The Time of Our Lives (3 page)

‘Well, it’s fine if it is.’

‘Imogen. Switch it off. I mean it. Switch the damn thing off.’

My palms dampen. ‘Really?’

‘Really. Now, you run along and have a fabulous time. I don’t want to hear from you until Thursday.’

‘Tuesday.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, that’s really kind of you, David—and, thank you.’

‘Not a problem. Oh, before you go, did you send me what you’ve done so far on the presentation I need to deliver to the board next week?’

‘Yes.’ Twice.

‘Okay, good. And the new images I’d requested?’

‘Yep.’

‘And the additional data?’

‘All there.’

‘Okay. Hmm.’ He hesitates.

‘What is it?’

‘That phone of yours . . . ’

‘I’ll leave it on, shall I?’

He hesitates again. ‘Probably for the best.’

There’s excited, there’s very excited, and then there’s Meredith. Nicola and I spot her in Departures in Terminal 5 at Heathrow when we arrive just before 8
a.m. She’s flying towards us with her silk Missoni batwings flapping like a designer phoenix poised for lift off.

‘This is going to be immense!’ Meredith is dressed like a flame-haired version of Paris Hilton – white hot pants, coordinating Alice band, and Balenciaga sunglasses perched
above her mischievous, cerulean-blue eyes. The other notable thing about Meredith’s appearance is that she’s pregnant – thirty-three weeks to be precise, which leaves just under
two months before she gives birth to Nathan’s baby. Meredith has been calling it her ‘final fling’, which belies the fact that she sees motherhood as the equivalent to a quick but
painful death for her social life.

She never did marry Nathan, although we notched up four hen nights before she woke one morning vomiting like a supermodel after twelve chocolate eclairs and, a hasty pregnancy test later,
discovered she was to become a mummy. Which isn’t something she’s entirely taken in yet.

The development has also added an interesting twist to the ebbs and flows of her relationship with Nathan. Once they gave up on the idea of getting married altogether – about three years
ago now – the on-off set-up they had had melded into a strange, twilight world in which nobody could work out whether or not they were actually together.

It wasn’t an open relationship exactly, not officially. But there is no doubt that a certain amount dabbling went on, albeit fleetingly, and on the unspoken assumption that they’d
always end up together again.

Then came the surprise pregnancy, something that changed things all over again – particularly for Nathan. Perhaps he’s grown up a little, or maybe it’s brought into focus what
he feels for Meredith. Either way, he’s no longer acting like a man who wants ambiguity between them. And – although all her dabbling has ceased – there’s no doubt that
these developments scare the living daylights out of my friend.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Meredith continues. ‘I’ve been up since two. I don’t know what the matter is with me lately – I can’t get through the night
without peeing at least three times.’

‘That’s pregnancy, Meredith.’ I shrug. ‘There’s more capacity in the bladder of an incontinent gerbil than yours at the moment.’

‘God, that again? Are there any benefits to being this size, apart from a better chance of a seat on the Tube?’

‘Well, there
is
the baby,’ Nicola teases.

‘Obviously,’ Meredith replies with mild indignation, as she pushes her overburdened trolley to the check-in desk.

I think back to when Meredith and I first met, properly, on the fourth day after I’d moved to London, into the significantly pokier flat below hers. I’d become intimately acquainted
with her musical tastes – largely in the early hours of the morning – from the start, but it was only when my eardrums were still jangling to the tune of various dance anthems several
hours after I’d left the house one day that I had decided to bite the bullet and to confront her that evening.

I had prepared myself for the worst, but she couldn’t have been more apologetic, erupting with remorse that she’d kept me awake. Then she had turned up on my doorstep that weekend
with a bottle of something expensive and bubbly, which we’d demolished with a KFC bargain bucket in front of the newly revamped
Doctor Who
, before heading to Clapham High Street and
pulling two short but enthusiastic engineering students from Belize. Our friendship had been sealed. And, soon afterwards, so was that between Meredith and Nicola. Because although they met through
me, a few years, copious nights out and a string of personal dramas (the lion’s share of which belonged to me), they were good friends with each other too.

The funny thing about Meredith is that, in every way apart from her money, she is the absolute antithesis of her family. Her sister, Gabriella, is a human rights lawyer, a relentlessly serious
type who disapproves of her sister’s every move and considers her job as a freelance beauty writer to be so frivolous as to be barely worth mentioning.

