appear your mascara is woefully non-water-resistant.’
‘What? Oh no.’ Juliet slid her hand into the bag on the seat next to her, withdrew a mother-of-pearl mosaic-studded compact that Gloria just knew Juliet had made herself, and whipping it open, stared at her reflection, gave a whimper of dismay and then dived into her bag again. This time she withdrew a home-made and perfectly hand-stitched pouch in black velvet with little embroidered bees all over it and Gloria stared, wondering how the hell, in Juliet’s hands, all these mismatched, second-hand, home-made things could always all go together. Withdrawing a pack of face-wipes from the pouch, Juliet rubbed at her cheeks and muttered, ‘Thanks.’
‘So …?’ Gloria prodded, leaning down to rest her hands on the open car door frame so that Juliet couldn’t close the window and ignore her.
‘So?’
Gloria fought the need to roll her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’ God, this ‘F’ word thing was tricky.
‘Absolutely.’
Gloria tipped her head to the side, increasing the intensity of her narrowed gaze. ‘Why are you lying? Should I phone Oscar? Get Kate for you?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Are you sure?’ They’d certainly be better at taking the bruised expression out of her eyes than she was going to be.
‘I’m completely sure, thank you.’
‘Looks like you’re stuck with me, then.’ She studied Juliet as her nervous hands slipped her compact and face-wipes back in her bag and she sucked in her bottom lip, presumably to stop it wobbling. Making a keep talking motion with her hand Gloria advised, ‘Just tell me quickly. You’ll feel better and have time to pull yourself together before Melody comes out because I know you don’t want her seeing you like this.’
Juliet sighed. ‘You’re not going to stop until I tell you, are you?’
Gloria flashed a smile. ‘I always knew those Ditsy prints you insist on wearing didn’t fully reflect your personality.’
Being potentially called ditzy earned her an arched eyebrow before Juliet shook her head slightly, and said, ‘Look, it’s just bad period pains, okay.’
‘So pop a couple of painkillers and be done with it … oh!’ Her brain caught up with her mouth.
Juliet wasn’t pregnant then.
Again.
Still.
Yet.
Nothing slowed down the passage of time quite like not being pregnant. Gloria remembered that from before Persephone had come along.
A lump formed in her chest. At Christmas last year, you’d only had to look at Juliet to think she was pregnant.
She’d had that glow about her.
Coupled with the tiredness and the meepyness it was a natural conclusion.
And wrong.
It had turned out to be overwork and excitement about opening up The Clock House.
But eight months later and Juliet still wasn’t pregnant?
A fact which made the vintage-chic hairdresser’s usually bright button eyes dull and defeated.
Gloria rubbed at her chest. She should never have got out of the car. Juliet needed someone with an A* in friendship, and she only had a C-. Okay, maybe a C+ on a good day.
‘Yep. “Oh”,’ Juliet replied and then dragged in a shaky breath and pasted on a smile. ‘I’ll get over it though and be absolutely fine in a jiffy.’
Liar, liar. ‘Look,’ Gloria said, searching for a way to make it better. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you that the way you parent Melody is—’
‘Don’t,’ Juliet whispered, cutting her off. ‘Don’t be nice to me.’
Oops. Gloria actually got that because she absolutely hated it when she was upset and someone tried to be nice to her. Still. With the ‘F’ word to take into consideration, maybe a less obvious approach was needed. ‘How about I take Melody home with me and Perse this afternoon? You know the two never turn down the option to extend their day together. I can give her tea and you can – I don’t know – take a little time out to howl at the moon or something?’
‘You’re being nice,’ Juliet sniffed. ‘And Melody will be out any minute and like you said, I don’t want her to see me upset.’
Gloria was pleased about that. The last thing kids needed when the world was already so bewildering was to realise that parents hardly ever had their shit together.
When Bob had first left she hadn’t been able to cry at all and then one night, she’d checked her daughter was asleep before creeping out the back door and picking her way down to the bottom of the garden to finally give in to a crying jag. She’d repeated that pattern for a while and maybe all those tears rolling into the soil was why the flowers always bloomed better there, although as a method of growing award-winning roses, she thought she’d give suggesting it to garden designer, Jake, the swerve. Nobody ever needed to know she cried like an actual human.
Chewing down on her tongue to stop anything unhelpfully nice from coming out of her mouth, the irony that lately it was usually the other way around, wasn’t lost on her and then she was sending up a silent prayer of thanks as Juliet’s phone chirped. She stared pointedly at the phone sitting on the passenger seat. ‘Honestly, only you could have some sort of saccharine-Cinderella-sounding bird-cheeping as your ringtone.’
Juliet picked up her phone. ‘It’s a text from Emma. She wants us all to pop into Cocktails & Chai ASAP.’
Gloria tried not to sigh at the timing. Her shift didn’t start for two hours but maybe she could get Bob to take Persephone a couple of hours early.
As if realising what she was thinking, Juliet said, ‘We can take the girls with us. Afterwards, I’ll take Persephone back to mine until Bob’s ready to pick her up, or I can drop her off at Bob’s for you?’
‘Well aren’t you just begging for a distraction,’ Gloria surmised.
‘Going to help me out? It would help take my mind off …’
‘Stalking storks?’
Juliet laughed a little and Gloria felt the lump in her chest dissolve. Surely she got points for at least not making Juliet feel worse. Maybe Fortuna was right. Maybe there was enough ‘nice’ inside of her now.
‘So why do you think we’ve been summoned to Cocktails & Chai?’ she asked. ‘Do you think Emma’s finished the screenplay?’
Emma had never shown regret about declining her big break in Hollywood to stay and manage Cocktails & Chai. Privately Gloria thought that was probably more to do with falling in love with Jake Knightley than running the village tearoom and bar. Then Jake had mentioned her getting back into the writing she used to love before acting. One off-the-cuff suggestion she write a screenplay about his Knightley
