‘No. None.’
‘Wow.’
‘It’s easy for you to look incredulous,’ Poppy snapped, ‘with your model metabolism.’
‘I…’ It was rare for Ankita to be lost for words.
‘I don’t want one,’ Beth rushed in.
‘Me neither.’ Georgie pushed her menu away. She didn’t know what was going on with Poppy but it was clearly more important than the sticky toffee pudding she’d been planning to have.
‘Oh, Ankita, I’m so sorry.’ Poppy’s eyes were filling. ‘I’m a witch. Ignore me.’
‘No,’ they all chorused. ‘Not a witch.’
Georgie was casting around in her mind for something to say to diffuse the emotion when Raf came over.
‘Noah’s told me to have a rest.’ He drew up a chair. ‘And I said yes. Bar work ishard.’ He turned to Poppy. ‘Daniel is ridiculously cute.’
Poppy actually beamed. Seriously. The Raf Effect was ridiculous.
And then Poppy’s smile dropped again and she pushed her chair back. ‘I should go. Daniel should go down for his afternoon sleep.’
‘He looks quite happy at the moment,’ said Ankita.
They all looked over at Daniel. He and Max were on the floor together. Max was doing monkey imitations and Daniel was laughing and laughing. Georgie’s heart clenched with worry.
‘Max is lovely with Daniel, isn’t he?’ Poppy said, sounding quite sentimental. Georgie nodded. She was starting to feel really sick again. ‘But, no, we have to go. Routine is everything with babies. Apparently. And it’s one of my resolutions and I amnotrevealing my secret. Yet, anyway.’
Wow. From the look on Poppy’s face it looked as though her secret could almost rival Georgie’s. Georgie frowned, grappling with that thought, and then shook her head.
‘Photos, then.’ She pulled a face and pointed her phone at Poppy. ‘Hold the pudding menu and look worthy.’ She snapped and then sent the photo to the chat. ‘And when you have Daniel in his buggy and you’re on your way out I’ll take one of you then too.’
As Raf stood to help Poppy out of the door and down the steps with the buggy, Ankita stage-whispered, ‘Georgie, he’s gorgeous and I think he might like you.’
‘Yes.’ Beth nodded vigorously. ‘I think he might be over his wife.’
Raf had very tragically lost his wife to cancer about five years ago and had moved to New York quite soon afterwards.
No waywas Georgie going to contemplate any kind of involvement with someone who was probably still grieving – that was a second-best situation straight off – and also he lived in the US, and she lived in Bristol.
‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly.
‘No, I really think he does,’ Ankita insisted. ‘Youmustlike him, too? Like, who wouldn’t?’
‘No,’ Georgie began. And then she stopped. She really needed to get her envelope back from him. Which would involve her convincing him to post it to her. Or just bin it. But how would she get proof that he’d definitely done that? If shedidneed to spend any time with him trying to convince him, her friends thinking that she liked him would be an excellent smokescreen. And she wassurehe wouldn’t like her in that way, so it wasn’t like she’d be leading him on. ‘A bit,’ she said, aiming for coyness.
‘Noway,’ Ankita screeched.
‘No way what?’ Raf asked, back from helping Poppy.
‘Nothing.’ Ankita fluttered her eyelashes at him, which would have made anyone else look, just, odd, but she actually managed to pull it off.
Raf laughed. ‘Right.’
‘Max, show Ankita and Beth our Christmas Day photos,’ Georgie said. And then, as they both turned towards Max, she said to Raf, ‘Are you free later? I have kind of a big favour to ask you in private. Max and I are going home tomorrow, so I wondered if we could meet this evening?’
Her mother’s cleaner had told her that she was up for babysitting any time this week and she always let Max stay up late and eat a lot of chocolate, so he’d be ecstatic if Georgie went out this evening and left him with her while his grandparents were still out with their ‘nuclear family’.
