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‘It’s ridiculously hot,’ Dee said, fanning her pink face with Dan’s worn straw hat. ‘It’s September; it shouldn’t be this hot. I was hoping for sunny with a light breeze. God, this is what the bloody menopause is going to be like, isn’t it? Mood swings, hot flushes and vaginal dryness. Bloody hell.’
I glanced at her in amusement. We hadn’t even hit our forties yet. Besides, Dee had a cheek moaning about the heat. I was absolutely roasting in a loose-fitting purple maxi dress with one of those elongated cardigans over the top. Paranoia about someone spotting my tiny bump was to blame for my sweaty hairline, but honestly, I was about to melt.
Hearing my mobile beeping, I groped in my handbag.
‘Who’s that?’ Dee jammed Dan’s hat on her head, squashing what I knew to be an expensive blow dry. She looked ravishing in it, as she did in everything she wore. ‘Not Luke cancelling, I hope. Frankie’s got her heart set on playing swingball with him all afternoon.’
‘He wouldn’t miss it for the world. No, he’s just going to be a bit late.’ I took out my sunglasses. Perhaps I could slip off my cardigan when everyone had downed a few of Dan’s pungent sangrias.
‘I suppose, now that Luke’s a senior paramedic, he can’t always just dash out of the door, even for Frankie,’ Dee drawled. ‘Why can’t I have a hero for a husband instead of a gallery owner? It doesn’t sound half as sexy. Art … saving lives. There’s no comparison.’
‘Being a paramedic isn’t sexy. Luke comes home covered in blood most nights.’
‘Don’t spoil it. But seriously. You two are such a couple of romantics.’ Dee sounded wistful.
I glanced at her. ‘You and Dan have a brilliant time together.’
‘Oh yes, we have fun,’ Dee replied vaguely. ‘But still …’ She turned her attention to Dan, who was holding court on the patio wearing torn Bermuda shorts and a navy T-shirt. ‘Look at him. He’s a bloody caveman.’
I studied Dan. He was wielding a beer and a ridiculously large pair of tongs as he told a joke to a group of men in matching short and T-shirt combos.
I smiled. ‘He’s definitely “Man in Charge of Fire.”’
‘Ug, ug. When Luke gets here, there’ll be lots of references to “man tools.”’
‘And about his gigantic barbecue being compensation for a tiny nob.’
Dee’s mouth twitched. ‘Men,’ she said indulgently.
‘Men,’ I agreed. We laughed.
Luke and Dan were proper mates. Although their friendship had been brought about by the closeness of their wives, it was a union in its own right nonetheless; games of pool, putting the world to rights over beers, jokey texts at all hours that caused them to snigger like schoolboys. Standard stuff, but there was genuine respect and affection there too … Maybe even a teeny bit of ‘hetero man love,’ as Dee called it.
Dee flapped her face once more. ‘Right. More people. I need to air kiss and host. I might even proper kiss a few of them, if they’re dishy.’
I watched her as she set off down the lawn, her hot-pink prom dress flouncing around her knees. I sighed a breath of relief; Dan’s sangria was legendary – laced heavily with booze, vodka-spiked fruit bobbing in it – and I couldn’t possibly drink it. Dee was practically a member of the booze police and I knew she would be the most challenging person to keep my pregnancy-dictated avoidance of alcohol from, because drinking was a thing we did together, but, luckily, she was too busy circulating and introducing people as though they were on speed dates to notice.
My friendship with Dee – or Delilah, as she was known back then – began eight years ago, the summer I’d begun working at a book shop. We met in the deli next door, bonding over deliciously pungent houmous, and we cemented our friendship on a night out, working our way through the cocktail menu in a local bar. This, I learnt, was a normal night out for Dee, but it wasn’t for me. I rarely drank in those days, nor was I much of a girl’s girl. I wanted to be, but I struggled, and Dee was the extrovert required to bring me out of my shell. She introduced me to grown-up drinking: Porn Star Martinis (‘because they come with a champagne chaser – it’s the future, darling’) and Salt ‘n’ Peppa Vodkas (neat vodka, with three olives providing the salt element, and a sprinkle of black pepper). Better still, she introduced me to her gaggle of loud friends and, after a few months spent in their company, I found I had gained confidence, although I’d never be Dee.
