Extract
HOW COULD SO many things have gone so terribly, terribly wrong?
Ellie Thomas could feel the shape of the phone she was holding against her ear. The edges felt sharper as her grip tightened. They were tangible and real.
What she was hearing couldn’t possibly be real.
Could it...?
‘Ava—are you still there?’
A moment’s silence and then she heard her friend’s voice again. Her best friend since...since as long as she could remember. A bond that had lasted throughout childhood. Through the trauma of Ava’s surgery and chemotherapy as a teenager. With happy memories like being Ava’s bridesmaid two years ago and the darker memories of her best mate’s despair at not being able to become a mother—a side effect of the treatment that had saved her life.
A friendship that had seemed unbreakable. Until two weeks ago...
‘Yeah...I’m still here.’ A stifled sob could be heard. ‘And...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ellie.’
Sorry? Did that somehow make this okay?
‘Where are you?’ Ellie could hear the sound of an announcement of some kind going on in a noisy background. Was Ava at a train station? ‘Talk to me, Ave. We can sort this out. I’ve been trying to call you since the beginning of last week.’
Ever since she had heard that Marco, Ava’s gorgeous looking but sometimes volatile husband, had packed a bag and walked out on her.
The day after that awful row... The last time she and Ava and Marco had been in the same room together.
‘I was getting frantic,’ Ellie added.
Terrified might be a bit closer to the truth.
The silence on the other end of the line was unnerving. Ellie could feel a tight knot of fear that was making it difficult to draw in a new breath. This couldn’t be happening. A friendship like this couldn’t just evaporate because of something that hadn’t even been her fault. Not after all they’d been through together and especially not with what they were going through right now.
‘I didn’t encourage him, Ava. You know that, don’t you? I was just as horrified as you were that he tried to kiss me.’
‘It wasn’t just you.’ Ava had stopped crying and there was anger in her low, fierce tone. ‘He’s been cheating on me the whole time. He admitted it. Said I would never have been enough for a man like him. That our marriage had been a huge mistake because I couldn’t accept that.’ The tears were obviously flowing again and her next words were totally broken. ‘...that trying to have a baby was just putting a Band-Aid on a wound that was already fatal.’
Ellie could hear an odd humming and there were bright specks in front of her eyes. Oh, yeah...
Breathe...
‘You’re not trying to have a baby.’ Her words came out in a voice she hardly recognised as her own. ‘You are having a baby. In about four weeks.’
‘But don’t you see? I can’t do it now. My world’s fallen apart, Ellie and I can’t hang on to anything. It’s not even my baby...’
Technically, this was true. Technically, this was Ellie’s baby. Ellie and Marco’s. The gift that was the one thing that could make life perfect for Ava. It had been such a huge decision, offering to be a surrogate, but Ellie hadn’t really hesitated. This was something she could do for the most important person in her life—the only real family she had left.
Fear was morphing into anger, which was a relief because it made it easier to breathe again.
‘I’m thirty-six weeks pregnant, Ava. With your baby. Yours and Marco’s. A baby I would never have dreamed of having otherwise. I’m single, remember? I don’t have any family to support me. I don’t even have a boyfriend, as you well know. I’m supposed to go back to work in six weeks and if I don’t, I won’t be able to pay my rent. And you’re sorry?’
The silence against the background noise was astonishingly loud. Time seemed to be standing still. It could have been seconds but it felt like minutes or even hours. And when it was finally broken, the words Ellie could hear were almost too strangled to understand.
‘Got to go...last call...can’t miss my plane...’
Fear was strong enough to feel like pain, now.
‘Plane? Where are you going? Ava...? Ava?’
The beeping of a disconnected line said it all but Ellie couldn’t hang up. She lowered the phone and stared at it. Any moment now, the dropped line would be abandoned and she would see the image that was on the screen of her locked phone. The picture of herself and Ava, with their arms around each other, Ava pressing a kiss to her cheek and the smile on Ellie’s face making it clear that she was the happiest person in the world.
And there it was...
Ellie dropped the phone on the floor. She wrapped her arms around the huge bump that was her belly now and bent her head to try and deal with the wave of fear and pain that was threatening to wash her over the edge of an unimaginably high cliff.
A pain that was an overwhelming swirl of loss and anger and bewilderment and terror.
It wasn’t going to ebb any time soon, either. It filled her chest and made it impossible to breathe again but then it seemed to move to her back as well. And then to her belly, where it gripped harder and harder...
Ellie could feel the muscles under her hands tightening with the strength of a vice. This wasn’t just emotional—it was becoming very, very physical.
She was an emergency department nurse, for heaven’s sake. She knew what this was but it took another five minutes and the start of another contraction to admit it. When she saw the blood trickling down her leg fast enough to be pooling on the worn linoleum of her floor, she realised just how much trouble she might be in.
Gripping the armrest of her chair, she managed to lower herself onto her knees on the floor and reach for her phone. The call was answered instantly.
‘Ambulance... What is your location...?’
* * *
Lucas Gilmore was getting used to pushing through the overgrown shrubs on the front path. He’d find time to trim them soon but there had been more important things to do. Like making the house habitable.
The man walking behind him stopped beside the front steps and brushed pollen and spider webs off the dark trousers of his dress suit. The smile was a little forced but an aspiring leader in local real estate like Mike knew how to disguise distaste.
His smile faded, however, as he turned
