just prayed I wouldn’t burn up on entry.
The christening went as well as a small village christening could go. Babies cried, mums cooed and the twenty-something children who had run away at the age of eighteen stood awkwardly at the back fielding questions from their former Brownie leaders about why they weren’t married yet.
‘We can’t get married,’ Amy was explaining to our septuagenarian Brown Owl. ‘Because we’re a triad. Me, Tess and Charlie. Society doesn’t understand our love. It’s a polyamory thing.’
‘Pollyanna-y?’ Mrs Rogers looked very confused. ‘I don’t quite follow, Amy, love.’
‘Just what we need,’ Charlie whispered in my ear as he fell into the seat next to me. The post-baptismal celebrations were taking place in the pub, ‘the true church of the village’, as it was written. Almost everyone I’d gone to school with was crammed into the conservatory of The Millhouse, putting back pints and taking pictures of Amy’s new niece, Katniss, with their phones and posting them straight to her Facebook page. I had assumed Amy was taking the piss when she’d told me the baby’s name, but no. I should have known. Her big sister was called Bella, after all.
‘What’s that?’ I clinked my Diet Coke against his pint of bitter and took a sip. As predicted, Amy had struggled with my wardrobe of sensible work separates, so I was sitting in a Yorkshire pub at my best friend’s sister’s baby’s christening in July wearing black leather knee boots, a gold sequinned miniskirt I’d worn one New Year at uni, and a white cotton shirt that really needed ironing. It was quite the outfit.
‘Amy is going round telling everyone that the three of us are a couple,’ he said, undoing his already loose tie. ‘I think she got bored of people asking about Dave.’
‘Amy was bored of people asking about Dave seven seconds after she broke up with him,’ I replied, imagining the fun conversation I’d be having with Lorraine from the library and Donna from the post office before the night was out. ‘Now she’s just bored. Why did she even make us come to this?’
‘I’m fairly certain it was to remind you why you left in the first place. Is it working?’ Charlie drained his pint and nodded towards my half-empty glass. ‘What are you drinking? I’m going to the bar.’
Reaching over, I wiped a frothy moustache from his top lip and smiled. ‘Just Diet Coke. I’m not in the mood to drink.’
‘God forbid you should make a scene.’ He looked over to where Amy was performing a jazz tap routine for the pensioners who lived in the bungalows near her mum.
‘I’m not nearly so entertaining,’ I replied. ‘Thanks for coming with us, anyway. I know it’s a ball-ache.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘Any family is better than no family, remember?’
‘And the grass is always greener,’ I said. ‘Remember?’
Charlie half laughed as he walked away, towering over everyone else in the bar while I watched. It was Christmas in the third year of uni when he first came home with me. His parents were getting divorced, and since I’d been there, done that, I’d told him to come home with me. Never in a million years did I think he’d say yes. Now, eight Noels on, he had a stocking embroidered with his name and a permanent spot at our Christmas dinner table. Just like me, he didn’t really see his dad, and his mum had moved to Malta with his stepdad a couple of years ago. Without any grandparents or siblings, as soon as the Boots Christmas catalogue dropped, he was an honorary Brookes.
‘Tess! You came! We were worried you might be too busy!’
Only a full-blooded Brookes could be that passive-aggressive. I tore my eyes away from Charlie’s arse to the far less pleasant sight of my two younger sisters standing before me, arms full of babies and faces full of judgement.
‘Are those new boots?’ Melanie asked.
‘Your hair is so long,’ Liz said.
‘And you both look well,’ I said, looking down at my niece and nephew and giving them each a curt nod. ‘Hello, babies.’
‘Here, hold her.’ Melanie, twenty-six, married, mother of two, handed me baby Tallulah. ‘She doesn’t even know who you are. Isn’t that funny?’
I bit my lip to avoid pointing out that Tallulah was only nine months old and barely even knew who she was and took the baby with a strained smile.
‘Please don’t be sick on this shirt,’ I whispered to my niece. ‘It was a present.’
‘Look, you’re a natural!’ Liz, twenty-two, engaged, mother of one but desperately trying for another by all accounts, thrust out a second baby. ‘Take Harry while I get us a drink.’
‘I can’t hold two babies,’ I squealed, taking the even tinier bundle in my other arm and looking around in desperation. ‘What if I need a wee?’
‘You’re not allowed to have a wee,’ Mel said, smoothing out her wrinkled-to-buggery dress and sitting down beside me. She picked up a glass of wine that did not belong to her and swigged it back. ‘Welcome to my world.’
‘I think I read something on the way in about overpopulation, so I can’t stay,’ I said. I really wanted to give her one of the babies back, but with my arms full, I had no idea how to offload one. They smelled weird. ‘Are they OK? I can’t see their faces. How do you do this?’
‘Don’t overthink it, you’ll drop one,’ she advised. Her hair, identical to mine, sprang all around her face. While I kept my copper mess carefully tethered in a long ponytail, Mel had clearly decided to embrace the curls for the christening. It was a controversial gamble that had not paid off. ‘Although I realize that telling you not to overthink something is like telling Liz no.’
Mel was the poor put-upon middle sister. While Mum was busy forcing me up an imaginary ladder of success and our stepdad was spoiling little Lizzie with his unwavering attention, the true child of divorce and official Band-Aid baby Mel sat quietly in the middle of it all, shaking her head and counting down the days until she could get out, get married and fuck up a family all of her own. So far, so good. She had a house, a husband, a Rav 4 and two kids. As far as she was concerned, she was winning. And despite her open disapproval of me, I actually liked Mel. She was funny, dry and desperately honest. We didn’t see each other terribly often, mainly because I avoided the village like the plague and she couldn’t exactly come gallivanting down to London with two babies under three. It might seem like a strange thing to say about your sister, but if we weren’t related, I’d want to be her friend.
‘Wiiiiiine.’ Liz returned from the bar and handed Mel a glass bucket of suspiciously green-tinged white wine. ‘So, Tess, tell me everything. You never update Facebook. Have you got a boyfriend?’
Liz, on the other hand, not so much.
‘Me and Jamie are moving at the end of the month, has Mel told you? Right around the corner from her. Isn’t it brilliant? All our babies will get to grow up together. Well, all our babies apart from your babies. You really need to get a move on, you know – you’re not getting any younger.’
There was nothing like being reminded about your tick-tick-ticking biological clock by your six-years-younger half-sister to put the icing on this shitty cake of a week. And cake should never be shitty.
‘Is