I glanced around Dee’s sprawling garden. It was reasonably well looked after and, like their house, it was very much a family space. Dominated by climbing frames, swings and, the pièce de résistance, a vast treehouse, erected with much ugging and hammering by Dan in another macho moment.
I waved at Patricia and Nell as they strolled into the garden, glad to see people I recognised. Dee charmed men and women effortlessly and, being the total opposite myself, I envied Dee her enigmatic allure.
I was one of life’s ‘growers,’ a person others tended to need to get to know, rather than instantly warmed to. Dee had a number of opinionated theories about why this was the case, most of them blaming my ‘kooky’ parents and lack of siblings. She probably made a good point, but, whatever the reason, I was still really shy, despite the boost knowing Dee had given me. This, I’m told, translates to ‘stand-offish’ on initial contact. This fact distresses me – it’s not the way I want to be seen – and I have tried to work on it, but it feels forced. And I admit: it’s sometimes easy to forget to make the effort when Luke has enough charisma for the both of us.
Dee joined me again, raising an eyebrow at my still-full glass. Damn. I should have tossed it in the bushes.
‘Drink up, Luce. You’re lagging behind.’
‘Sorry.’ I made to sip it, close to blurting out my baby news. But we had agreed not to talk about the baby until the twenty-week scan this time. Our secret weighed heavily on my shoulders; Dee was my best friend and it didn’t feel natural to keep this from her.
I glanced around for a suitable conversation point to distract Dee. I spotted a woman in a low-cut dress that showed off a plethora of daring tattoos and knew I was safe for the moment.
‘Who’s that? I haven’t seen her at one of your shindigs before.’
Dee obliged with a peppy observation. ‘That is the wife of one of the artists at Dan’s gallery. She’s about to feature in her husband’s explicit nude collection, would you believe?’ Dee flipped her sunglasses down on to her nose. ‘I must’ve been drinking champagne at one of Dan’s events because I don’t even remember inviting her … don’t say it, Luce; I know I can’t handle the bubbles. But honestly. We can see her bum cleavage from here, so I’m not sure the nude paintings will show us anything new. Apart from her fairy parts, perhaps – do you think she has those tattooed as well?’
I snorted. Fairy parts? For such an extrovert, Dee could be surprisingly prudish when it came to sex talk. I felt a sticky hand on my arm.
‘What’s bum cleavage?’ Frankie’s brow wrinkled. She wore a tiara at a rakish angle, giving her the air of an off-duty princess. ‘And fairy parts?’
Dee looked vexed. ‘Franks, you do have the most incredible timing. Can’t you ever appear when I’m talking about school schedules?’
‘You don’t talk about school sched … whatever you said,’ Frankie responded with the brutal honesty of a three-year-old.
‘Are you wearing sun cream?’ Dee fretted, expertly checking Frankie’s shoulders for redness. ‘And where’s your hat?’
‘It’s gone.’ Frankie’s expression darkened. ‘Not talking about it.’ Ignoring her mother’s look of agitation, she turned to me. ‘Where’s Uncle Luke?’
Where indeed? I checked my watch. ‘He’s working, sweetheart, but he promised me he’d be here for your Swingball championship.’
Frankie looked unimpressed. ‘When I grow up, I’m not going to work at all. I’m going to be just like mummy.’
‘Charming.’ Dee took a long, exasperated sip of sangria.
I hid a smile. ‘Mummy does work, Franks. She works hard bringing up the three of you.’
I frowned. What was that? I had felt an odd sensation in my stomach. This pregnancy was scaring the hell out of me. I’d had a few strange twinges in my groin over the past few days, and was concentrating hard on not worrying about them.
