Jenny Downham - Before I Die aka Now is Good

Even Sally can’t help smiling as Mum tells the story of how her parents thought Dad was too working-class and banned her from seeing him. She talks of private schools and coming-out parties, of how she regularly stole her sister’s pony and rode across town to the council estate to visit Dad at night.

He laughs at the memory. ‘It was only a little market town, but I lived right on the other side. That poor pony was so knackered on a Saturday, it never won a gymkhana again.’

Mum tops up Sally’s wineglass. Cal does a magic trick with the butter knife and his napkin.

Perhaps Sally’s medication allows her to touch alternative realities, because it’s really obvious how Cal’s making the napkin move, but she looks at him in awe.

‘Can you do anything else?’ she asks.

He’s delighted. ‘Loads. I’ll show you later.’

Adam’s sitting opposite me. My foot’s touching his under the table. Every bit of me is aware of this. I watch him eat. When he takes a sip of wine, I think of how his kisses might taste.

‘Upstairs,’ I tell him with my eyes. ‘Upstairs now. Let’s escape.’

What would they do? What could they do? We could undress, get into my bed.

‘Crackers!’ Mum cries. ‘We forgot to pull the crackers!’

We cross arms and link up, a Christmas cracker chain round the table. Hats and jokes and plastic toys fly through the air as we pull.

Cal reads his joke out. ‘ What do you call Batman and Robin after they’ve been run over by a steamroller? ’ Nobody knows. ‘ Flatman and Ribbon! ’ he cries.

Everyone laughs, except for Sally. Maybe she’s thinking about her dead husband. My joke’s rubbish, about a man going into a bar, but it’s an iron bar and he gets a headache. Adam’s isn’t even a joke, but an observation that if the universe had appeared today, all of recorded history would have happened in the last ten seconds.

‘That’s true,’ Cal says. ‘Human beings are really trivial compared to the solar system.’

‘I think I might try to get a job in a cracker factory,’ Mum says. ‘Imagine making up jokes all year round, wouldn’t that be fun?’

‘I could put the bangers in,’ Dad says, and he winks at her. They really have drunk way too much.

Sally touches her hair. ‘Shall I read mine out?’

We all shush each other. Her eyes are sad as she reads. ‘ A duck goes into a chemist’s to buy some lipstick. The chemist says, “That’s fifty-nine pence.” The duck says, “Thank you, could you put it on my bill please?” ’

Cal explodes with laughter. He throws himself off his chair onto the floor and waves his legs about. Sally’s pleased, reads the joke out again. It is funny. It starts as a ripple in my belly, then moves up to my mouth. Sally laughs too, a great gulping sound. She looks surprised to make such a noise, which makes Mum, Dad and Adam start to chuckle. It’s such a relief. Such a bloody relief. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud. Tears roll down my cheeks. Adam passes me his napkin across the table.

‘Here.’ His fingers brush mine.

I wipe my eyes. Upstairs, upstairs. I want to run my hands along you. And I’m just about to say it out loud, just about to say, ‘I’ve got something for you, Adam, but it’s in my bedroom, so you’ll have to come and get it,’ when there’s a rap on the window.

It’s Zoey, her face pressed against the glass, like Mary in the Christmas story. She wasn’t supposed to be here until tea time, and her parents were meant to be coming with her.

She brings in the cold. She stamps her feet on the carpet in front of us all. ‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ she says.

Dad raises his glass to her and wishes her the same. Mum gets up and gives her a hug.

Zoey says, ‘Thank you.’ Then she bursts into tears.

Mum gets her a chair and some tissues. From somewhere two mince pies appear with a large dollop of brandy butter. Zoey shouldn’t really have alcohol, but maybe the butter doesn’t count.

‘When I looked through the window,’ she sniffs, ‘it looked like something from an advert. I nearly went home.’

Dad says, ‘What’s going on, Zoey?’

She stuffs a spoonful of pie and brandy butter into her mouth, chews quickly, then swallows it down. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Whatever you want to tell us.’

‘Well, my nose is stuffed up and I feel like crap. Do you want to know about that?’

‘That’s caused by an increase in HCG,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the pregnancy hormone.’ There’s a moment’s silence around the table as everyone looks at me. ‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest.’

I’m not sure I should have said this out loud. I forgot that Adam, Cal and Sally don’t even know Zoey’s pregnant. None of them say anything though, and Zoey doesn’t seem to mind, just shoves another load of pie into her mouth.

Dad says, ‘Has something happened at home, Zoey?’

She carefully reloads her spoon. ‘I’ve told my parents.’

‘You told them today?’ He sounds surprised.

She wipes her mouth with her sleeve. ‘It may have been bad timing.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They said a million things, all of them terrible. They hate me. Everyone hates me in fact. Except for the baby.’

Cal grins. ‘You’re having a baby?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I bet it’s a boy.’

She shakes her head at him. ‘I don’t want a boy.’

Dad says, ‘But you do want a baby?’ He says this very gently.

Zoey hesitates, as if she’s thinking about this for the very first time. Then she smiles at him, her eyes watery and amazed. I’ve never seen such a look on her face before. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I really think I do. I’m going to call her Lauren.’

She’s nineteen weeks pregnant, her baby is fully formed and weighs roughly two hundred and forty grammes. If it were born now, it would fit into the palm of my hand. Its stomach would be pink-veined and transparent. If I spoke, it would hear me.

I say, ‘I’ve put your baby on my list.’ I probably shouldn’t have said this out loud either. I didn’t really mean to. Once again, everyone stares at me.

Dad reaches out a hand and touches mine across the table. ‘Tessa,’ he says.

I hate that. I shrug him off. ‘I want to be there.’

Zoey says, ‘It’s another five months, Tess.’

‘So? That’s only a hundred and sixty days. But if you don’t want me there, I can sit outside and maybe come in afterwards. I want to be one of the first people in the world to ever hold her.’

She stands up and walks round the table. She wraps her arms around me. She feels different. Her tummy’s gone all hard and she’s very hot.

‘Tessa,’ she says, ‘I want you to be there.’

The afternoon goes quickly. The table’s cleared and the TV’s turned on. We all listen to the Queen’s speech, then Cal does a few magic tricks.

Zoey spends the afternoon on the sofa with Sally and Mum, going through every detail of her doomed love affair with Scott. She even asks for their advice on childbirth. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘does it hurt as much as they say?’

Dad’s engrossed in his new book, Eating Organic . He occasionally reads out statistics about chemicals and pesticides to anyone who’s interested.

Adam mostly talks to Cal. He shows him how to spin the clubs; he teaches him a new coin trick. I keep changing my mind about him. Not if I fancy him or not, but if he likes me. Every now and then his eyes catch mine across the room, but he always looks away before I do.

‘He wants you,’ Zoey mouths at me at one point. But if it’s true, I don’t know how to make it happen.