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think she was somewhat disappointed she wasn’t a lesbian herself, and this was the next best thing. My poor father visibly drooped at the prospect of yet another female joining our family, until he met Susie’s new friend Roz, that is. Roz was what my father called a man’s woman . In other words, Roz was for all intents and purposes a man, but with breasts. I didn’t exactly warm to her. There was something about a woman who knew more about the workings of a Ford Falcon engine than my father which made me nervous.
    However, six months later, Susie had decided she wasn’t a lesbian, it was just a phase she was going through. She was in fact a good old-fashioned heterosexual. When Susie broke the news, Mum had excused herself and gone for a long walk, tears framing her eyes. My father was also visibly disappointed by Roz’s sudden departure from our lives, and at being left once again with the three of us, none of whom were remotely interested in donning a pair of overalls and putting their heads under his bonnet.
    As a child I had often imagined that I was adopted at birth. I still do hold out some hope. Surely my birth parents were famous celebrities or well-respected businesspeople, who spent their days flitting around the world from one incredibly stylish pad to the next? I’d think to myself. The only holes in this theory were the fact that my sisters and I bore more than a striking resemblance to each other, and that Mum had three photographs of tiny babies covered in revolting matter lying on her very flabby stomach in a hospital bed. Aside from that I was convinced.
    I sent a reply to my mother’s email: What were the girl’s parents doing while they were running around the field killing themselves?
    Half an hour later I got another one back: Their mothers were probably working at their two-dollar fifty-an-hour machinist night-jobs, before going home to make breakfast for their ten children. Their fathers would have either been killed by the Red Rebels, or abandoned the family years ago.
    Did she have to be such a pessimist and humanitarian know-it-all? She should take an overseas posting with Amnesty International and leave us all in peace.

2
    My life continued its downward spiral when I was invited to a baby shower, a couple of weeks after my date with Jasmine. Laura, who used to work at the firm, was eight months pregnant with her first offspring. She used to be called Legless Laura, on account of the fact she could always be relied upon to drink until she fell off whatever it was she happened to be sitting on. At which point she, or someone else, would invariably pick her body up from the floor, place it back onto its perch, and it would immediately carry on drinking. She was rarely seen without a glass of champers in one hand and a lethally swinging cigarette in the other. I had absolutely no idea what to buy a baby so I bought Laura a very expensive bottle of champagne instead. No doubt she’d be feeling like a drink when the whole hideous birthing part was over and done with.
    I was the last to arrive and upon entering Laura’s living room it was glaringly obvious I was the only person out of the ten women present who either hadn’t given birth or was going to be doing so in the very near future. And who wasn’t sporting either an engagement ring or wedding band. The sunlight reflecting off the enormous diamonds on fingers rendered me temporarily blind.
    ‘Oh…thanks, Sam,’ said Laura, unwrapping the champers and giving me an odd searching look. She wasn’t nearly as excited by my present as she should have been.
    Lord how times had changed, I thought to myself. Barely a year ago she would have torn the cork out with her teeth and polished off the bottle in a nanosecond, chilled or not, before declaring it by far the best gift she’d ever received.
    ‘Coffee Sam?’ asked Laura.
    Coffee? What about a good old-fashioned glass of wine? Wasn’t this supposed to be some sort of celebration we