very much a single girls’ pad. Then Vicky committed the ultimate crime (in Gina’s eyes anyway) which was to not only marry Richard, but have his babies. It was, of course, totally predictable but still, Gina and I didn’t expect to be here nearly a decade later. In fact Gina was so convinced that whatever bloke she was shagging at the time was about to ask her to move in with him, she didn’t buy a bed for two years.
And I thought I’d be long gone by now, married, living in a garden flat, but we’re both still here, maxing up the rent so we don’t have to get in a third person. Gina continues to go out with tossers (the sort who talk about moving in together by week three, and who have dumped her by week five). And I just coast along quite happily, cheered by the odd shag with Jim, wondering how I wound up, twenty-eight and a half, living like an ageing student.
When I eventually recover from my laughing fit I realize Gina’s glaring at me. Gina doesn’t like people laughing at her boyfriends, even when they offer up the jokes themselves.
‘Tess can do better than that, can’t you Tess?’ she says, playfully. ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever said in an interview?’
Here we go, Gina loves to wheel this one out at every social occasion. ‘Do I have to?’ I groan.
‘Yes, you have to. It’s genius. Go on.’
‘I once told the Head of a PR company that I was fluent in Italian,’ I sigh. ‘Which would have been fine, if I hadn’t failed GCSE.’ Everyone waits for the punch-line. ‘And she hadn’t been Italian.’
Gina claps her hand with glee. ‘Love it! Cracks me up every time! I wouldn’t mind,’ she continues, hardly able to talk she’s laughing so much, ‘but her name was fucking Luisa Vincenzi!!’
And I have to admit. It is quite funny.
It is only when Marcus starts to get fresh, playing footsie in the water, I come to my senses, realize I am shrivelled like a prune, and am utterly and totally shit-faced. When I eventually make it to the sanctuary of my bedroom it’s gone three a.m. I climb into bed, sink back into the coolness of my pillow and exhale, slowly, deeply. Outside I can still hear cars whizzing past, the faint sound of engines revving, London still alive and throbbing. I don’t know how I’m going to get up tomorrow, or make it through the day on four hours’ sleep.
The other thing I don’t know, is that somewhere deep inside of me, cells are multiplying, life is just beginning.
‘Funnily enough, Chris was watching football when I came home. “Right,” I said, “do you want the good news or the bad?” “Good news,” he said. “I’m pregnant,” I said. “And the bad?” “It’s due in June.” I called him immediately after Grace was born, but he didn’t pick up. When I heard Pearce and Bates had both missed penalties, I punched the air. Needless to say, divorce proceedings were already underway.’
Laura, 25, Leicester
The next morning, I’m sitting on a stool drinking tea in the kitchen when Gina wanders in with Jasper, still complete with trilby.
‘God, rough as a bear’s arse,’ she yawns, reaching above my head to get mugs out of the cupboard so I have to duck, spilling tea all over my nightie.
I wince slightly as the heat hits my skin. ‘Don’t feel too clever myself. How about you Jasper? You feeling rough? You’ve got the right idea with that hat, that’s for sure.’
Gina raises an eyebrow, she knows I’m being sarcastic but he doesn’t hear me anyway. He’s got his hands down his pants and his head in last Saturday’s copy of the Guardian Weekend.
Gina wanders over to the kettle, coughing, or rather hacking, and switches it on then pulls her curvaceous little frame up onto the worktop. There’s a flash of red knickers from underneath her dressing gown.
‘Jesus, I need to give up the fags,’ she says, when she’s eventually recovered from her coughing fit. She’s been saying that for ten years. I got her four sessions with a hypnotist once, in return for being in a health feature in Believe It! magazine. It did nothing to help her kick the habit, but she did gain a new one: the hypnotist. Blaise Tapp he was called, and that was his real name. She ended up shagging him for three months.
‘Tea or coffee Jasper?’
‘Er, coffee. But only if it’s proper coffee. One sugar please.’
He leans back on the kitchen chair, stretching his arms above his head. He’s wearing a string vest, so I can see his thick, dark underarm hair sprouting forth like those fake moustaches you get in joke shops.
I get up to put my bowl into the dishwasher and realize I’m wearing no bra and my nipples are probably on show.
Gina opens her side of the cupboard. We did try sharing everything once, but due to our clashing eating habits, i.e. I eat like a horse and she eats hardly anything, it didn’t work out that well.
‘Fuck, no coffee,’ she mutters under her breath.
‘Have you got any real coffee I can borrow Jarvis?’
I get it out of the cupboard and hand it her; she doesn’t say thank you.
Gina can be a bit like this: brusque, bordering on rude. It gets people’s backs up sometimes. Jim goes into teacher mode and tells her off and Vicky just steers clear. And me? Well, I’m well practiced I suppose. Gina may act like a tough little cookie, but she’s soft as treacle inside, sensitive as anything. I definitely blame the parents: palmed off to nannies as a baby, sent off to boarding school aged eight. I suppose earning £70,000 plus in the City it’s not as if Gina needs someone to give her financial security, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that even though she resists it like an exhausted toddler resists sleep, she just needs to be loved. Which is why I worry about her choice of men.
Jasper excuses himself and goes for a shower, his jeans hanging off his arse to reveal the start of a most unsightly hairy crack. I worry I’m turning into my mother.
‘He’s such an interesting guy, isn’t he?’ says Gina, walking over to the kitchen window and putting her nose to the glass. Outside, the morning light is cobalt blue, like a church window. ‘So creative.’
So obviously a prat, I want to say, but I don’t. I couldn’t. I mean it’s not that he is an evil person or anything, he just isn’t boyfriend material. And Gina, more than anyone else I know, could really do with a boyfriend.
I am getting out of the shower when I hear my mobile. Oh for God’s sake, piss off! Who can possibly have something so important to say, that it needs saying at eight a.m.?
I get to the phone on the fifth ring.
‘Hello?’
‘Tess?!’
Even though she has known me and my voice for nearly thirty years, my mother still behaves as if I am Terry Waite, and this is the first time she has spoken to me after twenty-five years in captivity. I wouldn’t mind, but this
