My laughter interrupts her. I notice that the other two don’t contradict her.
She goes on, ‘They won’t hate you, Carly. They might not love you to pieces, but they won’t hate you.’
I hope she’s right.
I don’t know why I’m being so morose. It’s obviously just a freak pre-menstrual moment.
That and having to say goodbye to so many people. It’s only a week until I leave and I feel like I’ve spent the last twenty-one days explaining my departure to astonished faces. When I resigned, my boss’s reaction was priceless: ‘But, Carly, how can you contemplate leaving Quilties? You’ve got a great future here.’ I couldn’t believe it – after all, I have no emotional attachment to the world of toilet rolls. I only took the job all those years ago because after all the eardrum damage and sleep deprivation working in nightclubs, I decided I needed a normal Monday to Friday, nine to five job. Selling loo rolls was the only one I was offered that paid enough to keep me in life’s essentials – rent, cigs and chocolate.
A lifetime of selling toilet rolls or a globe-trotting adventure that might just lead to happy ever after? I stuck with my plan.
I broke the news to my mother on the phone – not because I was being a total coward, but because since her divorce from Jack Daniel’s she’s taken to spending most of her life at a health farm, having her bits pummelled. I’m sure she’s shagging an aerobics instructor. I called her at the spa to explain what I’d done. For once, she didn’t take off like a space shuttle on a tirade of disapproval and recriminations.
She simply said, ‘Well, darling, you only live once,’ before whispering, ‘I’m just coming, Ivan,’ and hanging up. Ivan, the shagging aerobics instructor. It had to be true. I laughed as I replaced the receiver.
Callum and Michael were even easier to win round. Callum and I had persuaded Michael to come to London for a few days the week before, by telling him that if he didn’t venture out in daylight at least once a month he’d develop scurvy and rickets.
I love that both my brothers are happy. Callum spends his life travelling for work, but his base is a London flat that he shares with a couple of other models. It works really well because they’re never all there at the same time. And Michael has his own place in the West End of Glasgow, a few miles from the head office of the games software company he works for. He’s always been the baby of the family, so I still can’t get my head around the fact that he’s a fully developed adult who has got his life together. Especially when I don’t seem to have managed that.
When Michael arrived, we headed for Fashion Café. Callum loved it there because he could see himself strutting his stuff on the big screen and Michael liked it because it was near the Trocadero, home of more computer games than Japan.
We ate all the most fattening things on the menu, then I launched a pre-emptive strike before pudding.
‘Guys, I have something to tell you and I want you to promise me that you’ll still love me,’ I announced sheepishly.
‘Yes!’ Callum exclaimed. ‘I knew it.’
‘What?’ I replied, intrigued.
‘You’re gay,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘That’s why you’re such a disaster with men. How cool, a gay sister,’ he mused.
‘No, I am not gay,’ I replied laughing. ‘At least not last time I checked.’
‘You’re pregnant?’ That came from Michael.
‘Nope, not pregnant.’
‘Lottery win?’ he countered hopefully.
I decided to put them out of their misery and blurted out the whole story. Tears formed in their eyes and I was so touched. They’re going to miss me so much, I thought, feeling love and affection welling up inside me. Then I realised that they were tears of amusement as they tried to control outbursts of hilarity.
‘Sis, I love you,’ Callum said, melting my heart until he added, ‘but you definitely got the crazy genes.’
Michael was muttering something about a trade descriptions act. He was twenty-five now, but with his cute curls and Michael J Fox face, he could pass for much younger.
‘What are you on about?’ I quizzed.
‘I was just saying that older siblings are supposed to be an example to us younger and more innocent in the brood. Look what I ended up with,’ he continued. ‘Two serial shaggers with love lives that are epic carnage.’ I’d be offended if it wasn’t for the fact that he was right. Callum still opted for casual flings and I… well, clearly relationships weren’t my area of expertise. Michael was still talking. ‘Just promise me something. If it miraculously works out, then I want to dance with Kate’s sister, Karen, at the wedding.’
This was nothing new. Michael had been in love with Karen since they were six and she belted him in the face with her clackers. His nose broke on impact and it’s never been straight since.
‘Michael, if it all works out, I’ll pay for you to take her to Majorca for a week.’
‘Even you could seduce a woman there,’ Callum barbed, still smarting over the serial shagger comment. Michael took no notice. He was the first to admit that other than a couple of brief flings (the now-legendary ‘Mikey-baby’ girl being one of them), he wasn’t a roaring success in the romance department.
Now, a week later, hanging out in Kate’s kitchen, the sounds of her throwing up in the downstairs bathroom snap me back to reality. God must be a man to subject females to both periods and pregnancy.
I sit at the table and try to make
