Page 94 of So Thrilled For You

‘Didn’t we all?’ Nicki adds, pushing her drink into the table to get everyone to cheers. She is on her fourth and definitely on her way to having the most fun there.

Music thumps around them in the surrounding club, but it’s almost drowned out by the clumps of industry people, dressed to the hilt, circling and networking, thirsty and grafting. The novelty of the A-list celebrities was sort of wearing off, although Steffi was still low-key concerned Charlotte was going to corner one in the toilets for a selfie. She gives herself a moment to stop and take it all in. This dream sequence of an evening. An afterparty to end all afterparties, following the movie premiere of all movie premieres. She thought she was legitimately going to combust with pride when she watched Rosa walk the red carpet – still as a deer in headlights as she’d been on that first hot day, all those years ago, when Steffi had told her the news down the phone. Now, she glances over at where she’s huddled with Nina Baldwin near the ice sculpture, their arms around each other like best friends. Their eyes meet and Rosa mouths ‘thank you’ for what is likely to be the millionth time since they met. Steffi shrugs back, smiling, then returns to this table. The warmth of Jasper’s hand in hers, and warmth of her three best friends falling as hard in love with him as she has.

He leans over and kisses her. ‘I’m just going to the bar,’ he whispers, his breath hot on her neck. ‘Want anything?’

‘Only for you to come back very quickly.’

‘Done.’ He leans in for one more kiss. ‘By the way,’ he adds. ‘You’re amazing. You know that, right?’

She manages to game-face – all the Little Women do – as he says ‘ladies’ and tips an imaginary cap before extracting himself from the table. But the moment he’s absorbed by the crowd, the other three squeal and clap and wave their arms in the air.

‘Oh my God, Steffi, I love him, LOVE HIM.’

‘He’s so obsessed with you. Honestly, the way he was looking at you when you made your speech. If you could bottle that look . . .’

‘It’s giving me hope,’ Nicki says. ‘Hope in men. At last! Hooray!’

Steffi isn’t sure she’d be able to stop smiling even if someone paid her a million pounds, and not only because she doesn’t need the money. ‘He’s great, isn’t he? He’s, like, such a cheeseball. But not a red flag cheeseball. Like, an actual one. He said “wowsers” when I got ready earlier. Out loud. In full sincerity.Wowsers.’

Lauren pats her head. ‘He’s not like anyone I’ve ever seen you with before and it’s brilliant. I’m sosohappy for you.’

‘We all are,’ Nicki says.

‘Yes!’ Charlotte adds, ‘and not just because this has given us a reason to leave the house for the first time in months. ‘

Steffi finishes her cocktail and beams. ‘Thank guys. And, yes, I really appreciate you all getting sitters.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Lauren asks, finishing her sparkling water. ‘This is probably my last night of freedom in forever. I would leave Woody with Stalin to be honest as long as I can go out.’ She rubs her giant stomach. ‘Though I’m really hoping, this time around, it will take me less time to integrate into society.’ She sighs. ‘And I’m also, of course, really hoping I won’t go stark raving mad again.’

‘You won’t,’ Charlotte says. ‘I’ll send you a night nanny myself if needs must. Honestly, I don’t know how I would’ve coped myself without Gillian. She even weaned me off my breastfeeding spreadsheet.’

Lauren rubs her hand. ‘Thank you, but hopefully I won’t need Gillian. Things will be different with this one. Tristan and I are in a much better place, plus we’re going in with our eyes wide open . . . which is just as well as our eyes will be open a LOT next month, once they’re here.’

‘I promise you, if the sleep is bad again, Gillian is coming over.’

The women laugh and start chatting about the movie again, reiterating to Steffi how good it was.Blood Moonsomehow did even better than anyone could’ve expected, and everyone expected a lot. The book was still on the New York Times bestseller list, almost two years later. And, if there were some people left in the world who hadn’t bought a copy, they surely would after the movie came out, widely tipped to sweep the board at award season. Steffi still isn’t sure this is all real – that tonight could get any more perfect. The premiere, Jasper, watching Rosa become a giant sensation, running the most successful boutique literary agency in London . . . but none of it was as important as the three women around her, there, supporting her, understanding just what it’s taken for her to get here. Her family, really.

Nicki glances down at her phone and flinches. ‘Eww.’

‘What is it?’ The others crane over to see.

‘I thought dick pics were illegal,’ Lauren says. ‘Like, seriously? Men still do that?’

Nicki pushes her hair off her face and sighs as she hits the ‘report’ button. ‘It’s so strange to think that, until recently, I’d only ever seen two whole penises in my entire life.’

‘No half penises?’ Steffi quips and Nicki laughs.

‘. . . then, I’ve been single now, what, a year? And I’ve seen dozens. Maybe even over a hundred. All unsolicited. It’s . . . obscene.’

Charlotte grabs the phone. ‘You should report them to the police,’ she says. ‘It really is illegal.’

‘I’ve had enough to do with the police to last a lifetime. Honestly, it’s fine.’ She lays her head on Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘I’ll adjust. Well, that’s what I keep telling myself.’

‘You will,’ Charlotte pats her. ‘And, in the meantime, I love having you in my granny annexe every other week.’

Steffi surveys Nicki with sympathy – something she never thought possible. Things between them had been much better since the fire, but it was only last year she felt she truly forgave her friend. Shortly after Matt and Nicki announced their divorce, she’d received a drunken voicemail from him at 1am.‘Do you ever think about what would’ve happened, that morning, if I hadn’t gone down to get toast?’Matt had slurred, so plastered she could hardly make him out.‘Because I do. I did. I’ve thought about it this whole time.’

After she hung up on him, she’d not been able to get back to sleep, and turned on her light and stared at her walls for a very long time. Watching Matt and Nicki unravel had been one of the most painful things she’d ever witnessed. Poor Belle had been the total opposite of a ‘band aid baby’. They fought constantly and relentlessly since she was born, and Nicki had finally accepted that Belle being a ‘child of divorce’ was better for her than a child of whatever the hell Matt and Nicki had become. They were now ‘birdnesting’ for a while. A term Nicki had used like Steffi was supposed to understand what it meant. Googling it afterwards, it seems to be an ill-fated attempt to minimise disruption to Belle’s home life by taking it in turns to spend a week living in the family home with her, while the other parent stays elsewhere. Something only rich people could do, or, if you were Nicki, someone rich with even richer friends. Her and Charlotte had been seemingly having a blast in the granny annexe every other week – watching girly movies and wearing matching pyjamas. Steffi predicts the birdnesting will only last for as long as it takes for one of them to meet someone else, which if Matt’s drunken call was anything to go by, won’t be very long at all. She sighs into her drink, eyeing her friend, thinking how, maybe, at some point, she would’ve relished receiving that voicemail and the power it gave her. Now, she just felt sad and pissed off. And, she realised, with it, she’d totally understood Nicki’s previous paranoia about her. It hadn’t stemmed from nowhere. It had just been aimed at the wrong person. Not that Matt had ever behaved inappropriately with her their entire marriage, but still. An instinct is an instinct, and it turns out Nicki’s was spot on. Steffi’s own personal instinct is that Nicki was making a huge mistake by dismissing the Phoebe situation as a ‘one off’ regarding her sexuality. But things were still so new and raw with the divorce, maybe, with time, she’ll be able to open up that side of herself? She leans back in the red leather of the booth, and gives herself one more moment to drink this all in. You know what? Having her friends here, celebrating this with the credence she had celebrated all their more-typical achievements, felt just as bloody good as she thought it would. And, she’s the only one who got an ice sculpture.

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