He She It

twenty-two: stomach pumps and bad decisions

Grace did not consider herself a violent person, but when Lilly walked into her living room and woke her baby up, - the same baby, bearing in mind, that she had just spent an hour rocking to sleep - it was incredibly tempting to throttle her right there and then.

"Jesus, Lil," she said, yawning and leaning back over to retrieve a now screaming Olivia from her cot. "Did you have to be so loud?"

"Did you not hear what I said?" Lilly asked, joining Grace on the sofa. On the TV, two cartoon girls were re-enacting the story of the Three Little Pigs for an understandably impassive audience of badgers. "We have a problem. A big problem, in fact-"

"Lil, hon, unless anybody's life is at risk, I really can't be arsed to deal with it right now," Grace said, bending slightly to kiss Olivia on the forehead. Her screaming subsided a little, and she grabbed hold of a lock of Grace's hair - which, for the first time since Lilly had known her, looked like it hadn't seen shampoo in at least four days. In fact, Grace looked like she hadn't done anything in four days that didn't involve trying to stop Olivia from screaming herself to death. "Ssh, baby. Ssh."

"You don't have to deal with anything, I promise," Lilly told her, and Grace sighed. She'd been friends with Lilly for long enough now to know that persistence and failing to take hints were among two of her many talents, and so she leant back into the sofa and murmured a deflated 'okay.' "Right, so you realise the fashion show is three days away?"

Grace hummed in acknowledgement.

"Do you also realise that our model is no longer in the habit of wearing a dress?"

Grace opened one eye and lifted a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Bloody hell," she muttered, partly because they'd spent a really, really long time on that dress and partly because this was a problem she most definitely could not avoid dealing with, but mostly because she'd apparently been gifted with a baby with the world's largest lung capacity and chronic insomnia. "Has she actually said she won't do it?"

"Well, I'm assu-"

"Wait a second," Grace said, bringing Olivia closer to her chest as she took a brief breather, her cheeks bright red. "Are you telling me that you came here, woke my baby up, and stopped me from getting some actual sleep because you had an assumption?"

Lilly didn't know whether it was motherhood, the extreme lack of sleep or just the slightly crazed look in her eyes, but for the first time in her life, Grace Hammond was actually borderline intimidating - and it was on this that Lilly based her second assumption of the day: Grace was almost definitely not up for trying to talk Eve into abandoning her only plan to avoid getting sent to Amara's old therapist (or her successor - rumour had it Amara had pushed her into an early retirement) and strutting down a catwalk to Born This Way in front of their entire year group, parents, and the local newspaper team that Lilly planned on conveniently forgetting to mention to Eve until she was pushing her onto the stage and telling her to smile for the cameras.

Lilly went ahead and asked her anyway.

"Lilly," Grace said, slowly enough to suggest that Lilly was about to seriously regret asking her to perform a task that involved getting off the sofa. "I don't know if you missed it, but I've just had a baby. A baby that never stops screaming. Trying to persuade Eve to model for us is at the bottom of my to-do list, right now."

"Well she won't listen to me," Lilly said, which was another assumption, because over the past four days she'd been communicating with Eve in nothing but glares and exaggerated sighs, neither of which provided Eve with much of an opportunity to do any listening. Grace, who had witnessed most of their tense interactions, raised one eyebrow and shook her head. "Oh, come on, Grace."

"No. Piss off."

"Please?"

"No."

"I'll change Olivia's nappies for you?"

"Lilly, babe, you could offer to adopt her and pay her university fees, and I still wouldn't get off this sofa," Grace said, shutting her eyes again. Two seconds later, there was a knock at the door, and Olivia let out another feeble squeal, thrusting her fist out to hit Grace in the stomach. "Jesus Christ, baby. Lil, can you get that?"

As a general rule, Lilly did not tend to do favours for people that had just refused to do one for her (or, as a matter of fact, do favours for people at all), but she figured that if Grace Hammond hadn't straightened her hair in a week and had bags under her eyes big enough to carry a week's worth of groceries in, then the normal rules did not apply.

That didn't stop her from glaring at Eve when she opened the door, though.

"I've brought her some work," Eve said, nodding down at the pile of books in her arms. "Do you want to give them to her, or can I come in?"

Lilly shrugged. "Do whatever you like, it's not my house."

"Lil-"

"Seriously, Eve," Lilly interrupted, stepping aside and gesturing down the hallway. "Just go and give it to her. She has something to ask you, anyway."

She followed Eve back into the living room, where Grace was making an excruciatingly slow journey to the cot, one tiny step at a time. Every time Olivia - who had, thank God, finally stopped trying to break the sound barrier and gone to sleep - so much as took a slightly deep breath, Grace stopped dead, muttered a barely audible 'don't you dare,' and then widened her eyes at Eve and Lilly to suggest that they probably shouldn't dare do anything, either.

"Motherhood changed you, Grace," Lilly said, as soon as they were in the kitchen with a solid two walls between them and Olivia. Grace stuck her middle finger in the air, dumped two spoonfuls of coffee into her mug, and then started rummaging through the medicine cabinet. "Also, don't you have something to say to Eve?"

"I thought I gave you my answer to that, Lil," she replied, straightening up and waving a box of paracetamol in the air. "How many of these can I take without dying?"

"You said you wouldn't leave the house," Lilly said, as Eve mumbled something about stomach pumps and bad decisions. "Now Eve is here, and you don't have to."

"Is four too many?"

"Four?" Eve repeated, standing up to snatch the pills away from Grace. "Bloody hell, Grace, calm down. You've not lost a limb."

"I have not slept properly in four days," Grace said, taking the box back and popping two pills out onto the counter. "I don't think I'd feel this bad even if I had just had my leg sawn off."

"I think you probably would."

"Christ, can you just ask her the question?"

"Fine," Grace said, swallowing the pills with a mouthful of coffee and shuddering a little as they went down. She slammed the mug back onto the table and then turned to Eve. "Lilly would like to know if you're still going to model for us."

Eve hesitated for a few seconds, and then gave a slow nod. "Well of course," she said. "Where else would you find a six foot model that pulls off purple as well as me?"

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(a/n: twenty-twoooooo down, three to go. i cannot cOPE BYE. also this chapter was kind of a filler but you'll like the next one i promise and also stressed out grace is my fave to write okay adios)