several additional deep breaths I had taken while she was making her leisurely exit from the room, I could no longer speak calmly, as I shrieked, ‘Simon. It was NOT a misunderstanding; it was a deliberate manipulation of us by Jane. She knows perfectly well I have said she is not to have an account yet. She just thought you were a soft touch and she would get round you while I was out, and I would be none the wiser. And WHY can’t you just bloody back me up with the children? Why the fuck do I always have to be the bad cop, and you get to be the good cop, while I rant and rave and you just refuse to take anything seriously? You ALWAYS DO THIS, and it’s NOT FAIR!’
‘You do realise that you now sound like your eleven-year-old daughter, claiming things aren’t fair?’ said Simon, in his special ‘I’m going to sound annoyingly rational because I think you are hysterical’ voice.
‘But it’s NOT fair!’ I howled. ‘You never punish them, you always leave it up to me, so when they grow up and write their memoirs I will be the Mommie Dearest figure and you will be some sort of fucking saint. Joan Crawford probably wasn’t even that bad a mother. She probably just had a husband who DIDN’T BACK HER UP!’
‘I think she was quite a bad mother …’ remarked Simon.
‘Don’t change the subject,’ I snapped.
‘I do back you up though. I backed you up over Peter’s screen ban last week.’
‘Well, apart from the two of you downloading and watching Guardians of the Galaxy while I was at the supermarket. And letting him play Fortnite! Apart from that, you totally backed me up,’ I said with what was supposed to be a hollow laugh, but sadly came out more as a strangulated snarl.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! I DO back you up, you just overreact ALL THE TIME. My God, are you hormonal or something? Is this the start of The Change?’
‘I am not hormonal,’ I said coldly. ‘I resent your assumption that every time I express any emotion, it must just be because I am an irrational … beachball … just swept away on an uncontrollable tide of hormones.’
‘What an image!’ sniggered Simon, who was fiddling with his phone. ‘And actually, darling, according to the period tracker app on my phone, you are due on, actually.’
‘MY FUCKING CYCLE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT YOU ARE AN INCONSIDERATE PRICK! AND THAT APP IS FUCKING CREEPY AND A TOTAL INVASION OF MY PRIVACY!’ I snarled.
‘On the contrary, sweetheart, it’s a useful reminder for when I need to don my Kevlar jacket each month,’ sighed Simon.
‘I am late,’ I responded with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘I am going now. We will talk about this tomorrow. In the meantime, do not let Jane have an Instagram account, if that is not too much to ask!’
I swept out of the house on that parting note, pausing only to pop upstairs and throw some tampons in my bag, as I had a horrible feeling he was right about me being due on. I do hate it when he is right.
All in all, therefore, I was not in the best frame of mind when I arrived at the pub to meet Hannah and Sam, and before we even got onto the subject of this year’s teachers and class groups I indignantly relayed my tale of woe. Sam’s daughter Sophie and Hannah’s daughter Emily are the same age as Jane, although Hannah’s children are at a different school, due to the vagaries of the catchment system, and they at least shared my outrage and concerns, as I hiccupped about pedophiles and sexting, unlike Simon who had made unhelpful suggestions about privacy settings and parental controls when I had raised these concerns.
Nonetheless, despite her sympathetic noises about this, and about my tales of the millennials in short pants with their reuseable cups and their meeting rooms that were more like upmarket soft-plays, and did they think that I had said the right thing in answer to that question, I could not help but feel that Hannah was not wholly concentrating on Instagram or my interview, and indeed was squirming in her seat like a newly potty-trained toddler in need of a pee.
‘Are you all right, Hannah?’ I said. ‘You look a bit odd. Have you got a UTI?’
‘What?’ said Hannah.‘Why would I have a UTI? I do have some news, actually, but I’m not supposed to tell you yet!’
‘Well, you have to tell us now,’ said Sam indignantly. ‘You can’t just say, “I have news” and then refuse to say what it is!’
‘Oh, fuck my life, you’ve got a bun in the oven!’ I gasped. ‘That’s why you’re wriggling around and needing a pee – you have pregnancy bladder. Oh my God! But you’re forty-two! You will have to go to the special unit for the geriatric mothers, with all the other old people who have been shagging. Still, I suppose that’s better than all the retirees who are apparently filling the clap clinics because they are all at it like bunnies and not taking precautions now they’re too old to even worry about being a geriatric mother.’
‘Thank you, Ellen, for your supportive comments,’ said Hannah dryly. ‘Firstly, I don’t think they call them “geriatric mothers” any more. It’s advanced maternal age or something, which isn’t much better, but you are classed as one of them at thirty-five, so it’s not like I’d be the only dried-up husk of a medical miracle if I was pregnant, which I’m not, because as you may have noticed, I’m the best part of the way down a bottle of Cab Sauv! Which I’d hardly be doing if I was fucking pregnant, would I now, Miss Marple?’
‘I suppose not,’ I conceded grudgingly. ‘So what is it then?’
‘Shall we guess? Let’s guess!’ suggested Sam excitedly. ‘We could make a drinking game of it and do shots every time we get it wrong?’
‘Or Hannah could just tell us, because I am her best friend and she tells me everything, like she promised she would when we were eleven,’ I said. ‘Maybe she’ll just tell me, and not you, Sam, because I’m her best friend!’
‘Ah,’ said Sam. ‘But I am her best gay friend, which means, according to the laws of cliché, that actually she tells me everything.’
‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Yes, but according to the laws of cliché, after a Gay Best Friend is told a secret, they have to go shoe shopping with you and then drink Cosmopolitans, and you hate shoe shopping and Cosmos give you heartburn. I WIN!’
‘My God!’ said Hannah. ‘Do you actually WANT to hear my news, or do you just want to squabble between yourselves until I put you on the naughty step?’
‘I know. You’ve won the lottery! Like millions and squillions and you are going to share it with your best friend,’ I squawked.
‘Will you both shut the fuck up? I’m not preggers and I’ve not won the lottery, BUT Charlie has proposed. We haven’t officially announced it yet, because we haven’t told our parents, but I couldn’t keep it a secret. Look, look at my ring!’ said Hannah smugly, fishing a rather swanky little leather box out of her bag.
‘Oh my God! Oh my actual fucking God! You’re getting married! To Charlie. It’s like a fairy story,’ I babbled, only slightly tearfully, because my best friend in the whole wide world was getting married again, and this time to a lovely man, instead of a dickhead goblin troll, like her horrible first husband who had unexpectedly walked out on her three years ago.
‘Oh, babe. That’s amazeballs!’ said Sam, also with suspiciously moist eyes. ‘Oh, wait. I’m trying
