Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?: An absolutely laugh-out-loud and feel-good page-turner

by Kristen Bailey

  ‘How’s it going? Do I need to book you into rehab yet?’

  ‘I’m too old for this. I bet Philip did that to make me look bad. Drugging the competition. What if it was cut with something dodgy?’

  ‘I knew a girl at university who got hospitalised for snorting Shake n’ Vac once.’

  He laughs but there’s a scared, almost paranoid look to his face. So we’re at that stage now. I embrace him.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t back you up with the bouncer. I was trying to stop my face from twitching uncontrollably.’

  ‘I noticed. How do we get you down again? Water?’

  ‘Weed. I think. I believe there’s some of that in your bra.’

  ‘And he’s not getting it back. I’m selling it to pay for our Uber home.’

  He kisses me on the forehead. We suddenly hear a sharp whistle and turn to see Philip standing on a table of a booth, urging us over.

  ‘One drink?’

  ‘One drink.’ He interlocks his fingers into mine and we weave through the crowd of revellers. At least I have somewhere to sit tonight.

  ‘Oh my God, did the 5-0 do a strip search?’ Philip asks when we get there.

  ‘I don’t think they were the actual police,’ I tell him. He glares at me like I just ruined his bad joke.

  ‘What are we drinking?’ asks Will.

  I glance at Will. We need to scrape him off the ceiling. Are we seriously adding more alcohol to the mix?

  ‘Oh, Sammy’s got us bottles of Lanson for the table?’ Philip says, swigging from a glass. Kiki is kind enough to push two glasses in our direction and I take a polite sip. Geez, that is the good stuff. It tastes like money. Will drinks his a little too enthusiastically. Pace yourself. I suddenly feel an arm drape itself around my waist.

  ‘Darlings, you made it in!’ says Sam. ‘I was worried. I was on the phone to Terry and Giselle. You will love them, Will. They own an agency in Prague and are here for the week. Such intense ideas about urban regeneration. Jacques is also coming.’ I have no idea who Jacques is but nod. ‘And we just have to dance. Come on, gang, a celebratory boogie because we got that Lambeth gig.’ She swipes a glass from the table and holds it aloft, grabbing at Will and grinding at him in a time that doesn’t quite fit the music. You have to applaud the gall of a woman who does that right in front of his girlfriend. Is she just so drunk that she’s blissfully unaware? Or is this some sort of boss privilege that she’s playing out here? Do I play along so I don’t get Will in trouble? Or do I pretend to sling my handbag over my shoulder and take her out? I have to laugh, don’t I? I have to push down all my feelings of jealousy and judgement and self-worth and let her do this. Kiki and Shu place their handbags on the table and shift out of the booth while Philip removes his jacket, ready to launch himself onto the dancefloor. I am not a part of the team who got the Lambeth gig so I understand my role here. I’m saving our seats and looking after the belongings. It’s one down in ranking from the designated driver. Go. Dance. At least dance the drugs out of your system. As Will follows them, he looks back at me, apologetically. It’s cool. I don’t like this song anyway.

  ‘Excuse me… excuse me… is anyone sitting here?’

  I jolt myself awake and sit up to see a group of girls looking over me. God, they’re so young. I want to see ID. How long was I asleep?

  ‘Yeah, sorry… they’re on the dancefloor.’ I point over to the little crowd of people I assume to be Sam, Will and the others. They seem to have been joined by a few more. There’s a neon aura of merriment around them. The girls don’t look too impressed with me. Do I allow them to perch for the meanwhile? Or is it because I nodded off and used this nook like a tramp? They skulk away and I sit up, taking a sip of this expensive champagne to refresh myself. My milk will be posh now, Joe. I hope you appreciate it.

  Along the sides of the banquette seating, I’ve arranged coats and bags to protect our space. I refold Sam’s coat. It’s Balmain. It’s so chic. I stroke at the suede fabric. I don’t buy suede because it bobbles when it gets wet but it’s so nice to touch. I can’t believe I fell asleep. Actually, I can. Realistically, all that’s getting me through this evening is momentum but the fact I’ve stopped and taken pause on a seat with cushions has meant my body has taken over. This is more exercise and excitement than I’ve had in months. To be fair, is anyone actually looking? I could have another ten-minute power nap and I don’t think anyone would care. But a figure suddenly appears at the table.

