My Fake Wedding(92)

After all, I won’t be adding any notches to my bedpost. I’ve already been there, seen that, bought the T-shirt. And, in the very unlikely event that I do suddenly start to fall in love with him all over again, I won’t be able to do anything about it. I certainly won’t be able to dream of marriage.

Because I’ll already be married. To David.

And, of course, there’s the Revenge Factor. While Fishpants is at home, mopping up baby sick and mashing up Weetabix, Jake and I will be having sordid, extramarital sex behind her back. OK, so I can’t avoid a slight twinge of guilt. There’s a baby involved here, after all. And it really isn’t the poor beggar’s fault its parents are so horribly dysfunctional. But then I tell myself I’m not really risking little Tallulah’s happiness in the slightest. After all, I certainly don’t want Jake to leave Fish-pants and take up with me. She need never know that Daddy’s a philanderer.

So I conveniently gloss over the memory of sex with Jake pre-split. I forget that, most of the time, the sex was actually so dull I had to ask to go on my front so I didn’t miss Holby City. Because having sex with Jake just now felt so natural, so comfortably familiar, that I suddenly realise, with a stab of nostalgia, that this is what I want. To be with him again, no matter how infrequently. I want to feel safe.

I’ve missed him.

Over the next few weeks we meet on Saturdays, mainly. George and David usually go clubbing on Saturdays. And it’s easy for Jake to get away. It’s not so easy, however, for me to lie to Nick/Dudley who, against all the odds, has proved himself to be bum-numbingly reliable. Which is a bit of a shame. He really did have bastard potential. Finding out someone so utterly unsuitable is completely in love with me is rather like getting a really tasteful Valentine card and then discovering it’s from Mum.

Still, I decide that it’s probably just as well to keep him on side. After all, it’s one in the eye for Jake. It’s nice to feel I’m sort of cheating on him, just as he cheated on me. Even if he doesn’t know about it yet. Janice would understand. Except I can’t talk to her about it because she’s gone off on a Rich Bitch weekend in Ipswich without even telling me. I have to hear all about it from George.

‘Are there any rich bitches in Ipswich?’ I ask him doubtfully, as we sit in his kitchen (I still can’t quite think of it as my home too) eating raspberry yoghurt with dollops of honey.

‘Well, that’s what I wondered,’ he says. ‘They must bus them in specially.’

‘And what happens, precisely, on this rich bitch wotsit?’

‘It’s run by vapid, cocksucking whores with gold-digging habits,’ he assures me. ‘They tell you exactly how to dress and behave in order to bag a rich man. They tell you how to get out of cars at premieres without showing your pants. You know the sort of thing. And if you talk like Bianca from EastEnders, they teach you to either learn to talk posh or keep your mouth shut. She’s learning to be a proper lady so Jasper will marry her.’

‘Why didn’t she say she was going?’ I whinge.

‘She did.’ George licks the back of his spoon. ‘She just couldn’t tell you because you’re too busy. And she’s still upset about you making up that story about Jasper and some other woman.’

‘But I did see him with another woman,’ I insist.

‘But I didn’t,’ he says. ‘And I think it’s better to stay out of it really, darling. Don’t you?’

‘Oh.’

I suppose I have been rather busy lately, what with Neat Eats doing so well. Word of mouth, it seems, spreads like wildfire and I’m getting bookings for parties up and down the country now.

Tallulah’s christening, for which I provide a huge T-shaped cake, covered in palest pink icing and tiny fresh blueberries, goes like a dream. Jake and I even manage a guilty bunk up in the bathroom when nobody’s looking. Well, I feel guilty. I don’t think he’s even aware that he’s doing anything wrong. And then I can never see my friends on Saturday nights because I’m usually seeing Jake. Apparently, it’s much easier for him to sneak out then because Saturday night is always a good night for engineering an argument. All Fishpants wants to do then is spend quality time together when the baby’s in bed. This evidently involves watching shit TV together and eating takeaways. ‘As if she can afford to eat takeaways,’ he grumbles one night. ‘She’s the size of the bloody Hindenberg as it is.’

Even I have to feel a bit sorry for her when I hear poor old Fishpants being denied a decent calorie intake.