Champagne Kisses

by Amanda Brunker

‘Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’ My apology was lame and clearly not good enough for Maddie.

  ‘Don’t you dare start complaining, I’ve been having contractions since midnight. That’s six and a half hours, and where the fuck have you been? You’re supposed to be my birthing partner.’

  ‘I think you better hop in the shower,’ whispered Parker, opting not to be facetious for once.

  ‘Just hold tight,’ I said, walking out the door. ‘I’ll be two minutes.’

  Who was I kidding? I felt like death. How was I going to survive this morning?

  I was in a lot of pain but Maddie needed me. This morning had to be all about her and her baby. I had to swallow some painkillers quick and try and blot out my own issues.

  I was just pulling on some comfies when I heard the buzzer from downstairs.

  ‘Taxi for Maddie,’ said a voice.

  ‘She’ll be right down,’ explained Parker. ‘Girls, shake a leg.’

  Instantly I got another flashback from the night before: Lucy sitting up out of the Jacuzzi with her legs wrapped around my shoulders.

  Oh, dear God … Please say I didn’t …?

  Could I have really gone down on Lucy?

  I don’t remember, but maybe … No, I couldn’t have.

  I’m just a social lesbian, one who occasionally kisses girls at the weekend. Yes, I can be a lesbian from the waist up, but I’m strictly hetero from the waist down.

  That’s it, I don’t care how uncool it makes me, I am never doing coke again, no matter who bullies me into it. Parker and Maddie will freak when they hear what I’ve been doing.

  ‘EVA!’ Parker was screaming from the hall, ‘EVA! Come on, Maddie’s about to drop any second.’

  ‘OK, I’m coming now.’

  Right, it was time to concentrate. I’d just have to focus on the fanny I’d be looking at today, and forget about the fanny I can picture from last night.

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Nothing, I don’t want to look.’

  It was 2.42p.m. and Maddie was ten centimetres dilated and preparing herself to push.

  ‘Eva pleeeeeease …’ Maddie’s rant was delayed by yet another contraction.

  ‘Eh, there’s nothing to tell yet, except that you’re exceptionally well trimmed.’

  This repetitive banter could have gone on for ever, but we were distracted by the entrance of the midwife Mary, whom we’d met when we were first admitted to Holles Street.

  ‘Ladies,’ she announced in a loud and stern voice. ‘Listen up. A baby is about to be born, so we all need to concentrate.’

  By now Maddie – and myself – had become extremely weak from the length of the process, and Mary’s presence seemed to trigger tears in both of us.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ whined Maddie.

  ‘Of course you can, my love,’ said Mary, holding Maddie’s hand and stroking her hair, ‘but you’ve got to work with me. Right then, let’s do this.’

  And with that I assumed the head and hand holding, and Mary along with the trainee midwife Aoife, who’d spent all morning with us giggling at our moaning, took up their positions to welcome Maddie’s baby into the world.

  ‘OK, Maddie. On my say-so I’m going to need you to give me a big push. I need you to push from your bottom, and I need you to keep pushing until you can’t push any more. OK?’

  By now absolute fear had gripped Maddie, and all she could do in response was nod.

  ‘All right, Maddie, take a deep breath in from your nose, one, two, three – now, push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push, and relax. Quickly, let’s go again, breathe through your nose and push, push, push, push, push, push, push, and relax. Well done, Maddie, we’ve got a head. Good woman.’

  She was right. I didn’t want to look down, but I couldn’t help myself.

  It was the weirdest, most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. And although Maddie had clasped my left hand so tight that I’d lost feeling in it, and she’d even reopened the cut I’d sustained in my Jacuzzi drama, I was overwhelmed with pride.

  ‘OK, let’s get this job finished,’ ordered Mary, snapping me out of my trance.

  ‘One more time, Maddie. We need a great big push down through your bottom, you’re doing great. In through your nose, one, two, three and push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push … Ah, we have a baby.’

  The room fell silent.

  Maddie and I stared at the midwife who was wrapping the baby in a little blue towel and poking about at its mouth. The two of us became statues waiting to hear the baby’s cry.

