Page 38 of So Thrilled For You

‘Hello. Greetings. Welcome. Thanks for coming. Here’s your welcome cupcake. Be careful biting into it. There’s a prize if you get a pregnant one.’

One in five of the cupcakes has apparently been ‘fertilised’ with a ‘gooey centre’ so nobody really wants to eat them after hearing that. But everyone coos as they take their red velvet womb sponges and glittery prosecco cocktails, and coo appropriately when they see Nicki. Luckily for me, the next thing to coo over is Woody, and the older women especially have basically taken him off my hands. Mrs Davies is currently squidging his cheeks and throwing him up and down, allowing me to down this prosecco which leaves edible glitter all over my lips. The air-con unit is almost combusting with the effort of keeping the packed room cool. I’m already sweating, as is my uneaten cake toone side of me. For some reason, the prospect of a fertilised cupcake isn’t giving me an appetite. This is surprising as the only joy I’ve found during my maternity leave has been sitting in coffee shops and stuffing myself with butter icing while Woody cries in my arms. One day, during the ‘four-month sleep regression’,(can you regress from waking every two hours? It appears, yes, you can) I ate an entire cake. A whole one. Like Bruce fucking Bogtrotter inMatilda. If only that cake was‘fertilised’ with ‘a gooey centre’ then maybe I’d be put off baked goods and then I’d fit into at least one item of my pre-pregnancy wardrobe.

Anyway, I sit with a nappy in one hand, and a black marker pen in the other, awaiting instructions from Charlotte, who is so manic her whole face is essentially one diluted pupil.

‘Right, ladies and gent,’ she says, nodding her head towards Nicki’s mate, George. He waves a jazz-hands hello and his glittery nail polish catches the sun. ‘Here’s a little icebreaker game so we can all get to know each other.’

Is there any collection of words worse than ‘ice breaker game’? Other than ‘rail replacement bus service’? Or ‘destination hen do’?

‘I want you to write a piece of advice for Nicki on the nappy. Then we wrap them up, and pass them along until we lose track, then open them up again and take it in turns to introduce ourselves and read out the advice.’

Am I just exhausted or does this game make literally no sense?

‘This way, Nicki has lovely keepsakes from her closest friends that she can read through when the baby is playing up. Go on, write whatever advice you like! It’s anonymous.’

I glance around at everyone else and wonder what the hell they could be writing. Nicki’s mum is still bouncing Woody over in the kitchen. If she’s anything like my mum, she’s already given Nicki all the unsolicited advice she’s ever going to need anyway. But everyone else seems suitably inspired to inscribe a Pampers with guidance. To my left, I look at what Steffi’s written. She’s half-heartedly scrawled ‘ENJOY EVERY MOMENT‘and is now checking her phone for the nineteenth time. To my right, I catch the eyes of this skinny woman covered in freckles. We both shrug at the same time and she rolls her eyes at the circle around us.

‘I don’t want to be a bitch,’ she leans in, whispering. ‘But, I can’t imagine it’s the most practical way to give a mother advice, is it? What’s Nicki supposed to do? The baby starts crying, and she what? Has to unravel a pile of Pampers fortune cookies until she finds one that tells her how to burp it properly?’

I giggle, then feel disloyal to Charlotte for giggling, leaning closer. She smells delicious, like grown-up Ribena.

‘What are you going to write?’ she whispers.

‘I don’t know. What are you going to write?’

‘I’ll make a joke about gin, I guess.’ She scrunches up her nose. ‘Isn’t that how women plaster over their ruined marriage, pelvic floor, and vanished place in society . . .LOL but mummy loves gin?’

I splutter with laughter and a few people look up so I cough as a cover. ‘I take it you’re not a mother?’

‘Hell no.’ She tilts her head and smiles. ‘And I take it you’re not a mother either?’

I point out Woody. ‘Actually, my baby’s over there.’

‘Shit. Sorry. I’m sure your pelvic floor and marriage are fine.’

I keep laughing and she seems relieved. ‘Both are fucked,’ I admit. ‘And I don’t like the taste of gin. So, I guess I’m fucked from all directions.’

‘Maybe that’s what you should write then?’ She points her pen at my blank nappy. ‘You’re fucked?’

My loyalty to Nicki arrives a moment too late, and I don’t let myself laugh at this one. Though, that’s the sort of thing I wish I could write on this nappy.

You’re fucked.

Yes, it’s much harder than you ever could’ve imagined. Sorry.

Try screaming into a pillow rather than the baby’s face.

Yes, you should’ve done your Kegels.

Apparently, it gets easier. I don’t know when.

‘Smile!’ Charlotte’s in front of us brandishing her phone. I blink like a blinded deer, noticing she’s taken the photo from the angle where my postpartum jowls are most prominent.

Jowls. Another thing nobody tells you about.

‘You must be Phoebe,’ Charlotte says to the freckled lady, lowering her phone for a second. ‘I recognise you from your profile picture. Thanks so much for coming.’

‘Thanks for inviting me.’

---