Julia Hearst has shoulder-length auburn hair, a shapely model’s swimwear figure, pouting lips, and she looks shattered, judging by the dark sacs swelling under her red eyes. Despite serious reservations, she is still living with Colin, a trainspotting dullard she picked up on a drunken girls’ night out with her sisters, Jessie and Di, at a seedy nightclub on the coast.
Jules wants to have his baby, as in she desperately wants a baby girl, a granddaughter. As a personal gift to her mother. To make up for all the pain, heartbreak and anguish that she has suffered since her father walked out, leaving Joan to bring up three girls on her own. Her boyfriend, partner and electrician, nineteen, says he wants to give her his baby. He seems to prefer spending evenings in the garden shed, meddling with his model train set, constantly adding sets of points, lengths of track, freight vans, plastic carriages filled with the faceless toy passengers that squat inside them. The diesel locomotives that haul them around in ever increasing circles, past clumps of artificial moss or fake mirror glass ponds.
Julia strongly suspects her man of concealing a low, inactive or non-existent sperm count. After all, they have tried for well over a year now, and she did just suffer her latest period.
It isn’t as if he hasn’t tried hard enough. He makes passionate love to his cherished, sacred woman religiously before he goes to work in the morning, during his one hour lunchbreak, after dinner, in bed at midnight. That’s after he has finished reading his thrilling collection of model railway magazines to inspire the next generation of major station construction projects, not to mention miniature moulded versions of ill-fated tunnels, paper mâché hills and working signal boxes.
Nervous Collette, just sixteen, the latest trainee make-up assistant, cautiously dabs neutral beige luxury all-day concealer on the shag circles blighting Julia’s eyes. Her boss, Cami, sets up the lighting in readiness for their final photoshoot of the day.
Julia stretches out on the off-white sofa, complete with its off-white mesh pillows, in front of an off-white partition which compliments the pale beige tan of her skin. Struggling to keep her eyes open, this afternoon she is modelling a one-piece graphite grey swimsuit in stretch fabric with red bows attached to each of her shoulders and an alluringly high thigh cut. In line with Camille’s orders, she extends her slender right leg, bends her left leg at the knee creating an enticing arch, folds her left arm over her plump left breast to conceal the thin lines at the base of her neck – early signs of wear and tear – reaches upwards with her right hand, and runs her fingers through her silky hair.
‘That’s great! That’s good! That’s cool! That’s wonderful! That’s sexy! That’s hot! Love you like that!’ enthuses Camille, shooting out reams of praise like bullets out of a machine gun, ‘Last one of the day. Close your eyes. Purse your lips. Imagine you are making love to a sexy man on a sun-kissed sandy beach. That’s perfect! Perfect! You look so hot, girl!’
Her model shuts her weary eyes to rest them, grateful for the chance to catch up on lost sleep. Julia dreams she is lying naked on a sun-kissed sandy beach, making sweet love to her secret lover, their pale skins touching, rubbing, melding, burning flame red under the baking hot summer sun on some far-off paradise island. He’ll give me a baby, she thinks, hoping for some kind of miracle, at the same time praying she isn’t the one who’s infertile.
‘All done!’ she hears her friend announce above her head, ‘Same time tomorrow, Jules?’
She heaves herself awake, slides off the couch, and sighs, ‘Yes, same time, thanks Cami.’
‘All part of the service, girl,’ Cami smiles, inwardly wishing Julia were bisexual like her.
Cami, forty, changes into her smart soft cerise shirt, drippy gold bracelet, and dark fuchsia lipstick for her annual golf club dinner tonight. She catches her best model in the corridor, trudging slowly to her dressing room, confronting her with, ‘Jules, is everything alright? I mean, between you and Colin.’
The model spins on her heels a mite too quickly for yes it is, ‘Sure, why shouldn’t it be?’
‘It’s just that you look so exhausted,’ as in: you look all-in, girl. I need you fresh-faced. If not I might have to find myself another model, ‘Try to get some beauty sleep tonight, yeah?’
‘Sorry Cami, we’ve been up half the night trying for a baby. I’ll give it a rest for a while.’
‘No luck yet, then?’
Julia shakes her heavy head, ‘Obviously not.’
‘Plenty of time left, I imagine,’ her confidante smiles, encouraging her, ‘You’re both still young, after all.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
‘Think yourself lucky, Jules. I had to wait until I was thirty-six before I conceived Bryce.’
‘I can’t wait that long. It has to be fully natural for me. None of that IVI, IVF or artificial insemination lark. I don’t want anyone tampering with my insides, thank you very much.’
‘Each to their own, I suppose,’ Camille sighs, reflecting on her IVF, ‘Be seeing you, then.’
She looks up just in time to catch the door being firmly shut in her oval, pale ivory face.
Once she is safely inside her dressing room, Julia extracts her pink metallic mobile from her cluttered faux suede clutch bag and makes the call. He answers her instantly, as she expects him to, being the model of organisation and efficient time management that he is.
‘Who’s that speaking?’ he asks in a gruff, masculine voice that gives her butterflies in her stomach.
‘Julia.’
‘Jules. To what do I owe the pleasure?’
She smiles for the first time all day, appreciating the young man’s formal tone, ‘I need to see you tonight – the usual place.’
He pictures the discreet pebbledash walled inn off the Sisters’ End. The window displays, hanging baskets of busy lizzies, begonias and fuchsias will be in full bloom. There is also a convenient car park for him to park his sports car, Julia to house her brand new mini hybrid in chili red. The pub serves excellent home cooked food and cask ales for afters: that’s if she decides to hang around and eat, which she rarely does. He feels sorry, having to disappoint her.
‘Can’t do tonight, I’m afraid.’
‘How about tomorrow at six?’
‘I’ll see,’ he rifles through the pages of his busy pocket diary, ‘I think I can manage that.’
‘I’ll book a room, then, confirm by text. I’ll pay.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
‘My pleasure. After all, I do need you to be kind to me tomorrow night.’
‘How kind?’
‘Very kind.’
She tells him what she wants him to do with her, in which preferred position, and why.
‘Think I can manage that, too,’ he says, sounding matter of fact, her model of practicality.
‘I’m sure you can.’ She can’t stop shaking. The excitement building inside her is getting too much for her to cope with. Her legs are trembling. Despite being dressed in only her swimsuit, she is starting to perspire hard, her heart’s racing, ‘Not a word to anyone, mind.’
‘Course, not, Julia.’
‘I love it when you call me Julia. It sounds so much more romantic than plain old Jules.’
‘You make me feel romantic.’
Reclining heavily on the embroidered dressing room chair, she tells him she must go. Her partner will be clawing at the window by now, wondering where she is. He cuts their call.
*****
That’s the final trailer for Sisters’ End I’m afraid. If you’d like to know what happens next, Sister’s End & Other Strange Romances by me, HJ Furl, is out now on Amazon. Support your independent writers! https://www.amazon.com/author/hjfurl