  ‘Breast pads.’

  It’s the bouncer from before. Is that my new name now? But he points over to my dress. My nap has meant a breast pad has shifted out of position and sticks out my cleavage. I’m half grateful it’s not the eighth of weed. I adjust my tits and look at up him.

  ‘I was told there was someone asleep in the booths.’ I look over his shoulder to see the same group of girls standing a distance away, glaring at me. Is that a reportable offence now? I glare back at them. I hope one of you drops your phone in a loo tonight and you lose all your pictures.

  ‘I’m not asleep. As you can very well see.’ I smooth down my hair and unconvincingly wipe at the corners of my mouth where I may have been drooling. Please don’t throw me out and put the nail in this evening’s coffin. I’m not sure why but I then reach for Sam’s coat and drape it on my shoulders. To make myself look richer, more powerful perhaps, so he may think I’m important. Instead, he comes to sit next to me. I am slightly unnerved so put my handbag in between us. Crap, this is when I’m supposed to slip him a fifty-pound note to bribe him, isn’t it?

  ‘Can I say something?’ he asks.

  ‘Only if it’s nice?’

  ‘You look very tired. Are you alright?’

  I laugh at his honesty. I thought I’d used enough concealer to hide the worst bits. I suspect cheap product, summer heat and the nap has melted it all off.

  ‘Honestly? I have a new baby. I’m not the best version of myself this evening.’

  He smiles. ‘How old?’

  ‘Ten weeks.’

  He scans my face trying to work out what I looked like before this. I didn’t look as bloated for a start. And I’d have taken greater care with my eye make-up and hair.

  ‘My wife is eight months pregnant with our first.’

  I smile at the fact he wants to share this with me though I’m pretty sure I act as some sort of advisory warning.

  ‘When I met you in the queue I realised I didn’t know what a breast pad was. This baby is going to be here in a month and I don’t know half of what I need to,’ he tells me, panicked. ‘And I’m standing in the queue searching down punters and thinking are Lil’s boobs going to leak milk the whole time? Like, how does she switch them off?’

  ‘They’re not taps.’

  ‘Yeah, I googled that on my break and found that out. Did you know men can lactate too? If you stimulate their nipples enough?’

  ‘Will hasn’t got round to that yet.’

  He laughs. ‘Will, is he your husband?’

  ‘Boyfriend. We’ve never sealed the deal, as it were.’

  ‘And the baby’s name?’

  ‘Joe.’

  ‘Do you have a picture?’

  I reach down in my bag for my phone, scrolling through my photo roll. It’s all Joe. I have no other recent pictures except one I sent Will of a double sausage and egg McMuffin I bought about a fortnight ago, and a few dozen memes that I seem to collect to try and spice up my social media.

  The bouncer’s face softens to see Joe on my screen. It’s a shot where he’s just woken up and his bedhead is whipped up like a mass of fur.

  ‘Wow, he’s very cute.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He scrolls through a few more photos, smiling at them all. That’s the thing about baby pictures. We take them when the baby is cute, when he’s smiling and just woken up or covered in food and mess, revelling in the adorability. We don’t have photos of them crying, crimson with wind and discomfort and covered in barf. I’m
selling him the cute side of parenting, though maybe that’s what he needs instead of worrying about how he can try and milk himself.

  ‘So this is your first night out since having the baby?’ he asks.

  ‘That’s why you let us in, isn’t it?’

  ‘You both look like you needed it. How’s your evening going?’

  ‘I fell asleep.’

  He smiles. He scans across to Will, almost angry with him. But Will needed this as much as me. He needed to relax and let loose. I don’t want him babysitting me or holding my hand. And maybe one of us needs to get something out of this evening. I wish our first night out together was more fun, easier, with not so douchey people but it’s just one night. I see him jumping about, joyous, happy.

  ‘Can I get you anything? A hot drink? A cushion?’ the bouncer asks.

  ‘You make me sound like your grandmother.’

