EPISODE NINETY-NINE
Nicky yawned as she
shuffled into the kitchen, scratching her head sleepily. Vanessa was at the breakfast table, noisily
slurping the remaining milk from the bottom of her cereal bowl.
‘Anything for me?’ asked Nicky, indicating the pile of unopened mail on the
table.
‘Don’t think so. You expecting
anything?’
‘Well, no, not really. Maybe a postcard
from Mummy.’
Vanessa smirked. ‘You don’t deserve a
card from her, after what you did.’
Nicky slumped into a chair opposite her sister.
‘Oh, don’t remind me. I’ll always
feel guilty about that. Till the day I
die.’
‘No, you won’t. This time next year you
won’t give it another thought..’
‘Oh, well,’ Nicky nodded, with a small sigh.
You’re probably right. And at
least it wasn’t a total disaster. I
wonder where they went in the end.’
Vanessa shrugged, pushed her cereal bowl aside and picked up the mail. ‘Junk mail, bill, bill, junk mail,’ she
chanted as she sorted through them. ‘Ah,
but this looks like an invitation.’
‘Who’s it for?’
‘Me!’ Vanessa tore open the envelope and
tugged out a gold-edged card. ‘It’s a
wedding invitation.’
‘I couldn’t face another wedding right now,’ said Nicky.
Vanessa sniggered. ‘Especially this
one.’
Nicky stared at her sister, frowning hard.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘My friend Lisa’s getting married to Jason.’
‘Jason?’
‘Yes, you know, that slimeball you went out with for a while.’
‘I didn’t know you knew Jason.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry...I should have told you.
I bumped into him by accident in the pub one day, and I introduced him
to Lisa. They started going out
together. I should have told you, I
suppose. But I thought you’d be upset.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve known Jason and your best friend were going out
together all this time, but you never said anything.’
Vanessa shrugged carelessly, then looked her sister straight in the eye and
smiled. ‘It’s a small world,’ she said.
*
Ted crept around the house in case he woke the baby, who was sleeping
peacefully in the nursery. She seemed to
do nothing but sleep. After the
birth, it was a sudden gut-wrenching
anti-climax. Every so often, he tip-toed
into her room to make sure she was all right, and to convince himself it was
real. But all she did was sleep.
Having spent most of the morning getting the house ship-shape, Ted now felt
exhausted. Marjorie was upstairs,
running herself a bath, and he thought he might indulge in a quiet sit down
with a read of The Tempest.
Marjorie suddenly appeared in the living room doorway, holding up an empty
champagne bottle as if it was a urine sample.
‘What’s this?’ she demanded.
Ted could feel the blood drain from his face.
How had he overlooked the bathroom?
He’d been shaving and showering in there for the past three days, so how
had he missed it? Too much on his mind,
probably. What with the baby, seeing
Donald, and having to work a late shift.
Perhaps it was the tiredness. How
on earth had me missed a champagne bottle standing on the edge of the
bath. But there it was. Now that Marjorie had confronted him with it,
he could see in his mind’s eye the champagne bottle glaring obviously at him
from where he and Donald had...
‘Well?’ said Marjorie.
He realised the silence had stretched to an unbelievably unrealistic length
while she waited for his explanation.
‘I...er...’ he began. ‘I just wanted to
wet the baby’s head.’
‘You drank a whole bottle yourself?’
Ted nodded silently.
Marjorie’s lip curled triumphantly.
‘Then why are there two glasses in the bathroom?’
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED
Ted has some explaining to do.