‘Oh wow,’ Beth said. ‘Can you do the splits for us now?’
There was a slightly-too-long pause and then Poppy said, ‘Certainly not. It’s very undignified doing the splits in public. It’s something that no adult should ever do other than at home or in an Olympic competition. And that is why I did not ever post any pictures of myself in my perfect splits. Which I can totally do.’
‘Amazing and fair enough,’ Georgie said quickly. ‘So who’s next?’
They should definitely move on; Poppy clearly hadnotkept her resolutions but clearly did not want to read out her secret. And why would anyone want to make her?
‘Raf.’ Ankita handed his piece of paper to him.
‘I just had: Move back to the UK, be in bed before midnight at least five nights a week and stick to one cup of coffee a day. And I did them all.’
‘Hmm, I think we should have made everyone learn a new skill,’ Georgie said. ‘Those wereeasy.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Raf nudged her. ‘Your new-skill-learning went fantastically, didn’t it?’
Dammit. She’d set herself up for that one.
‘Yes, it did actually.’ She kicked his ankle under the table and he grinned.
‘Mine next.’ Ankita held hers up in front of herself with a flourish. ‘Give up caffeine, see my friends more, visit twelve new countries, learn how to mix cocktails.’
‘My goodness.’ Beth’s eyes were on stalks. ‘What countries did you visit?’
‘Only America and Mexico, and I’d already been to America. And I can’t actually live without caffeine. And I don’t really want to mix cocktails because if I ever have guests I just want to talk to them.’
‘So what was your secret?’ Beth was the only one who asked the question, probably because most of themreallydidn’t want to go there because they didn’t want to go anywhere near discussing theirownsecrets.
‘Um, that I’d slept with my boss before I realised he was my boss.’
‘Ankita!’ Beth did a big eye swivel in the direction of Alex.
Ankita sighed out loud. ‘Darling Beth.Alexwas my boss.’
‘Oh. I see.’ Beth reached out to hug both of them. ‘Well, that is cute.’
‘It certainly is.’ Alex was still looking like the cat that got the cream.
‘Beth, the next one is you.’ Ankita passed her list to her.
‘I only had one. And I succeeded.’ She put her hand on her rounded tummy and smiled at Noah. ‘And it was half my secret and I really don’t mind telling you the other half, because you all know anyway.’ Around her friends, Beth was still a complete open book. ‘My resolution and the first half of my secret was to get pregnant this year, although I thought I was maybe going to have to do it by IVF with a sperm donor. Because the second half of my secret was to think about leaving Dominic.’
There were lots of choruses of words to the effect of ‘That’s so wonderful.’ They had indeed all already completely known.
‘Yours next,’ Ankita told Noah.
Noah’s resolution was staying off alcohol and his secret was that he had a very loudly ticking biological clock, so he’d done very well on both.
‘We started trying for a baby almost as soon as we started going out,’ Beth told them.
When everyone had stopped exclaiming even more about how happy they all were for Beth and Noah, Declan whizzed through his flower-buying, getting Daniel on the Irish foreign births register so he could get his Irish passport and Spanish-learning resolutions.
‘And I did them all,hola y gracias, haha,’ he concluded. ‘Who’s next?’
‘Must be me,’ Georgie said, really fast again, so no one could challenge Declan with any Spanish beyond hello-and-thank-you because again why should anyone be forced to share a secret if they didn’t want to? The whole thing had been astupididea. She took the piece of paper from Ankita. ‘Mine were go running,give up chocolate, crisps, cake and pizza, don’t pull my grey hairs out, go to bed before eleven at least four times a week, do yoga at least once a fortnight, learn Italian—’ there was no need to mention the taking-a-GCSE aspect ‘—and learn how to do a jump while ice skating and—’eeknowaydid she want to mention that she’d resolved to cheer Poppy up ‘—that’s it.’
She screwed the piece of paper up and stuck it in her handbag.
‘You can’t have managed all of that?’ Ankita stated.
