Taking a couple of deep breaths—not that it was doing anything to help the stitch in her side—Chloe dialed the operator.
‘I’d like to make a reverse-charge call please.’
She told the woman the number of the shop and waited to be put through. It was all right, no need to panic, everything was under control. Bruce would be able to help.
‘Chloe, is that you? What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing?’ Bruce sounded irritated beyond belief. ‘Have you any idea how much it costs to accept a reverse-charge call?’
‘I’m sorry. Look, I’m in a phone box on Dempsey Street.’ Chloe tried to find a nice way of saying it. ‘My…um, waters have broken and I’m in a bit of a mess and I haven’t got any money on me—’
‘Good grief, girl! If you’re in labor, tell that husband of yours to get you to the hospital.’
‘Greg’s gone.’ Chloe felt the prickle of perspiration at the back of her neck. ‘But the thing is, I don’t think I’m actually in labor. I mean, I haven’t had any real contractions—’
‘So you want the afternoon off? For crying out loud, Chloe, you certainly pick your moments! I told you I had a vital meeting lined up—’
‘Bruce, please, I need some help here.’ Don’t be a selfish bastard all your life, Chloe longed to yell, but didn’t. ‘I really hate to ask, but you couldn’t come and pick me up, could you?’
‘What, miss my meeting and wreck my leather car seats? I do hope you’re joking, Chloe.’
‘I’m not joking.’
‘And who’s going to look after the shop?’ demanded Bruce. ‘I’m sorry, but somebody has to stay here. Dial 999, get yourself an ambulance.’ He paused and tut-tutted indignantly. ‘You have no idea how inconvenient this is.’
‘But I can’t call an ambulance if I’m not even in labor!’ Chloe was desperate to make him understand.
‘So? Just pretend you are,’ Bruce snapped back. ‘Clutch your stomach and scream for an epidural, that’s all Verity did the whole time she was in bloody labor with Jason. Then when you get to the hospital, tell them the contractions have stopped. They’ll clean you up and give you the bus fare home.’
‘But—’
‘Have to go, customer wants serving, ’bye.’
Brrrrr went the dial tone in Chloe’s ear. She shifted her balance from one foot to the other and felt another warm trickle of amniotic fluid slide down the inside of her leg.
A cramping pain in the depths of her stomach increased in intensity, making her gasp. Was that one? Was that an actual contraction or just another of those Braxton Hicks practice ones she’d been experiencing for weeks?
It was all very well draping yourself across the sofa reading the books, thought Chloe, perplexed, but when it came to the real thing, how were you supposed to tell?
She waited. The cramping pain receded.
And waited.
Nothing happened.
If I stay in here for just a few more hours, Chloe thought, my trousers might dry out.
It all depended how much water had already leaked out and how much was left.
Oh, hang on…
Another cramp was on its way, building up in strength like a giant fist being squeezed gradually tighter and tighter…
Yes, yes, this must be labor. Hooray, that meant she could now phone for an ambulance and they wouldn’t sue her for calling them out under false pretenses.
Weak with relief, and panting a bit as the fist tightened its grip still further, Chloe snatched up the phone. She stood, index finger poised over the 9 button, and pictured the scene. An ambulance, blue lights flashing and siren blaring, screeching to a halt outside the phone box. Paramedics leaping out, ready for anything and clutching those cases they use to jump-start dead bodies back to life—
Oh crikey, not really an emergency, thought Chloe, chickening out. Two contractions and a puddle, that’s all I am.
Hardly the same as a multiple pile-up on the M25.
Relieved, Chloe thought of something else she could do. Phone Miranda.
Yes, that was definitely a sensible idea. Miranda, as her designated birth partner, needed to be warned that things could be about to happen. She may have to finish work at six and make her way straight to the hospital. Chloe felt better instantly. She was glad she’d have Miranda there. Not for the technical advice, admittedly—‘Lawdie, Miss Scarlett, I don’ know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!’—but for sheer moral support. Because let’s face it, if the going got rough and you wanted someone around to take your mind off things and make you laugh, well, Miranda was definitely your man.
***
When you worked in the Fenn Lomax salon you became accustomed to seeing celebrities, but even by Fenn’s standards, cutting and styling the hair of Magdalena Rosetti was something of a coup.
Currently one of the world’s most prized actresses, garlanded with Oscars at this year’s ceremony and fêted as much for her beauty as for her stupendous talent, she was over in London to appear at a televised awards bash being broadcast live that evening from the Grosvenor Hotel.
‘My hairdresser was scheduled to fly over with me,’ Magdalena explained to Fenn. ‘But he fell off his pogo stick in Central Park and while he was lying on the ground a six-year-old rollerbladed over his hand. Three broken fingers,’ she went on, ‘and he’s suing for two hundred million dollars.’
‘Suing the six-year-old?’ said Fenn.
‘No, the manufacturers of the pogo stick, for not warning him that if he pogoed, he might fall off.’
‘She’s amazing in the flesh,’ Bev confided to Johnnie when he phoned half an hour after Magdalena’s arrival. ‘So glamorous, even with her head tipped over a sink, and the smoothest neck I’ve ever seen—damn, there’s another call waiting, so what time are you coming round tonight?’
‘Seven thirty. Six hours to go.’ Johnnie grinned, he couldn’t help it; these days he was so happy, he’d taken to counting the hours like a teenager. ‘Shouldn’t you be taking that call?’
‘Let them wait. I’d much rather talk to you.’
‘Don’t let your boss find out.’
Since there was no chance of that happening, Bev wasn’t scared.
‘Fenn’s locked away in the VIP room with Magdalena Rosetti. Getting up to goodness knows what.’
