The Long Weekend at Wren Farm | Pt. 1
One — the car
Sadie had known it was going to be a problem by the second motorway services, and by the fourth she'd stopped pretending otherwise.
The hen weekend had been Bex's idea, obviously, because everything was Bex's idea — Bex who was getting married in five weeks and had decided that what she wanted, before she did, was a farmhouse in the Cotswolds, eight women, a hot tub that probably wouldn't work, and a "dares jar" that she'd made herself out of an old coffee tin and a glue stick.
Sadie was a bridesmaid. Sadie was, in fact, the bridesmaid Bex had known longest — seventeen years, since they were ten and Bex had punched a boy for her — and there had never been any version of this weekend where Sadie wasn't in the car.
The problem was that Sadie had been having what she had privately started calling the trouble for about four months.
It had started as a thing where she needed to go more often. Then a thing where she needed to go now. Then a Tuesday in September where she'd coughed in the stationery cupboard at work and had to change her underwear at lunch. She'd been to the doctor, who had said "stress, probably, and the caffeine, and let's do a bladder diary," and had sent her away with a leaflet and no answers.
She'd been meaning to buy something. Pads, at least. Something. She'd been meaning to for four months.
She had not bought anything.
So she got in Fi's car on Friday afternoon with a black coffee and a bottle of water because the coffee was the only thing keeping her upright, and she sat in the back with her knees together and her bag on her lap, and by the fourth services she was at an eight and there were still forty minutes to go and Fi had said, cheerfully, "No stopping now, we're nearly there, and anyway the last one was grim."
"Nearly there" was thirty-eight minutes.
The house was down a single-track lane with a cattle grid and a gate that had to be opened by hand, and Sadie got out of the car into cold air with her thighs clamped together and her bag in front of her, and Bex came out of the front door in a sash with BRIDE on it and screamed, and hugged everyone, and hugged Sadie last, and Sadie hugged her back with her jaw tight.
"You alright?" Bex said, pulling away. "You look pale."
"Fine. Journey."
"There's a loo just there, second door—"
Sadie was already going. She got the door shut behind her with about four seconds to spare and got her jeans down and sat and let go and ached with how good it was, and then sat there for a minute afterward with her head in her hands and her eyes shut, thinking: right. That's the last easy one. Do it properly from now on.
She did not do it properly from now on.
Two — the dares jar
There were six of them plus Bex and Bex's brother Cal, who had been drafted in as driver and general dogsbody and who was in the kitchen when Sadie came out of the toilet, unpacking carrier bags.
Cal was thirty-one and quiet and had the kind of face that got better the longer you looked at it, which was annoying. Sadie had known him since he was fourteen and gawky and she had never quite stopped being aware of him, and she was aware of him now, in a jumper with the sleeves pushed up, putting wine in a fridge.
"Alright, Sadie," he said, without turning round.
"Alright."
"You look rough."
"Thanks."
"Fi drives like she's being chased."
"Yeah."
He glanced back then, and something in his expression shifted — a beat too long — and then he went back to the bags. Sadie went through to the sitting room where everyone was, and the fire was on, and the dares jar was on the mantelpiece, and Fi was already shaking it.
"Right," Bex said, clapping her hands. "Rules. Everyone draws one on arrival. You can't refuse a dare, you can only buy your way out for a tenner into the honeymoon fund, and it will be noted."
Sadie drew hers with her stomach going over. It said, in Bex's handwriting: Ring your mum and sing her the chorus of "Wonderwall."
She did it. It was mortifying but survivable. Mags had to do an impression of Bex's fiancé having an orgasm, which got the tone exactly right for the weekend, and everyone shrieked, and someone opened a bottle.
By seven o'clock Sadie had had a glass of wine and a pint of water because she was being careful, and she was at a five and fine, and she thought, with real relief: I can do this. I can just go every hour.
At half seven Bex produced a game.
It was a drinking game with a rule attached — a holding game, essentially, which Bex had found on the internet and which she announced with enormous delight as "the drought." Everyone had to drink a pint of water in fifteen minutes. Then nobody was allowed to use the toilet until someone cracked, and the first person to crack did a forfeit, and the last person standing picked the next dare out of the jar for anyone they liked.
Sadie looked at the pint glass in front of her and felt her stomach drop.
"Bex," she said. "Do we have to?"
"Yes."
