Sam swung into a space and switched off the engine. ‘Maybe I should go up. I could pick up a few bits for the Sweet Pea.’
‘Ick, I told you to drop the cute name.’
‘We can’t just call it “it”,’ Sam argued. ‘What about Finn the Foetus? After Ice-T inSVU?’
Ali laughed wearily. He’s trying to cheer me up. It’d be cute if it wasn’t so stressful. She needed him to stop talking about the baby 24-fecking-7.
‘I wish you could come in with me …’ She stared, with dull eyes, towards the entrance. It wasn’t just any old meeting with the care team. She pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands.
‘You know I would in a heartbeat, right?’ Sam drew her towards him, his expression pained. ‘I wish I could, Ali. But I’m guessing this is a family-only kind of activity?’
It was impossible to bring Sam in there anyway – too many questions – but she was surprised at how much she wished she could.
‘I can call in sick to work and wait here, though,’ Sam offered. ‘It’s no big deal – I can catch up on emails and stuff. I’ve loads of candidates I need to chase.’
‘No, you go. I’m cool. Well, I’m not cool,’ Ali laughed quietly, ‘but it’s probably not even going to be a big thing,’ though the squirming feeling in her gut and the jagged beat in her chest told her otherwise.
‘I’ll come and collect you and we can go on a megaSVUbender – how about that?’
Shit TV was their hands-down favourite Thursday-night jam, and Ali felt a bit uncomfortable admitting that after the consultation with the geriatric specialist and Mini, she was due at an event, the Glossie Awards Countdown dinner. Plus it was Liv’s birthday. She needed to duck out of the dinner as early as possible and get back to her for cake and prezzies. Things had been so tense around the house and Ali needed to get her back onside.
Why did everything feel so impossible right now? Especially as she was completely knackered lately. She’d been cramping all morning and, with an apocalyptic period evidently imminent, a glitzy influencer event sounded particularly hellish, especially as this period seemed to be gearing up to be a massacre in her womb – she’d never known PMS to be so vicious.
‘Sorry, I can’t tonight. It’s Liv’s birthday but I’ll text to let you know how this goes. Thanks for driving me.’ Ali put her arms around his neck and breathed in his Sam smell for a few moments. He rubbed her back and whispered comforting things to her and her insides wriggled with unease. ‘Have a good day.’ She disengaged and hopped out.
She waved as the tree-lined driveway seemed to swallow the car, leaving her to turn, dejected, and make her way inside.
Her phone buzzed a calendar reminder – ‘Glossies Countdown dinner, 7.00 p.m. Ambassador Hotel’.
The awards were still four weeks away but they really knew how to squeeze every last bit of ‘glam spam’ out of these events. Ali sighed. It was funny how, before, these influencer events were the Holy Grail for Ali. On nights of a big influencer event, her whole timeline would be overtaken with everyone – wannabes to top-level influencers – who’d got the invite and were desperate to eke out every last scrap of content for it. Updates with the hashtag #GlossieAwardsCountdown had already started clogging her feed by eight that morning with all the Insta-crowd filming their facials, their workouts and even, bizarrely, a visit to the chiropodist. Annabel Stevens, an ex-TV presenter with about ten thousand followers, had elected to make a stab at repackaging some poor unfortunate attempting to angle-grind her corns off as #glamprep.
Now, Ali felt like she would gladly ditch the whole thing if she wasn’t so invested.
She signed in at the reception visitors’ book, took a seat among other blank-faced loved ones and waited to be called. No sign of Mini yet – she was probably dashing across town shouting down the phone to Erasmus at that very moment.
Maybe her ambivalence about her new-found success was down to her PMS. She’d been happy that morning scrolling her notifications, reading the comments from her adoring followers, though even those had lost some of their sheen. Somehow the words ‘you look amazing’ really lost their impact after being repeated ad nauseam. Speaking of nausea, Ali could feel a tide of queasiness invading her once more. What is the deal? she wondered. Though she’d been so busy arranging breakfast that morning, she’d actually forgotten to eat any – maybe she was hungry?
She rummaged in her bag and found a bag of Skips. Better than nothing, she thought, starting on them – the saltiness seemed to assuage the nausea – just as Mini walked through the sliding glass doors of the Ailesend reception. Mini was buried in a phone call – she waved, looking hassled, hung up and added her name to the visitors’ book.
‘What are you eating, Ali?’ Mini shook her head as she sat. ‘You complain about gaining weight and then you’re gorging on crap.’
‘When have I complained about gaining weight? You complain about me gaining weight!’
She was obsessed with everyone’s weight. Mini’d be happier walking in on Ali smoking a crack pipe than eating a bag of crisps. Ali had once heard her compliment a cancer survivor on their incredible weight loss.
‘I’m not getting into a row.’ Mini folded her arms, adopting the tone of someone who was a permanent fixture on the high road.
‘You literally started it.’
‘Ali—’
‘OK, OK.’ Ali held up her hands in a gesture of surrender.
Mini was crossing and re-crossing her legs. She brushed some invisible lint from her asymmetrical sheer dress, worn over trousers with slim patent-leather brogues. Ali felt bad. Along with avoiding Sam and reality in general, she had been keeping her distance from Mini. She’d tried to still her conscience, reasoning that it wasn’t so bad – after all, she was still going up to sit with Miles every second day – but she’d barely spoken to Mini since she’d told her about Marcus. She didn’t even know if they’d gone on their date. Somehow she didn’t feel so furious about it anymore – in light of the things she’d been up to since then, a date with an old friend seemed fairly innocuous.
‘Are you doing OK, Mum?’ She reached for Mini’s hand.
‘Darling!’ Mini snatched her hand away, horrified. ‘There’s some kind of crisp residue on your fingers.’
