to her chest was spooning frozen yoghurt into her mouth, over the top of the baby’s head. ‘It was a lot, I don’t blame you for leaving, but you could have told me before you vanished. I’m still technically pissed off with you.’
‘I could have and I’m sorry,’ I agreed. ‘I’m a shit.’
‘Yes, you are, but luckily for you, I need to talk to you about something.’ She piled her long black hair back over her shoulder, the annoyance fading from her face. ‘Lucy enjoyed it though? I think she did.’
‘She definitely did,’ I said. I frowned as she pulled her phone out again, opened her emails and threw it back in her bag. She seemed too tense for someone about to eat their body weight in frozen dairy delights. ‘Sumi, what’s wrong?’
‘Evening, ladies,’ the waiter came back around, pen and paper at the ready. ‘What can I get you?’
Sumi looked up and stared at me, big brown eyes wide open and entirely serious.
‘I want to have a baby.’
‘I’ll come back in a minute,’ the waiter replied.
‘Please come back with two large glasses of white wine,’ I said.
‘We don’t serve wine,’ he said quietly. ‘Why don’t I bring you some fro-yo samples while you work out what you’d like?’ Before I could respond, he ran across the café floor and disappeared behind the wall of frozen yoghurt dispensers.
‘What are you talking about?’ I said, resting my forearms on the table and leaning towards her. ‘You’ve never mentioned wanting kids before, what’s going on? Talk to me.’
‘Ros, I’m older than you,’ she began.
‘You’re two years older than me,’ I reminded her. ‘You literally just turned thirty-five ten days ago.’
‘And do you know what that is in lesbian years?’ she asked. I shook my head. I did not. ‘Well, it’s thirty-five because lesbian years aren’t a thing but, my point is, everyone’s life is moving forward and I’m stuck. You went away and had this amazing career adventure in the US, Adrian is going to be married by Christmas at the rate he’s moving and Lucy is already married, living in a gorgeous house, about to have an actual baby and the happiest person I have ever met. What am I doing with my life? Nothing.’
‘Apart from your very important job? And your very lovely architect girlfriend and being a badass?’ I corrected. Shocked wasn’t the word. Sumi, out of all of us, had always been the one who knew exactly what she wanted and went for it. She was living her best life before anyone even knew that’s what they were supposed to be doing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
‘I didn’t want to put it up for debate until I was sure in my own mind,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s not an overnight decision, it’s something that’s always been in the back of my mind. I’m not Lucy, I’m not going to meet a man and just “get” pregnant, am I? I always knew there would have to be planning involved and that’s what I’m doing now. Planning.’
‘And what does Jemima think?’
Sumi pursed her lips and looked upwards, blinking. ‘Jemima isn’t sure she wants a baby,’ she replied. ‘But I do. I know I do. There won’t be a better time for me to do this and I’ve told Jemima if she doesn’t want to do it with me, I’ll understand but my mind is made up.’
The waiter reappeared and slipped half a dozen small paper cups of frozen yoghurt on the table. ‘I’ll just leave these here for now,’ he whispered before melting away.
‘You’re really serious?’ I said as Sumi dug into the salted caramel sample. Halfway to tears, breaking the news of the biggest decision she would likely ever make and she still wasn’t about to miss out on her fro-yo. At least I knew it was really her and not some very sophisticated clone.
She looked up from her dessert to fix me with a very serious stare. ‘When have I not been serious?’ she asked.
‘When you were going to adopt a dog from Russia, when you decided we were all going to be vegan, when you said we should go to Japan for Christmas, when you went to look at that tiny house in Wimbledon and put an offer in and then cancelled it and then put it in again and—’ I said, counting off examples on my hand.
‘Fine, yes, got the point,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘But this is different. I can feel it in my bones. I want a baby and I don’t want to wait until I’m any older to be a mum. I can afford to take care of a family on my own, I can afford to buy a house. Now is the time and I’m going to do it.’
I picked up a cup of yoghurt and dipped the tip of my spoon in thoughtfully. Lemon curd. It was OK.
‘Go on then,’ Sumi said. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘I’m thinking about how everything keeps changing,’ I said with a sad smile. ‘And how this is the biggest change yet.’
Sumi set down her spoon and sighed, pressing her palms against her face. ‘Right, I’m sorry but I’ve got to say this. I love you, Ros, and I am so fucking happy you’re back, but this obsession you’ve got with missing your old life, with how everything was better “before” has got to stop. Before didn’t exist!’
I dropped my spoon on the floor and leaned over to pick it back up, hair covering my burning face.
‘Lucy had already moved in with Dave before you left and I only stuck it out in that shithole because I knew you wanted me there,’ she went on. ‘We weren’t ecstatically happy little elves, running around London shitting rainbows. We were broke kids, struggling to get by, struggling to be heard, and we made the best of it.’
‘So you’re saying you hated it?’ I asked. I was stung. ‘It was a nightmare, was it?’
