Chapter Twenty-Six
‘I’m sorry, Ellie. Whichever way you slice it, it sounds like a red flag to me.’
‘I thought you liked Rhys.’
Mel set down her paintbrush, dripping a few drops of emulsion onto the plastic sheeting that covered the floor. ‘I did. I do. And I admire him for being honest and upfront with you. But it’s hard to hear that he might only see this as a summer fling.’
‘Maybe a fling is all I want too. And to be fair, that wasn’t exactly how he phrased it.’ It wasn’t easy defending Rhys when I privately agreed with everything Mel said.
She reached for a rag to wipe her paint-stained fingers. The look on her face needed no caption.
‘Well, I want more for you. You deserve more. I want you to be somebody’s everything.
And as much as I like what you’ve told me about Rhys, I’m not convinced that ex of his will ever accept that he’s moved on.
Or hasn’t damaged him so much that he never can.
’ Her voice softened. ‘I want someone who’ll look at you the way Steve looks at me.
Even when I’m feeling grotty, pumped full of hormones, and tearful 24-7. ’
‘I think they broke the mould when they made your husband.’
Mel’s eyes lit up the way I could remember them doing after her very first date with Steve, when she’d come home and woken me up at two a.m. to tell me she’d just met ‘the one’.
‘Not everyone gets the fairy tale, you know.’
‘No. Some people have to be zapped with a gazillion volts of electricity to find their man,’ teased Jackson, carefully descending the stepladder with a paint roller in his hand and specks of emulsion in his hair.
He paused on the bottom rung and surveyed his handiwork. ‘I told you we were going to run out of paint.’
I frowned and glanced at my watch. ‘I could make a quick dash to the DIY store.’
Jackson came up between us and threw an arm around both our shoulders. ‘It’s okay. I’ll go. There’s a cake shop near the one on the industrial estate that I want to scope out for our wedding cake. Cupcakes and Rainbows, or something like that.’
I looked at both of my oldest friends and felt overwhelmed with a wave of love. Jackson was busy with wedding plans, Mel with her fertility journey, and yet neither had hesitated for a second when I’d asked them if they were interested in helping me decorate the old wool shop.
‘This is kind of like old times, isn’t it?’ Jackson said, his eyes going to me. I think we’d all been sucked back into memories of evenings and weekends spent decorating my office three years earlier. ‘Or did the lightning wipe those memories out too?’
My smile was warm. ‘No. They stuck. Maybe because they’re some of my favourites.’
Jackson inhaled deeply. ‘Nothing like the smell of paint and white spirit to make you all dewy-eyed and nostalgic.’
I looked around the empty shop that had once sold wool and crafting goods and would soon be up and running as an official charitable enterprise.
We were just weeks away from opening the doors to the public and that was due – in no small part – to Mel’s tireless efforts in pushing the paperwork through.
‘It’s actually been good for me to have something to take my mind off everything else that’s going on,’ she’d said when I thanked her yet again for all her hard work.
Her eyes had clouded a little and it was easy to see that she was counting the days until they began their next round of IVF.
‘My lovely mother-in-law has gifted Steve and me the money for one more round,’ she’d told me hesitantly.
‘I know you offered to help, Ellie, and I turned you down, but accepting the money from Sylvia feels different. She wants grandchildren almost as much as we want to be parents. And she’d do absolutely anything for Steve. ’
I hugged her and tried to ignore a fleeting sting of regret that I’d never known that kind of relationship with my own mother.
Of course, there were no guarantees that their third attempt at IVF would be successful, but the hope that had been missing from my friend’s eyes was back there again. I could cope with a lot of things in life, but seeing my eternally optimistic friend robbed of that emotion had been beyond cruel.
‘I’ll be back in about half an hour,’ promised Jackson, pressing a possibly paint-stained kiss onto my cheek and then Mel’s.
The shop seemed strangely empty once he was gone. Jackson had always had the kind of personality that filled every corner of a room and left you missing him almost instantly.
‘Let’s take a breather,’ I suggested, moving to a relatively clean section of the plastic sheeting in the far corner of Florrie’s.
Mel dropped down to the floor beside me, and we both surveyed the almost completed room.
‘You did it,’ she said with obvious admiration.
