AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The smile fixes on Josie’s face as she watches Alix Summer and her big group of friends, her red-haired husband with his arm draped loosely across the back of her chair, large platters of meats and breads being brought to their table and placed in front of them as if conjured out of thin air, the sound of them, the noise of them, the way they fill every inch of the space with their voices and their arms and their hands and their words. The energy they give off is effervescent, a swirling, intoxicating aurora borealis of grating, glorious entitlement. And there in the middle of it all is Alix Summer with her big smile and her big teeth, her hair that catches the light, her simple gold chain with something hanging from it that skims her gleaming collarbones whenever she moves.
‘I wonder if today is her actual birthday too?’ she muses.
‘Maybe,’ says Walter. ‘But it’s a Saturday, so who knows.’
Josie’s hand finds the chain she’s worn around her neck since she was thirty; her birthday gift that year from Walter. She thinks maybe she should add a pendant. Something shiny.
At this moment, Walter passes a small gift across the table towards her. ‘It’s nothing much. I know you said you didn’t want anything, but I didn’t believe you.’ He grins at her and she smiles back. She unpeels the small gift and takes out a bottle of Ted Baker perfume.
‘That’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Thank you so much.’ She leans across and kisses Walter softly on the cheek.
At the table opposite, Alix Summer is opening gift bags and birthday cards and calling out her thanks to her friends and family. She rests a card on the table and Josie sees that it has the number 45 printed on it. She nudges Walter. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘Forty-five. We’re birthday twins.’
As the words leave her mouth, Josie feels the gnawing sense of grief that she has experienced for most of her life rush through her. She’s never found anything to pin the feeling to before; she never knew what it meant. But now she knows what it means.
It means she’s wrong, that everything, literally everything, about her is wrong and that she’s running out of time to make herself right.
She sees Alix getting to her feet and heading towards the toilet, jumps to her own feet and says, ‘I’m going to the ladies.’
Walter looks up in surprise from his Parma ham and melon but doesn’t say anything.
A moment later Josie’s and Alix’s reflections are side by side in the mirror above the sinks.
‘Hi!’ says Josie, her voice coming out higher than she’d imagined. ‘I’m your birthday twin!’
‘Oh!’ says Alix, her expression immediately warm and open. ‘Is it your birthday today too?’
‘Yes. Forty-five today!’
‘Oh, wow!’ says Alix. ‘Me too. Happy birthday!’
‘And to you!’
‘What time were you born?’
‘God,’ says Josie. ‘No idea.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Were you born near here?’
‘Yes. St Mary’s. You?’
Josie’s heart leaps. ‘St Mary’s too!’
‘Wow!’ Alix says again. ‘This is spooky.’
Alix’s fingertips go to the pendant around her neck and Josie sees that it is a golden bumblebee. She is about to say something else about the coincidence of their births when the toilet door opens and one of Alix’s friends walks in.
‘There you are!’ says the friend. She’s wearing seventies-style faded jeans with an off-the-shoulder top and huge hoop earrings.
‘Zoe! This lady is my birthday twin! This is my big sister, Zoe.’
Josie smiles at Zoe and says, ‘Born on the same day, in the same hospital.’
‘Wow! That’s amazing,’ says Zoe.
Then Zoe and Alix turn the conversation away from the Huge Coincidence and immediately Josie sees that it has passed, this strange moment of connection, that it was fleeting and weightless for Alix, but that for some reason it carries import and meaning to Josie, and she wants to grab hold of it and breathe life back into it, but she can’t. She has to go back to her husband and her flatbread and let Alix go back to her friends and her party. She issues a quiet ‘Bye then’ as she turns to leave and Alix beams at her and says, ‘Happy birthday, birthday twin!’