"I'm — I need the loo a lot at the moment."
"Then go now, before we start." Bex waved a hand. "Go on, everyone, last loo trip, we start in five."
Sadie went. She sat and got four drops out and came back and looked at the pint.
She should have said something. She should have said, actually, I've been having a thing, I might not be great at this, and everyone would have laughed and been nice and she could have sat it out. She didn't. She'd spent four months not saying anything and the habit had set.
She drank the pint.
Three — the drought
It went wrong in under an hour.
Sadie was at a seven by twenty past eight and she'd stopped being able to join in. The game had gone on around her — Fi was doing a running commentary, Mags was loudly declaring herself "made of iron," Tommi was already swaying — and Sadie sat on the floor with her back against the armchair and her knees drawn up and her heel pressed hard into herself under her skirt.
At half eight she was at an eight and a half.
At quarter to nine, Fi cracked, and there was a great shriek of triumph and Fi had to do a forfeit (run to the gate and back in her bra, in November), and everyone was laughing and looking at Fi, and nobody was looking at Sadie, and Sadie thought, distantly, I'm going to be next.
She was not next.
Tommi was next, at nine. Then Mags, at ten past, with enormous theatrical disgust.
By half nine there were three of them left — Sadie, Bex, and Cal, who had joined in on a technicality and was sitting in the doorway with his pint glass empty and a slightly amused expression.
Sadie was at a nine and a half and she was rocking.
"Ohhh," Bex said, pointing at her. "Look at her. She's doing the dance."
"I'm not—" Sadie's voice came out thin. "I'm fine."
"You are not fine. You're going to go before me, I can see it."
"I'm not."
She was. She could feel it going, the way it went now — the pressure cresting and then that first hot little slip that meant the muscles had given up arguing — and she clamped down so hard her calves hurt and it held for maybe ten seconds and then it didn't.
The first leak was small. The second wasn't. It came in a hot run into her underwear and she made a small strangled noise and sat up off her heel and it kept coming, and it went through the cotton and into her skirt and she felt the spread against the rug under her.
"Oh no," she said. Out loud. "Oh no, oh no—"
"Sadie," Bex said, delighted. "Have you cracked?"
Sadie put her hand over her face.
The whole room went quiet in the specific way rooms do when something's happened that nobody expected. Then Fi said, "Wait — has she actually wet herself? Not just cracked? Actually?"
Sadie nodded into her hand.
The noise that went up was extraordinary.
Four — the floor
"Stand up," Bex said. "Stand up, stand up, let's see."
"I can't."
"Sadie."
"I can't—" Her voice cracked and went up an octave and she hated it, and she got her feet under her and stood.
Her skirt was grey jersey and the wet had turned it dark in a wide patch at the front and back and it was clinging to her, and there was a wet mark on the rug the size of a dinner plate, and the whole room looked at it and then at her and there was a beat of silence that was somehow worse than any noise.
"Oh my God," Fi said, reverently.
"It's a lot," Mags said, in the tone of an appraisal. "That's not a bit. That's a lot."
"It's — I've been having a thing," Sadie said. She was going to cry, she could feel it building behind her eyes. "I've been having a thing for months and I haven't — I meant to buy something, I kept meaning to buy something, and now—"
"Wait." Bex was frowning. "You knew you were having trouble and you did the drought anyway?"
"I thought I'd be fine."
"You're an idiot."
"I know—"
Bex grabbed her and hugged her, hard, and Sadie burst into tears against her shoulder in front of six women and her brother, which was the actual humiliation, the crying, the crying was the worst bit, and then Fi was rubbing her back and Mags was saying "it's alright, love, it's a laugh, it's honestly a laugh" and Tommi was pressing a glass of wine into her hand, and Cal, in the doorway, hadn't said anything at all.
Sadie looked up and caught his eye over Bex's shoulder. He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't parse — not laughing, not pitying, just looking — and when he saw her looking back he said, quietly, "You alright?"
"No," she said.
"No." He nodded, like that was the right answer, and then said, "Bex. She needs to get out of those."
That was the second humiliation: being managed.
Bex took charge. Bex was good at taking charge, which was why she was a project manager and why her wedding was going to be immaculate and why the weekend had a jar of dares in it. She got Sadie up the stairs and into the bathroom and said, "Right. Trousers off, get in the shower, I'll find you something," and Sadie stood under the water with her forehead against the tiles and her face screwed up and the water running down her legs, and heard Bex through the door going, "Cal — Cal! Is the shop still open? The one by the bridge?"
