Famous by Kate Langdon

Jasper, as we set the plates on the table. ‘Well done!’
    ‘Delicious,’ agreed everyone else, once they had taken their first mouthful. I had to agree.
    ‘Gosh, you three must have been cooking all afternoon!’ said Lisa, who was just grateful there was no seafood in the entrée.
    Not only was she highly annoying and ruining our dinner party, but apparently she was also rather stupid. Who in their right mind would spend a whole afternoon slaving away at an oven? Not us, that was for sure.
    ‘Absolutely divine ladies,’ said Jenna, winking at us. ‘Tastes just as good as Prego.’
    After receiving more praise for the entrée which we had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with making, we reconvened in the kitchen to heat the dinner plates.
    ‘What the hell are we going to give her?’ I asked. ‘She won’t eat salmon.’
    ‘Arsenic,’ replied Lizzie, who wasn’t being much help.
    ‘Hell knows,’ said Mands. ‘You know I don’t have any food here.’
    ‘There must be something,’ I said, opening the tiny freezer, which contained nothing but a packet of frozen blackberries and a couple of hash browns.
    ‘That’ll do her,’ I said, pulling out the hash browns.
    ‘Aren’t you s’posed to put them in the oven?’ asked Mands, as I popped them into the microwave.
    ‘Who cares,’ I replied. ‘She’s lucky she’s getting anything.’
    ‘Bloody right,’ said Lizzie.
    We brought the dinner plates to the table, where they were received with similar accolades to the entrée. (Except for Lisa’s, which just got stared at disdainfully as Lizzie slammed it down in front of her.) But before we could begin to eat Simon managed to knock over a full bottle of red wine and splatter myself, Jenna and Mands in the process. Thankfully, for his sake, he didn’t get Lizzie, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table, as far away from him as she could possibly get while remaining in the same room. Simon appeared to be dealing with the fact he was sitting at a dinner table with both his pregnant wife and his furious mistress in the only way he knew how — by getting as quickly and as rottenly drunk as he could.
    ‘Slow down!’ hissed Lisa, giving him an evil look.
    Jasper appeared to have contracted a very sudden and violent case of verbal diarrhoea and was presently having three simultaneous conversations with me, Lisa and Samuel, all on completely different subjects. Somehow he was successfully managing to juggle all three without either losing the other parties’ interest or forgetting what it was we were talking about.
    ‘Bloody boring pregnant woman,’ he whispered, turning to me.
    ‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘The night is being completely dominated by someone who has yet to form arms or legs.’
    ‘What’s up with Lizzie?’ he asked.
    I explained the Simon, Lisa and big baby surprise situation.
    ‘Oh,’ said Jasper. ‘That’d explain the look then. I was beginning to think she was rehearsing for the role of Margaret Thatcher.’
    As I sat talking to Jasper, eating the delicious zalmon, I suddenly felt myself becoming hot. Very, very hot. All over.
    ‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed to Mands, who was sitting on my left. ‘I think I’m having a hot flush.’
    ‘Bloody hell,’ she replied. ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it dolls?’ I poured myself a glass of water, but it did nothing to cool me down. My body was on fire. I lunged across Mands for another glass.
    ‘Not very Singapore girl,’ she muttered. I was too uncomfortable to apologise.
    ‘You’re going a bit red,’ she observed.
    And then, very suddenly, I was not only hot-all-over, I was also incredibly itchy. Skin crawling, tear-the-flesh-from-my-bones type itchy.
    I excused myself from the table and walked into the bathroom, madly scratching my body all over. It gave me some temporary relief and I made my way back to the table.
    But not for long. Within five minutes I was hot and itching all over again, worse this time. I felt like