Bella appeared at her side, hooking an arm through Lexi’s. She grinned, a strangely wolfish smile. ‘This weekend is going to be perfect.’
2
Robyn
Robyn paused the trolley in the fridge section of the supermarket. She hooked a finger at the neckline of her T-shirt and waggled it. Cool air reached her skin. Bliss. She wanted to climb into the standing refrigerator and press herself against those large tubs of Greek yoghurt.
Her eyes stung. Flights always did that to her. It must have been some combination of air conditioning and exhaustion. Unless she was about to cry? That happened since she’d become a mother. It was like her tear ducts had been tampered with and could leak without the faintest notice: at a single thought, an advert, a warm look between a mother and son. Anything.
She waited a moment, and when no tears arrived she decided the eye-sting was exhaustion. She’d barely slept last night and couldn’t even blame Jack, who’d only woken once. After she’d been through her nightly rendition of nursery rhymes and resettled his blanket twice, she’d returned to her bed, too alert for sleep. She’d begun mentally running through the checklist of instructions for her parents. Make sure you cut Jack’s grapes in half. No more than twenty minutes of television, even if he yells. He must keep his hat on if it’s sunny.
She’d never left Jack before. She’d tried demonstrating how long four nights was by stacking coloured blocks into a tower, but he’d bashed them down with a chubby palm, chuckling delightedly at the game.
Still, she mustn’t feel guilty about leaving: it was Lexi’s hen party. She would’ve flown to the other side of the world for Lexi because she was the sort of friend who – no matter what – was there for you. Lexi’s life had always been big and colourful and messy and beautiful, and Robyn felt privileged to be along for the ride.
Although, she wasn’t feeling quite so privileged about doing the supermarket run. Typical of Bella to task her with it. ‘You’re always so wonderfully practical,’ she’d said. ‘I’d just come away with a trolley full of ouzo.’
She slung a large block of feta and a tub of herby olives into the trolley while imagining the others already in swimsuits, cooling off in a sparkling pool. The B-list, she was thinking. Isn’t that what they were all thinking?
She always took things too personally. That’s your problem, Bill, her ex-husband, had told her.
Funny how personal a series of affairs feels.
Anyway. She was looking forward to this weekend. She really was. She deserved it. It’d been a tough couple of years. No, tough was wrong. That’s what she’d say in front of her parents’ friends. Correction; the last two years had been absolute shit-kickers. She had been six months pregnant when she’d discovered Bill had been having an affair. In fact, not one affair: many. Oh, how many there were. And she, Robyn of the Lists, of the Great Plans, had had no idea. When he finally admitted it, red-faced and indignant, she’d looked down at the huge swelling where her waist used to be and thought: How am I going to do this on my own?
Bill stayed until Jack was born, but after three months, the sleepless nights and cold stares were too much for either of them. She and Jack had moved in with her parents – and they’d been there ever since.
Bill visited Jack every Saturday afternoon, bringing plush cuddly toys, and then returned home to his new girlfriend, who still had full breasts and a stomach that didn’t showcase silvery rivers that ran to the source of a C-section scar. Robyn knew she was meant to embrace these bodily changes – the map of her life – but honestly, she preferred her old body, the tight one that could propel her up mountains, that didn’t constantly give her backache, that came with a sharp mind unfogged by exhaustion.
She rolled the trolley forward, catching up with Eleanor in the confectionery aisle. Her pale forehead shone with sweat, and she looked uncomfortably hot in a blouse and pressed shorts. Eleanor was Ed’s sister. She hadn’t been at the engagement drinks, Lexi explaining that she’d recently lost her fiancé, so a gathering to celebrate someone else’s wedding was probably the last thing she needed. In truth, with Robyn’s divorce imminent, it hadn’t been that high up her list of Fun Ways To Spend An Evening. Still. It was Lexi. She would always show up for Lexi.
‘Even when it says Cadbury,’ Eleanor said, brow wrinkled, ‘you can’t trust it, can you? Cadbury abroad doesn’t taste like Cadbury at home. Have you noticed? I think it must be the milk.’