Saturday morning was announced by a single drop of water, landing directly on my face. Bloody condensation in the shed, I thought, rolling over and bumping into another body. Lying on her side, surrounded by a nest of pillows and cushions, was heavily pregnant Lucy, happily snoring away under my sheet. I sat up, the night before slowly seeping back into my memory, to see Sumi wedged onto the world’s smallest sofa and, when I looked over the edge of my mattress, Adrian was curled up in a ball between the bedframe and the front door. Empty pizza boxes were stacked up at the side of the sink and my head throbbed with recollection. Patrick followed by podcast followed by Pinot Grigio.
After The Artist Formerly Known as Snazzlechuff’s big announcement, absolute chaos had broken loose. And by chaos, I meant three teenagers turned their chairs over and had to be escorted out of the convention centre. After that, came the social media decimation, the Snazzlechuff Is Over Party, Hashtag Cancel PodPad and, my personal favourite worldwide trending topic of all time, Who the Fuck Is Ros Reynolds? It was an excellent question and not one I was certain I could answer.
By the time I’d fought my way off the stage and down to find my friends, John had disappeared, late for work at the bar, and there was an email in my inbox from Ted confirming that since Snazzlechuff Says was not going ahead, my services would no longer be required at the office. Those weren’t the exact words he’d used but I got the general gist. I’d been sacked. But this time, I wasn’t overwhelmed by shame. It wasn’t my fault. Or at least not entirely. And this time, I had my friends to support me, I would work it out somehow. We left the convention centre and went straight to the closest pub where I gave them a blow-by-blow recap of my Patrick predicament and proceeded to get very, very drunk.
Sacked, single and hungover. The perfect start to my parents’ special day.
‘Are you awake?’ I asked Lucy as I saw one eyelid flicker.
‘I’m thirty-seven weeks’ pregnant, I don’t sleep,’ she muttered. ‘I just close my eyes and hope that when I open them, the baby will have fallen out.’
‘God, it hasn’t, has it?’ I rubbed my hand against my face. ‘I felt something wet on my head?’
Lucy stared straight at me.
‘Are you asking if I got up, straddled your face, waited for my waters to break and then got back into this position, all without you noticing?’
I looked up at the ceiling and back down at my friend.
‘Yes.’
‘You got me,’ she grunted, closing her eyes again. ‘Was it a boy or a girl?’
‘You didn’t have to stay over, you know,’ I said, somehow managing to smile at the bodies crammed into my tiny space.
‘Please,’ Adrian grunted. ‘As if we were going to leave you alone.’
‘The first night is the most dangerous,’ Lucy added. ‘Sumi needed to be here to chop your hands off if you tried to change your mind and call him.’
I lay back on my bed and smiled happily. All my friends around me, all my friends (bar Lucy) hungover. Just like the good old days. Another drop of water landed on the top of my head. I looked up at the ceiling, which was moving too quickly, the room spinning around me.
‘What’s that sound?’ I asked, leaning over Lucy to move the curtain.
‘In England, we call that rain,’ Adrian replied from the floor. ‘Listen.’
‘I thought that sound was in my head,’ I groaned. It wasn’t just raining, it was torrential. Water was splitting the sky in two, it was practically coming down sideways.
‘At last,’ Sumi said in a muffled voice, still face down on the settee. ‘Maybe it won’t be so bloody hot today.’
‘But Mum and Dad’s party.’ I flexed my head left and right, wincing at the headache that was starting to scratch away at my temples. Outside the rain was coming down so hard, I could barely see the house. ‘She’s going to be so upset.’
‘Rain on your wedding day is good luck,’ Lucy replied. ‘Don’t worry.’
I flipped my legs out of bed, narrowly avoiding stepping on Adrian’s face. ‘What about rain on your fortieth-anniversary slash marriage-vow-renewal day?’
‘I think it’s fine and you should be quieter and we should all go back to sleep,’ Sumi answered in a monotonous tone I recognized all too well. ‘Ugh, what was that?’
‘The roof is leaking,’ I wailed as another giant droplet landed on my face. ‘I knew it!’
But the roof wasn’t just leaking, water was pouring in. At first, the drops turned into a trickle which turned into a steady stream, the gaps in the roof widening from minor cracks to gaping chasms until it was raining as hard inside as it was outside.
‘This isn’t good,’ I said, eyes on the ceiling as I felt around on the floor for my trainers. ‘We should get inside.’
‘But we are inside,’ Adrian protested, wiping a raindrop from his face.
‘Inside the house,’ I clarified, helping Lucy to her feet and shuffling a pair of flip-flops onto her feet. ‘Come on! We need to go before—’
A huge chunk of my white plastic ceiling crashed to the floor, right beside Sumi’s head.
‘I’m up, I’m up!’ she shrieked, rolling off the settee and onto the floor. Draping Lucy’s arm over my shoulder, I propped up my pregnant friend, Adrian waiting with my cagoule held over his head as another piece of ceiling tile cracked loudly and fell onto the bed, the heavens opening onto my mattress.