"It shuts at ten," Cal said, from somewhere below.
"It's ten to."
"Then I'll go now, shall I."
"Yes. Get nappies."
"For Sadie?"
"For Sadie, yes, go, go—"
Sadie turned her face into the tiles and laughed, once, wetly, and it came out almost like a sob.
Five — the shop
She came down twenty minutes later in borrowed pyjamas — Tommi's, too big, with cartoon cats on them — with her hair up in a towel and her face washed and no underwear on at all, which felt obscene in a room full of people.
Nobody made a thing of it. That was the mercy. Fi had put a towel on the sofa and Bex had topped her wine up and Mags was telling a story about a man at her gym, and Sadie sat down in the corner of the sofa with her knees up and her borrowed pyjama bottoms baggy and nothing underneath and the towel rough under her thighs.
She was at a four by the time the front door went.
Cal came in with a Boots bag and put it on the arm of the sofa next to her and said, "They didn't have much. The woman looked at me like I was lying."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. I panicked. I said 'for my sister.'"
"Cal, I'm not your sister."
"I know. I panicked." He sat down on the far end of the sofa and rubbed his face. "There's pull-ups and there's — I didn't know what the difference was, so there's both. The woman said the taped ones hold more. She said it like it was a personal failing."
Sadie looked in the bag. Two packets. One was a pastel box of pull-ups with a picture of a woman laughing on the front, laughingly unbothered. The other was a plastic-wrapped brick of thick white things, MAXIMUM ABSORBENCY in blue, with a diagram of four tapes on the side.
The room had gone quiet.
"Right," Bex said, peering. "Those. The taped ones. That's what you want."
"I know what they are," Sadie said.
"Have you used them before?"
"No, Bex, I've been having a thing for four months and I haven't bought anything, that's the whole—"
"Okay, okay." Bex held her hands up. "Right. So we're learning together. Fine." She looked around the room with the expression of a woman allocating resources. "Fi, you're on wipes — there's a garage on the main road, take my card. Mags, there's a towel situation, sort out the bed. Tommi — actually Tommi's useless, Tommi sit down. Cal—"
"Cal's doing the tutorial," Mags said, from the door, and everyone turned to look at him.
Cal looked up. "Am I?"
"You're the only one who's had a baby."
"I've had a nephew—"
"Same thing."
"It is not—"
"Cal." Bex pointed at him. "Tutorial."
Six — the tutorial
He was very good at it, which was the worst part.
"Right," he said, sitting forward, and Sadie sat on the towel with the packet open beside her and her borrowed pyjama bottoms round her ankles and her whole face on fire. "So. First thing, they're noisy. You can't help that, so get used to it. Second thing — the tapes are sticky as hell and you get one go, so do the bottom two first and do them where you want them, because if you try to do the top ones first the whole thing sits wrong and it'll leak."
"How do you know all this?"
"Because I've changed my nephew about two hundred times and my sister's spent a fortune on laundry." He paused. "And the bottom ones go over the front panel, not flat to the back, or it'll pop off at the hip when you sit down."
Sadie got one out of the packet. It unfolded with a crackle that went off in the quiet room like a crisp packet and she felt six pairs of eyes on her and had to look at her own hands.
"Under you first," Cal said. "Open it out flat."
She did. She sat on it and it crinkled and she got the front up between her legs and pressed the bottom left tape down over the front panel, and then the bottom right, and then she reached for the top ones and Cal said, "Tighter. Go on — tighter than that, or it'll sag."
She pulled it tighter. The padding came snug against her and pushed her thighs apart and she pressed the tape down and then did the last one and sat back, and the room let out a breath.
"Oh, they're loud," Fi said, from the doorway with an armful of shopping.
"They're loud," Cal agreed.
Sadie stood up. The thing was thick and white and it crackled with every movement and it forced her to stand with her legs a little apart, and her borrowed pyjama bottoms wouldn't go back over it properly, so she ended up with them round her knees for a second before just pulling them all the way off and standing in a diaper and a pyjama top in front of everyone.
"There we go," Mags said. "That's the look."
"How's it feel?" Bex said.
