Chapter 19 #2
Hannah watched as Andrea came to perch on the edge of her desk, facing Hunter, who looked arrogant as ever, with his hands in his pockets and pushing the tails of his flashy suit jacket open.
Andrea spoke.
Hunter’s composure broke.
He rubbed his chin and paced the floor of the office.
Andrea looked down to the ground. Disheartened? Apologetic?
Oh no, she was not accepting this as her fault.
That bastard.
It takes two, fuck-weed! Hannah wanted to scream.
Then Hunter was in front of Andrea, flinging what looked like a credit card in her face. Andrea recoiled, startled. Hunter flung open the office door.
‘Get it done,’ he said.
As he marched down the corridor, Hannah ran to Andrea, who was unmoving, still perched on the edge of her desk, Hunter’s credit card on the floor in front of her.
‘Leave me,’ she mumbled, her eyes fixed on a spot on the floor.
Hannah stepped forward. ‘Andi…’
‘Please, Hannah, just leave.’ She looked up to Hannah, her eyes full, and whispered, ‘Please.’
Hannah hated him. She hated that bastard. She wanted to drive a stake through Hunter’s stone-cold heart and tear it to shreds.
* * *
It wasn’t her fault, Hannah knew that, but as she walked into the French boulangerie and saw Rosalie waiting for her, Hannah’s lips curled, almost snarling.
There had been a time in all of this that Hannah had felt terribly sorry for Rosalie, unsuspecting as Andrea screwed her dad.
Now, all she saw when she looked at Rosalie was Hunter’s child and the fact Hannah had just bore witness to that vile man throwing a credit card at her best friend and telling her to go kill her unborn baby.
She had to separate the two things. Lunch had been a bad idea, in hindsight, but she had fretted about Andrea too long before realising it was too late to cancel on Rosalie, especially since Andrea, for obvious reasons, had done a no-show.
But there was a sickness in Hannah’s stomach that wouldn’t go away.
It was hatred for Hunter, combined with disgust over Andrea and Hunter’s affair, mixed with sympathy for her best friend, who would be feeling truly lost. She knew exactly how lost Andrea would be feeling because she remembered being a young woman, barely more than a child, in the middle of college, finding out that she was pregnant and not having a clue what to do, or how to tell people, or what Rod would say.
With everyone who should have supported her being disappointed in her.
The difference was, Hannah had never thought, not for a second, that she wouldn’t have the baby.
Rod had never thrown money at her and told her to sort it.
She couldn’t imagine what she would have said to someone who told her to abort her child.
Her parents had alluded to it and that was part of the reason, seventeen years on, that she didn’t have a good relationship with them.
Yet here she was, kissing Rosalie on her cheeks and trying to pretend like her dad wasn’t a murderous dick.
‘Are you all right?’ Rosalie said as they took seats opposite each other. ‘You look… bothered.’
Hannah was staring at her friend, in a moment when she could air it all – the affair, the baby, the abortion – but knowing that it wasn’t her story to tell.
There would come a time, who knew when it would be, that everything came out in the wash.
Would she lose Rosalie’s friendship then?
Wasn’t Rosalie as much a victim in all of this as that unborn child?
But Andrea meant everything to Hannah. They had always been by each other’s side.
Andrea had been the only person there for Hannah and Luke in her darkest days.
Hell, Hannah suffered an agonising commute every day to work for Andrea and she knew that, without Hannah, Andrea had no one to truly rely on, or at least that was what she believed.
And so, Hannah told Rosalie, ‘TJ is out of nursery again.’
‘Oh, that poor mite. You know you can call me when you’re stuck, right? I’ll be there in a flash.’
Hannah gave a soft smile, hating that she was lying to Rosalie. ‘Thank you. Should we have a look at the counter? This place does the best focaccia.’
She knew what she would pick for lunch, though she had no appetite, but feigning looking at the options in the glass counter bought her a few minutes to centre herself. It was Rosalie. The same Rosalie as yesterday. Her friend.
They paid the cashier for their orders and resumed their spots at the table.
‘I’m hoping you’re going to tell me all about this perfect baby daddy you’ve found,’ Hannah said, as brightly as she could manage.
‘Perfect baby daddy? Ohhh, Lance?’ Rosalie asked. ‘Oh, you know, I’m not sure that’s going to work out, after all.’
‘But I thought he was perfect. Good job on Wall Street, matching values, all that jazz?’
‘Good looking, too. Like, Idris Elba good-looking.’ Rosalie smiled from behind her coffee cup.