‘No, it wasn’t a nightmare,’ she said, holding her hands out and looking up to the ceiling as though it might help her out. ‘It was brilliant and shit and fine and everything life is, depending on the day of the week. I loved my twenties but I’m also happy they’re in the past. It’s like you’ve convinced yourself it was utterly idyllic and I can’t work out why. Where has this “Everything was great when I were a lass” attitude come from? I’m trying to tell you I’m ready to move on to the next chapter in my life and you’re sat there wishing we were in our pyjamas in a house that didn’t have a living room, eating the Chinese takeaway we could only afford once a month and wondering whether or not some dickhead is going to reply to your text? It’s starting to get pathetic.’
I looked down at the other samples of yoghurt while I let her words simmer. Pathetic? I was pathetic?
‘Will you talk to me please?’ Sumi said, tapping two fingers on the table under my nose. ‘Help me understand, Ros. I know moving back home isn’t exactly a dream come true but you’ve got a good job, you’ve got that tit Parker back – which you’d think would have you cock-a-hoop – and you got to work in America for three years which is an opportunity most people would kill for—’
‘And would they kill for the opportunity to be shit at the job and get fired?’ I asked, raising my head sharply.
Sumi blinked at me, confused.
‘I got the sack,’ I said, dipping my spoon into the coconut. It was fine. ‘I hated my life in DC. I was lonely and miserable and I got the sack. Does that help?’
I turned away and gazed out the window.
‘What do you mean, you got the sack?’ Sumi asked.
‘They let me go,’ I replied, remembering the conversation so clearly. Sitting there in my boss’s office, the HR person explaining they were terminating my contract, my boss refusing to make eye contact, and me, just sitting there, overwhelmed with shame. ‘I wasn’t good enough and I got the sack. The end.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, softening her voice and reaching for my hand. ‘Ros?’
‘Because I was embarrassed,’ I replied, closing my eyes and breathing in. As soon as I said it, I felt incredibly stupid.
‘You were embarrassed to tell me you lost your job?’ Sumi squeezed my hand and I opened one eye to see a small smile on her face. ‘Seriously? Even though I know your deepest, darkest secrets?’
I sniffed and squeezed her hand back.
‘Don’t you dare,’ I warned in a thick voice.
‘Even though I know you had a wee in your cat’s litter tray when you were twelve?’ she said. ‘Even though I know you found out the hard way that a blow job does not mean you blow on a penis?’
‘Oh my god, shut up,’ I groaned, pulling my hand away and covering my face.
‘Even though I had to take you to A&E after you tried to use cotton wool as a makeshift tampon and were convinced you had toxic shock syndrome?’
‘I was wondering if you’d like to order now?’ asked the ashen-faced waiter. We looked up at his pale face and trembling lower lip and burst into hysterics.
‘Two large originals,’ Sumi said, gasping for breath. ‘With chocolate chips for her, coconut shreds and strawberries for me.’
He nodded and left. No further questions.
‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ she ordered. ‘I want to know all of it.’
‘It was horrible, I felt so worthless,’ I told her, so relieved I could have laughed. ‘It was fun at first, being in DC, but then it got on top of me and I was just so lonely. There were days at the weekend when I didn’t get off the settee because what was the point? And I didn’t know how to get myself out of it.’
‘Oh, Ros.’ Sumi looked like she might cry. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I wanted to but I couldn’t,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t know how to start the conversation without sounding pathetic. And ever since I got back, it feels like all these doors are closing to me. Lucy is further away, Adrian’s got his girlfriend, even my parents don’t want me around. And now you’re going to take this incredible, incredible step, which I am so happy about and I’m sorry if it seemed as though I wasn’t because I am, I really am.’
She nodded in silence, her face open and kind and there for me, and it was enough.
‘It was easier before, everything was up for grabs. Something didn’t work out, you just did something else. Now it feels as though I have one less choice, one less option every day,’ I said, reaching for words I had struggled to find until now. ‘I know it’s not just me, I know lots of people are having a hard time right now, but I don’t know how to fix it and I feel as though I used to, or we used to.’
‘Don’t get upset,’ Sumi said, slowly, carefully. ‘But have you thought about talking to someone about this? A counsellor maybe? Only, I’ve been seeing one to talk about all the baby stuff and it’s life-changing. Not saying you need to or have to but just putting it on the table. It sounds like you’ve really been struggling.’
A rush of affection for my best friend ran through me. I’d dreaded this conversation, like I was trapped in a dark room all on my own, but now it was as though someone had pulled the curtains open from the outside. There was a light at last.
‘Have you talked to Patrick about any of this?’ she asked. ‘What does he say?’
I clenched my jaw and made a fist, suddenly tense. ‘I can’t talk to Patrick about any of this,’ I told her. ‘I don’t want him to know I got the sack, about any of it.’
Sumi raised an eyebrow but said nothing as the waiter reappeared with two immense-looking buckets of frozen yoghurt. He placed them on the table in front of us and backed away, eyes wide and transfixed, half bowing as he went. Either he was terrified of us or he was in love with us. Possibly both.
‘I talked to John,’ I said lightly.
‘Oh,’ Sumi dug into her dessert with a neutral expression on her pretty face. ‘Did you now?’
‘And I might have kissed him.’