  We waited …

  And waited …

  Two other women wearing blue midwife’s coats rushed in and circled around the baby, but apart from the whispers there was nothing else to be heard.

  I could feel Maddie’s grip tighten again. ‘Eva …’ she said, trying to fight back the tears.

  ‘I know,’ was my only response. I wasn’t able to speak and I could hardly breathe for the fear that I might miss the baby’s cry. But it wasn’t coming and the midwives had started looking spooked too.

  Although I had hoped to cut the cord, I watched as one of the women did so before whipping the baby across to a unit with loads of gadgets on it.

  There they continued to fuss and began to administer oxygen to the baby. But still there were no cries to be heard. Was the baby dead?

  Maddie didn’t deserve this. She’d lived like a saint these last few months. Her life was a monotonous rotation of light exercise, sleep and constant grazing on fruit, vegetables and dairy products.

  I was just about to start praying, which was totally hypocritical, when I heard a faint noise.

  Was that a cry?

  Was I imagining it?

  There it was again. It was definitely a weak cry. ‘Nurse,’ I yelled with a newly rejuvenated energy, ‘is everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, ladies,’ said Mary, ‘we’re out of the woods. There was a little blockage, but that has been cleared.’

  ‘Can I hold my baby?’ cried Maddie, panicked.

  ‘Of course you can, my love. You did terrific,’ said Mary, picking the baby up off the table and walking towards us. ‘Congratulations, Maddie; here is your beautiful baby boy.’

  As one of the ward midwives Mayia tried to convince Maddie that breast-feeding was the way to go, I made my exit to the corridor to ring all the relevant parties with the good news.

  Maddie’s mum was first. Despite their differences she sounded thrilled with the news and gave out stink that she wasn’t allowed to call up to the hospital till six that evening. I then phoned Parker, who didn’t want to hear any of the gory details but said he would dutifully call up to the hospital later and sneak in a mini bottle of champers for Maddie.

  I then paused. Who else should I ring?

  Parker had said he’d call Lisa and Anna, so that left no one else special enough to share this with.

  It was a deflating feeling.

  I wanted to scream from the rooftops that my best friend had had her baby. A gorgeous 8lb 6oz lump, perfectly pink, with a massive shock of black hair. Unfortunately he’d have to go through life with the silly name of Woody. Somewhere along the way, Maddie had fallen out of love with Troy, and became besotted with Woody. It was just as ridiculous, but his mother would always love him regardless, and so would his special auntie.

  No one else needed, or deserved to know about his arrival, I thought. This was a sacred time. All our fleeting social pals about town would find out in due course.

  But seeing this child’s birth had stirred something inside me.

  Putting all the rock ’n’ roll stuff aside I craved normality. I might have been fighting it, but I just wanted all the regular stuff in life.

  Normally I would have been disappointed by the fact that neither Michael nor Lucy had left a message to ask if I was all right, but today I was glad. This was the perfect day to break contact with toxic friends. He had showed himself to be a compulsive liar and a fraud, and Lucy,
well, she was just a dangerous manipulator. I wanted nothing more to do with either of them.

  From now on I was going to be true to myself, and stop wasting time. I wanted babies of my own some day. I wanted to meet a good man, fall in love, get married, and then have children. It was painfully traditional but seeing the miracle of a new life being born had had a profound effect on me.

  Although I hadn’t talked to God in a long time, I decided now was as good a time as any to pick up contact. So I found myself a quiet step, sat down and began talking in my head.

  ‘Hiya, God,’ I started, as if we were old pals. ‘It’s Eva here. I haven’t said hello in a while, but I wanted to check in and thank you for your help today delivering Woody safely to us. I know you’re a busy guy, but I believe you had a hand in it, so thanks. Now I know it’s probably a bit greedy to ask you to help out again today, but is there any chance you could do me one more favour? It’s a bit of a stretch, I know, but – could you reprogram me and make me a better person?’

  9

  WITHIN THE SPACE of a week, Woody Lord had turned the Bitches of Eastwick from proud doting adults, back to three highly emotional and short-tempered zombies. The sleep deprivation had hit us all bad. While Parker and I had tried ear-plugs from Boots, both soft foam and wax versions, neither worked to block out the constant crying.