Sadie thought about it. Her skin was still damp from the shower and the padding was warm and soft and enormous against her, and she could feel the bulk of it pushing her thighs apart and the soft white mass of it at the front and back, and it was — it was actually—
"Alright," she said, and her voice came out a bit strange.
"Just alright?"
"It's — yeah. Alright."
Cal was looking at her from the sofa with his elbow on the arm and his chin on his fist. He hadn't looked away since she'd started.
"There's a bin bag in the kitchen drawer," he said. "For the used ones. Don't put them in the bathroom bin, they swell."
Seven — the rules
Bex instituted rules by half eleven, because of course she did.
"Right. New rules for the weekend. Number one, you're in them now—"
"Am I—"
"You're in them now," Bex repeated, "because you can't be having accidents in Tommi's pyjamas all weekend. Number two, if you need to go you say so out loud, you don't suffer in silence, because we're not doing that again. Number three—" she thought about it "—number three, you don't change yourself, someone else does it, because you're rubbish at it and the tutorial was not sufficient."
"Bex."
"I've done it once. Once." Bex put her hands on her hips. "Number four — and this is the good one — anyone can call a check. Any time. And you have to stand up and let them."
There was a general murmur of approval.
"What's a check?" Sadie said.
"It's where someone comes and puts their hand on you to see if you need changing." Bex said it as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "Obviously."
Sadie looked around the room. Fi was grinning. Mags was nodding slowly. Tommi was asleep in the armchair.
"All weekend?"
"All weekend."
"And Cal too?"
Bex looked at Cal. Cal looked at Sadie and said, "I'll do it if you want."
There was a pause that went on slightly too long, and Sadie said, "Yeah. Fine," too quickly, and Mags made a small noise that she turned into a cough.
Eight — the first check
It was Fi who did it, twenty minutes later, in the middle of a conversation about whether Bex's fiancé's mother was going to wear a hat.
"Check," Fi said, and everyone stopped talking.
Sadie put her glass down. "Now?"
"That's the rule." Fi came over and stood in front of her. "Stand up."
Sadie stood. She was dry — she'd only been in it half an hour — but she stood up anyway and the crinkle came out and she had to stand still while Fi put two fingers flat against the front of it and pressed.
She'd had no idea what that would feel like. Two fingers, flat and warm, pressing the padding back against her, and the pressure of it was diffuse and soft and everywhere, and Sadie's breath caught audibly in her throat.
Fi's eyebrows went up. "Alright?"
"Yeah."
"Still dry." Fi took her hand away and sat back down. "You'll know when she's wet, she goes bright red."
"I do not—"
"You're bright red now, love."
Sadie sat down and put her hands over her face and Mags said, "Do me next."
The thing about being checked was that it was, by ten to midnight, less of a humiliation than a constant low-grade turn-on, and that was worse than either.
She was dry for an hour and then she wasn't — she'd drunk two glasses of wine and the wine went straight through her — and the pressure built while Mags was telling a long story, and Sadie sat with her thighs pressed together and the thick padding between them and the whole room not looking at her.
"Sadie's doing the face," Fi said.
"I'm not."
"You are. Are you going?"
"Nearly."
"Go on then. Everyone's seen it now."
She went. She leaned back against the sofa and let it go and the heat flooded into the front of the diaper in a spreading wave and she heard herself make a small noise and the whole room heard it too, and Mags — mid-story — said, "Oh, there she goes," and carried on.
The warmth spread and spread. The padding swelled and went heavy and soft and warm and it ran back under her and up and she felt the bulk of it fill and hang and she had to grip the sofa arm. It was so much more than she'd expected, and it went on so long, and the heat of it against her was enormous and she could feel her own pulse low down and hard.
"All the way?" Bex said, when she'd stopped.
"Yeah." Sadie's voice was wrecked.
"Good girl." Bex got up and came over. "Check."
Sadie stood up without being told. The diaper hung heavy and warm and she could feel the wet front of it cling and sag, and Bex pressed the front of it with her whole palm and the squelch was audible and Sadie's hips jerked.
"Soaked," Bex announced to the room. "Right. Somebody's doing a change, and it's not me, I've got a hen weekend to run." She looked around. "Mags. You've got kids."
"I've got teenagers. I haven't changed anything but a fuse in nine years."
"Then it's Cal."
"Cal's got kids," Mags said.
"I've got a nephew," Cal said, wearily, and got up.
