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“For God’s sake, stop it! You’re doing my head in, the lot of you.” Gerry’s voice slices through the air, silencing us. Louise and I begrudgingly sit back down. I try to steady my breathing. My heart is pounding so hard that I’m surprised they can’t hear it next door.
“Anyway,” Francesca continues briskly, “as fate would have it, she lost her kid and so the deal’s back on again! Whoopee.” She cries in fake glory.
We’re all speechless, the air dense with tension. In the distance, Roxy whines and scratches at the kitchen door. Louise looks at Gerry pleadingly, a tear sliding down her pale face.
“She is right about one thing, though,” Francesca points at me as she crosses the room and picks up the baby monitor off the dining room table. “You are a bloody selfish cow,” she whispers, bending down to Louise’s eye level. “I’ve a good mind to keep Thomas. You’re just lucky I need the sodding money.” Louise winces as Francesca shoves the baby monitor into her hands. How can she speak about her own child as if he’s a commodity?
“Right, that’s it.” Gerry stands up, fists clenched by his sides.
“Okay, okay, keep your hair on.” Francesca straightens up.
“Leave it, Gerry.” Louise gets to her feet and stands between them, arms outstretched like a referee. “Yes, okay, Francesca, you’ve made your point. Can you please just go now?” she says irritably. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Francesca huffs as she backs away. “I’m meeting up with some friends up West,” she says blithely, applying a fresh layer of lipstick in front of the mirror above the fireplace. “He’ll need a feed soon.” She presses her lips together, then grabs her bag off the armchair. “Don’t wait up.”
When the front door slams Louise rushes over and kneels in front of me.
“Don’t believe her.” She wraps her hands around mine, they’re cold. “You don’t know what she’s like. She’s a liar, a cheat, a manipulator.” I raise my eyebrows. “We’d have told you and Nick about the adoption once the dust had settled. Once we’d sorted out the loan with the bank. That was the plan, wasn’t it Gerry?” She looks at Gerry for support but he just shakes his head. “Look, Audrey, please, you’re my best friend. I did what I thought was best for everyone. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to cause you any more pain. He’d hurt you enough.” She looks at me pleadingly. But she’s dug a hole that’s too deep. A pit that she’ll never be able to climb out of. “I mean, we didn’t force him to have sex with her, did we?” Her eyes widen excitedly, she must be mistaking my silence for compliance.
I pull my hands away and she flinches. “Have you any idea what I’ve been going through? How many sleepless nights I had trying to work out why he suddenly left me? Hell, I thought that it was me, that I’d done something wrong, that he’d gone off me, that I was too old for him. I felt ugly, rejected, lonely. My confidence was in tatters. And to think you had the power to save me from all that anguish right from the beginning.”
Louise jumps to her feet and starts pacing, biting her nails. “I didn’t know you’d find out about the baby before I had the chance to tell you, did I? You weren’t supposed to visit him in hospital, start seeing him again for crying out loud!”
“Oh, so all this is my fault, then, is it? Louise, will you listen to yourself? You want to adopt, no sorry, BUY Nick’s baby. MY ex- fiancé’s baby – that’s insane!”
“YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S BLOODY LIKE!” Her loud, piercing voice almost bursts my eardrums. Gerry and I exchange glances. “You with your perfect relationship and smug, child-free contentment.”
“Louise, that’s enough,” Gerry says firmly.
“I was desperate for a family with Gerry. Desperate!” I gawp at her in amazement. I had no idea she resented me and Nick for being happy. “I wanted to adopt Thomas right from the beginning, I’m not going to lie to you.” How ironic. I want to laugh. “I only called off the deal with Francesca because Gerry didn’t think I’d be able to cope with two babies, that’s the God’s honest truth,” she says, as if Thomas is some kind of lucrative contract. “I’d have sorted it out for Francesca somehow, helped her, given her some money to help raise Thomas on her own. But she went off to Nick’s all guns blazing before I could stop her.” She pauses. “Of course, now we’re in a position to adopt him again. Don’t you see, Audrey? This IS a miracle, Thomas is Gerry’s nephew, there’s a blood connection, they share some DNA. It can’t get any better than this for us. This is our last chance to be a proper family, and…”
“Stop it, Louise, I’ve heard enough.” I stand up.
“But, Audrey, can’t you see that…”
“I can’t believe you betrayed me like this,” I cut across her icily. “You’re not the friend I thought you were. I’ll see myself out.” She rushes behind me, blabbering, crying.
“Come on, Louise,” Gerry pulls her back gently, “I’ll walk Audrey to her car.”
Gerry asks me to cut Louise some slack as we walk against the cold, sharp wind, says that she hasn’t been herself lately, that her obsession to have a family has taken over her life, is straining their relationship.
“Don’t be angry with Nick. He was kept in the dark about most of this. Poor sod,” he says as two giggling girls rush past us, mobile phones in hand. “And there’s something else you should know too.” Jesus, I’m not sure I can take any more surprises today. “I told him not to tell you about the baby.”
I stop walking and look at him. This just gets worse and worse. We start walking again.
“I…” He closes his eyes briefly, “WE suggested that he postpone the wedding until we got everything sorted with Francesca, made her see sense. She was threatening to tell you everything herself if Nick didn’t leave you and take full responsibility for their child, and she meant it, too. I love my sister but she can be a cruel bitch sometimes. I think she even called your number a few times, just to show Nick she meant business.” So those anonymous calls were definitely her then. “We thought we could calm her down if you just put the wedding off for a while. At first Nick wouldn’t listen, was adamant that you should know the truth. He somehow believed your love was strong enough to take it. He’s still in love with you, you know that, don’t you? You’re in his blood.”
I stare at the pavement, swallowing back the tears that are welling in my throat.
“Anyway, in the end I managed to persuade him that it was the kindest thing to do, that it’d be less painful for you than the truth. It was a big ask, I can see that now.” He rakes his hands through his hair. “Christ Almighty, Audrey, what a bloody mess. I can’t help feeling responsible for his accident, wondering if all this trauma sent him over the edge.”
We’ve reached my car, the end of the road. “Well, say something, then.” He laughs nervously, rubs his arms, then turns up the collar of his short-sleeved checked shirt, as if that will keep up the cold. “Please don’t look at me like that.” But I can’t tell him what he wants to hear, not this time. I can’t comfort him with words of wisdom, nor wrap him in a blanket of compassion. I don’t think he understands the extent of damage that they’ve caused.
“Thanks for explaining Nick’s involvement in all this, Gerry, we’ve only just rescued our friendship, it couldn’t take another knockback.”
“I shouldn’t have let this happen. I shouldn’t have let Louise manipulate me. I was weak. Stupid.” He exhales loudly, his warm breath forming a puff of mist in the cold air. “I’m just so, so sorry.” He blinks and a tear splashes from his eye and rolls down his face.
“Look, I’d better go.” I unlock the car and climb in.