She looked up so quickly, I was afraid her head would snap clean off. A spoon of yoghurt that had been headed for her mouth, sticking her in the neck.
‘What do you mean, you kissed him?’ she screamed.
‘All right, calm down,’ I whispered, smiling nervously at the mother and her stirring baby beside us. ‘You literally just told me you’re going to bring a life into the world and I didn’t even raise my voice.’
‘I’m having a baby, I’m not breeding chimeras,’ she replied, her voice lowered by barely a fraction. ‘What do you mean, you kissed John? When? Where? How? And again, what the fuck?’
‘At the baby shower, under the stuffed rabbit, with my lips,’ I groaned. Worst game of Cluedo ever. ‘Technically he kissed me, I was the kissee, not the kisser. I don’t even know how it happened.’
Sumi pffted loudly. ‘It happened because he’s obviously got a raging boner for you. How dare you sit there and tell me how terrible things are when you’re casually getting it on with one of the most beautiful men my gay self has ever seen, Rosalind Reynolds, you are a disgrace.’
‘Sumi!’ I suddenly very much wished we had opted for an establishment that had wine. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re unhappy and confused and you don’t know what you’re doing and we’ll get to that,’ she said, waving away the last ten minutes of emotional revelations. ‘You snogged John at the baby shower? Now with the details please.’
‘That’s it, that’s the whole thing,’ I insisted before biting my lip. ‘Except we also had a bit of a dance at the dark disco. A sexy dance.’
Sumi gasped, loudly and dramatically, with her entire body.
‘And just like with everything else, I have no idea what’s going on.’
‘Your honour, I refer you to my first point,’ she replied. ‘John’s raging boner. Wait, you kissed under the rabbit? That is kinky.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, my fingers finding my lips as my memory tiptoed back to the kiss. Short, sharp and electric. I could still feel it. ‘It’s not happening again. I just had to tell you before I exploded.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Sumi confirmed, resuming her serious expression. ‘I am listening.’
‘Did you know he was divorced?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Oh yeah. One of my mates at the firm did his divorce. That’s how we met. Adrian thought he could train him up as a new wingman but me and Lucy couldn’t put him through that off the back of a nasty break-up.’
‘I heard it wasn’t great?’
‘The nastiest,’ Sumi confirmed. ‘You must have seen her at the bar, she’s always there, haunting the place. Blonde? Pretty? Very tall. Two red horns poking out of her forehead and a forked tail sticking out her arse. Cheated on him with one of their friends and then refused to sell him the business. It’s so messy.’
‘Poor John,’ I said slowly, my heart lurching at the thought of how hard that must have been for him.
‘Not that it matters to you.’ Sumi leaned back in her chair, a calm coming over her face.
‘It doesn’t?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Because you’ve got Patrick.’
‘Right, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Patrick.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Sumi said, watching me shovel my fro-yo. It really was very good, even if it wasn’t wine. ‘All you’ve ever wanted was Patrick Parker. And now you’ve got him, you don’t want him? Come on, Ros, you’re not that kind of girl. What’s going on?’
‘I just want things to feel easy again,’ I replied, sure of my answer for the first time in what felt like forever. ‘I’m tired of being tired. And stressed and on edge. I want to wake up in the morning and have all the answers. That’s all I want, for life to be easy.’
‘Well, I can’t help you there,’ Sumi said sadly, sticking her spoon into my dessert. ‘I’m a brown lesbian who’s about to use a sperm donor to become a single mother. I don’t know if I’ve ever known what easy feels like.’
‘You know I love you,’ I told her, pushing my yoghurt away. ‘And I want you to know I’m here for you for all of it, start to finish. Except not the literal start or the literal finish because I don’t want to look at your vagina. But everything else, I’m one hundred percent yours.’
‘The further you stay from my vag, the happier I’ll be,’ she said with glistening eyes. ‘Look at us making emotional breakthroughs over frozen yoghurt. Lucy would be so proud of us. And to think, I almost went vegan.’
I looked at her face, a face I knew as well as my own, and found myself smiling. It was so strange to see my Sumi without a smirk or a grin. Something had changed in her but it suited her.
‘You’ve got to talk to Patrick,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I said with a sigh. ‘He’s coming to the podcast recording on Friday and to Mum and Dad’s ceremony. I need to figure this out.’
‘Who knows?’ she said, waving her spoon around in the air. ‘Maybe I’ve been wrong about him all this time and he’ll be wonderful. Maybe he’ll be able to help you.’
I nodded but something inside me sank sadly. Even though I wanted to agree with her, I knew in my heart that I couldn’t.
‘You’re going to have a baby, aren’t you?’ I said, finding a smile for my friend.
She nodded and rested her elbows on the table, cradling her chin in her hands.
‘Ros?’
‘Sumi.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
I reached my spoon into her fro-yo and grabbed a scoop with a side of strawberries. ‘Shoot.’
‘How was the kiss with John?’ she asked, batting her eyes at me.
‘Oh, sod off,’ I mumbled, looking away.
‘Oh dear,’ she grinned. ‘You are in trouble.’