it? She wasn’t expecting anyone. She scrubbed at her face with her sleeve and took a deep breath. Right at that moment she wished she hadn’t cut her hair short, because then at least she could’ve hidden her face a bit. As it was, she’d have to brazen it out. She opened the door just a crack. ‘Yes?’
‘Bailey, are you all right?’
‘Jared?’ She frowned. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We have a meeting to discuss Darren, remember?’
She remembered now. Joni’s news had knocked the meeting completely out of her head.
She couldn’t let Jared see her in this state. ‘Can we do it tomorrow?’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked again, and this time he pushed the door open. He took one look at her and said, ‘No, you’re not all right.’ Very gently, he manoeuvred her backwards, closed the door behind them and cupped her face between his hands. ‘You’ve been crying.’
‘Give the monkey a peanut,’ she muttered, knowing that she was being rude and unfair to him but hating the fact that he’d caught her at a weak, vulnerable moment.
But he didn’t pay any attention to her words. ‘Come on. I’ll get you a drink of water.’ He put one arm round her. ‘Your kitchen’s at the end of the corridor, yes?’
‘Yes.’
She let him lead her into the kitchen and sit her down at the bistro table. He opened several cupboard doors before he found where she kept her glasses, then poured her a glass of water; she accepted it gratefully.
Jared waited until Bailey had composed herself for a bit before he made her talk. He knew she’d been to yoga with Joni and then out for dinner; it was their regular Monday night catch-up. But he’d wanted to have a quick chat with Bailey about Darren, their problem player, so she’d agreed to be home for nine o’clock and meet him at her place. Jared had been caught up in a delay on the Tube after a signal had broken down, so he’d been all ready to apologise for being twenty minutes late for their meeting, but that didn’t matter any more. Clearly something bad had just happened.
‘What’s happened? Is Joni all right?’
‘She’s fine.’ Bailey dragged in a breath. ‘It was good news.’
‘Good news doesn’t normally make you cry or look as if you’ve been put through the wringer,’ he pointed out.
‘I’m fine.’
They both knew she was lying.
‘It’s better out than in,’ he said softly. And he should know. He’d bottled it up for a while after Sasha, until his oldest brother had read him the Riot Act and made him go to counselling. And that had made all the difference.
‘I can’t break a confidence.’
‘Under the circumstances, I think,’ he said softly, ‘that Joni would forgive you. Or maybe I can guess. Good news, from someone who’s just got married—it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to know what that’s likely to be.’
And it didn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to put the rest of it together, either. What would make someone bawl their eyes out when they learned that their best friend was going to have a baby? Either Bailey couldn’t have children or she’d had a baby and lost it. Miscarriage, stillbirth, cot death … a loss so heartbreaking that she’d never really recovered from it. And neither had her marriage.
Was that why she’d been so adamant that the break-up hadn’t been her ex’s fault? And was that why she’d suddenly been so antsy at the park, when she’d asked him if he wanted children?
The way she looked at him, those beautiful dark eyes so tortured, was too much for him. He came round to her side of the table, scooped her out of her chair, sat in her place and settled her on his lap, his arms tightly wrapped round her. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me. And whatever you say isn’t going any further than me, I promise you.’
She didn’t really know him well enough to be completely sure that he wouldn’t break his promise, but he hoped that she’d got to know him enough over the time they’d worked together to work out that he had integrity.
‘What happened, Bailey?’ What had broken her heart?
‘I was pregnant once,’ she whispered.
He stroked her face. ‘When?’
‘Two and a half years ago. I was so thrilled. We both were. We wanted that baby so much.’
He said nothing, just holding her close and waiting for her to tell him the rest.
‘And then I started getting pains. In my lower abdomen. It hurt so much, Jared. I was worried that I might be having a miscarriage. And my shoulder hurt—but I assumed that was because I was worried.’
Jared knew that when you were stressed and tense you tended to hold yourself more rigidly and the muscles of your shoulder and neck would go into spasm, causing shoulder pain. Clearly that hadn’t been the reason for the pain in this case.
‘I went to the toilet,’ she said, ‘and there was spotting.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I felt sick. Light-headed.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘Then I collapsed. Luckily one of my colleagues found me and they got me in to the department. I told them I was pregnant, but I knew what was happening. I knew.’
A miscarriage? Heartbreaking for her.
‘They gave me a scan. I was six weeks and three days. The pregnancy was ectopic.’
Even harder than he’d guessed. The fertilised egg hadn’t implanted into the uterus, the way it should’ve done. Instead, it had embedded in the Fallopian tube and stretched the tube as it had grown, causing Bailey’s lower abdominal pain.
‘My Fallopian tube had ruptured. They took me straight into Theatre,’ she said, ‘but they couldn’t save the tube.’ Her voice wobbled, and then a shudder ran through her. ‘I wanted that baby so much. And I—I …’
‘Shh, I know.’ He stroked her hair. ‘And it wasn’t your fault.’ It happened in something like one out of eighty pregnancies. Often it sorted itself out and the woman hadn’t even known she was pregnant in the first place. But Bailey had been unlucky, caught up in one of the worst-case scenarios.
And clearly the fact her best friend had just shared the news of her pregnancy had brought it all back. Joni had doubtless been one of the first people that Bailey had told about her own pregnancy, and Jared would just bet that Joni had agonised over telling her best friend the news, knowing that it would bring all these excruciating memories back. And he was equally sure that Bailey had gone into super-sparkly mode to reassure her that it was fine, all the while her heart breaking into tiny pieces again.
‘The ectopic pregnancy wasn’t my fault,’ Bailey said, ‘but the rest of it was.’
The rest of it? He’d obviously spoken aloud without meaning to, or maybe the question was just obvious, because she started talking again.
‘I pushed Ed away afterwards. I—I just couldn’t cope with the idea of it happening
