The Rom-Com Collection: The Plus One, Something for the Weekend, A Marriage of Connivance

by Natasha West

  ‘Maybe I could buy a piece?’ Ellie asked kindly.

  ‘Absolutely. I’ll text you the website later.’

  Caitlin, flush from the spotlight, took a celebratory swig of wine and Ellie looked to Jordan, wanting to thank her with a glance. But Jordan steadfastly refused to meet her eye.

  But aloof Jordan had helped her out of a jam, Ellie realised. Weird.

  ‘How’s the brats, err, the children’ Caitlin quickly corrected ‘at the crèche?’ Caitlin asked.

  Ellie pretended she hadn’t heard the first word Caitlin had chosen.

  ‘They’re lovely, yes. It’s always a pleasure to spend time with children.’

  ‘Rather you than me’ Caitlin said with a passive aggressive laugh.

  Ellie tried to join in but faltered.

  Zoe suddenly came running in with plates.

  ‘Grub’s up’ she cried, affecting a working class accent.

  Caitlin laughed. No-one else did.

  After everyone had eaten most of the main and given the obligatory compliments to the chef, who told everyone the preposterous lie that she’d just knocked it up from what she had to hand, conversation began to flow a little more easily. The booze helped.

  Inevitably, Caitlin bought up ‘The Old Days.’

  ‘Hey, do you remember that girl from the room next to yours?’ she asked Zoe.

  ‘Err, no…’ Zoe replied, trying to reach through the fog of time.

  ‘You know, she had that boyfriend with the lazy eye.’

  ‘Oh, wait… Was it Jane?’

  ‘That’s her. Well, someone else from the dorms, Greg, he was the one who was doing business studies and then he had that nervous breakdown in the first year and switched to geology, across the hall from me…’

  Zoe nodded.

  ‘I saw something on his Facebook, he liked this picture of her and I followed the breadcrumb trail to her page and anyway, to cut a long story short…’

  ‘Too late’ thought Jordan.

  ‘She’s a prison guard now. How odd is that?’

  Zoe’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘Jane? A prison guard? She was on my finance course!’

  ‘Weird, right?’

  Zoe shook her head, mystified.

  Both Jordan and Ellie knew that if Caitlin and Zoe were allowed to go much further down memory lane, it would never end. They would both become ornaments in the background of the evening.

  Ellie felt a sadness at the thought. She wished she were having an evening with Zoe alone. She wasn’t like this usually. There was something about Caitlin that seemed to bring out a certain way in her.

  Jordan, predictably, wasn’t having it. She was breaking this little party up before it had a chance to get going.

  ‘So, remind me, how did you two even know each other? You weren’t on the same course, right?’

  ‘No’ Caitlin coughed. ‘We were on the same floor of halls. Met at a party.’

  ‘Before you dropped out?’ Jordan asked, still pretending she didn’t remember the details of the story that had been told many times.

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I’d just had this offer to teach English in Hong Kong and it seemed too good to pass up.’

  ‘Surely you could have done that after your degree finished, I mean you were, what, eighteen months into a medicine degree?’

  Ellie thought she saw the slightest flicker of something in Zoe’s eyes. But then it seemed to vanish.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not like I wanted to be a doctor or anything. It was just something to do till I figured out what I really wanted’ Caitlin said quickly.

  ‘And that’ll happen any day now’ Ellie thought, with unusual meanness.

  Zoe suddenly chirped up.

  ‘It’s a shame. You would have looked good in the white coat.’

  There was a silence. No one could think of a damn thing to say to Zoe’s last comment. And when Ellie could take no more, her fevered mind latched onto one possible topic of interest.

  ‘Oh, by the way, me and Zoe have a little bit of news.’

  Zoe looked over quickly and Ellie knew straight away that Zoe didn’t want to talk about it. But it was too late. She’d started to say it. What else could she end such a dramatic opener with now? Ellie, no natural liar, had nothing except the truth.

  ‘We’ve been shopping for a sperm donor lately and we’ve found one that we like, he’s an astrophysicist, so we’ve ordered a, err, donation. It’s coming next week.’

  Jordan and Caitlin’s mouths simultaneously dropped open.

  Jordan eventually found her tongue and said ‘Woah. Seriously?’

  Ellie nodded. Caitlin had yet to respond.

  ‘So who’s taking the bullet?’ Jordan asked.

  Ellie said modestly ‘That will be me.’

  Jordan gave a small laugh, still slightly amazed. She hadn’t known that Ellie and Zoe were even planning to do the preggers thing. She wondered if Caitlin knew. One look at Caitlin’s face made it plain that she did not.

  ‘Good luck to you’ Jordan said, meaning it. She didn’t know what kind of mother Zoe would make, but Ellie seemed like the motherly type. And who knew, maybe motherhood would soften Zoe a bit.

  ‘Thanks’ said Zoe, speaking at last.