  He laughs again.

  ‘Just tell that group of girls to do one.’

  ‘I’ll them you’re famous. You look like Keira Knightley.’

  I look at him like he’s been the one drinking. ‘If she’d eaten all the pies.’

  He gives me a look, almost angry at my need to self-deprecate, then hands my phone back to me. A message from Emma flashes up. It’s a picture of a very sleepy Joe, his hand tucked under his face. It makes my heart hurt. Or maybe that was my boobs.

  ‘I’m Beth, by the way.’ I put my hand out to shake his.

  ‘Eric.’

  ‘You’re going to be a great dad, Eric.’

  He beams. I mean, I don’t really know him but sometimes you just need to hear those words said out loud. He salutes me and returns to the girls. I hear one of them laugh loudly as he tries to fob them off with the Keira Knightley lie. Will and Sam suddenly pop up at the table.

  ‘Problem, babes?’ asks Sam. ‘This table is booked out.’

  ‘It’s fine. He was just doing the rounds.’

  She spies her jacket draped around my shoulders. Now she thinks I’m being far too familiar or that I’m a coat thief. I try to casually remove it to Will’s amusement.

  ‘I’m going to order a few more bottles for the table,’ she tells Will, the intimacy of her body language still jarring with me. She takes her Louis Vuitton tote and Will comes to sit next to me.

  ‘One drink, Will Cooper.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He takes my hands and kisses them.

  We hear a song in the background. It’s a remix of Joe’s favourite Groove Armada song and we smile, swaying together in our seats, shoulders moving in time. It’s what we did, everywhere. We know the lyrics or we have a story about how we have this song on vinyl, have heard that band live. We bop in our seats, the music gluing us together. I like this. I miss this. But then I see Sam ushering Will over to the bar. He lets go of my hand.

  ‘You’re being summoned,’ I say.

  He puffs out his cheeks.

  ‘I’m going to go,’ I say. ‘I’ll get an Uber to Emma’s and stay there.’

  He doesn’t reply. I see his mind whirring.

  ‘Stay. You’re having fun,’ I tell him.

  ‘You’re not?’

  I shake my head. ‘I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  He embraces me tightly. Come with me, I want to say. You’re better than this, Will. But he hears Sam calling his name from the bar and he shuffles out of the booth.

  ‘When you get to Emma’s, just message me to let me know you’re safe, yeah?’

  I nod. He disappears into the crowd and I grab my bag, seeing Philip’s baseball jacket there in the pile. I bet you’ve never played baseball in your life, Philip. I pat down the pockets and find a bag of pills. Twat. I take them all and stuff them in my bag, reminding myself to find a bin on my way home.

  Track Seven

  ‘Waking Up’ – Elastica (1995)

  ‘B… My nephew is hungry again…’

  I wake up on a sofa that isn’t mine. I know because mine is second-hand and has always smelt mildly of damp dog. I jolt up. Am I still in that bar? Or maybe I’m in an Uber. I fell asleep in that too. All I remember was a very lovely conversation with a man called Jamal from South Norwood who liked a bit of Smooth FM and had rosary beads hanging from his rear-view mirror. But then I must have fallen asleep because before I knew it, he and Emma were trying to wake me up in the back seat. I then received a telling off from my big sister that I should never fall asleep in the back of taxis. That’s how people end up in ditches without their organs, apparently. She got me inside the house, made me drink a pint of water because she assumed I was drunk and then attached a baby to one of my boobs before I fell asleep. Again.

  Now I’m awake on this sofa and everything smells fresh and new, unlike my flat which is normally filled with the scent of stale milk and nappy sacks. My eyes spy a hot cup of coffee and a plate of toast on the table in front of me. I’m wearing a giant nightshirt and my make-up has been removed. This is why we keep Emma. I sit up and she’s sitting next to me. A freshly groomed Joe in his panda sleepsuit looks over and beams. It’s you. I know you. I think I missed you, he seems to say. This one is great but the boobs are useless. I smile back.

  ‘Thanks, Ems. Where’s Lucy?’