Nine — the first change
He did it in the sitting room, because Bex said the bathroom was cold, and because the
Sadie had known it was going to be a problem by the second motorway services, and by the fourth she'd stopped pretending otherwise.
The hen weekend had been Bex's idea, obviously, because everything was Bex's idea — Bex who was getting married in five weeks and had decided that what she wanted, before she did, was a farmhouse in the Cotswolds, eight women, a hot tub that probably wouldn't work, and a "dares jar" that she'd made herself out of an old coffee tin and a glue stick.
Sadie was a bridesmaid. Sadie was, in fact, the bridesmaid Bex had known longest — seventeen years, since they were ten and Bex had punched a boy for her — and there had never been any version of this weekend where Sadie wasn't in the car.
The problem was that Sadie had been having what she had privately started calling the trouble for about four months.
It had started as a thing where she needed to go more often. Then a thing where she needed to go now. Then a Tuesday in September where she'd coughed in the stationery cupboard at work and had to change her underwear at lunch. She'd been to the doctor, who had said "stress, probably, and the caffeine, and let's do a bladder diary," and had sent her away with a leaflet and no answers.
She'd been meaning to buy something. Pads, at least. Something. She'd been meaning to for four months.
She had not bought anything.
So she got in Fi's car on Friday afternoon with a black coffee and a bottle of water because the coffee was the only thing keeping her upright, and she sat in the back with her knees together and her bag on her lap, and by the fourth services she was at an eight and there were still forty minutes to go and Fi had said, cheerfully, "No stopping now, we're nearly there, and anyway the last one was grim."
"Nearly there" was thirty-eight minutes.
The house was down a single-track lane with a cattle grid and a gate that had to be opened by hand, and Sadie got out of the car into cold air with her thighs clamped together and her bag in front of her, and Bex came out of the front door in a sash with BRIDE on it and screamed, and hugged everyone, and hugged Sadie last, and Sadie hugged her back with her jaw tight.
"You alright?" Bex said, pulling away. "You look pale."
"Fine. Journey."
"There's a loo just there, second door—"
Sadie was already going. She got the door shut behind her with about four seconds to spare and got her jeans down and sat and let go and ached with how good it was, and then sat there for a minute afterward with her head in her hands and her eyes shut, thinking: right. That's the last easy one. Do it properly from now on.
She did not do it properly from now on.
Two — the dares jar
There were six of them plus Bex and Bex's brother Cal, who had been drafted in as driver and general dogsbody and who was in the kitchen when Sadie came out of the toilet, unpacking carrier bags.
Cal was thirty-one and quiet and had the kind of face that got better the longer you looked at it, which was annoying. Sadie had known him since he was fourteen and gawky and she had never quite stopped being aware of him, and she was aware of him now, in a jumper with the sleeves pushed up, putting wine in a fridge.
"Alright, Sadie," he said, without turning round.
"Alright."
"You look rough."
"Thanks."
"Fi drives like she's being chased."
"Yeah."
He glanced back then, and something in his expression shifted — a beat too long — and then he went back to the bags. Sadie went through to the sitting room where everyone was, and the fire was on, and the dares jar was on the mantelpiece, and Fi was already shaking it.
"Right," Bex said, clapping her hands. "Rules. Everyone draws one on arrival. You can't refuse a dare, you can only buy your way out for a tenner into the honeymoon fund, and it will be noted."
Sadie drew hers with her stomach going over. It said, in Bex's handwriting: Ring your mum and sing her the chorus of "Wonderwall."
She did it. It was mortifying but survivable. Mags had to do an impression of Bex's fiancé having an orgasm, which got the tone exactly right for the weekend, and everyone shrieked, and someone opened a bottle.
By seven o'clock Sadie had had a glass of wine and a pint of water because she was being careful, and she was at a five and fine, and she thought, with real relief: I can do this. I can just go every hour.
At half seven Bex produced a game.
It was a drinking game with a rule attached — a holding game, essentially, which Bex had found on the internet and which she announced with enormous delight as "the drought." Everyone had to drink a pint of water in fifteen minutes. Then nobody was allowed to use the toilet until someone cracked, and the first person to crack did a forfeit, and the last person standing picked the next dare out of the jar for anyone they liked.
Sadie looked at the pint glass in front of her and felt her stomach drop.
"Bex," she said. "Do we have to?"
"Yes."
"I'm — I need the loo a lot at the moment."
