Today I am excited to welcome Tracy Bloom to my blog and share with my readers the first chapter of Tracy's bestseller 'No-one ever has sex on a Tuesday'.
T
here are those who get to choose the father of their child
and those who don’t. Those who spend years sifting through the giant haystack
that is the male population and those who get unexpectedly ambushed.
Katy
never thought that she would be one of those who got ambushed. She certainly
never thought that at thirty-six she would be pregnant, unmarried and with a
boyfriend eight years younger than herself. A boyfriend who was now sitting
beside her dressed in his football kit, as they drove off for their first
antenatal class.
She
felt sick. She put this down to pre-class nerves and the fact that Ben had come
straight from school, where he was a PE teacher, smelling unpleasantly of gym
shoes, teenage-boy sweat and mashed potato. As she stared across at him she
comforted herself with the knowledge that at least she could rely on him to offer
up some well-thought-out words of wisdom to help calm her fears.
“So
this guy at work says that all you do in these classes is talk about tits and
fannies for two hours. How good is that?”
Katy
continued to stare at Ben for a moment then sighed and put the car into gear.
“Please
don’t say that,” she said wearily as they drove off.
“Say
what?” asked Ben as he fiddled with every knob, switch and dial he could reach on
Katy’s dashboard.
“Fannies,”
said Katy, slapping his fingers.
“It’s
better than a lot of other words for it,” said Ben. “I mean I could say…”
“No,
no more words,” interrupted Katy “You know my Gran wouldn’t like it.”
“Why?
Is she coming with us?” said Ben, pulling open the glove box and peering
inside.
“Her
name was Fanny, I’ve told you that before,” said Katy, starting to lose
patience.
Ben
turned to stare at Katy in complete admiration.
“You
have never ever told me that. That’s exactly the sort of information that makes
my life worthwhile and certainly not something I’d forget.”
“Really,”
said Katy. She hesitated, wondering if she wanted to continue the conversation
before realising that what she was about to say would probably make Ben’s day. “So
I’ve never told you her surname either then?” she asked him.
Ben
paused for a moment deep in thought until he erupted enthusiastically.
“Vagina.
Must have been vagina,” he said, bouncing up and down. “Please tell me it was
vagina and I will die a happy man.”
“Mycock
actually,” said Katy more than a little triumphantly.
Ben
stared at her again in shock, his mouth hanging open.
“You
are kidding me,” he said finally. “Her parents called her Fanny with a surname
like Mycock. Were they insane?”
“No
stupid. Mycock was her married name. She wasn’t born a Mycock.”
“She
was called Fanny and married Mr. Mycock?”
“Yes.”
Ben
was quiet for some time before he declared solemnly, “Your Gran was a comedy
genius.”
They
didn’t speak for the rest of the journey as Ben was fully occupied with texting
or calling his friends to share the funniest name story of all time. He was
still on the phone as she started to muster up the effort to get out of the
car. She eased her swollen belly in the vague direction she wanted her body to
go in, hoping the rest would follow. Looking down at the carefully chosen acre of
magenta poly-cotton flowing in all directions over her lumps and bumps she
hoped she looked like a woman in control of her pregnancy. But the memory of the
lack of control that had landed her here in the first place led to the all too
familiar sensation of a fist grasping tightly around her heart. She looked over
her shoulder seeking Ben for some reassurance and caught sight of his knees for
the first time which were decorated in school pitch mud.
“Your
knees,” she exclaimed, pointing at the offending items.
“I’m
not proposing now,” said Ben in mock anger.
She
shook her head in despair, took a deep breath and set off towards the hospital
entrance. She thought she’d pretty much nailed life until this. All the big
boxes had been ticked. University, career, homeowner. Admittedly the marriage
box had remained conspicuously empty, but that was exactly the way she wanted
it.
