I bite my lip and stare at the floor. It’s always slightly embarrassing when Gina starts on one like this, especially in a public place. Very audibly.
‘Don’t torture yourself, it’s best you found out now that he was a shit. Imagine if you were really into him and then found out. You’d be well pissed off.’
‘Guess so,’ she mumbles. ‘His loss not mine and all that. Anyway, I’ve had it up to here with wankers, I reckon I’m better off single. I mean, what’s wrong with me? Do I have “I only date losers” written across my forehead?’
‘No, of course not, you moron,’ I say, getting up to give her a hug but she brushes me off.
The sad fact is, Gina’s always gone for men who are destined to let her down. She did have a decent boyfriend once, Mark Trelforth, all the way through university. But Mark’s doting just did her head in the end, she had to put him out of his misery – the morning after the graduation ball just to add insult to injury, poor bastard.
Ever since then she’s been in search of someone ‘more exciting’, someone ‘edgy’. Mr so-called Perfect.
The problem is (as I’ve reminded her today) that if a thirty-five-year-old man’s key qualities are that he is edgy and exciting, that he models himself on Pete Doherty, just for example, then chances are commitment and unconditional love are not likely to be his forte. But Gina hasn’t quite grasped this.
The windows of the café are all steamed up from the persistent London drizzle that shrouds everything in a soft-focus haze. It’s only two p.m. but it feels much later, probably because we got here two hours ago. Since then, we’ve drunk two lattes, an espresso and a cup of tea between us and seen two whole seatings arrive, eat and leave. First, the thirty-something Islington hungover crew, with their shower-wet hair and their Racing Green body warmers. Then, the twenty-something brigade who are much cooler, therefore arrive later, and tend to be still wearing the same clothes as last night.
Through all this time, Gina has barely drawn breath whilst I’ve nodded and ummed and generally kept my mouth shut for so long, we’ve worked up an appetite worthy of an all-day breakfast.
I don’t mind, this won’t last for ever. After a day or so, this rant mode will subside, making way for a brief period of calm and self-reflection. This will move seamlessly into mild euphoria as Gina embraces her new-found single status, a period which usually finds her dragging me out to hideous speed-dating nights, until she finds herself another totally unsuitable man, at which point I’ll be largely redundant.
I don’t know why I’m going on. I’m hardly a shining example of how to do relationships in my current mess. It’s just, when you’ve known someone for such a long time, you come to know these things. You ride the waves with them, experience their storms and their fleeting sunny days. Except, she isn’t riding this, the biggest, scariest wave of my life. She isn’t able to help. Because I haven’t even told her.
A surly waitress plonks the all-day breakfasts in front of us and strides off, swinging her hips.
‘Cheer up love,’ says Gina. ‘It might never happen.’
No fewer than three people have said this to me in the past week. ‘Too late!’ I’ve wanted to shout. ‘It already has!’
Gina drenches everything in tomato ketchup – a breakfast massacre – and I suddenly feel a bit sick.
‘Do you know what really pisses me off?’ she says, cutting into her food aggressively.
‘I spent a hundred quid on my dress to wear to that wanky party of his.’
‘Haven’t you got the receipt?’ I offer. ‘Can’t you just take it back?’
‘Possibly, but it’s the principle of the matter Tess,’ she snaps, stabbing her fork into a sausage. ‘The fact I went and wasted my own money, money I could have spent on New York, just to please him!’
My stomach flips when she says this. New York. Shit. How could I go to New York now? Gina and I arranged to go to New York together a year ago – when we were in a pub (which is where I agree to most things). But how can I go anywhere now I’m pregnant?
Gina studies my face, my stomach rolls: does she know something? Every time we’ve talked in the past week, every time Vicky has rung and I’ve made some excuse to get off the phone, I’ve thought this is it. This is the moment my cover is blown. But then her face falls.
‘Look at us, eh?’ she says, laughing. I brace myself. ‘Pair of total fuck wits.’
You have to watch Gina when she does this. Tar you with the same brush as she tars herself, it’s a most irritating habit.
‘Speak for yourself!’ I laugh. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I don’t mean anything bad by it,’ she shrugs. ‘I just mean, you know, look at us.’
‘Look at what?’
‘Our lives, I suppose, look at our lives. We’re in our late twenties, prime of our lives, witty, talented, devastatingly attractive…’
‘Now you’re talking.’
‘Exactly. And can either of us get it together to find a boyfriend? Can we fuck.’
I try to think of something enlightened or positive to say, but all I can think about is the wave of nausea currently washing over me. I wish Gina would stop talking.
She doesn’t.
‘Do you remember when we were at uni and we used to play Would You Rather?’
Would You Rather was something we’d all play when we were too skint to go out. It mainly involved debating the lesser of two evil scenarios – the merits of shagging Noel Edmonds over, say, having to bear children to Bruce Forsyth.
When we got bored with debating the ridiculous, we’d introduce more serious dilemmas, like whether we rated marriage over kids, or whether a glittering career was more important than true love. It never occurred to us then of course, when thirty-year-olds were just people who wore court shoes – that we’d be heading towards being left on the shelf without either. (Well, almost.)
‘We still don’t know what we’d rather have in a way, don’t you think?’ says Gina. ‘We still don’t know what we want.’
I don’t answer, I can’t. I feel too rough. Plus, I don’t much like the way this conversation is going.
‘I mean, look at you and Jim. That was never going to work.’
She says this nonchalantly but I flinch.
‘I really like Jim, you know, despite his obvious shortcomings…’
What were they?!
‘…and I think he’s mad for not snapping you up. But it would have happened by now if it was going to happen. You need to stop pissing about, you two, find the real thing. I always thought you and Laurence would go the distance, if he hadn’t messed it up, that is. You two were so cool together. You were just too young.’
I feel the colour drain from my face. Should I have gone on the date? Should I have emailed back anyway? Maybe I am selling Laurence short assuming he’d never want to date me because I’m pregnant? He is a grown man, he can make his own decisions, after all.
‘And then there’s me,’ Gina goes on, ‘not a fucking clue what’s good for me. I thought Jasper was great, so different from anyone else I’ve ever gone out with…’
So a carbon copy of every other dickhead you’ve dated since Mark, I want to say but I’m too busy looking at the bloodied mess of eggs and beans streaked with ketchup on her plate and trying to keep the contents of my stomach intact.
‘Thank