"Then go now, before we start." Bex waved a hand. "Go on, everyone, last loo trip, we start in five."
Sadie went. She sat and got four drops out and came back and looked at the pint.
She should have said something. She should have said, actually, I've been having a thing, I might not be great at this, and everyone would have laughed and been nice and she could have sat it out. She didn't. She'd spent four months not saying anything and the habit had set.
She drank the pint.
Three — the drought
It went wrong in under an hour.
Sadie was at a seven by twenty past eight and she'd stopped being able to join in. The game had gone on around her — Fi was doing a running commentary, Mags was loudly declaring herself "made of iron," Tommi was already swaying — and Sadie sat on the floor with her back against the armchair and her knees drawn up and her heel pressed hard into herself under her skirt.
At half eight she was at an eight and a half.
At quarter to nine, Fi cracked, and there was a great shriek of triumph and Fi had to do a forfeit (run to the gate and back in her bra, in November), and everyone was laughing and looking at Fi, and nobody was looking at Sadie, and Sadie thought, distantly, I'm going to be next.
She was not next.
Tommi was next, at nine. Then Mags, at ten past, with enormous theatrical disgust.
By half nine there were three of them left — Sadie, Bex, and Cal, who had joined in on a technicality and was sitting in the doorway with his pint glass empty and a slightly amused expression.
Sadie was at a nine and a half and she was rocking.
"Ohhh," Bex said, pointing at her. "Look at her. She's doing the dance."
"I'm not—" Sadie's voice came out thin. "I'm fine."
"You are not fine. You're going to go before me, I can see it."
"I'm not."
She was. She could feel it going, the way it went now — the pressure cresting and then that first hot little slip that meant the muscles had given up arguing — and she clamped down so hard her calves hurt and it held for maybe ten seconds and then it didn't.
The first leak was small. The second wasn't. It came in a hot run into her underwear and she made a small strangled noise and sat up off her heel and it kept coming, and it went through the cotton and into her skirt and she felt the spread against the rug under her.
"Oh no," she said. Out loud. "Oh no, oh no—"
"Sadie," Bex said, delighted. "Have you cracked?"
Sadie put her hand over her face.
The whole room went quiet in the specific way rooms do when something's happened that nobody expected. Then Fi said, "Wait — has she actually wet herself? Not just cracked? Actually?"
Sadie nodded into her hand.
The noise that went up was extraordinary.
Four — the floor
"Stand up," Bex said. "Stand up, stand up, let's see."
"I can't."
"Sadie."
"I can't—" Her voice cracked and went up an octave and she hated it, and she got her feet under her and stood.
Her skirt was grey jersey and the wet had turned it dark in a wide patch at the front and back and it was clinging to her, and there was a wet mark on the rug the size of a dinner plate, and the whole room looked at it and then at her and there was a beat of silence that was somehow worse than any noise.
"Oh my God," Fi said, reverently.
"It's a lot," Mags said, in the tone of an appraisal. "That's not a bit. That's a lot."
"It's — I've been having a thing," Sadie said. She was going to cry, she could feel it building behind her eyes. "I've been having a thing for months and I haven't — I meant to buy something, I kept meaning to buy something, and now—"
"Wait." Bex was frowning. "You knew you were having trouble and you did the drought anyway?"
"I thought I'd be fine."
"You're an idiot."
"I know—"
Bex grabbed her and hugged her, hard, and Sadie burst into tears against her shoulder in front of six women and her brother, which was the actual humiliation, the crying, the crying was the worst bit, and then Fi was rubbing her back and Mags was saying "it's alright, love, it's a laugh, it's honestly a laugh" and Tommi was pressing a glass of wine into her hand, and Cal, in the doorway, hadn't said anything at all.
Sadie looked up and caught his eye over Bex's shoulder. He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't parse — not laughing, not pitying, just looking — and when he saw her looking back he said, quietly, "You alright?"
"No," she said.
"No." He nodded, like that was the right answer, and then said, "Bex. She needs to get out of those."
That was the second humiliation: being managed.
Bex took charge. Bex was good at taking charge, which was why she was a project manager and why her wedding was going to be immaculate and why the weekend had a jar of dares in it. She got Sadie up the stairs and into the bathroom and said, "Right. Trousers off, get in the shower, I'll find you something," and Sadie stood under the water with her forehead against the tiles and her face screwed up and the water running down her legs, and heard Bex through the door going, "Cal — Cal! Is the shop still open? The one by the bridge?"
