The Big Five O. Jane Wenham-Jones

She took another drag on her own cigarette. ‘Bless her!’

      Fay rolled her eyes. ‘Funny how nobody had food allergies when we were kids. I can just imagine my mum buggering about with tofu on a bed of quinoa or whatever it’s called.’ She laughed. ‘Meat and two veg we had and God forbid if you didn’t finish your potatoes.’

      Charlotte laughed too. ‘Becky’s a veggie now. They all are on her floor apparently. I’ve told her she’ll be cooking for herself in the holidays.’ She blew smoke out. ‘Unless it means I can finally get Joe to eat something green! If we can agree on 28^th that will be great actually,’ she went on. ‘Becky will be home from uni – Joe will have broken up. Oh and so will Andrew of course. It will make it more relaxed for him and Laura – maybe they and Stanley will stay a few days. I miss Lu so much since Andrew got that bloody headship in Gateshead. I can’t wait to see them.’

      Fay frowned. ‘We’re not having kids?’

      Charlotte stubbed her cigarette out on the wall and dropped the butt into a litter bin outside the second-hand shop next door. ‘We’re obviously having mine,’ she said firmly. ‘And Stanley is as good as family. And almost an adult!’

      She strode ahead of Fay back into the coffee bar. ‘And there’s Amy,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Come on! Let’s get this show on the road.’

      ‘Amy probably won’t want to come,’ Roz said, trying to keep her voice bright. ‘Far too embarrassing.’

      ‘Of course she’ll come,’ said Charlotte. ‘I shall tell her I’m expecting her. AND she’s got to put up with you mum-dancing.’

      Roz shook her head. ‘She really will go home then!’

      ‘Anyway, no other damn kids apart from your own,’ said Fay, swivelling her dark glossy head round to fix them all with a stern look. ‘Plus a special dispensation for the son of Charlotte’s best friend. Because they are coming to stay,’ she added grudgingly.

      ‘I thought we were your best friends,’ Sherie was smiling.

      ‘You are – but Laura is my longest-standing best friend and fulfilled the role on her own before I met you lot.’

      Fay was still on a mission. ‘Can’t be doing with them running around screaming. Did I tell you about the little bastard in M&S?’

      ‘Ours are all teenagers,’ said Charlotte, shaking her head. ‘Of course no small children – it’s an adult party.’

      ‘I gave his mother the benefit of my opinion I can tell you,’ said Fay, satisfied. ‘Offered to scream the place down, and then throw myself in the chilled chicken. See what she thought.’

      Roz laughed. ‘We have some right little sods on the school trips to the gallery too.’

      ‘So, are you going to confirm the booking, Charlotte?’ Sherie was looking bored.

      ‘Yep. I’ll call in to the pav and see Dan tomorrow. Tell him the Big Bash is on!’

      ‘And sort some vegetarian options?’

      ‘He’s used to all that. You saw the list – there’ll be a selection–’

      Sherie looked doubtful. ‘I think we ought to mention it. And put a note on the invitations saying to let us know about dietary requirements.’

      ‘Or tell them to eat before they come if they’re that fussy,’ said Fay. ‘Which is what I’m about to do. I need to get home, I’m starving.’ She got up and swept towards the counter.

      Sherie put her sunglasses in their case and also stood up. She was holding a ten-pound note.

      Roz felt in her bag for money, hoping a fiver would be enough, but Fay returning and putting a card back into her wallet, shook her head.

      ‘You get it another time,’ she said easily. Roz swallowed. As if it were that simple. Which it was for the other three. If next time, the bill came to forty quid instead of twenty, they’d pick up the tab without thinking.

      ‘Swings and roundabouts,’ Charlotte would declare, if she ended up paying more than her share. Not realising that if Roz got the wrong sort of ride when it was her turn, she’d have to plunge even deeper into debt.

      ‘Can’t stand faff about the bill,’ Fay was fond of saying as she’d swiftly divide by four, not knowing that the only reason Roz had been on water was that she was desperately trying to keep that bill to a minimum.

      Charlotte scrutinised her as she said goodbye. ‘Amy all right?’ she asked.

      Roz shrugged. ‘You know – fifteen!’

      She thought of her daughter’s face earlier, screwed up with rage and disappointment. ‘WHY can’t we ask Granny?’ she’d said over and over while Roz tried to explain.

      ‘I just can’t – the boiler was different – we had to be warm – I couldn’t let you have no hot water. It was a necessity and you going to Paris isn’t. And I hated doing it even then.’

      Amy had pouted. ‘Granny said she never minds helping – if only you were a bit more grateful. She said when she gave you the deposit for this house you barely said thank you.’

      ‘Nice of her to be so supportive,’ Roz had said tartly as Amy had banged out of the room.

      One of the things Roz resented most about her mother was her total lack of loyalty and her indiscretion. When Amy went on her twice-annual visit to Carshalton to stay beneath her parent’s well-appointed mock Tudor beams, she came back with a new set of clothes and a fresh tale of Roz’s ingratitude.

      ‘She wanted me to abort you,’ Roz felt like saying. ‘Because they thought a single woman in her thirties getting accidentally pregnant was too low-rent for words.’

      Instead she tried to explain the difficult nature of her interactions with the woman to whom her status at the Rotary and Golf Clubs was everything and who had never forgiven Roz for being the one two hours away when her sainted brother had emigrated, when it would have suited her so much better had the geography been reversed.

      Roz used words like ‘beholden’ – not wanting to be – and ‘self-sufficient’, something she’d hysterically promised herself in the hospital when her mother had brought a shawl and a stiffly-signed cheque for a thousand pounds and her father hadn’t been allowed to come at all. But Amy barely listened, increasingly resentful of Roz’s low-income and her own fatherless state that she blamed for money being so tight.

      ‘Terrible teens,’ Roz added to Charlotte now.

      ‘Nightmare, I remember it well.’ Charlotte looked at Roz harder. ‘Everything else OK?’

      Roz nodded, her stomach churning.

      ‘So I’ll text you about getting together so I can show you round both places and give you the keys, and we’ll talk dosh. I was thinking an hourly rate.’ Charlotte hugged her. ‘I’ll pay well as it’s you, love.’

      Roz squeezed her back, touched and terrified. The extra earnings would be good but she needed the job for more than that. For a moment she felt lightheaded as bile rose in her throat. Charlotte was the best sort of friend. Roz dug her nails into her palms to stop her feelings of panic overtaking her. Charlotte trusted her to complete exactly what was required. What would Charlotte say if she knew what Roz was really going to do …

       Chapter 3

      ‘I really don’t know what I’m going to do.’

      Charlotte sat at her super-sized kitchen table, hands clasped around her empty mug, and stared at the piece of paper she’d been looking at for at least an hour before Fay had arrived.

      Fay