Sophie nodded, remembering with a sudden, horrible clarity the terror she’d felt at this point in her own pregnancy. She couldn’t possibly identify with Amy’s emotions because she had no experience of the joy that anyone actually intending to become pregnant might feel. ‘Well, let’s go inside and crack open the water to celebrate! To be honest, Amy, they’ll all know the second you refuse a glass of champagne anyway.’
They made their way through the flagstoned lobby into a vast kitchen equipped with all the latest mod cons. Sophie ran her hand longingly over the granite worktop, thinking of her own tiny Ikea galley kitchen back at home.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Amy filled the kettle and put it on to boil while Sophie pulled out a wooden chair and sat down at the huge, stripped oak table.
‘I’m sure it’s not that dissimilar to yours.’ Sophie looked around her in awe as she spoke. She hadn’t been to Amy and Nick’s house in Notting Hill yet but she knew it was spectacular from Melissa, who had crashed there many times after a boozy night out. Apparently, there was a separate flat in the basement that she could use whenever she liked. Melissa had tactlessly told Sophie that the flat alone was bigger than Sophie and Steve’s whole house.
Amy made a cup of tea for Sophie and a cup of hot water for herself. ‘I’ve gone right off tea,’ she mused, as she placed the steaming mug in front of Sophie.
‘I did too but it’ll come back, don’t you worry. So, how’s Nick taken the news?’
Amy sat down opposite Sophie and sighed prettily. ‘He’s thrilled. We’d been trying for a while and we were both starting to get a bit worried. It’s weird though – I just knew when I was pregnant.’
Sophie nodded, enjoying Amy’s delight but envying her too. Her own emotions had been such a mess when she discovered she was pregnant. She couldn’t say she had felt happy at any point in her pregnancy. There was just a cloud of guilt and doubt hovering over her all the way through that tarnished it. Made it less special.
‘Were you the same?’ Amy prompted.
Sophie’s attention snapped back to the present. She had to let all the negativity go. She couldn’t change what had happened so she had to accept it and move on. ‘Um, not really. Emma was a surprise in every way. A happy accident.’
Amy beamed, clearly not guessing for one second that Sophie had been anything other than delighted by her pregnancy. At least she could comfort herself that she had managed to put on a convincing act. Only Melissa knew the truth, which was that at one particularly low point, she had rung a helpline to investigate a termination. But by then it was too late. The thought made her skin prickle with horror now. The idea that her little darling might not have existed was one that she couldn’t contemplate.
‘Have you got any photos? I’m dying to see what she looks like now.’
Sophie reached for her bag and pulled out the envelope she had stuffed with pictures of Emma.
Amy took them and began to leaf through them. ‘Oh, Soph, she’s perfect!’
Sophie could feel the tears burning at the backs of her eyes. ‘Yes. She is.’
‘God, she looks so much like Steve!’
People said that all the time. But Sophie couldn’t allow herself to hope. To believe it.
She stood up and walked to Amy’s chair, looking over her shoulder at the photo she had in her hand. In it, Steve was sitting with Emma on his lap on the sofa in their tiny sitting room. He was tickling her and she was arching her little body away from him but her face was split with a wide, milky smile that perfectly matched Steve’s. She did look like him. But then, Sophie sometimes thought that at certain angles she also looked a bit like Matt. The mind played tricks like that all the time.
She would have liked to forget what Matt looked like and could easily have blotted his face from her mind if it wasn’t for the fact that his star had continued to rise and he was now presenting several of the major news bulletins. She always switched channels but it was impossible to avoid him altogether. He always seemed to be on somewhere, reading the news. She and Steve had never discussed Matt after they were reconciled. It was as if they had an unspoken rule that he should never be mentioned. Maybe it was the only way both of them could cope with it and it certainly suited Sophie. She just wanted to forget.
At that moment, the doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ she offered eagerly. The ground floor was up a flight of stairs that led to a grand, tiled hallway and Sophie gazed around her as she made her way to the door. The house was vast and stunning. It made her tiny terrace look like a shoebox. The seeds of dissatisfaction with her own humble surroundings that were beginning to take root were quickly forgotten as she threw open the wide, heavy door to reveal Melissa and Emily, who had travelled down together by train.
They gave a united squeal of delight before enveloping Sophie in a barrage of hugs, amid cries that she had ‘lost so much weight!’ and her hair looked ‘fantastic’. Sophie returned the hugs, smiling ruefully to herself at the unspoken suggestion of how truly awful she must have looked the last time they saw her.
Clattering down to the kitchen, dropping bags and jackets as they went, they gabbled various compliments about the house and moans about the train journey before they swamped Amy with yet another blanket of squeals and cries of delight.
Sophie put the kettle on and sighed happily. Things were definitely looking up for them all.
Melissa linked her arm through Sophie’s as they strolled beside the river on their way into the centre of Bath. It was a warm day without being stifling and already the streets were packed with tourists and shoppers making the most of the summer weekend. ‘You seem really good, Soph. And you’re doing so well at work! Big Brother’s a huge hit. You must be pleased.’
Sophie looked down at Melissa and smiled. ‘I am. I’m much more suited to producing this type of show than news. I wish I’d switched years ago…’ She left the words hanging in the air for a second, imagining how different things would be if she had. ‘I’m really sorry about… well, how I was last year. It all got a bit too much, you know?’
Melissa nodded and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry too. I was a bit of a mess myself, with nothing like your excuse.’
Sophie didn’t reply, unsure what to say. Melissa seemed together enough but she didn’t look great. Her black hair was dull and lank and her skin, which normally glowed with good health, now looked spotty and blotchy. ‘I know, I know. I look like shit.’ As always, Melissa voiced what Sophie was thinking.
‘You don’t look like shit. But you don’t look yourself either. What’s going on? Is everything OK?’
Melissa unlinked her arm from Sophie’s and thrust her hands into the pockets of her jeans. It was a defensive gesture and made her look both young and vulnerable.
‘You don’t have to tell me. But you’ve always been there for me when I really needed you and I’d like to do the same for you, Liss. I want to help.’
Melissa gazed up, her large brown eyes swimming suddenly. ‘I’m fine.’
Sophie reached out and put an arm around Melissa’s tiny shoulders. Instinctively she recoiled, shocked by how thin she felt to touch, the bones jutting out to fill the palm of her hand. ‘You’re not fine. But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted you to know that I’m here.’
‘Thanks.’ Melissa shrugged a wan smile and sniffed hard. She did a lot of sniffing, Sophie noticed.
‘Look, it’s probably none of my business but it might help if you didn’t do coke any more.’
Melissa