‘Grab the phones!’ Adrian screamed as Sumi unplugged her own from the wall charger. ‘No man left behind!’
‘I’ve got them, I’ve got them,’ she yelled, holding four black phones aloft and hoisting her enormous tote bag onto her shoulder.
We rushed across the garden as quickly as we could given the size of Lucy, the protection of the cagoule doing absolutely nothing for anyone. I half expected to see an ark sailing down the neighbour’s driveway at any minute.
‘For what it’s worth, I thought the shed was quite cute,’ Lucy said, looking back sadly as the rest of the roof gave up the ghost, and water rushed out the front door.
‘Was being the operative word in that sentence,’ Sumi replied, hammering down on the locked back door as loudly as she could. ‘Let us in!’
‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I heard Dad trill as he strolled through the kitchen with a steaming mug in his hand. ‘What’s the emergency?’
‘The emergency is the death trap you built for me just collapsed,’ I said, falling through the door, more puddle than person. I scraped my soaking hair back from my face to see Mum peering at us from the hallway, the cordless phone up to her ear.
‘My beautiful shed,’ Dad gasped, fingertips pressing lightly against the kitchen window. ‘My poor, beautiful shed.’
‘Your poor, wet-through daughter and her nearly concussed sodden friends,’ I corrected. Sumi began filling the kettle while Adrian sat Lucy at the kitchen table. I pulled four mugs out of the cupboard and popped a teabag in each. A proper brew, the answer to all of life’s crises. ‘We could have died, Dad. The roof collapsed onto the bed.’
‘It wouldn’t have killed you,’ he said sadly, watching as my waterlogged copy of Starting Over sailed downstream towards his alpine rockery. ‘Wasn’t heavy enough. Worst-case scenario would have been a broken leg.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ I replied loudly, glaring at the back of his head as Mum walked into the kitchen, phone pressed to her chest, knuckles white around the handset. ‘I’m sure Lucy and her unborn child are relieved.’
‘Morning, Mrs Reynolds,’ Adrian said, pulling out a chair. She sank into it wordlessly. ‘We nearly died but everything’s fine now. You look radiant this morning …’
‘Nearly died,’ Dad scoffed under his breath before narrowing his eyes at my friend. ‘Adrian, did you fiddle with the roof?’
‘That was the tennis club on the phone,’ Mum said before Adrian could reply. Her face was ashen. ‘They’re completely flooded. They say there’s no way they can have it up and running again by this afternoon.’
I bit my lip as the kettle whistled.
‘That was fast,’ Adrian commented as Sumi poured out the water.
‘It’s a fast-boil kettle,’ Mum said, breaking into heaving sobs. ‘Alan got it last month.’
‘It’s OK.’ I rushed to my mum’s side, hugging her into my damp pyjamas and looking to everyone else in the room for reassurance. ‘It’s going to be OK. We’ll fix it somehow.’
‘But the ceremony is supposed to start at one,’ she choked. ‘Your Aunt Annette and Uncle David are already checked in at the Premier Travel Lodge. They’ll be furious if they’ve had a wasted trip.’
‘And our Kevin has set off to get Mum from the home,’ Dad added darkly. ‘I’ll not convince him to do that again in a hurry.’
‘It’s fine,’ I insisted. ‘We’ll find somewhere else, you will have your ceremony. I will fix this, I promise.’
Even if I didn’t exactly have a fantastic track record of fixing things of late, I thought to myself.
‘Sumi,’ I said, firing out ideas before I could second-guess myself. ‘What about the event planners you used for Lucy’s party? Do you think they have any last-minute venues?’
‘I’ll give them a call but I wouldn’t bet on it,’ she said, immediately grabbing her phone. ‘There’s last minute and there’s last minute.’
‘I know someone who could help.’ Adrian closed the fridge, a pint of milk in his hand. ‘What about John?’
‘What about John?’ I replied, skimming through the (cursed) contact list in my phone. Dry cleaners, no. Hairdressers, no. Wong’s Chinese, maybe.
‘Adrian, you’re so clever!’ Lucy brightened immediately. ‘We could use the upstairs room at Good Luck! It’s so beautiful, with the big windows and the chandeliers, oh and there’s the little stage at the front. It’d be perfect. Call him, Ros, I’m sure he’ll let us use it.’
Tightening my grip on the back of my mum’s chair, I smiled brightly at my friend. ‘Why don’t one of you call him?’ I suggested. ‘You all know him better than I do.’
‘Technically, not true,’ Sumi said with a wink as she fished four teabags out of four mugs.
‘I wouldn’t be comfortable asking him,’ I said, enunciating each word with a knife-like degree of sharpness. ‘And I would appreciate it if you would call him for me.’
‘Fine, I’ll call him,’ Sumi said, cackling into her mug. ‘It’s a beautiful space, Mrs Reynolds, you’ll love it.’