‘Lucky Fenn.’ Johnnie laughed, then added, ‘But I’d rather be locked in the VIP room getting up to goodness knows what with you.’
Finally, after a couple more minutes of playful banter, Bev whispered, ‘Better go now…love you…bye,’ and took the call that was, irritatingly, still hanging on waiting to be answered.
Honestly, talk about inconsiderate. Was making an appointment to get their fringe trimmed really the high point of some people’s lives?
Had they never heard of true love?
‘Yesss, the Fenn Lomax salon, how may I help you?’ Bev said smoothly in her best don’t-mess-with-me-I’m-the-receptionist voice.
‘Well, well, at long last,’ drawled a woman, employing similar don’t-get-uppity-with-me-I’m-the-operator tactics. ‘Will you accept a reverse-charge call from a Miss Chloe Malone? She needs to speak to a Miss Miranda Carlisle.’
‘Miss Carlisle isn’t here, she’s on her lunch break.’ Reversing the charges? What was going on? Fenn wasn’t going to be thrilled when he heard about this. Bev thought fast, then said graciously, ‘But I’ll accept the call.’
The operator, sounding bored and not in the least grateful, sighed and said, ‘Putting you through.’
‘Chloe?’
‘Bev?’
‘Chloe, what’s happening? Miranda’s not back from lunch yet, but I can take a message for her.’
‘Oh. Right. Okay.’ Chloe’s voice was high-pitched and she sounded distinctly on edge. ‘Can you tell her I think I’m in labor, so if she could make her way to the hospital after work, I’ll meet her there?’
‘You think you’re in labor?’ Bev was mystified. ‘Good grief, don’t you know?’
‘I probably am. It’s hard to explain…oh God, and there are kids with skateboards banging on the glass…’
Fenn, emerging from the VIP room, tapped Bev on the shoulder and said, ‘Coffee for my client, please. Black, two sugars.’
Not even hearing him, Bev frowned into the phone—banging on the glass?—and said, ‘Hang on, where are you?’
‘In a phone box on Dempsey Street, in Barnes. Look, I’m really sorry about having to reverse the charges, but—’
‘A phone box?’ echoed Bev, appalled. ‘God, you can’t give birth in a phone box—too unhygienic for words!’
Fenn, about to tap Bev on the shoulder again, stopped and stared at her.
‘Who are you talking to?’
‘And they smell of wee,’ Bev went on, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘Chloe, if you’re in labor, you really should get to a hospital, they have clean sheets there and everything—oh, hang on a sec.’ Realizing that she was the focus of Fenn’s attention, Bev apologetically covered the receiver. ‘It’s Chloe,’ she stage-whispered. ‘You know, Miranda’s friend. She wanted to let Miranda know—ooh, ouch!’
Fenn snatched the receiver out of her hand before she could finish the sentence. His jaw set, he said tightly, ‘Chloe, what the hell is going on?’
Charming, thought Bev, bend my finger right back, why don’t you? And don’t even think of saying sorry, oh no, just gaily inflict a bit of grievous bodily harm then barge in on some phone conversation that has absolutely nothing to do with you—
‘Tell me where you are,’ ordered Fenn, making Bev jump. ‘Right, yes, I know Dempsey Street. Okay, stay there, don’t move, I’m on my way.’
‘B-but,’ Bev spluttered as he banged the phone down and headed for the door, ‘you can’t—Fenn, you can’t just—’
The door slammed shut behind him.
Too late, he already had.
***
‘Crikey, what’s up with Fenn? He just shot past me in the Lotus doing about a hundred miles an hour down the Fulham Road.’ Amazed, Miranda unwound her red scarf from around her neck and flung her beret, James Bond-style, at the hatstand. Oh well, James Bond probably practiced a lot more than she did.
‘Your friend Chloe rang up. Fenn’s gone racing off to rescue her from some public phone box.’ Bev pulled a fastidious face—much as she wanted babies of her own, she couldn’t help wishing that she could pick them up at the supermarket, shrink-wrapped. ‘Chloe thinks she’s in labor. I must say, it all sounds quite revolting. Talk about disgracing yourself completely—she’s surrounded by boys on skateboards, cheering her on.’
‘Oh. Cheering her on was supposed to be my job.’
Miranda was disappointed, but not that disappointed. When Chloe had asked her to be her birth partner, she’d naturally assumed the event itself would take place in a hospital, preferably one kitted out with morphine, midwives and all manner of hi-tech medical equipment.
Somehow crouching on the floor of a grubby phone box didn’t hold quite the same allure. If Fenn wanted to be the intrepid one, that was fine by her.
‘So I missed Magdalena Rosetti, did I?’ Miranda looked resigned. ‘I suppose she’s been and gone.’
‘Tuh, that’s the other thing.’ Bev looked exasperated. ‘Fenn was so hell-bent on playing the flying doctor, he forgot all about her. She’s still in there.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the VIP room. ‘Half cut.’
Miranda’s mouth dropped open.
‘You mean…?’
‘Not drunk. I mean literally half cut.’ Bev mimed scissors snapping away. ‘I took her a cup of coffee and she asked me where Fenn was. I said he’d be back in a minute.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I mean, what else could I do? Lucy’s completely tied up for the next forty minutes, James is at lunch…Corinne’s just going to have to deal with her as soon as she’s free, but that’s going to be another half-hour at least.’ She shook her head indignantly. ‘It’s not on, it really isn’t. Fenn can’t run out on clients and expect to get away with it—think of the ghastly publicity if this got out.’
‘You are absolutely right,’ said Miranda.
Yes, yes, yes!