Page 88 of So Thrilled For You

Lauren:We tried to put it out but the fire was moving so fast. We were running back and forth with cups of water but it was useless and so dangerous. We were all coughing. I had Woody with me and he was my priority. Our priority. We ran towards the house, calling 999 on our phones, but we quickly realised the house wasn’t safe. The fire was everywhere.

***

Simmons:So you just left it to burn?

Steffani:No. We tried to put it out, but the water did nothing, and then the fire was all around us and we had to run. The heat was so intense, I honestly thought we were in hell. The 999 operator told us to get out. We ran to the front of the house and crammed into Lauren’s car. It was a nightmare – we couldn’t get Woody into his car seat. I had to clutch him on my lap. Nicki struggled to get into the front seat. She was coughing. I honestly worried we wouldn’t get out in time.

***

Simmons:Is there anything you’d like to add to this statement?

Charlotte:Nothing further your honour.

Simmons:I’m not a judge.

Charlotte:Whoops.

Simmons:And what if I were to tell you that I don’t think this adds up? The timings, the lack of photos taken of the reveal, the way I’m supposed to believe you were all suddenly best friends again after a big fight?

Charlotte:I’d want to know a bit more about your childhood to understand where your trust issues are coming from, to be honest. Because I don’t lie. It’s bad for my frequency.

Nicki

Charlotte screams and runs past Lauren, before locking herself in the upstairs bathroom. For a moment, we’re united in our stunned silence, all desperately trying to metabolise what’s happened.

I realise, in the course of only a few hours, I’ve managed to derail my entire life. I’ve ruined my marriage, and my most important friendships, only weeks before my baby’s due. I clutch my bump in abject terror and try to figure out how to cope with the next five minutes.

‘Fuck all of you,’ Steffi announces, descending the stairs two at a time, her phone already out.

‘Pleasant as always, Steff,’ I call after her, before trying to make eyes at Lauren. We’re the only two who haven’t verbally attacked one another today and I could really do with having someone on side, but, as I take her in, I realise she’s somewhere else entirely. She’s blinking madly as she comforts Woody, but her eyes are unfocused, hovering in the mid-distance. She doesn’t see me. She’s just shhing him and bouncing him while tears pour down her face. She looks . . . I don’t mean this in a cruel way, but she looks totally insane. Like, somebody needs to come and catch her with a butterfly net insane. I take a step forward, thinking I should help, but my brain’s already racing back to its selfish default setting. Where’s Matt gone? I need to catch up with him and fix everything. I can’t deal withthisright now. Lauren . . . the way she’s been . . . I find it hard to be near her. It feels dark, contagious. I won’t be like this when my baby is born, will I?

‘Shh, shh, Woody. Don’t cry. I’m here. Mummy won’t go anywhere ever again. I give up. I won’t try to have a life, I promise. Not when you hate me doing it so much. It’s over. You won, baby. You won.’

‘I just need to go find Matt,’ I tell Lauren, who gives a tiny nod of her head. A snippet of a sane response. ‘Then I’ll be back and we have a cup of tea, I promise.’ I don’t think she’s really heard me, but I make my way down the stairs as hurriedly as I can. When I reach the bottom, I hear her mutter to herself.

‘Woody won’t let us have a cup of tea anyway. Woody doesn’t let me do anything.’

And, still, I leave her.

The heat is just as ridiculous as it’s always been as I waddle outside, down the front steps, and onto the empty driveway, desperate to see Matt. But there’s no supportive husband here to reassure me, just tyre marks in the gravel, and a message that comes through on my phone.

Matt:

I’ve taken the car for a drive. I need to clear my head.

I sink onto the gravel, my bump weighing me forward, and weep into my hands with my face pressed into the stones. He’s going to leave me. I’m going to be a single mum. I can’t be alone with this . . . this thing . . . this tidal wave in my life. I cry and cry, massaging my bump and panicking at the sheer irreversibility of it – apologising to it, telling it I don’t know what to do, how I’ve let it down already.

My nostril wrinkles as I smell something off. I lean up, look around, and see smoke blowing across the driveway.

Lauren

I’m a terrible mother. I’m a neglectful, resentful and awful mother. The horror in their faces. I will never be able to un-see their faces. I will never be able to un-see Woody’s face – so confused and scared in Steffi’s arms, wondering why I didn’t come for him. Why didn’t I come for him? I’m so selfish, and shit, and not cut out for this. Being a mother. A parent. Having a baby. It’s broken me and keeps further breaking the shattered parts within me and I don’t know what to do. I have to somehow keep going because I have a baby, and the only thing you can do is keep going, but I feel like I’m dead, and I don’t know how. I’m sobbing so hard I can’t stand. I try placing Woody down, but he crawls right to the edge of the stairs in an instant, so I scoop him up again, and carry him back down into the remnants of the party. There’s wrapping paper everywhere, streamers, balloons, a wall full of flowers smashed to the floor. His face brightens at all the things to poke and shove into his mouth, and I figure he’ll be OK here, for a second, while I fall head-first into the abyss. I plop him down and sink face-first into the sofa, sobbing in a way that shakes my entire body, as I contemplate the rest of my life and how fucked it is. There’s no going back to before. To when I was happy, and free, and capable. When I could get a train and pick up a coffee and a croissant and a magazine at the station and look out as the landscape sped past the window, taking small, slow, sips. When I could work late, deliriously high on a deadline for a project I loved so much I felt it in my soul, messaging Tristan to say I’d sleep in the spare room, as the office cleaners sprayed desks around me, feeling so present, and wired, and complete. When Tristan and I would sleep late on the weekends, one of us dashing out to get the good coffee and the croissants fromthe bougie deli, bringing them back to our sheets, sprinkling them with pastry dandruff, flicking through a newspaper supplement, before having slow, steady sex as the sun grew higher in the sky behind our thin curtains, our eyes locked on one another. When I would see at least one friend, at least once a week, gossiping over the syrup of cocktails, throwing my head back laughing, psychoanalysing every shred of their dating partner’s childhood, getting into super niche discussions about super niche parts of a subculture we were both into, while swirling delicious pasta around a silver fork, in total awe at how smart and brilliant my friend was, and how precious they were to me. When I could pull up a pair of jeans and do the button up. When I could set an alarm at nighttime on my phone and it would tell me, confidently, how much sleep I would get before I woke up. When I could read books. Go on walks. Go away for weekends, to see friends or new cities or cute cottages with a good pub next door. This life I had. This wonderful life that’s a rotten carcass now because I’ve had Woody. I miss that life. I miss who I was. I hate this person – fat and sobbing on the sofa after giving her son his first traumatic core memory. I’ve been drowning every day since he was born, dead by the end of each of them though I lose track of the days – bloated with stress and worry and unpredictability, and yet, love too. Pulsing, powerful,want-to-eat-himlove. The love is too much, very often. It hurts to love this much. To worry this much. To need to put him first this much. I almost don’t want the love because it can only bring pain and worry and guilt. The guilt. I let my baby cry, alone in the dark, because I’m too weak and I never should’ve been allowed to have a baby and . . . and . . . I almost can’t breathe I’m crying too hard. I bury my face further into the sofa and give into it entirely.

I don’t notice anything other than my own misery until I hear a horrific shriek.

Steffi

Well, I guess I’m back in this downstairs bathroom again. I should pay rent on it. It really does have a stunning view, looking out across the dried vista, as I push tears back into my eyes and get out my phone to comfort myself. The worst has happened now, I guess, and a calm settles – as I’ve learned it does when the worst happens. I was almost tranquil when Mum finally let go.

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