Sophia Money-Coutts - The Plus One

‘Happy birthday, darling, kick my boots out of the way,’ Mum shouted from upstairs when I pushed her front door open that night to the sound of Bertie barking. There was a pile of brown envelopes on the radiator grille in the hall, two marked ‘Urgent’.

‘Mums, do you ever open your post?’ I asked, walking upstairs and into the sitting room.

‘Oh yes, yes, yes, don’t fuss,’ she said, taking the envelopes and putting them down on her desk, where magazines and old papers covered every spare chink of surface. ‘I’ve made a cake for pudding,’ she went on, ‘but I’ve got some prawns in the fridge that need eating, so we’re having them first. I thought I might make a risotto?’

‘Mmm, lovely, thank you,’ I replied, wondering whether Peregrine would believe me if I called in sick because my mother had poisoned me with prawns so old they had tap-danced their way into the risotto.

‘Have you had a nice birthday?’ Mum asked. ‘How was work?’

‘Oh, you know, Peregrine’s Napoleonic tendencies are as rampant as ever. I’ve got to write a piece on Royal babies and their playmates.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mum vaguely, as she walked towards the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a bottle of wine. In the four years I’d worked at Posh! , I’d learned more about the upper classes than I’d ever expected to. A duke was higher than an earl in the pecking order and they were all obsessed with their Labradors. But Mum, a librarian’s daughter from Surrey, while supportive of my job, wasn’t much interested in the details.

She poured two glasses of white wine and handed me one. ‘Now, let’s sit down and then I can give you your present.’

I collapsed on the sofa whereupon Bertie instantly jumped on my lap and white wine sloshed over the rim of my glass and into my crotch.

‘Bertie, get down,’ said Mum, handing me a small jewellery box and sitting down beside me. She stared at Bertie and pointed at the floor, as he slowly and reluctantly climbed off the sofa. I opened the box. It was a ring. A thin, delicate gold band with a knot twisted into the metal.

‘Your dad gave it to me when you were born. So, I thought, to mark a big birthday, you should have it.’

‘Oh, Mum…’ I felt choked. She hardly ever mentioned Dad. He’d had a heart attack and died at forty-five when I was just ten years old. Our lives changed forever in that moment. We had to sell our pretty, Victorian house in Surrey and Mum and I moved to this flat in Battersea. We were both in shock. But we got on with our new life in London because there was no alternative. And we’d been a small, but intensely close, unit ever since. Just us two. And then Bertie, when I left for university and Mum decided she needed a small, hairy substitute child.

I slipped the ring on my finger. It was a bit tight over the knuckle, but it went on easily enough. ‘I love it,’ I said, looking at my hand, then looking up at Mum. ‘Thank you.’

‘Good, I’m glad it fits. And now, listen, I have something I need to chat to you about.’

‘Hmmm?’ I was trying to turn the ring on my finger. A bout of dysentery from prawn-related food poisoning might not be the worst thing, actually. I could probably lose half a stone.

‘Polly?’

‘Yes, yes, sorry, am listening.’ I stopped fiddling with the ring and sat back against the sofa.

‘So,’ started Mum. ‘I went to see Dr Young last week. You know this chest pain that’s been worrying me? Well, I’ve been taking my blood pressure pills but they haven’t been doing any good so I went back on Thursday. Terrible this week because the place was full of people sneezing everywhere. But I went back and, well, he wants me to have a scan.’

‘A scan?’ I frowned at her.

‘Yes. And he says it may be nothing but it’s just to be sure that it is nothing.’

‘OK… But what would it be if it wasn’t nothing?’

‘Well, you know, it could be a little something,’ said Mum, breezily. ‘But he wants me to have a scan to check.’

‘When is it?’ I felt sick. Panicky. Only two minutes ago I’d been worrying about the sell-by date on a packet of prawns. It suddenly seemed very silly.

‘I’m waiting for the letter to confirm the date. Dr Young said I’ll hear in the next couple of weeks but the post is so slow these days, so we’ll see.’

‘It might help if you looked at the pile of post downstairs every now and then, Mum,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘You don’t want to miss it.’

‘No. No, I know.’

I’d always told myself that Mum and I had done all right on our own over the years. Better, even, than all right. We were way closer than some of my friends were with their parents. But every now and then I wished Mum had a husband to look after her. This was one of those moments. For support. For help. For another person to talk to. She could hardly discuss the appointment with Bertie.

‘Well, will you let me know when you get the letter and I’ll come with you? Where will it be?’ I asked.

‘Oh there’s no need, darling. You’ve got work. Don’t fuss.’

‘Don’t be silly, obviously I’m coming. I work for a magazine, not MI6. No one will mind if I take a few hours off.’

‘What about Peregrine?’

‘He’ll manage.’

‘OK. If you’re sure, that would be lovely. The appointment will be at St Thomas’.’

‘Good, that’s sorted,’ I said, trying to sound confident, as if the scan was a routine check-up and there was nothing to worry about. ‘Now let’s have a sniff of those prawns.’

By Friday afternoon, I had six posh babies and their scan pictures. Where the hell were another four going to come from? My phone vibrated beside my keyboard and a text popped up from Bill, an old friend who always threw a dinner party at the end of the first week of January to celebrate the fact the most cheerless week of the year was over.

Come over any time from 7! X

I looked back at my screen full of baby scans. Jesus. A baby. That seemed a long way off. I hadn’t had a proper boyfriend since university when I went out with a law student called Harry for a year, but then Harry decided to move to Dubai and I cried for about a week before my best friend, Lex, told me I needed to ‘get back out there’. My love life, ever since, had been drier than a Weetabix. The odd date, the odd fumble, the odd shag which I’d get overexcited about before realizing that, actually, the shag had been terrible and what was I getting so overexcited about anyway?

Last year, I’d had sex twice, both times with a Norwegian banker called Fred who I met through a mutual friend at a picnic in Green Park in the summer. If you can call several bottles of rosé and some olives from M&S a picnic. Lex and I drank so much wine that we decided to pee under a low-hanging tree in the park as it got dark. This had apparently impressed Fred, who moved to sit closer to me when Lex and I returned to the circle.

We’d all ended up in the Tiki bar of the London Hilton on Park Lane, where Fred ordered me a drink which came served in a coconut. He’d lunged in the car park and then I’d waited until I was safely inside my cab home before wiping off the wetness around my mouth with the back of my hand. We’d gone on a couple of dates and I’d slept with him on both those dates – possibly a mistake – and then he’d gone quiet. After a week, I texted him breezily asking if he was around for a drink. He replied a few days later.

Oh, sorry been travelling so much for work and not sure that’s going to change any time soon. F

‘F for fucking nobody, that’s who,’ said Lex, loyally, when I told her.