Meredith partly has herself to blame for this. Despite loving what she does, and earning a good living – which actually amounts to pocket money compared with the inheritance she received
after her father died a few years ago – she’s forever repeating the words that could have come straight from the mouth of her mother: ‘I’ll get a proper job one
day.’

My thoughts are interrupted by a little girl – about the same age as Florence – giggling uncontrollably as she heads to the check-in desk with her mum and dad. Since I completed the
round trip to Liverpool yesterday – to take Florence and Spud to stay at my mum’s, and pick up Nicola – I have been consumed by thoughts of my daughter.

‘Everything okay?’ Nicola asks me, pulling her dark blonde hair into a loose topknot.

You know how some celebrities claim to love charity-shop chic, but wouldn’t actually set foot in Age Concern even if they were escaping a serial killer? Well, Nicola
really
loves it
– and pulls off the vintage look beautifully. Today she’s wearing a floaty cotton dress adorned with yellow roses, which sets off the warm copper hues of her eyes to perfection.

‘Just worried about leaving Flo, that’s all.’

Nicola puts her hand on my arm. ‘She’ll be
fine
with your mum.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ I reply. ‘My only concern is that she’ll come back dressed like Kim Kardashian and asking for eyelash extensions for her birthday.’

Nicola laughs. ‘Try to relax. This trip must have been five years in the making.’

‘Six, isn’t it?’ asks Meredith.

Nicola thinks for a second. ‘You’re right. I set up a standing order for my savings account as soon as I got back from Zante. Good job we didn’t have to rely on
that
,
though – I’ve pilfered so much of it on the days my rent is due, I’d only saved up enough for a weekend in Pontins.’

She’s not the only one to have failed to save successfully – I spent two days before Christmas in Euro Disney with Florence last year, and have similarly depleted resources.

‘Good job one of us bothers to enter these competitions, isn’t it?’ Meredith points out.

Our friend, it seems, is the luckiest woman alive: she’s only ever entered two competitions in her life, and won both of them. The first was for a year’s supply of incontinence pads,
first prize in the raffle at the summer fair run by her great aunt’s church. Then, last month, she did one of those giveaways on Facebook that everyone enters but, suspiciously, never seem to
win. Well, it turns out that some do – and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Only a couple of weekends earlier, when Meredith had tagged along on a trip home to Liverpool,
we’d all bemoaned how we wished we’d taken our pledge six years ago more seriously. I was feeling the strain of my new job, Meredith was desperate for a ‘babymoon’ –
though with us, rather than Nathan – and Nicola, for a reason I couldn’t put my finger on, seemed more stressed than I’d seen her in ages.

I don’t think it is her job, because she loves that. Nicola is by nature a modest, down-to-earth type who doesn’t have a flashy bone in her body, yet she is food and beverage manager
of one of the City’s hippest venues, Fire and Brimstone. It’s a huge, converted warehouse that only the coolest dare enter, and occasionally me if I’m feeling brave. Although
Nicola is insistent that the atmosphere is relaxed – they have smoked alfalfa-seed soup on the menu, and regular art fairs to prove it – I can’t set foot in the place without
feeling as square as a chessboard.

Anyway, the trip Meredith won was billed as a ‘romantic getaway for two’, but the holiday company who ran the competition agreed to let us pay for a third person, which we did by
splitting the cost. So, basically, we’ve got the most luxurious holiday imaginable, in a hotel that could happily grace the cover of
Condé Nast Traveller
, for a fraction of the
cost.

It’s so fabulous that Nic’s girlfriend, Jessica, was tempted to join us, even though she hasn’t come on our previous holidays. But she had to attend a medical conference:
something there’s been a lot of since she qualified as a junior doctor at Liverpool’s Cardiothoracic Centre. I like Jess a lot, and she’s good for Nicola: funny, feisty and loyal,
the first person my best friend has ever got really serious about. That was nine years ago – ages after she’d confided in me, aged sixteen, that she was gay (I hadn’t had the
heart to break it to her that I’d already worked that out).