‘We’re not work, Auntie Lucy.’ Frankie shot her mother a withering look. ‘We’re just children.’ Catching sight of her brother and sister terrorising a neighbour’s child, she tore after them.
‘Just children,’ Dee echoed faintly. ‘If only. I’d be amused if I thought she was joking.’
I watched Dee’s three children charging down the garden, bellowing and galloping like wild animals. Somehow, Dee and Dan had managed to divide their gene pool equally, giving Jack, their only son, Dee’s height, blonde curls and clear blue eyes. Tilly, their second child, had Dan’s expressive features, his unruly dark hair and the heavy-set jaw more suited to a man than a young girl. And Frankie, the child they hadn’t planned, had inherited a rather exotic blend of them both, giving her dirty-blonde curls and heavy brows that Dee was already itching to wax.
Was our baby a boy? Would he be like Jack, boisterously confident, destroying everything in his path? Or perhaps a girl like Tilly – thoughtful and creative, but still prone to bouts of excitable shrieking and yodelling? Maybe we’d have one of those 4D scans everyone seemed to be having these days, the ones Dee said made babies looked like freaky little aliens with webbed fingers.
‘They’re so very loud,’ Dee continued, clutching her hair. ‘They actually make my brain rattle sometimes.’
I felt something familiar struggling to break free and I squashed it down, hard. It wasn’t just Dee’s languid charm I envied. Her life seemed so perfect, so complete. The house, the garden, the fact that she and Dan were entirely suited – no, that wasn’t it, because so were Luke and I. But the children. I closed my eyes briefly. If only I could be blessed with half … a third, of Dee’s luck. Easy conceptions, smooth pregnancies, no major heartaches along the way.
I need to be clear about this: I loathed myself for the acrid ripples of jealousy that often poleaxed me without warning. Dee was my best friend and she had been supportive, sympathetic and downright heroic during the endless miscarriages and the ensuing heartache.
But somehow, Dee’s ripe fertility left the stench of failure all over me. Two major events had rocked our friendship. The first had been the time Dee had admitted that she and Dan were pregnant again, by accident. Frankie’s unexpected arrival had caused a new kind of grief. The choking kind that left a ball of spiky thistle in the back of my throat. An accidental baby? One that hadn’t required temperature-taking, vitamins, injections or side effects? Dee’s apologetic hug when she’d told me had almost tipped me over the edge and we had clung to one another wordlessly. What was there to say?
The second event had been more recent, the time Dee had cautiously suggested that I consider ‘letting go’ of my baby dreams. My fingers involuntarily curled around my glass of sangria at the memory, those feelings clawing at me again. Ferocious rage, screaming frustration and an urge to strike Dee had been so violently strong that I had been forced to stalk away at high speed. We hadn’t spoken for a month and I had grieved for our friendship, certain we would never speak again. Dee had left countless pleading messages on my mobile, followed by some drunken ones accompanied by tuneless singing to the soundtrack of that old TV show The Golden Girls – we used to watch it constantly after nights out back in the day – and after the fifteenth rendition of ‘Thank you for being a frrriiieeend,’ I had finally relented. I knew deep down that Dee had suggested giving up on our baby dreams because she cared. To underline the hideousness of the whole sorry episode, we had lost our second IVF baby shortly afterwards, and Dee had been almost as devastated as we had been.
Dee interrupted my reverie. ‘Let’s go and join Dan at the barbecue; he’s looking forlorn.’ We strolled towards the patio together.
‘Good lord, who’s that?’ Dee said, waving to someone.
‘Haven’t a clue. Did Dan invite him? Nell looks gorgeous, doesn’t she?’
She did. Luke’s sister was naturally stylish with bobbed hair, the same chestnut-brown shade as Luke’s. She was wearing what looked like one of her own creations, a stylish tea dress with an unusual hemline. The print was bold, but it suited her.
‘That’s Nell’s friend Lisa,’ I informed Dee, ‘from school, I think. She owns about five clothes shops already. She’s the archetypal business woman.’