‘Let me get this straight, he ticks all of your boxes and he’d make gorgeous babies with you but you don’t think it will work out? Didn’t you get along when you met?’
‘Oh yeah, we really did. He’s funny and sweet. Obviously smart. I like him a lot, but I got thinking about, you know, what kind of baby I want…’
Hannah bit down on her lips to stop herself from saying something unkind.
Rosalie. Andrea. What was it with the women in her life that they thought they could pick and choose which babies they had or didn’t have or what kind of baby they had?
No one ever asked Hannah and she adored all three of her kids, regardless of whether they had been planned, what shape or size they were, whether they were smart or just a little bit dumb, whether they were athletic like Rod or anti-athleticism, like her.
‘…and the thing is, I want a baby that looks like me.’
Hannah felt her features twist in confusion. ‘I thought the idea was it was your baby? Your egg, womb, all of that.’
‘No, it would be, I don’t mean, like, have my nose or whatever.’
Then Hannah understood. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked fake breezily.
‘You know… Like, when I was looking after TJ, people asked if I was babysitting or whatever. They didn’t look at TJ and think he was mine.’
Hannah felt her temper rise. ‘You mean because he’s black?’
‘I… Well, yeah, I think, mostly. I don’t mean that I have a problem with black kids, or anything…’
Oh. My. God.
‘Just that I want my kids to look like they’re mine.’
Hannah stood, her chair screeching against the tiled floor. ‘So my kids don’t look like they’re mine because they’re mixed-race? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No! No. I… I’m sorry, this isn’t coming out right.
It doesn’t even matter any more because I don’t think I’m going to go through with the whole process.
’ She sighed. ‘Look, I just think if I had a white baby, people would know… I mean, it’s different for you because you have Rod.
If I went down the Swans agency route, then my baby wouldn’t necessarily have a dad around when I was out with it, so it would need to look?—’
‘Enough!’ Hannah yelled, drawing the attention of other diners.
‘How dare you? I’m so sick of you, and Andrea, and your first-world problems. Babies aren’t toys, Rosalie.
They aren’t trash you can throw away when you’re done with it or because you never wanted them in the first place.
You think that a baby will cure the fact that you’re bored with your shoes and your handbags and the fact you have nothing meaningful in your life. ’
Rosalie stood. ‘How dare I ? How dare you ! I don’t want a baby to cure boredom, Hannah. I have meaningful things in my life.’
Hannah grabbed her purse. ‘No, Rosalie, you don’t. You want a designer baby that you can pick up when it suits you and dress in fancy clothes and take for babyccinos then drop him off to Daddy, who is straight and white and rich, just like your daddy because isn’t Hunter just goddamn perfect?’
‘Don’t bring my dad into this!’
‘I will because the reason you can’t find a decent man and a father for your child is that you think the sun shines out of Hunter’s ass.
You would overlook a decent man because he isn’t the CEO of a music label or because, god forbid, he isn’t a rich white man.
Well, news flash, Rosalie, your dad is a lying, cheating scum of the earth.
If that’s what you want from life. If that’s someone you want to father your child, I don’t think I want to know you. ’
Hannah stormed from the bakery with Rosalie hot on her heels. ‘What are you talking about? Why are you saying those things about my dad?’
Hannah spun and found herself inches from Rosalie’s face. ‘Because he’s a heartless, cheating bastard.’
‘He is not! How would you even know that? Why would you say that?’
‘No? He isn’t, huh? Ask Andrea if she agrees with that.’
Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck.
Hannah startled herself, straightening her back as she sucked in a breath. What had she done?
‘Andrea? Andi? What are you saying?’
There was no going back. She released her breath, resigned. ‘I think you know what I’m saying.’
* * *
Hannah felt faint as she made her way along the corridor to her desk. What had she done? She had outed Andrea and Hunter to Rosalie in a moment of rage. She had destroyed Andrea’s trust. Ruined a friendship. Made everything a thousand times worse for Andrea than it had been this morning.
As she neared her desk, Andrea stepped out of her office and stood calmly, with her hands by her sides. Hannah was going to have to tell her the truth. Today of all days. Despite what Hunter had done to her this morning.
There was no going back.
She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat as she reached her best friend.
‘Andi, I have to tell you something.’
Andrea spoke calmly. ‘You’re fired.’
‘Andi.’
‘Pack up your things.’
‘Andi, the kids.’
‘You had kids before you had lunch with Rosalie, perhaps you should have thought about them then.’
Then she turned her back on Hannah, walked into her office and closed the door on their decades of friendship.