Speak Now

IV

When Charlotte told me that her brother and his long-term girlfriend were having a baby, I was surprised. Lucas Delaney never struck me as the type to want a child and to be fair, his girlfriend, Millie, seemed ambivalent about the idea. At times, she'd be excited to hold the babies in the family and coo over them, but then there were times where she was quick to give the babies back and say that she was glad they weren't hers. She loved them, she hated them, then she had one of her own. 

Despite being thousands of miles away at the time- James was shooting on location in Japan- I heard all about the shock announcement and how the couple had almost broken up over their differing opinions over whether Millie should continue the pregnancy. Lucas had apparently tried to convince her to have an abortion but she refused and they came to blows about it a few times but then my dad stepped in. 

It turns out Lucas was freaking out about his kid being born with Cystic Fibrosis, just like he had. He was obviously a carrier and was shitting himself about passing on his 'defective gene' to any kids he might have, which is why he was adamant that he was never having any in the first place. If you don't have them, you can't make them sick. Of course, my father, being a paediatric doctor, talked sense into Lucas and after some tests were run, Lucas and Millie found out that their baby was ok. Perfectly healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes. She was also a girl. They named her India. Oh, and they made Dad her godfather. Then, just for kicks, they made Sophie Whitaker the godmother. 

We all thought it was a joke at first; Dad and Sophie have never been best friends and they antagonise each other more than anyone could stand. There'd been a truce for a while after Dad delivered Sophie's eldest child in the bathroom of the V&A Museum but they quickly went back to making each other's life a living hell. Halloween is the worst, I've been told. Sophie hates spiders. Dad loves them. Dad puts spiders up everywhere. Sophie freaks out. They argue, alcohol is thrown, voices are raised, and then they ignore each other for a while until they both forget why they were fighting and decide to get past it. Then they find something new to fight about. It really is the weirdest quasi-friendship I've ever come across. 

They do make a good team though, so I can understand Lucas and Millie's choice of godparents. It was just lucky for India that Millie had chosen two of her friends to make up the other half of the Godlies, as Sophie was calling them. It was an ironic collective noun for them since there was nothing godly about Sophie, and while I love my dad, there's nothing godly about him, either.

"Oh, dear God," James muttered from my side as we roamed the living room at Jimmy and Camille Delaney's house, smiling and waving politely at the other guests. "What level of hell is this?"

To say that James wasn't happy to be here was an understatement. If he thought that he'd be safe at a one-year-old's Christening, he was sadly mistaken and had ended up taking more selfies with guests than he usually does at a red carpet event. Everyone stopped him to have their photo taken, which was rude, but James was too polite to turn them down. The last thing he needed was some twelve-year-old cousin of Millie's slagging him off on Twitter because he said 'no' to a selfie. Now, he was complaining of a headache.