Despite it being an almost-freebie, I didn’t immediately jump at the trip. Although I’m owed tons of holiday at work, I knew I’d miss Florence too much. But, one evening, after
a horrible day when I was one of only two people who’d remembered it was ‘Wear Your Pyjamas To Work Day’ for Comic Relief (the other being our 84-year-old security guard, Graham),
I mentioned the possibility of the trip to my mother on the phone.

I should have known better. Having grumbled constantly since the day Flo was born about how deprived she is of opportunities to look after her, the decision was virtually made for me.

‘So, the bit I didn’t tell you,’ Meredith says, grinning the way she did when she last had a cold and combined one too many doses of Benylin with a heavy night out, ‘is
that our luxury treat starts now. Not when we get to Spain, but now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

‘Follow me!’ She winks. So we do, bewildered, all the way to the sign marked,
BUSINESS-CLASS PASSENGERS
.

Nic shivers. ‘You’re not going to try and get us a free upgrade again, are you?’

Meredith once claimed that she had a guaranteed technique for securing this, the details of which I won’t bore you with, except to say that it involved flashing more than her passport.

‘It’s all part of the prize,’ she says. ‘I only found out a week ago when the marketing woman from Elegant Vacations phoned me to check everything was in
order.’

‘You’ve kept this a secret for a week?’ I ask.

‘Nice surprise, eh?’ Meredith smiles and marches straight to the business-class desk as every head in the economy queue turns to look at her.

The woman behind the check-in desk flashes us a gleaming smile. ‘Hello ladies, where are you travelling to?’

‘Barcelona,’ replies Meredith.

‘And you’re in business class?’

I glance at Nicola incredulously then turn back. ‘It looks that way,’ I reply coolly, suppressing a sudden urge to cheer.

I unclasp my necklace to go through airport security and feel a shiver of unease that doesn’t evaporate until it’s safely back in place around my neck. I know I
have friends who think I shouldn’t still be wearing jewellery given to me by a man who everyone knows isn’t coming back. But, despite the fact that I’ve reluctantly accepted that
I’ll never see him again – just about – something still stops me from taking off the necklace permanently. It’s not just that it seems to complement every item in my
wardrobe, or that I fell in love with its delicate, blossom-shaped pendant the second I saw it. It’s because whatever misery I went through when Roberto had gone, it was given to me during
times I still consider to be the best of my life. It’s a reminder that once, albeit in the distant past, he and I had something undeniably, uniquely
good
.

As we arrive at the business-class lounge, these thoughts evaporate.

For those who have not experienced the unbridled joy of this oasis – and that included me until three and a half seconds ago – allow me to let you into a secret: if ever there was
proof that life’s not fair, this is it. I would be overcome with a sense of injustice if I wasn’t already overcome with the complimentary croissants and Buck’s Fizz.

As we find a seat with a view of the runway, I note the sublime peacefulness, the subdued lighting, the chairs of infinite plushness. There are no kids running about. There are no students,
sweaty from travelling and asleep on their rucksacks. Everyone is sharply dressed, tapping away meaningfully at laptops and – the sign of a true world-class traveller – managing to
restrain themselves from stuffing their faces with the free food.

I, on the other hand, am happy to concede that I am not a true world-class traveller. I am a mere pretender, a fleeting visitor to this world. And I am starving.

‘Do you think you’ll be able to leave work behind on this trip?’ Nicola asks me.

I can’t help but smile. She knows me, and my job, only too well. This might be the first holiday I’ve had in years where I actually relax the way normal people do – with no
phone ringing, no work distractions. And I’m going to read a book. A proper one, not
The Gruffalo
.

‘You always have had a wild streak,’ she says, grinning. ‘Well, I’m impressed. Meredith and I have been worried about you lately.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘You have so much on your plate. You’ve taken the term “juggling” to a new level, Imogen – it’s like watching a circus act sometimes.’

Nicola has always looked out for me. She is an only child, just like me, but she’s been my surrogate sister since we met. My formative years were spent combating chronic shyness (once,
aged five, I got locked in a downstairs toilet at a birthday party, and rather than pipe up and make a fuss, opted to sit there for two hours until my mum came and my absence was discovered). So
starting secondary school had been a hell that had no equal. But about five days after the beginning of term, Nicola had sat down next to me and introduced herself with a quiet smile. It was all it
had taken for me to know that everything would be okay.