  ‘Like a cat, she crawled back as the sun came up. So it was just me and Joe having a date night. We got through half a season of Downton and ate giant couscous. Didn’t we? How was your evening?’

  I shrug. I’m disoriented and without caffeine so it’s hard to know how to communicate. The key word is disappointment.

  ‘I’m not impressed that Will just put you in a cab and abandoned you,’ she informs me.

  ‘He didn’t. I left of my own accord.’

  ‘Still. He should have gone with you, no?’

  I don’t know how to reply to that. Do I wish he’d sacked off his dance party and accompanied me home? Yes. But I knew why Will had to stay. It was a work thing, a potential for promotion thing. We also don’t have the sort of relationship where we tell each other what to do. Of course, we scrap over chores and things around the house, like how he leaves his wet towels hanging off the wardrobe doors, but I am also me. I leave empty mugs everywhere, and little molehills of my clothes lie around the floor of the flat.

  ‘I’m fine. Your sofa is dead comfy.’ I look at the clock on her mantelpiece. ‘And that’s the longest I’ve slept in forever.’

  She rubs my shoulder reassuringly and I’m relieved as it removes the judgement from her face. She hands Joe over to me and I realise that to feed him, I will have to hike up this shirt and sit here with my knickers and overhang. Emma’s a doctor so I suppose she’s seen worse but I try and hide everything with the fleece blanket she draped over me. She watches as I unhook my bra and remove my breast pad to see an eighth of marijuana drop on my thighs. Her eyes may as well fall out of their sockets. This is the wrong woman to see that. Meg would have been fine, Lucy still smokes on occasion, but Emma, who has dedicated house slippers for her visitors and Marie Kondos the shit out of her knicker drawer? No.

  ‘What on earth, Beth?’

  I want to say, That’s oregano. I like to self-season in restaurants. But she’s not that stupid and I’m sure she knows what it looks like after Mum found some on Lucy once and reacted by chasing her down the street with a dustpan.

  ‘Are you smoking weed? Do you know how harmful that is to Joe?’

  ‘Of course I’m not smoking weed. I haven’t in years.’

  She rifles around on the coffee table, trying to find some baby wipes.

  ‘Wipe your boobs down immediately before you put that anywhere near my nephew’s mouth! There could be traces of anything on that packet.’

  Her panic is warranted, to be fair, but Joe looks upset that there are delays to his breakfast. She runs to get a bottle of bleach and sprays it at me.

  ‘Disinfect?’ I look at her strangely but do as I’m told. ‘For my life, are you dealing?’

  ‘Out of my bosom? No! One of the group had drugs and
they were searching bags and pockets so I hid it there. It’s all sealed, there’s no risk to Joe, right?’

  I finish wiping and she runs to the kitchen to dispose of the offending wipe. Joe smiles at me before latching on. Emma returns, cradling her coffee. The plastic packet still sits on her sofa and she eyes it curiously before picking it up with two fingers and flinging it in my nearby handbag. ‘You’re not even curious to keep it and have a puff?’ I ask.

  ‘No. In medical school, I saw a man fling himself off a roof once completely razzled on acid. So, I just say no.’

  ‘Goody two shoes.’

  She pretends to polish an imaginary halo. ‘And how was it? Did you have a nice time at least?’

  ‘Do you know what rillettes is?’

  ‘It’s another word for pâté.’

  ‘Oh. Anyway, I just wasn’t in the mood.’

  She scans my face.

  ‘Did you two have a fight?’

  ‘No. Not even that. He’s got some flamboyant new boss and I think he was trying to keep up with her and his colleagues to prove a point. It was painful to see and I was just seriously lagging by the end. Not being able to get drunk didn’t help.’

  ‘So Will was drunk?’

  And possibly off his bollocks on an unknown substance. But I stay quiet. Given her reaction to the weed in my bra that may be too much for her to digest at this time.

  ‘He’s not breastfeeding. He was allowed.’

  ‘But did he at least check you got home safely or ask about Joe?’

  I grab at my phone and show her my last text to him which he replied to with a row of lemon emojis. She doesn’t quite get it. Emma’s not usually so judgy but her recent divorce has made her hold people to different standards these days. She’s more guarded, more closed off.