go now we can be home by midnight.’
Sophie wrapped her arms around him, breathing in his smell and enjoying the warmth from his body. ‘I love you.’ It was the first time she had said it for months. Probably because it was the first time she had felt it for months.
‘I love you too,’ Steve murmured, with a slight crack in his voice.
From the distance of a year, it was hard to remember how bad she had felt back then. Sophie’s insides curdled with shame if she thought about it for too long, especially how she had felt about her darling Emma, now eighteen months old and only just starting to toddle. Sophie smiled as she pictured her little girl, with her cloud of silky blonde hair and her huge navy blue eyes that always made Sophie melt. It had taken so long to bond with her but when she finally did, it was like a dam bursting and now she couldn’t get enough of her. She’d made sure she’d packed plenty of photos to show the others this time.
It seemed like a lot longer than a year since they had all been together. A new millennium had dawned and Sophie certainly felt as though she had lived a whole life in between. Becoming a mother had changed her. It had shaken her to her core but she had survived and emerged stronger than before.
The fact that Amy – or rather Nick – had organized the Brighton weekend instead of her, had added to her general feeling of being out of kilter. But now, having returned to work as a producer on a big new reality show called Big Brother, and literally being back in the driving seat, she could feel herself regaining some of the vitality she had lost.
She pulled into a side road that took her to the parking spaces behind the tall Regency town house she had rented. It was so much easier now that she could go onto the Internet and book online, seeing the house properly before actually booking it. She climbed out and stretched, looking up at the gleaming sash windows with the sun glinting against the inky blackness and smiled to herself. It was exactly as it had looked online. She took her bag out of the boot and made her way to the back door.
She was casting around for the pot under which the owner had hidden the key when the door flew open. ‘Sophie!’ yelled Amy, tumbling over the step in her hurry to embrace her.
Sophie hugged her tightly, burying her face in Amy’s silky auburn hair, which smelt of summer and combined with her Hermès scent to make Sophie feel light-headed with happiness. They broke apart and held each other at arm’s length. ‘You look incredible.’ Sophie shook her head slightly as she spoke, unable to believe that Amy could look any more beautiful. But she did. There was something new. Something unmistakable. ‘You’re not pregnant, by any chance?’
Amy gave a tiny squeal and clamped her hand over her mouth quickly. ‘Don’t say anything to the others yet. I’m only eight weeks. I don’t want to jinx it.’
Sophie grinned. ‘I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep it a secret. They’ll know the second they clap eyes on you.’
‘Is it really that obvious?’ Amy’s green eyes danced as she spoke, radiating happiness.
Sophie’s gaze moved down to Amy’s belly that, typically, was still as flat as ever. ‘Maybe it’s only obvious to me because I recognize the signs. Emily will probably clock it too.’
‘That’s why I got here early, so that I could see you alone. I’ve been so desperate to speak to someone who’d understand how it feels.’
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