  Even Sister of Mercy Jeff had flown the coop and retreated to the quiet calm of his own home in Kildare, as much to escape Parker’s irritability as Woody’s colic.

  I was literally on the verge of telling Parker that Maddie’s mum had asked her to move home after falling in love with the baby at the hospital, but I knew she was happy where she was, cocooned in the Parker Hotel away from reality.

  If he knew the truth he’d personally carry the two of them back to her mammy’s, but aside from the hard labour, he secretly loved having them around. He just found it hard to admit.

  As a dysfunctional parenting trio, we were finding it challenging. But just when you thought you’d explode with frustration, the little man would go and do something cute and you’d forgive him everything.

  Sometimes it would be the simplest of bodily functions that made us laugh the most.

  He’d fart, we’d praise him.

  He’d burp, we’d congratulate him.

  He’d wee in our face … we’d pass him back to his mother.

  Yes, it was as if I blinked and everyone’s world around me changed, but I was still stuck in my rut.

  Since Parker fell in love with Jeff and Maddie became pregnant and gave birth to Woody I had felt like a gooseberry in both of their lives.

  Himself no longer had the time for the heart-to-hearts we used to have. We used to spend hours just scrutinizing the minor plot-lines of Coronation Street, and laughing at the snotty women who ended up in corporation houses on Wife Swap.

  But these days if he wasn’t putting in extra hours on editing a glossy coffee-table book in aid of a cancer charity, a project he was introduced to by Jeff, he was hanging out with said Mr Wonderful and being a much better person for doing so.

  As for Maddie, her every waking moment was consumed with being a mom, and she had no time for frivolous chats about how cute Daniel Craig was or whether Jonathan Rhys Meyers was on or off the drink again. As much as I tried to humour her, listening to the constant updates on how much cheese she had eaten that day or the benefits of swallowing strawberry and banana Innocent and probiotic vitamins to ward off thrush, she wasn’t the free spirit of old.

  She had outgrown me, and I hated not being able to hold her interest. Or share in the simple thrills that are support tights and Dunnes high-waisted knickers.

  Both of my best friends had moved on. I felt I was the only one remaining static. My world was juvenile and vacuous compared to theirs. It was if they both decided to grow up and forgot to invite me along on the journey.

  I felt it was very unfair on me. We had always done everything together.

  I knew that our party lives couldn’t continue for ever, I just wasn’t prepared for the comedown of being the last girl standing.

  After the summer drought my freelance work had finally picked up pace and I was now enjoying the privileges of occasional junket life again. Thankfully, editorial jobs at girlie magazines were just as easily changed as journalists.

  Although I hadn’t been asked to interview any sexy celebrities, or research any Christmas shopping trips in New York or Dubai, I was back in the saddle so to speak with a freebie murder mystery weekend at a castle in Tipperary for Social & Personal magazine.

  The coach down was full of all the old familiar journos, looking eager to get pissed, with a splattering of newer younger faces who diligently read their welcome packs cover-to-cover. I had been hoping for a bit of male talent to hold my hand through the scary moments, but I wasn’t to be given such a gift. So I teamed up with a couple of pleasant girls who were fresh to the business, and basked in their excitement as I told them old war stories of celeb interviews gone bad.

  ‘Who was your most difficult interview?’ asked one.

  ‘Oh, the cast of Pearl Harbor,’ I gushed. ‘Josh Hartnett was so full of himself, and Kate Beckinsale was one of the most boring women I’d ever met, yet so beautiful in the flesh. She was dull as dishwater but utterly gorgeous.’

  The girls hung on my every word, enthralled by my experiences.

  ‘And who was the most famous person you ever met?’

  ‘Emmm,’ I paused for a dramatic build-up. ‘Well, I’ve met loads of them really: Bono, Jagger, Beyoncé, Clinton, the Trousersnake, Pammie, Paris, Flatley, Leo …’

  ‘DiCaprio?’ the same girl butted in frantically.

  ‘Yeah, he’s not so cute in person and seriously grumpy as well.’