‘Wow. Five shops. That’s so cool.’
Dee always admired other women who ran businesses. I had a suspicion she might harbour secret dreams of becoming the next female Richard Branson, if only she could find a slot in her children’s busy social schedules.
‘That guy she’s being chatted up by is cute,’ Dee said. ‘Her type? … Oh, no, maybe not.’
Watching Nell politely brush the guy off, we waited for her to join us. ‘Hey,’ Nell said warmly. ‘What a perfect day for a barbecue.’
‘It’s too bloody hot,’ Dee grumbled, wiping her brow. ‘This is what the menopause will be—’
‘Ignore her; she gets crabby in the heat.’ I turned to Nell. We really needed to get our friendship back on track – somehow we’d drifted lately. ‘Listen, do you fancy coming over for coffee tomorrow morning?’ I intended to hide behind the kitchen counter and distract Nell with some bad cooking. Sweltering in the heat, I pulled my cardigan round my tummy to disguise the swell.
Nell seemed pleased. ‘That sounds great. Oh dear, look at mum. She’s being chatted up by a man with a beard. She has a thing about beards. And not in a good way.’
‘Who does?’ Dee shuddered and waved Nell away. ‘Go, rescue her.’
I put a hand on my stomach. There it was again. A tiny flutter inside. Like butterfly wings beating. It was the baby, it was moving. It was too early, surely? I gasped, turning away from Dee. The baby was stretching its limbs, wriggling, kicking. Relief coursed through me. There was nothing wrong. Everything was fine. My baby was growing and moving and it felt magical.
‘Are you all right, Dan?’ Dee frowned as Dan started frantically poking the sausages. They looked cremated.
He groaned. ‘It’s all gone a bit …’
‘Pete Tong?’ Luke appeared, putting his hands on Dan’s shoulders. Wearing navy shorts and a crumpled white shirt, he looked as though he’d recently stepped out of the shower. ‘Desperado, you are truly awful at cooking. Do you need some help, sweetie?’
‘Finally, the cavalry arrives!’ Dan clapped his hand on Luke’s back in a display of manly camaraderie.
Luke noisily kissed Dan’s cheek then did the same to Dee. ‘Look at the size of that barbecue.’ He turned back to Dan and rubbed his chin gravely. ‘You know what they say about men and their barbecues don’t you, Dee?’
Dee giggled as Dan handed Luke a beer.
‘Shut up, you arse. And don’t you dare mention my man tools.’
‘Tongs.’ Luke shook his head. ‘You are such a girl, Danny boy.’ He caught sight of me and immediately came over. ‘Hey you,’ he said in my ear. ‘Everything okay?’
I nodded. I wanted to tell him about the baby moving but now wasn’t the time. I leaned in and gave him a kiss. He hugged me, his hands on my back. There was something about the way Luke touched me that made me feel completely cherished. Or turned on. Depending on the type of touch on the given day.
‘I missed you,’ he said, pulling back to look into my eyes. ‘That’s totally naff, isn’t it? I’ve only been at work.’
‘Yes, it’s totally naff. You’re adorable though. Never stop saying stuff like that.’
I felt Dee watching us, but when I looked at her properly I wasn’t quite sure what to read from her eyes.
I pushed Luke away jokingly. ‘Go. Go and help your boyfriend.’
Luke grinned and strolled back to the barbecue. ‘Hand your tongs over, boy,’ he told Dan. He started to fork sausages on to a plate or into the bin, depending on their blackness.
The food was disappearing as fast as they were cooking it. I picked at an avocado salad and helped Frankie dissect a rather charred sausage she kept describing as ‘dirty.’ Dan was drunk and taking all the credit for the cooking. ‘Well, my sausages might have been a bit burnt, but it’s probably going to be better than Lucy’s dinner tomorrow.’
I flicked his bare thigh hard, gratified when he yelped.
‘Ouch!’
