Page 26 of Out of Control

“It’s a group of friends, not a military exercise.”

Fiona felt a flush burn her cheeks. It seemed their relationship was taking a step backwards. “Once an IT project manager, always an IT project manager.” She tried to keepher voice light. “Planning carefully came with the territory; everything always had to be belt and braces. But paper it is.” She picked up a plate with a smear of butter still clinging to the edge, was about to hand it back to Adele, then thought better of it, gritted her teeth, wiped the mark away with the tea towel and made a mental note to put the tea towel straight in the laundry basket. “The good news is that Meeko has agreed to come along and play Father Christmas. There will be a small gift in his sack for each guest.”

Adele turned her head and grinned. “Brilliant — people will be able to get some great photos.”

And social media will be bombarded with images of my living room. Not good but there is no way back now.

Afterwards they sat in the lounge and Fiona tried to be ‘less military’ by writing on the back of a flyer which had dropped through the letterbox, rather than using the A4 hardbacked notebook that sat upstairs on her office desk and contained the map of how to run her life.

“Guests.” She underlined it as the first subheading. “How many? Do we send proper invitations and collect RSVPs — in which case there’s very little time? Or do you do all that electronically these days?”

Adele’s eyes glanced heavenward. “I’ll put something out there. It’s mostly old school friends. They’re all back from uni for Christmas. It’ll be a big reveal — most of them won’t even know about this.” She patted her swollen belly. “Unless word has spread among the mothers.”

“Oh?” Fiona had assumed the girl would’ve told everyone via endless social media posts — isn’t that how people lived their lives these days? But if she hadn’t even told her parents, maybe that wasn’t the case?

Adele looked awkward. “At first I didn’t realise. And then I wondered about . . .” She looked down and stroked her bellyagain. “And then I hoped . . . the father and I . . . that it could be a joint announcement . . . and then, here we are.”

The gaps said more than the words. Fiona patted Adele’s knee. “It’s OK, I get it.” For a few seconds it felt as though a confidence had been shared. “Back to the guests.” Fiona didn’t want to wade back in with her big, flat military boots, but this party couldn’t happen without preparation. “You do the inviting and collate responses. But I could do with a rough idea of numbers now, for food, drink and Santa’s pressies. Err on the generous side — better to have too much than too little.”

Adele rolled her eyes again. Fiona ignored the girl’s irritated expression. It was essential to know whether to expect five or twenty-five guests. Adele mouthed names and counted on her fingers. There was a frustrated expulsion of breath and she appeared to start all over again, presumably having lost count when she got past ten.

“Here.” Fiona passed her the pen and paper. “Write them down — it’s a lot easier.”

Resting the flyer on the coffee table, Adele filled the page with a list of names and handed it back. Fiona counted them. Thirty. She wrote the number down and drew a circle around it for clarity and emphasis. More guests than she would like but they probably wouldn’t all come.

“They’ll all be up for it. We haven’t all been together for months. Probably since last Christmas.”

Fiona tried to smile. “I’ll have to fetch my . . .” She gestured at the ceiling with her pen. “You’ve filled my page.”

On her way upstairs she remembered her mum’s happiness at becoming a great-granny-by-proxy. The old lady would love to come to the baby shower — and not only because it would provide a wonderful one-upmanship conversation with her neighbours.

A few minutes later she had the red hardback book open in front of her with the title ‘Baby Shower’ underlined twice. She stapled the list of guests into the book alongside two pages torn from the back of Joe’s diary containing the initial ideas from the previous evening.

“Adele, would you mind if I invited someone along?”

“Who?” There was a hint of suspicion in the girl’s voice.

“My mother. When I told her about you and the baby she was over the moon. She hasn’t got any proper grandchildren and she’d love to be involved in some way. She bakes wicked scones.”

Adele appeared to weigh up this suggestion for a few seconds. “Yeah, OK.” Then she added, “Is ‘wicked’ usually in your vocabulary or are you trying to be down with the kids?”

Fiona blushed at her botched attempt to narrow the gap between her and the girl who, following her mum’s logic, could be described as Fiona’s ‘daughter-by-proxy’ — a term which had a much better, less wicked, ring to it than ‘stepdaughter’. Then she looked down at her notebook and wrote the subheading ‘Food’. After some argument about sandwiches and sausages on sticks, followed by an explanation of what a vol-au-vent was, Adele was firm: Fiona’s suggested menu sounded like a children’s birthday party. All that was needed were takeaway pizzas. They were easy and exact numbers plus vegetarian and vegan preferences could be sorted out on the night.

“Salad?” Fiona asked the question, even though she already knew the answer.

A discussion on drink followed, resulting in the requirement for at least ten bottles of prosecco, one of gin, several flavoured tonics plus a few beers. Fiona silently added fruit juices to the end of the list.

“Just Santa’s gifts now.”

“Do I get one?”

“Absolutely.”

“In that case I want them to be a surprise. And . . .” A mischievous grin settled on Adele’s lips. “Do we get to sit on Santa’s knee?”

Fiona waved the comment away. She was starting to learn when Adele was winding her up. “Ah! I almost forgot. Does Santa need a grotto or can he just walk around the room with his sack?”

“A grotto — definitely!” Adele’s eyes lit up like a child’s.

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