  Caitlin suddenly cried out ‘Yeah. Congratulations guys.’ She lifted her glass and said ‘To you and your sperm!’

  No one responded for a second and Caitlin added quickly ‘I mean, to you and your future baby!’

  Everyone clinked.

  After the evening was done with, Jordan and Caitlin were back in the car park. Jordan was watching Caitlin do an oddly terrible job of getting her Ford Ka out of a space that she’d slid into like butter earlier that evening.

  Back and forth Caitlin went, never quite hitting the target, straddling the white lines time and again. They were just lucky that the car park was no longer full. If Caitlin had been trying to get out from between a couple of Range Rovers, Jordan thought she would have likely collected several wing mirrors by now.

  Jordan couldn’t understand it. What the hell was Caitlin playing at? It was starting to get bloody silly. She wondered if she should just tell her to stop and take the wheel herself. She was about to do just that when Caitlin finally seemed to find her way out.

  ‘There! Perfect’ Caitlin said, as though she hadn’t just spent whole minutes trying to reverse like she was blindfolded.

  Jordan raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  Upstairs, Ellie was watching Zoe scrub the dishes with a vigour that seemed about more than a bit of dried-on sauce. She wondered if Zoe’s mood was about the donor announcement.

  ‘Zoe, it was OK, wasn’t it? That stuff I said earlier about the baby.’

  Zoe didn’t stop scrubbing.

  ‘Of course’ she replied coldly.

  ‘I mean, it’s going ahead. They were bound to find out eventually.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s fine. But next time, check with me before you decide to tell everyone our whole lives.’

  Ellie felt a small shock of adrenaline shoot into her hands at the criticism. Should she engage with it? No, she decided. Better to do a small conversational swerve.

  ‘I was quite surprised by Caitlin’s reaction. She seemed a bit shocked.’

  ‘Oh, do you think?’ Zoe asked, now very casual again.

  ‘Yes. I guess I just assumed you would have talked about our plans.’

  ‘I suppose I just didn’t get round to it.’

  ‘But she’s your best friend, isn’t she? I mean, don’t you talk to her about things-’

  ‘I don’t tell her every little detail of my life, Ellie’ Zoe broke in.

  ‘Little?’

  Zoe stopped scrubbing and turned around.

  ‘I didn’t mean little. I just meant that I don’t often see her solo, so we never really do that whole ‘gabbing about our lives’ thing.’

  ‘I’ve never understood why you guys don’t do that.’ Ellie said, a question in
the statement.

  ‘I’m busy. And I wouldn’t want to leave you out.’

  ‘Really? Because I’m completely OK with us having separate friendships.’

  Zoe threw a brief, distracted smile over her shoulder and then turned back to the pots.

  ‘Well, maybe we will then’ Zoe said vaguely.

  Ellie would have liked to talk more about it, she had a suspicion that Zoe wasn’t saying something. Ellie was damned if she knew what it was about. But it didn’t matter. She could tell that Zoe was done with the topic.

  Chapter Two

  The next week was strange in the respective Payne/Day and Hopkins/Cook households.

  Something that neither Jordan nor Ellie could put their fingers on. It was as though someone were constantly pranking them but the punchline never arrived. Something was off.

  Jordan noticed it first. Caitlin, never really someone with a strong work ethic, suddenly wouldn’t come out of her craft room. She was in there, night and day, generating piece after piece. In the eighteen months that Jordan had been with Caitlin, not to mention the eleven months of cohabitation, this type of dedication to anything was utterly unprecedented.

  Jordan had never really minded about Caitlin’s general flakiness. She’d come to see it as part of the Caitlin package and therefore learned to love it. But this new hard-working Caitlin, it was unnerving.

  On the fifth day of the decampment, Jordan tapped on the craft room door, only to hear ‘Not now!’

  Jordan, who’d actually been knocking to find out if Caitlin wanted a cuppa, did not care for being spoken to like that. She had half a mind to barge in and let her know just that. But then she decided that, in all honesty, she couldn’t be arsed.

  Jordan did not enjoy arguing. Mainly because there wasn’t much sport in it. Jordan was a born arguer with the ice cold ability to knock out any opponent with a few strategic hits. And like most of the greats who are lacking for a truly equal opponent, she’d lost the taste for it quite some time ago. She would only get into a row with Caitlin if she had to.

  And since she had a Poodle – Teddy - to get to in forty minutes, now wasn’t the time for a verbal smack down. Because Teddy was quite a schedule-oriented dog. If she didn’t reach him in time, he was likely to take a protest piss on his owner’s oriental rug.

  So Jordan didn’t go in to find out what was up with Caitlin. Which was unfortunate. Because if she had, if they’d talked it all through, the whole mess that was to follow might have been avoided.

  Ellie was in a similar fix across town. She suddenly had a girlfriend who appeared to have had a personality transplant. But the process happened a lot more gradually.