  ‘Noooo.’

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t do it for me. I had one glass of champagne in his company and left.’

  ‘Wow. I love him. He could be rude to me all night and I’d stand there and take it. The Beach is one of my all-time favourite films.’

  ‘What about Beyoncé?’ asked another now hungry for gossip.

  ‘She’s a big girl,’ I retorted.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In the way I looked like a Smurf standing beside her. She’s not your average teeny pop star. She’s a whole lotta woman.’

  Before I knew it, my tales of celebrities misbehaving had taken us the three-and-a-half-hour journey to the quaint castle.

  From the outside it looked quite tatty, which I supposed helped in giving the place an eerie atmosphere, but once inside we were handed hot toddies in mock tankards and directed towards a large flamboyant limestone fireplace with heraldic arms over it, which instantly made us feel all warm and historic.

  When the organizers sussed that we could be settling in for the night, after several more requests for refills, a bizarre and wizened old man appeared and asked us to follow him on a brief tour of the castle.

  Of course no one jumped at the suggestion, as we were all quite happy where we were, but after a little persuasion from the hyper PR representative, we shook the lead out of our asses and followed ‘Hermon’ out of duty.

  After a far from brief exploration of the castle, during which we learned some of its history, the people who had died there in mysterious circumstances, and that the vaults were strictly off limits, we were finally released from Hermon’s grasp and allowed to check out our digs.

  Since I had bonded well with the new girls Kirsty and Melanie on the drive down, we agreed to bunk together and were offered a huge Gothic room to share.

  It was budget medieval, with few original features aside from the crumbling exposed beams, the damp, and the large cobwebs which seemed to stretch everywhere, but it was pretty cool, and we each got a four-poster bed to call our own.

  We were just unpacking our cases when a loud knock came on the door.

  Being nearest, I opened it to find a very handsome blond man standing opposite me. Kitted out in a purple velvet smoki
ng jacket complete with a gold cravat, he looked a bit ridiculous, very Hugh Hefner, but it complemented the overall image of the castle, and I was blessed with the ability to imagine men naked from an early age anyway.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said in what seemed to be a Polish accent, ‘my name is Jacub, and welcome to Castle Henry. I need to inform you about dinner. It will be served at eight o’clock sharp.’

  I was shaping up for a big flirt but the words ‘Thank you’ had barely left my mouth when he was gone. He might have ignored my womanly wiles on this occasion but he couldn’t escape me all night. Things were suddenly looking up, I thought.

  I turned to my two roomies to rave about the hunky host and found them busy applying make-up and sending texts, oblivious to the in-house totty. They had missed him completely. What a stroke of luck for me!

  Not wanting to miss any of the action, I bullied the girls into arriving early for dinner, which meant more red wine for us.

  Wearing a midnight blue princess-style flowing dress with plunging neckline, I felt quite the part for such an ostentatious occasion.

  Even some of the guys had gone to great lengths to get into the spirit of things by wearing dinner jackets. Normally hacks are a stubborn breed and wear the same smelly clothes wherever they go, but this time they’d made an effort, which suggested everyone was up for the craic.

  During our starters, a very whiffy pork terrine, we were treated to musical clues for the pending murder.

  It was almost painfully camp, but truly hilarious. Aongus the head waiter pranced around the long tables like a singing Poirot on acid, teasing us with details of unsolved murders which had taken place in the castle in years gone by and urging us to look out for any suspicious activity.

  Unfortunately what followed was a greasy roast chicken dinner, which tasted of the pewter plates it was presented on. And despite taking extra care, I clumsily managed to splatter my lovely dress with stains.

  But I wasn’t overly bothered. The red wine had a strong acrid aftertaste but it was more consumable than the food, so I was happy to be out, and loving the whole spectacle.

  Although Jacub had paid me little attention all evening I wasn’t giving up hope, and timed a toilet break perfectly to bump into him in the corridor. Just as planned, I managed to collide with him as I walked out of the dining room. The only problem was that he was carrying a large chalice of mulled wine: before I knew what was happening I had dipped both my boobs in the hot vino bath, totally finishing off my special dress.