‘We did it,’ I corrected gently. Mel might not be one of the participating shop owners but she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into the project with a gusto that suggested she welcomed every moment of thinking time it had consumed.
‘How are things?’ I asked now, tentatively stepping on ground where only an old friend dared to tread.
‘They’re okay,’ Mel replied, but there was a glimmer of something in her smile that tripped an instant alarm in my head.
‘Do you have some news?’
‘No. No. No,’ Mel said, shaking her head hard enough for a few curls to spring free from the crocodile clip.
‘That’s an awful lot of nos,’ I observed, my eyes trained on hers. There was an undeniable glint in them. Her lips parted, clamped shut, and then parted again.
‘Mel?’
She bit her lower lip. ‘I’m three days late.’
I swivelled towards her so hard I heard the tiny bones in my neck crick in protest.
‘You are?’
She nodded.
‘I mean, it’s really too early to test. And it’s probably nothing. My cycle is all over the place.’ She reached for my hand and squeezed it excitedly. ‘But how crazy would it be if after all those failed IVF attempts, we actually got pregnant the good old-fashioned way?’
‘It would be wonderful,’ I said, feeling the unexpected sting of tears.
‘I know the odds are stacked against it. That it would be nothing short of a miracle if I was.’
‘Firm believer in miracles over here.’
Mel’s eyes were overbright as she turned them to me. ‘Can you imagine Steve’s face if I told him we didn’t need to take up his mum’s offer after all.’
‘Steve doesn’t know you’re late?’
Mel shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to get his hopes up. I think he takes each negative test result even harder than I do. I thought this time it would be wonderful if I could – just maybe – surprise him with some great news.’
I nodded, not sure if getting too excited at this point was the right way to go but unable to rein it back.
‘Is he still away at that conference?’
Mel nodded. ‘Yes, until tomorrow night. I should know one way or the other by the time he gets back.’
I lifted my hands, revealing four sets of crossed fingers. ‘Well, here’s hoping I’m finally going to be an honorary auntie – not that I’ll have a clue what that involves, mind you, but I already know it’ll be the best damn job I’ll ever have.’
Mel looked at the quadruple symbols of good luck and covered them with her paint-stained hands.
‘No way are you going to be an auntie to any future child we have,’ she declared.
She sounded emphatic, and I could hardly blame her. What I knew about young children could be written on the back of a very small Post-it note.
‘Steve and I have already decided you’re going to be his or her godmother.’
Now it was my turn to grow misty-eyed. I wanted to say thank you, that it was an honour I didn’t deserve, but the words were locked down in my throat. Mel smiled and gently nodded. She’d heard them anyway.
‘Will you do a test tomorrow?’
‘If I can hold out that long.’
‘Well, if you need any help. I could . . .’ My voice trailed away. ‘I was going to say hold the stick while you pee on it, but that sounded kind of gross.’
‘It is,’ Mel said, wrinkling her nose prettily. There was a look of excitement on her face. ‘I could do one of the tests now.’
‘You have more than one?’ Her eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead. ‘Of course you have more than one,’ I said, knowing her in a way that still filled me with gratitude. ‘How many exactly?’
‘Four,’ she replied with an impish smile.
It was the longest three minutes of my entire life. And the most nerve-wracking. I knew the answer the second the shop’s bathroom door opened. She’d walked into that room with so much hope and expectation, but there was none left when she lifted her face to mine.
She was dry-eyed. She’d been through this moment many times before. My face, however, was awash with tears.
‘Oh, Mel, I’m so sorry,’ I said, folding her into my arms. She felt so small. So fragile. So lost.
She sniffed. ‘It was always a long shot. A million-to-one chance.’
‘Maybe it’s a false negative?’ I was torn between raising her hopes and clutching at straws.
She shook her head sadly. ‘Unlikely. None of the other negatives have ever been wrong.’
I wanted to sob, to howl out at the injustice of a world where the one thing, the only thing, my friend wanted was denied her. But my tears weren’t going to help her, and so I just held her, as she stood upright but broken in my arms.
‘It will happen for you. One day it will happen.’
She nodded mutely against my shoulder.
‘At least I spared Steve from having to go through yet another disappointment.’
Even from the depths of her sadness, the love she felt for him was uppermost in her thoughts.
And for the first time, I envied her that. Because that was what I wanted too . . . from a man who didn’t want to commit.