And when he thought of how he’d asked her to marry him, how he’d tried to convince her, persuade her with gentle reason and understanding because he hadn’t been able to believe she didn’t want him... Leo closed his eyes, cringing with the shame of it.
Well, no more. He wouldn’t marry. Or if he did it would simply be for a child. He would not engage his emotions, would not seek anything greater than the most basic of physical transactions. And he would never see Margo again, Margo of the cold feet and the marshmallows...
His face twisted with regret before he ironed out his features and strode on into the night.
* * *
Margo’s stomach lurched for the third time that morning and she pressed one hand against her middle, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. This stomach bug was both insistent and annoying. She’d been feeling nauseous for over a week, although she’d thankfully never actually been sick.
‘Are you all right?’
Margo looked up to see Sophie, her colleague and fellow buyer at Paris’s exclusive department store Achat, frowning at her.
They’d worked together for six years, starting as interns, Sophie with her freshly minted college degree and Margo doing it the hard way, having worked on the shop floor since she was sixteen. They’d both moved up to being assistants, and now they were buyers in their own right. Margo was in charge of the home department; Sophie covered accessories. Both of them were completely dedicated to their jobs.
‘I’m fine. I’ve just been feeling a little sick lately.’
Sophie raised her eyebrows, a teasing smile playing about her mouth. ‘If it was anyone but you I’d be worried.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Margo asked, a note of irritability creeping into her voice. She had been out of sorts for a month now, ever since Leo had left her alone and aching.
It was for the best—it had to be—but she couldn’t keep herself from feeling the hurt. The emptiness.
‘I mean,’ Sophie answered, ‘that I’d think you were pregnant. But you can’t be.’
‘Of course I’m not,’ Margo answered sharply.
Sophie knew her stance on relationships and children: one night over a bottle of wine they’d each confided their intention to have single, solitary, safe lives. At least that was how Margo had viewed it; she suspected Sophie just wanted to play the field.
‘I’m on the mini-pill,’ she stated, and Sophie raised her eyebrows.
‘You haven’t forgotten to take it, then?’
‘No, never.’
Margo frowned at her computer screen and the image there of a selection of silk throw pillows, handcrafted in Turkey, that she was considering for Achat’s exclusive range. Her mind was racing back to that night a month ago, when she and Leo had had their memorable farewell. But she’d taken a pill that morning, and one the next day. She hadn’t missed anything.
‘Well, then, it’s probably just a stomach bug,’ Sophie said dismissively.
Margo barely heard her.
The next morning she’d taken it a bit later, she recalled. She hadn’t been able to sleep after Leo had left, her mind seething and her body aching, so she’d taken a herbal sleeping tablet some time in the middle of the night. It had knocked her out, which had been a blessing at the time, and she had slept for eight hours, waking around eleven, which was only three hours after she normally took the pill...
She couldn’t be pregnant.
But what if those few hours had made a difference? Allowed enough of a window...?
She let out a laugh, then, a trembling, near-hysterical sound that had Sophie looking up from her laptop across their shared open-plan office.
‘Margo...?’
She shook her head. ‘Just thinking how ridiculous your suggestion was.’
And then she turned back to her computer and worked steadily until lunchtime, refusing to give her friend’s teasing suggestion a single second of thought.
Her mind was filled with a static-like white noise even as she focused on the Turkish pillows of hand-dyed silk, and at lunchtime she left her desk and hurried down the Champs-Élysées, walking ten blocks to a chemist that wasn’t too close to Achat’s offices.
She paced the length of the shop, making sure no one who knew her was inside, and then quickly bought a pregnancy test without meeting the cashier’s eye. She stuck the paper bag in her handbag and hurried out of the shop.
Back at the office, she went into the bathroom, grateful that it was empty, and stared at her reflection, taking comfort from the elegant, composed face in the mirror. Her mask. Her armour. For work she wore nothing more than some eyeliner and red lipstick, a bit of powder. Her hair was in its usual sleek chignon and she wore a black pencil skirt and a silver-grey silk blouse.
The shade suddenly reminded her of the colour of Leo’s eyes.
But she couldn’t think about Leo now.
Taking a deep breath, she fumbled in her bag for the test and then locked herself in one of the stalls. She read the directions through twice, needing to be thorough, to focus on the details rather than the big picture that had been emerging ever since Sophie had made her suggestion.
Then she took the test and waited the requisite three minutes, staring at the face of her watch the whole time. As the second hand ticked to twelve for the third time she turned the test over—and stared down at two blazing pink lines.
Positive.
She was pregnant...with Leo’s baby.
For a moment she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even see. She doubled over as the world swam and darkened all around her. Then she took a few shallow breaths and straightened. She wrapped the test in a paper towel and shoved it deep in the bin, washed her hands and retouched her make-up. She would not think about this yet. She couldn’t.
She went back to her office, ignoring a curious look from Sophie, and sat at her desk and worked non-stop until six. She took phone calls, she attended a meeting, she even chatted and joked a little with colleagues.
But all the time she could hear the buzzing in her head. She felt as if she were watching herself from a distance, applauding how effortlessly she was handling it all. Except she wasn’t really...because inside she could feel the beginnings of panic ice over her mind and her belly.
She was pregnant with Leo’s baby.
‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ Sophie asked as Margo rose to gather her things at six.
‘I don’t think...’ Margo began, intending to put Sophie off, but then she hesitated.
She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to her apartment and spending the evening alone—not with this bomb of knowledge still ticking inside of her, waiting to detonate.
‘Why not?’ she amended as lightly as she could, and slipped on her blazer.
It was a warm evening in early September, and the office buildings of Paris’s centre were emptying out onto the wide boulevard of the Champs-Élysées. They walked to a wine bar on a narrow side street, one of their favourites, and sat outside at a rickety table so they could watch the world go by.
‘Red or white?’ Sophie asked as she moved to go inside and order their wine from the bar.
Margo hesitated, and then shook her head. ‘I’ll just have a glass of sparkling water. My stomach is still