Luke handed the tongs back over. ‘For that, my friend, you are on your own. No one disses my wife’s cooking, not even me.’
‘But it’s really, really bad …’ Dan protested.
‘Enough! Bring me one of those burgers if it’s a shade lighter than noir, would you, serving wench?’ Skipping out the way of Dan’s slap, Luke put his arm around my shoulder. ‘Are you sure everything is all right? You look lovely, by the way. That purple thing is nice.’
‘Really? My stomach shows under this cardigan and my boobs look massive.’
‘Every cloud.’ Luke tightened his grip. ‘Not long now until the next scan. Counting the days.’
‘I think Dee might have guessed about the baby but I haven’t said anything.’ I gestured to my untouched glass. ‘But listen. I felt the baby move. Properly. I was panicking because of those twinges, but then it felt like something fluttering around inside me.’
‘Christ, what have we got in there if it’s got wings?’ Luke went to laugh then stopped. ‘God, that’s amazing, Luce. What did it feel like? Tell me everything. Every single thing.’
I willingly described the extraordinary sensation, several times, in minute detail. I felt so incredibly happy and, as the night drew darker and the air chillier, I gratefully wrapped my cardigan around my stomach, keeping our secret that way for as long as possible.
Laughing as Luke and Dan danced to One Direction, even though they should have known better at their age, I allowed myself to relax. I chatted to Patricia briefly – the usual chit-chat – but I was probably distracted by the baby sensations I was feeling. My arms ached – ached – at the thought of holding our baby, but this time it was a good feeling. A beautiful feeling. I could barely wait.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_bab72590-e7df-5a5a-ab38-652abd47b968)
Nell (#ulink_bab72590-e7df-5a5a-ab38-652abd47b968)
Nell watched Lucy peering anxiously into the oven. She had some dodgy-looking meringues in there and, apparently, they were her fourth attempt. Nell couldn’t imagine bothering to cook something twice, let alone four times. She might re-cut a pattern fifteen times until she got it right, but that was different; that was her passion. She guessed this anniversary meal must be enormously important to Lucy, especially since she detested cooking so much.
Nell glanced around the small but homely kitchen. It was immaculate, with everything in its place. With Lucy in charge, how could it be anything but? There was a huge bunch of fragrant yellow flowers on the windowsill, brightening the room. There were always flowers in the kitchen; it was Lucy’s thing – well, Luke’s thing for Lucy.
Nell watched her, wondering why she had been cold-shouldered over the past few months. They were close and had been ever since Luke introduced Lucy to the family, so it was inexplicable. Upsetting, too.
Nell rolled her shoulders. It didn’t matter. Lucy was being friendly again; they would be back on track in no time. Besides, was it only Lucy’s fault they hadn’t talked much recently? Nell had her own reasons for not challenging the distance that had developed between them.
‘They won’t cook any quicker if you stare at them, you know,’ Nell found herself saying to Lucy. ‘God, I’m turning into my mum. Stop me if I start banging on about the WI and poking my nose into everyone’s business, won’t you?’
‘Nell, I don’t think you’re in any danger of that.’
This was followed by a semi-snort and Nell wondered if she had imagined the slight edge to Lucy’s tone. Perhaps not. Her mum was horrendously nosy – they berated her for it all the time – and Nell knew that Lucy was a very private person.
Lucy straightened, her face flushed from the oven. ‘So. I’m cheating a bit with a tomato bruschetta starter and I think I can just about cook the herby lamb things. It’s just these awful, pissing meringues.’ She wiped her furrowed brow. ‘I mean, how is it possible to undercook them, overcook them and, my best one yet … turn them into shrivelled cowpats?’
‘You know this is like the blind leading the blind?’ Nell picked up the iPad Luke had left on the counter. ‘How to cook the perfect meringue,’ she began, skim-reading the page. ‘Right. Apparently, you need to use a glass bowl, you mustn’t get yolks into the whites and it’s imperative that you use cream of tartar. What the hell is cream of tartar?’