"It shuts at ten," Cal said, from somewhere below.
"It's ten to."
"Then I'll go now, shall I."
"Yes. Get nappies."
"For Sadie?"
"For Sadie, yes, go, go—"
Sadie turned her face into the tiles and laughed, once, wetly, and it came out almost like a sob.
Five — the shop
She came down twenty minutes later in borrowed pyjamas — Tommi's, too big, with cartoon cats on them — with her hair up in a towel and her face washed and no underwear on at all, which felt obscene in a room full of people.
Nobody made a thing of it. That was the mercy. Fi had put a towel on the sofa and Bex had topped her wine up and Mags was telling a story about a man at her gym, and Sadie sat down in the corner of the sofa with her knees up and her borrowed pyjama bottoms baggy and nothing underneath and the towel rough under her thighs.
She was at a four by the time the front door went.
Cal came in with a Boots bag and put it on the arm of the sofa next to her and said, "They didn't have much. The woman looked at me like I was lying."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. I panicked. I said 'for my sister.'"
"Cal, I'm not your sister."
"I know. I panicked." He sat down on the far end of the sofa and rubbed his face. "There's pull-ups and there's — I didn't know what the difference was, so there's both. The woman said the taped ones hold more. She said it like it was a personal failing."
Sadie looked in the bag. Two packets. One was a pastel box of pull-ups with a picture of a woman laughing on the front, laughingly unbothered. The other was a plastic-wrapped brick of thick white things, MAXIMUM ABSORBENCY in blue, with a diagram of four tapes on the side.
The room had gone quiet.
"Right," Bex said, peering. "Those. The taped ones. That's what you want."
"I know what they are," Sadie said.
"Have you used them before?"
"No, Bex, I've been having a thing for four months and I haven't bought anything, that's the whole—"
"Okay, okay." Bex held her hands up. "Right. So we're learning together. Fine." She looked around the room with the expression of a woman allocating resources. "Fi, you're on wipes — there's a garage on the main road, take my card. Mags, there's a towel situation, sort out the bed. Tommi — actually Tommi's useless, Tommi sit down. Cal—"
"Cal's doing the tutorial," Mags said, from the door, and everyone turned to look at him.
Cal looked up. "Am I?"
"You're the only one who's had a baby."
"I've had a nephew—"
"Same thing."
"It is not—"
"Cal." Bex pointed at him. "Tutorial."
Six — the tutorial
He was very good at it, which was the worst part.
"Right," he said, sitting forward, and Sadie sat on the towel with the packet open beside her and her borrowed pyjama bottoms round her ankles and her whole face on fire. "So. First thing, they're noisy. You can't help that, so get used to it. Second thing — the tapes are sticky as hell and you get one go, so do the bottom two first and do them where you want them, because if you try to do the top ones first the whole thing sits wrong and it'll leak."
"How do you know all this?"
"Because I've changed my nephew about two hundred times and my sister's spent a fortune on laundry." He paused. "And the bottom ones go over the front panel, not flat to the back, or it'll pop off at the hip when you sit down."
Sadie got one out of the packet. It unfolded with a crackle that went off in the quiet room like a crisp packet and she felt six pairs of eyes on her and had to look at her own hands.
"Under you first," Cal said. "Open it out flat."
She did. She sat on it and it crinkled and she got the front up between her legs and pressed the bottom left tape down over the front panel, and then the bottom right, and then she reached for the top ones and Cal said, "Tighter. Go on — tighter than that, or it'll sag."
She pulled it tighter. The padding came snug against her and pushed her thighs apart and she pressed the tape down and then did the last one and sat back, and the room let out a breath.
"Oh, they're loud," Fi said, from the doorway with an armful of shopping.
"They're loud," Cal agreed.
Sadie stood up. The thing was thick and white and it crackled with every movement and it forced her to stand with her legs a little apart, and her borrowed pyjama bottoms wouldn't go back over it properly, so she ended up with them round her knees for a second before just pulling them all the way off and standing in a diaper and a pyjama top in front of everyone.
"There we go," Mags said. "That's the look."
"How's it feel?" Bex said.
Sadie thought about it. Her skin was still damp from the shower and the padding was warm and soft and enormous against her, and she could feel the bulk of it pushing her thighs apart and the soft white mass of it at the front and back, and it was — it was actually—
"Alright," she said, and her voice came out a bit strange.
