The Yorkshire Pudding Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

you!’ said Helen, swinging between nervous fear and explosive joy like a metronome gone berserk.
    ‘You didn’t tell us–I guessed,’ said Elizabeth, with a Cheshire cat grin.
    ‘Simon will go nuts if he finds out you know,’ Helen whispered, flicking a frightened-rabbit pair of eyes towards the door as if he were there listening.
    ‘Why the hell should he?’ shrieked Elizabeth. ‘We’re your best mates and as such we should have known before him!’
    ‘Oh, he told me not to tell you until I was twelve weeks’, because a lot of people miscarry before then.’ Helen squeezed them both tight. ‘Oh God, I’ve been dying to come round and see you. I had a feeling Iwas pregnant when I was late, because as you know I am never late. I wanted to be sure, though, and I knew if I saw you I would not be able to keep the secret.’
    ‘When’s it due?’
    ‘Well, by my calculations the twenty fourth of September but I’ll get a scan to confirm that in a few weeks.’
    ‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ Janey laughed. ‘I suppose Simon’s dead chuffed.’
    ‘Yes,’ Helen said without elaborating, which Elizabeth thought was a bit odd for someone who could gush more than a burst pipe about the milkman leaving an extra pint.
    ‘So sitting on Chalk Man’s willy worked then,’ said Janey. ‘Just so long as he doesn’t come through for me, that’s all I can say.’
    Elizabeth thought the same, although she didn’t say it aloud. Not that there was any reason why she should be worried about anything like that, since she always made Dean wear a condom however much he protested, plus they hadn’t had any penetrative sex since before Christmas. Plus her periods had been present and almost correct.
    ‘I couldn’t believe it when I did the test.’ Helen’s chirruping brought her back into the real world. Now the secret was finally out they could not shut her up–not that they wanted to anyway.
    ‘What did you think?’ said Janey.
    ‘I can’t put it into words, honestly I can’t!’
    Elizabeth smiled. She knew what she would havesaid, had it been her, but Helen swore less than Anne of Green Gables.
    ‘I thought we’d eat in the kitchen rather than the dining room if that’s okay with you guys,’ said Helen.
    ‘Fine by me,’ said Elizabeth, who liked her friend’s long, thin, cold dining room marginally less than her minimalist, masculine, cold kitchen.
    The kitchen table had been laid out beautifully though, with a green table cover and matching place mats and linen napkins rolled into golden rings. There was freshly grated parmesan waiting in a dish, and a huge polished wooden saltmill and an enormous pepper pot which Elizabeth could never resist picking up and twisting whilst saying in a saucy-Italian-waiter accent, ‘Beautiful laaaady like the big one, nice and grindy grindy and plenty of it, ah?’ The others expected it and then groaned afterwards. Helen’s kitchen was very different to Elizabeth’s cosy little den in Rhymer Street. This was a room straight out of Homes and Gardens but it wasn’t Elizabeth’s idea of a dream cooking space–and she damn well knew it wasn’t Helen’s. They shared chintzy tastes, displays of cottagey teapots, big squashy sofas and pictures of cats, not stark white walls and flaming horrible abstract paintings with squares on. This room reflected nothing of Helen’s personality and everything of Simon’s–hard-lined and clinical and, until the news today, Elizabeth would have added ‘sterile’ to the list.
    ‘So when do you reckon you caught on then?’ said Janey, when they were seated and eating.
    ‘New Year’s Eve,’ said Helen without any hesitation as she knew this for a fact.
    ‘Ooh, George and I had a bit of an evening then too,’ said Janey, remembering how George had managed to rev up his engine with gusto that night. He’d even taken her from behind and he hadn’t done that for years. ‘You went to a party, didn’t you,