and now they have the children no one would dream of suggesting that Lisa ought to go back to work, she’s busy enough – even with the help of a nanny and a cleaner. And somehow, knowing all of this makes me a little shy about admitting to Lisa that I’m a bit short cash-wise; I don’t think she’d understand.
‘Plus binge drinking is V fattening,’ I add aloud.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that, you’ll lose weight without even trying soon,’ says Lisa as she starts to pour the wine.
‘Why, because Adam is going to leave me and I’ll be too heartbroken to eat?’ I wail, with a touch of melodrama that I just can’t resist.
Lisa tuts. ‘No, because as soon as you are engaged you’ll turn into a weight-obsessed freak and go all “nil by mouth”. Everyone does.’
‘You think he’ll ask me to marry him?’ I ask excitedly. I want a confirmation from Lisa that my plan is on track.
‘Probably,’ she says with more honest caution than I want. Why couldn’t she have said certainly? ‘He should do, if he knows what’s good for him. You’re gorgeous, the best thing that ever happened to him. He’d be mad to let you go. You two are so brilliant together.’
‘One of the happiest couples I know,’ confirms Jess with a small hiccup.
‘But?’ I can hear the ‘but’ hanging in the air.
‘Well, men…’ Lisa trails off.
It’s an articulate enough comment. Men don’t know what’s good for them. Men don’t always recognize the best thing that ever happened to them. Men don’t always do the right thing. Men make mistakes. We all do.
‘It’s not in the bag, is it?’ I ask drearily.
Sadly, my best friends shake their heads. I know they love me enough to want to lie to me and enough not to do so. We all take another gulp of our wine and gaze around the bar. It’s noisy and busy. The bar we are in is not the usual sort of place we meet up. Normally we grab a bite to eat at the local Italian. The waiters know us there; the service is perfect – attentive but not over-bearing. The Italian restaurant is always full of other groups of gossipy women, the music is piped out at a reasonable volume and the conversations are conducted at a reasonable pitch. Tonight we’ve tried War Bar in Clapham High Street because Jess is newly single again (it didn’t work out with the hot banker, she said he had protruding teeth that got in the way when they were kissing) and she wants to use tonight to scout for talent. Lisa and I are fine with this. We’d both do anything to help Jess in her endless search for the perfect man. Plus Jess is a great multi-tasker; she can talk to us and flirt with the man on the next table without anyone feeling neglected.
Besides, I fancied a change too. A minuscule part of my brain seemed to want to remind the rest of my brain what it’s like being ‘out there’ again. Something was compelling me to take a cursory glance at the scene in case, God forbid, the worst came to the worst with Adam and the ultimatum. The War Bar is the perfect place to conduct a study of this sort. Jess assured me it’s a ‘cool and happening’ bar. It might just be my jaded view of things right now, but while the War Bar may be cool and happening, it isn’t a very happy place. At least not for anyone over twenty-five. Most of the punters look a little despairing or bewildered. I watch as people fight to be in one another’s physical and mental space. No one wants to go home alone. It all seems feral and desperate. At least the place is well named; everyone does appear a little shell-shocked. Jess is always telling me that the competition is tough, ‘out there’. She’s always telling me that because I haven’t been single for years, I have no idea.
Jess must be reading my mind because she asks, ‘What will you do if he doesn’t produce a ring on Friday?’
I shrug. ‘Leave, I guess.’
It’s hard to know if I mean this because my head is morphing into lots of different shapes and my tongue feels bigger than it did at the start of the day. I must say no to that next glass of wine. I have that thought at the exact moment that I reach for the