When the daylight has faded

Girls' night (#future)

Mona filled up our wine glasses again.

"Remember when I locked us in together because you threatened to go home if we didn't play with my Barbies?" Sandy laughed.

"Or the time you started bawling your eyes out after watching Fatal Attraction and you didn't stop until the next morning?" I fired back, words slurred.

Mona took another healthy sip from her glass and butted in, "And when you came to my wedding with that tiny little bundle of a human being, just one day after they released you from hospital?"

I laughed and relieved my glass of a sizeable chunk of its red liquid.

"Selina is pregnant!" I blurted out with a grin, then promptly burst into tears.

"That's good news, isn't it?" my childhood friends inquired softly after a short awkward pause.

"The best!" My crying intensified.

At least I had been easy on the make-up. After all, it was girls' night in. Mona, Sandy and I. We'd known each other since kindergarten. No need to go glamour with my ladies.

No need to prove good old hubby and the rest of his species right, though, either.

"Why do you even have these women's parties? They always end in tears for one of you," he had said before fleeing the premises. "I'm not playing Agony Aunt later again, I'm telling you now!" he had added with a shudder, no doubt remembering last month's fiasco with Mona.

Sandy gave me a hug. "I can still see Selina in that pram at Mona's wedding. Unbelievable how time flies."

"Exactly!" I cried. "Remember when our parents would talk about things they remembered that happened twenty years before, and we weren't even twenty years old? Now I can remember things that happened thirty years ago, for crying out loud! Where the hell did our future go?"

I tried to stifle a sob.

"Into the past, I guess," Mona added morosely, causing my sob to break free.

Sandy gave Mona a stern look and grabbed my hands.

"You're going to be the proudest nan on the planet."

"I don't look like a nan, do I? Oh please, tell me I don't!"

My brain conjured images of frail old ladies in wheelchairs, sporting an apron and the blue rinse. Maybe I should have made more of an effort with concealers and foundations after all.

"Next week I'm picking up my first varifocals. And the hairdresser said I'll have to start thinking about dying my hair soon." Mona said.

Even through my tears, I could see her eyes filling.

"Look at this!" Sandy jumped up, holding out her hands, her voice wobbly. "Age spots. Appeared out of the blue."

"We're officially old and decrepit," we wailed in unison, filling our stomachs with dry wine, while wet tears rolled down our cheeks and Girls just wanna have fun deafened the neighbours. "Life's over!"

As our communal commiseration crescendoed, the living room door suddenly banged open.

"All flipping three of them this time, mate, would you believe it! Get the beers back out. On my way back to yours already," my loving and caring husband shouted over the din into his phone before disappearing like a flash.