One Thing Led to Another. Katy Regan

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       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘Funnily enough, Chris was watching football when I came home. “Right,” I said, “do you want the good news or the bad?” “Good news,” he said. “I’m pregnant,” I said. “And the bad?” “It’s due in June.” I called him immediately after Grace was born, but he didn’t pick up. When I heard Pearce and Bates had both missed penalties, I punched the air. Needless to say, divorce proceedings were already underway.’

       Laura, 25, Leicester

      The next morning, I’m sitting on a stool drinking tea in the kitchen when Gina wanders in with Jasper, still complete with trilby.

      ‘God, rough as a bear’s arse,’ she yawns, reaching above my head to get mugs out of the cupboard so I have to duck, spilling tea all over my nightie.

      I wince slightly as the heat hits my skin. ‘Don’t feel too clever myself. How about you Jasper? You feeling rough? You’ve got the right idea with that hat, that’s for sure.’

      Gina raises an eyebrow, she knows I’m being sarcastic but he doesn’t hear me anyway. He’s got his hands down his pants and his head in last Saturday’s copy of the Guardian Weekend.

      Gina wanders over to the kettle, coughing, or rather hacking, and switches it on then pulls her curvaceous little frame up onto the worktop. There’s a flash of red knickers from underneath her dressing gown.

      ‘Jesus, I need to give up the fags,’ she says, when she’s eventually recovered from her coughing fit. She’s been saying that for ten years. I got her four sessions with a hypnotist once, in return for being in a health feature in Believe It! magazine. It did nothing to help her kick the habit, but she did gain a new one: the hypnotist. Blaise Tapp he was called, and that was his real name. She ended up shagging him for three months.

      ‘Tea or coffee Jasper?’

      ‘Er, coffee. But only if it’s proper coffee. One sugar please.’

      He leans back on the kitchen chair, stretching his arms above his head. He’s wearing a string vest, so I can see his thick, dark underarm hair sprouting forth like those fake moustaches you get in joke shops.

      I get up to put my bowl into the dishwasher and realize I’m wearing no bra and my nipples are probably on show.

      Gina opens her side of the cupboard. We did try sharing everything once, but due to our clashing eating habits, i.e. I eat like a horse and she eats hardly anything, it didn’t work out that well.

      ‘Fuck, no coffee,’ she mutters under her breath.

      ‘Have you got any real coffee I can borrow Jarvis?’

      I get it out of the cupboard and hand it her; she doesn’t say thank you.

      Gina can be a bit like this: brusque, bordering on rude. It gets people’s backs up sometimes. Jim goes into teacher mode and tells her off and Vicky just steers clear. And me? Well, I’m well practiced I suppose. Gina may act like a tough little cookie, but she’s soft as treacle inside, sensitive as anything. I definitely blame the parents: palmed off to nannies as a baby, sent off to boarding school aged eight. I suppose earning £70,000 plus in the City it’s not as if Gina needs someone to give her financial security, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that even though she resists it like an exhausted toddler resists sleep, she just needs to be loved. Which is why I worry about her choice of men.

      Jasper excuses himself and goes for a shower, his jeans hanging off his arse to reveal the start of a most unsightly hairy crack. I worry I’m turning into my mother.

      ‘He’s such an interesting guy, isn’t he?’ says Gina, walking over to the kitchen window and putting her nose to the glass. Outside, the morning light is cobalt blue, like a church window. ‘So creative.’

      So obviously a prat, I want to say, but I don’t. I couldn’t. I mean it’s not that he is an evil person or anything, he just isn’t boyfriend material. And Gina, more than anyone else I know, could really do with a boyfriend.

      I am getting out of the shower when I hear my mobile. Oh for God’s sake, piss off! Who can possibly have something so important to say, that it needs saying at eight a.m.?

      I get to the phone on the fifth ring.

      ‘Hello?’

      ‘Tess?!’

      Even though she has known me and my voice for nearly thirty years, my mother still behaves as if I am Terry Waite, and this is the first time she has spoken to me after twenty-five years in captivity. I wouldn’t mind, but this СКАЧАТЬ