"Just alright?"
"It's — yeah. Alright."
Cal was looking at her from the sofa with his elbow on the arm and his chin on his fist. He hadn't looked away since she'd started.
"There's a bin bag in the kitchen drawer," he said. "For the used ones. Don't put them in the bathroom bin, they swell."
Seven — the rules
Bex instituted rules by half eleven, because of course she did.
"Right. New rules for the weekend. Number one, you're in them now—"
"Am I—"
"You're in them now," Bex repeated, "because you can't be having accidents in Tommi's pyjamas all weekend. Number two, if you need to go you say so out loud, you don't suffer in silence, because we're not doing that again. Number three—" she thought about it "—number three, you don't change yourself, someone else does it, because you're rubbish at it and the tutorial was not sufficient."
"Bex."
"I've done it once. Once." Bex put her hands on her hips. "Number four — and this is the good one — anyone can call a check. Any time. And you have to stand up and let them."
There was a general murmur of approval.
"What's a check?" Sadie said.
"It's where someone comes and puts their hand on you to see if you need changing." Bex said it as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "Obviously."
Sadie looked around the room. Fi was grinning. Mags was nodding slowly. Tommi was asleep in the armchair.
"All weekend?"
"All weekend."
"And Cal too?"
Bex looked at Cal. Cal looked at Sadie and said, "I'll do it if you want."
There was a pause that went on slightly too long, and Sadie said, "Yeah. Fine," too quickly, and Mags made a small noise that she turned into a cough.
Eight — the first check
It was Fi who did it, twenty minutes later, in the middle of a conversation about whether Bex's fiancé's mother was going to wear a hat.
"Check," Fi said, and everyone stopped talking.
Sadie put her glass down. "Now?"
"That's the rule." Fi came over and stood in front of her. "Stand up."
Sadie stood. She was dry — she'd only been in it half an hour — but she stood up anyway and the crinkle came out and she had to stand still while Fi put two fingers flat against the front of it and pressed.
She'd had no idea what that would feel like. Two fingers, flat and warm, pressing the padding back against her, and the pressure of it was diffuse and soft and everywhere, and Sadie's breath caught audibly in her throat.
Fi's eyebrows went up. "Alright?"
"Yeah."
"Still dry." Fi took her hand away and sat back down. "You'll know when she's wet, she goes bright red."
"I do not—"
"You're bright red now, love."
Sadie sat down and put her hands over her face and Mags said, "Do me next."
The thing about being checked was that it was, by ten to midnight, less of a humiliation than a constant low-grade turn-on, and that was worse than either.
She was dry for an hour and then she wasn't — she'd drunk two glasses of wine and the wine went straight through her — and the pressure built while Mags was telling a long story, and Sadie sat with her thighs pressed together and the thick padding between them and the whole room not looking at her.
"Sadie's doing the face," Fi said.
"I'm not."
"You are. Are you going?"
"Nearly."
"Go on then. Everyone's seen it now."
She went. She leaned back against the sofa and let it go and the heat flooded into the front of the diaper in a spreading wave and she heard herself make a small noise and the whole room heard it too, and Mags — mid-story — said, "Oh, there she goes," and carried on.
The warmth spread and spread. The padding swelled and went heavy and soft and warm and it ran back under her and up and she felt the bulk of it fill and hang and she had to grip the sofa arm. It was so much more than she'd expected, and it went on so long, and the heat of it against her was enormous and she could feel her own pulse low down and hard.
"All the way?" Bex said, when she'd stopped.
"Yeah." Sadie's voice was wrecked.
"Good girl." Bex got up and came over. "Check."
Sadie stood up without being told. The diaper hung heavy and warm and she could feel the wet front of it cling and sag, and Bex pressed the front of it with her whole palm and the squelch was audible and Sadie's hips jerked.
"Soaked," Bex announced to the room. "Right. Somebody's doing a change, and it's not me, I've got a hen weekend to run." She looked around. "Mags. You've got kids."
"I've got teenagers. I haven't changed anything but a fuse in nine years."
"Then it's Cal."
"Cal's got kids," Mags said.
"I've got a nephew," Cal said, wearily, and got up.
Nine — the first change
He did it in the sitting room, because Bex said the bathroom was cold, and because the
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