Spin Cycle by Sue Margolis Read Free Book Online Page B

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    “Plus by then I was married and we were thinking about getting a mortgage. So I needed a proper job. Thing was, deep down I always knew I wanted to be a comic. Even when I was a kid. My mum would have the family over for tea and I always ended up standing in the middle of the living room, telling pathetic jokes that I’d got from some kids’ joke book or other. Then when I was seventeen I started going to comedy clubs. I saw people like Jo Brand and Julian Clary, ages before they were famous. Pretty soon I was writing my own material. In secret, of course. I never showed it to anybody. Just performed on my own in front of the mirror. Then one night, two or three years after I’d left uni, a whole gang of us were out on this hen night and we ended up at a comedy club. They had an open mike night. The girls I was with could see I was desperate to have a go, but I was too scared. In the end, they virtually dragged me up on the stage. I remember I did this routine about my cat going to the vet to be neutered and how I felt so sorry for him that I’d taken him out the night before the operation to find a cat hooker. Anyway, the audience laughed. They actually laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Pretty soon I started doing the odd pub gig on weekends and finally I plucked up the courage to go professional.”
    It turned out Shelley had been born in Upminster.
    “So we’re both Essex girls, then,” Shelley said.
    “Yeah, but don’t forget,” Rachel said, “when we were growing up, the place still had a definite air of gentility about it. Back then, Essex Girls was a hockey team, not an insult.”
    Shelley’s face broke into a broad grin. Rachel had a sense she was cheering her up.
    “Don’t know about you,” Shelley said after they’d filled two cupboards, “but I could murder a drink.”
    Assuming she meant of an alcoholic variety, Rachel nodded enthusiastically. Shelley opened the fridge and took out a carton of organic cranberry juice.
    “Wonderful for cystitis,” she declared, holding up the carton. “Totally detoxes your water works . . . Oh, and I think I’ve got a packet of sunflower and pumpkin seeds somewhere.”
    She began rummaging through the piles of packets.
    “Tell you what,” Rachel said, doing her best to sound tactful, “you still look a bit down. How’s about we spike it with some vodka? I’ve got an unopened bottle upstairs.”
    “No, I mustn’t,” Shelley said uneasily. “You see, I’m pregnant.”
    At this point she burst into tears again.
    “Look,” Rachel said, “I don’t want to pry, but if it would help I’d be happy to listen.”
    Ten minutes later they were sitting on the living room floor (the junk shop man wasn’t delivering the sofas until Monday), drinking cranberry juice. Although in Rachel’s case it was more like cranberry-laced vodka juice.
    Shelley took another glug of her drink and started telling Rachel how she was three months pregnant and that Ted, her thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend, had reacted to the news by ending their relationship and asking her to move out because he said he didn’t feel ready for marriage or fatherhood.
    “And what does the hypocritical bastard go and do? I’ll tell you what he does. He shacks up with a seventeen-year-old who’s still wearing a retainer and has a Saturday job frying burgers. . . Still, at least he’s agreed to support the baby. I suppose I should be grateful.”
    Rachel, who by now had forgiven Shelley her health food fanaticism on the grounds that she was funny, open and warm, shuffled across the floor and put an arm round her.
    “God, I’m really sorry. What a tosser. Going off with a McSchoolgirl when he could’ve had you and the baby. I dunno why we bother to have men in our lives,” she went on, knocking back more of her drink.
    “I do,” Shelley said, smiling. “It’s because a vibrator can’t mow the grass.”
    The pair of them burst out laughing.
    A minute later Rachel was telling