‘You can’t just reorganize something like this on the day, all the food was at the club and now it’s all ruined,’ Mum said with a sniff. ‘Everything is ruined.’
‘Mum, we’ve got all morning, we can do this,’ I insisted. ‘Adrian can call the florist, Sumi and Jo can sort out the food and me and Lucy can call the guests and let them know the change of plan. The bar isn’t that far away, just in Borough Market. We can be there in half an hour. It’s probably just as close as the tennis club.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said tearfully. ‘Maybe we should just cancel it.’
Everyone jumped as Dad slammed his coffee cup down on the kitchen counter.
‘We’ll do no such thing,’ he declared. ‘Sumi, call this John chap and tell him we need his help, money is no object. We’re getting this done.’
We all stared at my father, shocked into silence by an unprecedented display of emotion.
‘I promised you the most special day of your life, Gwen Reynolds,’ Dad bellowed as he dropped to one knee before his wife, a triumphant finger in the air. ‘We are renewing our vows today, come hell or high water!’
‘Poor choice of words,’ Sumi whispered to me, phone pressed against her ear. ‘It’s fucking biblical out there.’
As my mother collapsed into my father’s arms and my friends cheered, I turned my attention out the window and watched the shed, as it collapsed in on itself. All the clothes that hadn’t quite made it into my wash basket floated across the garden in a parade of slovenliness.
‘Could you help me up, Ros?’ Dad asked, stuck on the kitchen floor. I took hold of his hand and yanked him to his feet.
‘We’ll make it perfect, Dad,’ I promised, determined to see this right.
‘Not to throw a spanner in the works,’ Lucy said quietly, staring down between her knees. ‘But I think my waters just broke.’
‘That seems to me like something you need a definite answer on,’ Adrian asked from the seat beside her, leaping to his feet and climbing onto the chair as though expecting a second flood.
‘I was trying to be delicate,’ she replied, gripping the edge of the kitchen table and grimacing tightly. ‘But either my waters have broken or I’ve just wet myself.’
‘She hasn’t had a drink,’ Sumi commented, pushing her fingertips into her temples with her eyes closed. ‘So, I’d say it’s almost certainly the waters breaking thing.’
Mum wiped her face on the sleeve of her dressing gown and rushed over to Lucy’s side. ‘You’re all useless,’ she scolded lightly, throwing a tea towel onto the floor. ‘Let’s call Dave, he can come and pick you up.’
Lucy’s delicate face seized up again.
‘Perhaps just text him and tell him to meet me at the hospital,’ she suggested. ‘I don’t know that this is going to take very long.’
Everyone blanched at exactly the same time.
‘But you’re not due yet!’ I protested, forcing myself not to think of what would become of the new pyjama bottoms I’d lent her. ‘And people are usually in labour for hours, aren’t they? Days, even?’
‘Mum had me in two hours and my sister in three,’ Lucy replied. ‘And my sister had Lesley an hour after her waters broke. They both delivered early.’
I’d forgotten Lucy’s sister had called her baby Lesley. Baby Lesley. Honestly.
‘What do we do?’ I asked, looking straight to Mum and Dad.
‘I’ll drive you to the hospital,’ Adrian offered.
‘No!’ everyone shouted back at once.
‘Fine,’ he sniffed in response.
‘I’ll take her,’ Dad offered, grabbing his car keys from the kitchen counter. ‘Gwen, you’ve got your woman coming over to do your hair, I’ve only got to put my suit on. I’ll take her.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said, slamming my tea down on the table as Mum, unable to wait a second longer, reached for the mop.
‘No, you’ve got more than enough to do,’ Lucy insisted, rising carefully to her feet and we all rose with her. She smiled at Dad as he held out his arm. ‘Shall we?’
‘We shall,’ he confirmed with a gallant nod before turning to my mum. ‘I’ll be back in plenty of time and don’t worry about a thing. Rosalind has got this under control, haven’t you, Ros? She can do this.’
I breathed in sharply, surprise spreading across my face in a smile.
‘Yes, of course,’ I promised, my chest swelling with pride. ‘Like I said, we’ll make it perfect.’
‘Right,’ he said, pulling an umbrella from the stand by the back door. ‘Then everything’s all right. We’ll see you in a bit.’
We followed Lucy out the door and helped her into the car, choruses of good luck ringing all around her until they had backed out the drive and disappeared down the street.
‘Now what?’ Sumi turned to me with her hands on her hips.
‘Now we plan a wedding,’ I replied with a gulp. ‘And we do it really, really quickly.’
‘OK, then,’ she clapped me on the shoulder and marched back into the kitchen with a determined stride. ‘Let’s do this!’
I stood in a puddle outside the front door and looked up at the grey, overcast sky.
‘This has not been my week for good luck,’ I whispered to the heavens. ‘But if there was ever a time for that to change, it would be now.’
The sun peeked out at me from behind a storm cloud, just for a moment, before disappearing again.
‘I’ll take it,’ I said before following my friend back into the house.