A
truly traumatic experience with her first love as a teenager had left her heart
never quite able to recover its full emotional capacity. Since then the
slightest flutter of love had alerted her to heartbreak fast approaching,
allowing her to lock down the situation quickly with a clean and swift
break-up. She knew this approach had served her well over the years as she
watched her friends suffer the humiliation of being dumped from a great height,
over and over again.
She
had lost count of how many times her friends had declared that they had met the one. It
saddened her to know that approximately two weeks later they would be on her
doorstep sobbing out a tragic but predictable tale of the one,
clearly not thinking she was the
one, by getting caught with another one. She would patiently pour the wine
whilst they poured out their hearts until inevitably the night would end in
drunken dancing and singing round her dining room table to boy band music. Then
there would be an emotional love-in where they told her she was the best friend
in the world. Finally in the early hours one of them would throw up over the
balcony.
It
amazed her that they couldn’t learn that if they put their heart out there for
someone, they would be cast aside as carelessly as last season’s away kit as
soon as the next piece of skirt passed by. These days, though, nights spent consoling the
lovesick seemed to have dried up. One by one they had finally all found a man
who appeared to want a relationship for longer than five minutes and had
enjoyed the weddings they had always dreamed of.
She
had, in her opinion, suffered two years of near mental torture as the cream
invites lined up frighteningly quickly on her living room shelf. Her heart sank
every time she picked up yet another painstakingly selected envelope, which no
doubt had been chosen to match the bride’s knicker elastic, and tipped out the invitation,
handmade by the future bride herself. She would close her eyes in despair as
she read the words Miss Katy Chapman and Partner. Why oh why was it the law to
go to weddings as a couple? Why couldn’t she just go on her own? Was there some
terrible fear that single people at weddings were bound to run off with the
bride or groom given half the chance? Was it one of the wedding vows? Thou
shalt always have attached friends to prevent any possibility of straying. It
made her dread the so-called happy events, forced as she was to find some
random chap she had once had a drunken snog with, who in exchange for free food
and alcohol could endure the steady stream of well-meaning relatives saying,
“So will it be you next?”
Eventually
she had decided enough was enough and that she should make a stand for all
strong, independent women and stop pandering to the stereotype that happiness
was attached to a man.
When
she was next invited to a wedding she made the genius decision to take Daniel
from the Advertising Agency where she worked. The look on the face of Laura’s
great aunt, who was making polite conversation during the wedding breakfast,
was a joy to behold. Daniel sweetly told her that yes it could be him next as
he had been seeing his boyfriend Rob for over six months now and neither of
them were having sex with anyone else unless you counted the night he’d had sex
with Stanley, his ex. However he didn’t think that counted as he had been very
drunk at the time and Stanley had been dressed as a Navy Officer because it was
at a fancy dress party and who could resist a man in uniform?
From
that moment on Daniel had become her new best wedding partner.
Katy
jumped when Ben caught hold of her hand as she walked through the doors of the
hospital.
“So
what do you reckon then?” he asked, spitting on his other hand and leaning over
to try and wipe the mud off his knee as he trotted beside her.
“Sorry
I was miles away. What did you say?” asked Katy.
“I
said what do you reckon the other people in the class will be like?” said Ben.
“Oh
they will all have read every book, know exactly what they are doing and ask
really intelligent questions,” replied Katy feeling the panic rising again. She
was painfully aware that up until now she had put her pregnancy firmly in the
“deal with it later” file. It was clear that “later” had most definitely
arrived.
“Mmmm,”
said Ben, absorbing what Katy had said. “So you think we’ll be the trouble makers
sitting on the back row while the swots hang on the teacher’s every word at the
front?”
“Probably,”
sighed Katy.
Ben
glanced over to her.
“The
back row always has more fun,” he said grinning.
She
couldn’t help but grin back.
“You’re
right,” she replied, feeling better. Ben knew exactly how to stop her taking
life too seriously. That was what had first attracted her to him when they met
on one of the worst nights of her entire life.
My review of this funny book will be on the blog soon. The publishers, Arrow Publishing, have also provided me with one copy of the book to giveaway to one lucky blog reader.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