  The morning after the dinner party, Zoe seemed normal. And when they got home from work, Zoe seemed in an especially good mood. She was making plans for the insemination evening. They were going to try and make it as romantic as they could, given the scientific nature of the process. It was going to be all scented candles and soft violins before she whipped out the turkey baster.

  The mood seemed to continue for the whole week leading up to insemination night: Zoe being about as sweet to Ellie as she’d ever been. Foot massages, carefully prepared dinners, she couldn’t seem to do enough for Ellie.

  But as the week progressed, somehow, the whole thing started to make Ellie feel a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t that Zoe was being nice. It was that she was being too nice.

  But she shook off her fears. Zoe was just excited, Ellie told herself.

  The day of the insemination, Ellie was at work at the Little Tykes Crèche, a place in the shopping centre for hassled parents to drop their kids off so they could shop in peace for a few hours. She was dealing with a dispute between two little boys who had decided to disband their friendship over who got to feed the Little Tykes hamster-in-residence, Boris. Just as the argument was reaching fever pitch, (‘Boris doesn’t even like you! He told me so!’) Ellie’s workmate Janice suddenly walked in holding a ridiculously large bunch of flowers.

  ‘Well, someone’s got an admirer’ Janice declared.

  ‘Why don’t you go to separate corners?’ Ellie ordered the boys, before asking ‘Who?’ to Janice.

  The boys both huffed but turned obediently, bored with the fight anyway.

  ‘You, you banana!’ Janice said with a cackle and handed Ellie the unwieldy arrangement.

  Ellie read the card, which said:

  ‘To the mother of my future children. Love Zoe xxx.’

  ‘I know it’s not your birthday. Is it your anniversary or something?’ Janice fished.

  Ellie thought for a second, a needle of fear prickling at her heart. Had she forgotten an anniversary? And then she realised that the card was telling her the reason. Tonight. They were going to get pregnant. Zoe was making the day special for her.

  ‘No’ Ellie said. ‘I think it’s just because we’re doing the insemination this evening.’

  Janice, who happened to be broadminded for a sixty-year-old heterosexual woman who’d lived all her life in the same place, nodded her approval.

  ‘Either that or she’s been up to no good!’ Janice said with a laugh. Ellie joined her.

  When Ellie thought later on about how she’d laughed at that joke, her blood ran cold.

  At four thirty, an hour before Ellie would ordinarily leave for the day, Janice practically pushed her out of the door.

  ‘I’ll be alright, just get home. You’ve got a big night ahead.’

  ‘But you’ve got rehearsals tonight, haven’t you?’

  Janice snorted and said ‘I doubt I’ll be missed. I’m practically an extra in this one.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous’ Ellie exclaimed. ‘You should have a starring role.’

  ‘The Croft Amateur Dramatics society apparently thinks it can do a lot better than me’ Janice said.

  ‘Then they’re idiots’ Ellie said sincerely.

  ‘Never mind about all that. Go on, get home!’ Janice cried.

  Ellie let herself be released and off she went, headed for home, feeling nervous but excited. But as she walked up the hallway of her building and put her key into the door, she heard a strange sound come from within. It sounded like arguing.

  ‘That’s not the point!’ she heard Zoe say angrily.

  ‘I think it’s exactly the point’ a voice she couldn’t identify replied in a pitiable tone. ‘It’s not great timing, I realise that. But I can’t let you...’

  At this point, Ellie had the door unlocked. The voices immediately stopped as she entered the hallway.

  In the living room, Zoe and what turned out to be Caitlin were standing stock still in the living room. Caitlin’s face was a little flushed.

  ‘Hi’ Zoe said, almost hitting a normal tone.

  Ellie looked from Zoe to Caitlin and back to Zoe before she finally asked ‘Is everything OK?’

  Zoe shot a look to Caitlin and said ‘Yeah, it’s fine. We were just… Sorry, you must have heard the shouting. It’s… Caitlin, do you mind if I tell her?’

  Caitlin’s lips parted as though she were going to reply. But Zoe didn’t give her the chance. ‘I didn’t tell you this but I loaned Caitlin some money a while back and well, she’s trying to give it back to me even though I know she doesn’t really have it to give right now. I was just trying to make her understand that I won’t take it.’

  Ellie was confused.

  ‘When did you…’ she began. And then thought better of it. Maybe it would be better to get into this with Zoe once they were alone. ‘Right, OK. I’ll just go and make some tea, let you finish talking.’

  She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle noisily so Zoe didn’t think she was eavesdropping. But the water had barely begun to boil when Zoe walked into the kitchen alone.

  ‘She’s gone. I’m so sorry you had to come home to that’ Zoe said apologetically.

  ‘It’s alright but why did you never mention this money thing?’

  ‘Caitlin asked me not to. She was embarras
sed.’

  The explanation made sense to Ellie. Caitlin was pretty terrible with money and her erratic career didn’t help. Sometimes she appeared to be rolling in it, other times she could barely pay her rent. And who better to ask than Zoe, who’d been saving carefully since she was eight.