suddenly very upset.
“Hey now,” said Napoleon soothingly.
Frances, the romance author, plonked herself down and went bright red in the face as if she’d never heard the f-word in her life.
“Sorry,” said Carmel. She lowered her head. “It’s probably just envy.”
“Envy? You’re, like, jealous of me?” said Jessica. Wasn’t this woman too old to feel jealous? “Why?”
“Well …” Carmel laughed a little.
The money, thought Jessica. She’s jealous of the money. It had taken her a while to realize that people of any age, people she considered grown-ups, of her parents’ generation, who you would think wouldn’t care that much about money because their lives were virtually done, could still be jealous and weird about it.
“Well, you’re thin and beautiful,” said Carmel. “I know it’s embarrassing to admit this at my age—I’ve got four beautiful daughters, I should be way beyond this—but my husband left me for a …”
“Bimbo?” suggested Lars.
“Sadly not. She’s got a Ph.D.,” said Carmel.
“Oh, honey, you can still be a bimbo with a Ph.D.,” said Lars. “Who represented you? I assume you’re still in the family home?”
“It’s fine. Thank you. I’m not complaining about the settlement.” She stopped and looked at Jessica. “You know what? I’m probably jealous of you being pregnant.”
“Haven’t you got four children?” said Lars. “That seems like more than enough.”
“I don’t want any more children,” said Carmel. “I just want to go back in time to when everything was beginning. Pregnancies are the ultimate beginnings.” She put a hand to her stomach. “I always felt beautiful when I was pregnant, although I must admit my hair looked preposterous. I’ve got all this thick black Romanian hair, so when I was pregnant, it went wild.”
“Wait, why did it go wild?” asked Jessica. She was not prepared for her hair to go wild, thank you very much. Surely there was a shampoo and conditioner to fix that.
“Your hair stops falling out when you’re pregnant,” said Heather. “So it gets thicker.” She touched her own hair. “I loved my hair when I was pregnant.”
“I’m sure you are pregnant, Jessica,” said Carmel. “And I’m sorry.” She paused. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” said Jessica. Maybe she wasn’t pregnant. Maybe she’d just made a fool of herself in front of these people. She looked at Ben. He was studying his bare feet as if they had the answer. He had huge feet. Would their baby have huge feet too? Could they really be parents together? They weren’t too young. They could afford a baby. They could afford a dozen babies. Why did it seem unimaginable?
Tony had gone to the bathroom and come back with a damp towel that he wordlessly handed to Frances. She pressed it to her forehead. She was sweating.
“Are you not well, Frances?” asked Carmel.
Everyone looked at Frances.
“No,” said Frances. She waved a languid hand in front of her face. “Just … you know how you talked about how much you liked beginnings? I’ve got my own personal ending going on here.”
“Ah,” said Heather, as if that made perfect sense to her. “Don’t think of it as an ending. Think of it as a beginning.”
Carmel said, “When I was a teenager, my mother used to wear this pin that said, ‘They’re not hot flushes, they’re power surges.’ I was absolutely mortified by it.”
The three of them laughed that self-satisfied middle-aged-woman laugh that made you want to stay young forever.
53
Frances
“You all right?”
Tony sat on the floor next to Frances, in that uncomfortable way men sat on the ground at picnics, as if they were looking for somewhere to stow their legs.
“I’m okay,” said Frances. She pressed the damp towel to her forehead as the wave of heat continued to engulf her. She felt strangely sanguine, even though she was locked in a room with strangers having a hot flush. “Thanks for the towel.”
She studied him. His face was pale and there were beads of sweat across his forehead too. “Are you okay?”
He patted his forehead. “Just a bit claustrophobic.”
“You mean like properly claustrophobic? Not just I really want to get out of here claustrophobic?” Frances let the towel drop to her lap.
Tony tried to bend his knees up toward his chest, gave up, and stretched them out again. “I’m mildly claustrophobic. It’s not that big a deal. I didn’t like being down here even before we were locked in.”
“Right then, I need to distract you,” said Frances. “Take your mind off it.”
“Go right ahead,” said Tony. He smiled a half version of his full-on smile.
“So…,” said Frances. She thought about