Best Friend...Future Wife

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‘I don’t know why, it always seems so stressful.’

‘It’s challenging.’

‘It’s that all right. Sometimes, though, I wonder…’

‘Wonder what?’

‘How you can work for people like Tom Dermont.’

‘Well, not all my clients are like Tom.’

‘No, of course not, but he’s not the only one like that, either. How do you justify working for them? To yourself? Your conscience?’

Della frowned. ‘I don’t feel that I have to justify it. I’m not responsible for what he does or doesn’t do. It’s a job. I only have to concentrate on doing the work to the best of my ability.’

Lyn paused with her fork in mid-air. ‘You don’t think you’d be happier in a different job?’

Della shook her head.

After chewing her food, Lyn shrugged. ‘Anyway, that isn’t where I meant to go with this. What I meant was, I don’t want you to be so wrapped up in your work that you end up alone.’

‘I won’t be alone. I have you and Patrick, Jamie and Cassie, Dawn and Frank, Megan and Poppy.’

‘And Luke.’

‘And…Luke.’

Della averted her eyes, focusing on a young woman who was weaving between the tables, her generous hips swaying. If she was a typical woman, she’d prefer a svelte figure to the wide, childbearing hips she’d been given. But would she give up her chance to have children for it? Very unlikely. Not many women were childless from choice.

‘I think,’ Della said, ‘there’s something built into us, you know? Knowing I can’t accomplish the basic purpose I was meant for makes me feel less of a woman.’

Lyn’s eyes shone and she blinked rapidly. ‘I will not have you talking like this. It’s nonsense. There are loads of women who don’t have children, whether it’s a health issue, a lifestyle thing or otherwise. No one thinks less of them for it. No one will think less of you, Dell.’

She nodded. ‘Part of me knows you’re right, yet it doesn’t make a jot of difference to the way I feel. I just need some time to accept it, you know? I need to come to terms with it. I would have liked…loved—’ Her voice cracked and she paused, lips pursed, stomach clenched, willing herself to keep it together. ‘To…to have a child of my own some day.’

‘Of course, and you’d make—’ Lyn bit a trembling lip. ‘Would have made a wonderful mother.’

Della fanned her face with her paper napkin. ‘Don’t tell anyone, Lyn. Don’t tell Dawn. I’ll explain it to her myself one day, when I’m ready. But not yet.’

Lyn dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘Mum will feel badly for you.’

‘I know she will. That’s the problem. I can’t cope with her sympathy yet. I can’t cope with anyone’s sympathy.’ Until she could talk about it without shrivelling up inside, she didn’t want anyone else to know.

‘Fair enough.’ Lyn ducked her head and tugged a tissue from her handbag.

‘Let’s talk about something else now. Has Cassie’s first tooth come through yet?’

After blowing her nose, Lyn followed Della’s lead and filled her in on news of her offspring.

Della laughed as Lyn reached the end of an anecdote. ‘You should write all this down. You’d fill a book in no time, and I bet lots of parents would relate to it.’

Lyn flapped a hand. ‘I’m no writer. You and Luke were the ones with the monopoly on that. Or do I mean duopoly? See? I’m no good with words. And, speaking of Luke, what do you think of him moving back here?’

‘Well…’ She scratched her cheek thoughtfully. ‘I find it hard to believe. I can’t imagine him finding life here exciting enough, can you? I can’t help wondering whether he’s only come back to be near his family and friends while he gets over his divorce.’

Lyn frowned. ‘You might have a point, but he won’t talk about it. I think it would do him good if he did.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to talk to you because you have a happy marriage.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Lyn swirled the wine in her glass. ‘You might be right. Why don’t you see if you can get him to talk?’

Della nodded. ‘I’m hoping that’s why he wants to catch up tomorrow night.’

‘Sure. Do your best. Of course, we might be wrong. He might have moved back because he’s sick of the dangers and deprivations of living like he has for so long. Maybe he wants to settle down and live like a normal person.’

‘Could be as simple as that.’

‘Then again,’ Lyn said, ‘this is Luke we’re talking about. He doesn’t do settling down.’

Rushing through her front door the next day, Della cursed the senior consultants’ meeting for going on so long. Now she wouldn’t have time for the leisurely shower she’d planned to indulge in before Luke arrived. She started to remove her clothes on the way upstairs, finished the job in her bedroom and darted into the en-suite bathroom, where she took a shower in record time. She’d pulled on a pair of three-quarter length jeans and a short white T-shirt by the time the doorbell rang.

After finger-combing her hair on the way downstairs, she dragged open the front door. The meagre remains of her breath escaped when she saw Luke standing there. In his jeans, and a black muscle-skimming T-shirt, he looked young again. The embodiment of her fantasy. The man who’d come to her in her dreams night after lonely night, year after long year.

Her nerves buzzed with the thrill of being near him again, reminding her why she’d fallen for him in the first place. As she stared, a trickle of water ran down her neck, and with her nerves so taut it sent a shiver right through her.

‘Hi,’ she said.

He held up his hands. In one, he clutched a brown paper fast-food bag. In the other, a bottle of local wine. He turned it so she could see the label. ‘Will this do? Should I have brought a white too?’