Phoebe Morgan - The Wild Girls

Alice pulls the envelope out of her bag and uses a pair of slightly gluey scissors to slit it open, already wondering who it’ll be this time. She is thirty – still prime time for summer weddings and expensive hen-dos. It’s never-ending, really it is. She won’t have anything to wear – she’s put on weight recently, feels curvier than before, as Tom has pointed out more than once.

And then she sees the name, and she has to put the scissors down because her hands begin to shake. Felicity’s birthday . And she wants Alice to come.

Hannah

Hannah is in the baby’s room when Chris brings the post in. Of course she is – where else would she be? He’s just about sleeping through the night these days, which is something Hannah could weep in gratitude for to whoever might be listening, but still he wakes up at around five every morning and she sits with him, feeding and stroking, calming and shushing, as the hours tick by and the dark becomes light. It feels like the two of them are the only people left in the world in those moments, as she listens to his breathing, feels the beat of his heart against hers. Her eyes always feel gritty with tiredness; the shadows of the cot bars make strange shapes on the wall: a tiny prison. During those dawn hours, she forces herself to feel grateful, to remember how much she wanted this, how far they have come to be parents. She must remember that. At all times.

‘Morning,’ Chris whispers, keeping his voice soft – he usually does nowadays for fear of Hannah flying off the handle at him if he doesn’t. He’s clutching a mug of coffee and the smell makes her want to rip it out of his hands, but she is still breastfeeding and has had two cups already today, so of course she doesn’t. He pops the stack of mail down on the ottoman next to Max’s cot and peers down at their sleeping baby boy, whose blue eyes, the mirror image of hers, are squeezed shut (although Hannah doubts they’ll stay that way for long). Chris is dressed in a suit and tie, all sharp angles and clean-cut corners, and she feels a sharp pang of jealousy as she pictures him leaving the house, popping his earbuds in and hopping onto the tube to work, interacting with other adults. Most of Hannah’s conversations these days are pretty one-sided.

‘Is he OK?’ he asks her, and she nods sleepily, a yawn stifling her reply, and brushes a strand of her dark-blonde hair away from her face. It feels dry and frizzy to the touch; she hasn’t paid any attention to it for weeks.

‘He’s fine, we’re all good. Have you got a busy day today?’

Chris nods, takes a slurp of his coffee. The noise grates on Hannah slightly but she forces herself to ignore it. Chris is a lawyer, working in commercial law but wanting to make a move to family. ‘Commercial law is so boring, Hannah,’ he tells her all the time, and she wants to scream at him to try being cooped up with a baby for twenty-four hours a day, with nobody to talk to except Peppa Pig on the screen. Hannah hates Peppa Pig. She has started to dream about her; her rounded pink snout, the high-pitched sound of her voice. She taunts Hannah; in nightmares, the pig’s mother blinks her long eyelashes directly into hers, tickling her skin.

But of course Hannah never says that.

‘Remember the Clarksons are coming over tomorrow night,’ Chris says, and Hannah’s heart sinks like a stone beneath her nightie – naturally, she’d forgotten. Most of the time now, her brain feels like a sieve with extra holes. The Clarksons are Chris’s colleagues, invited for a hideous double-date dinner in an attempt to rally Hannah’s spirits, give her some company. Chris doesn’t understand why she hasn’t been in touch with the girls in so long, why their close-knit friendship has become so distant. She hasn’t yet found the words to explain it to him. Every time Hannah thinks about it, she feels a weird mix of emotions, but mainly she feels so guilty that she wants to disappear, hide under the baby’s cot and never be found.

As Chris reaches down to kiss Max goodbye, Hannah gets a whiff of his aftershave – it smells different, new.

‘See you later,’ he tells her, kissing her on the mouth, and she puts her hand on the back of his neck, trying to recreate the old passion, find their spark. Who are you wearing new aftershave for? she wants to ask him, but she knows she’s being ridiculous – this is Chris , for God’s sake, and so Hannah says nothing, just waves and smiles at him as he backs out of the baby’s room.

Max has miraculously stayed sleeping, so she takes the opportunity to sift through the mail her husband has left on the side, noticing the messy, chipped polish on her nails as she does so. There’s never time to replace it. She doesn’t understand the mothers with neat nails. A bill, addressed to Chris, a Boden catalogue (is she really that old?), a flyer advertising some Valentine’s Day lingerie (chance would be a fine thing) and something else. A stiff, square envelope, addressed to her. Briefly, Hannah wonders if it’s from his mother – she often sends cards, her little way of checking how they are (read: checking how she is coping with Jean’s longed-for grandson) but her latest was last week and this feels a bit soon for a second, even by Jean’s standards.

Hannah rips the paper, and the invitation tumbles out – nice, thick card, expensive. Someone with money – not his mother, then. Hannah thinks it must be a work thing, and then she sees the name and it’s as though she’s been dunked in cold water. The memory flashes back through her like a bolt of electricity. The cold of the wall against her jeans. The darkness of the sky. An unfamiliar hand rubbing her back.

Guilt crawls up her throat, and Hannah puts her fingers to her neck as if she can stop it in its tracks. She can’t change the past; she should know that by now. Her necklace, a thin gold chain from Chris, is cold underneath her fingertips, and she rolls it against her skin, pressing down harder than she needs to, imprinting herself with its tiny interlocking pattern.

Just then, her phone, caught in the folds of her nightie, beeps loudly with a message. It’s a familiar name, but one she hasn’t seen in months: Grace Carter. There are only three words, and Hannah cannot work out the tone – hesitant, or accusing?

The message says: Are you invited?

14th February

London

Grace

I’m working from home today, so I spend most of the morning on my laptop, googling photos of Botswana. I don’t even bother with a shower or my contact lenses, just sit there in my scrubby white dressing gown, glasses on, scrolling through the pictures. It says the temperature over there is thirty degrees, even in February, and it only gets hotter in March. Felicity always hated having a March birthday, said she wanted to be born in the summer when everyone was in the mood to drink rosé at any time of day. I continue scrolling through the websites, lose myself slightly in the images – imagining the hot sun on my back, the rustle of the grass underneath my feet. It’s been so long since I left London. Sometimes, I feel like I’m destined to be in Peckham forever, as though my soul will wander the busy streets for years after I die.

Botswana would be something different. It would be an adventure. And I’d get to see the girls again, after all this time. Girls – it’s ridiculous to call them that, now that we are all women in our thirties, but that is what we’ve always been. That silly nickname: the wild girls . Old habits die hard, after all. The thought of seeing them makes my stomach twist. Memories spin in my mind, like tricks of the light that I cannot quite catch.