‘Steady on, Luce!’ laughed Alex, swiftly concealing the flash of panic that had darted across his features. ‘It’s only been six months!’
‘I know, I know…’ said Lucy, giving him a playful shove. ‘I’m not asking if you want them now. I’m just asking whether you want them some day.’
‘To be honest I haven’t really given it much thought,’ Alex shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure yet.’
Lucy felt something inside her plummet. This was not the reaction she had been hoping for. How could he have not even thought about the one thing that Lucy couldn’t stop thinking about? Perhaps that was the difference between men and women… men didn’t have a biological clock ticking away inside them, there was absolutely no time pressure for them to procreate.
To mask her disappointment, Lucy marched over to the kitchen table that was currently acting as the bar. Claudia had pulled out all the stops as usual, including a never-ending supply of punch, which had become more and more heavily spiked as the night wore on. Tinsel and flashing lights were strewn all over the place and a fantastic playlist of cheesy Christmas tunes kept everyone dancing. The party went on well into the early hours of the morning ensuring a hung-over and rather depressing start to the New Year.
As always on January first, Lucy swore that next year she would definitelynotdrink, promising herself that there would soon come a time when she would welcome in the year in a zen and peaceful state of wellbeing, instead of dying a slow and painful death on the sofa surrounded by takeaway cartons. At least this year she was lying in Alex’s arms, she reasoned to herself, a serious improvement on three hundred and sixty five days ago, when she was dealing with the depression of her hangover all alone.
After a few days, when her hangover still hadn’t worn off, Lucy began to suspect that she was, in fact, ill… a sure side effect of drunkenly sharing drinks with a bunch of fellow party-goers. Her glands began to swell, her throat began to ache and she was overcome by a chronic sense of fatigue. She just wanted to stay in a cosy hole underneath her duvet and sleep. She phoned work to tell them that she was sick, not very impressive having only managed two days back in the office so far this year, but Lucy was beyond caring. She tried to sleep but the pain in her throat had become truly excruciating. She stumbled over to the mirror in her bedroom, finding a torch deep in one of her drawers and shining it into her open throat. She located her tonsils, swollen and raw, with the telltale little white spots of tonsillitis. Reaching for the telephone, she made an emergency appointment with the doctor, knowing from experience that she was in for a rough few days, and that penicillin was the only solution.
As the illness passed, Lucy began to feel like herself once more, finally plucking up the strength to go back to work, feeling thoroughly uninspired at the prospect of another year at J&L Communications. She didn’t want any more awkward encounters with Jack and she made a vow to herself that she would stay well away from him this year.
