The One with the White Wedding
ERIN LAWLESS

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Erin Lawless 2017

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © Alex Allden 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Erin Lawless asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008181765

Version 2017-05-18

PRAISE FOR ERIN LAWLESS

‘Funny and Addictive… If this is Erin Lawless’ first book, I can’t wait to read her next one!’

Fabulous Magazine (the Sun)

‘A lovely, warm read to snuggle up on the sofa with’

Novelicious

‘Devastatingly brilliant…an absolute triumph’

Books with Bunny

‘First there was Bridget and Mark; then there was Em and Dex and now there is Nadia and Alex…it is a rare thing to be able to make the love between two fictional characters become so real that you actually champion their love from your very roots’

Lisa Talks About…

‘Friendships, trust, lies, deceit, love and so much more – a real page-turner for me’

Cosmochicklitan

‘A superb debut about complicated ties, betrayal and lies, and one of my favourite books of the year’

ChickLit Club

‘Mind-blowingly good and everyone should read it’

ChickLitReviews

‘This book was so incredibly amazingly awesome that I want to shout it from the hilltops and make ALL my friends buy it this instant’

The Chiq Blog

For Jacqui, Joanne, Ksenia and Nicola – my beautiful, brilliant bridesmaids,

and for all of my Lawless Hens:

I’ll never forget the amazing weekend when we all met The Juan.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Erin Lawless

Dedication

Character List

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Also by Erin Lawless

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Character List

Please Save the Date

for the wedding of

NORA EILEEN DERVAN

and

HENRY ROBERT CLARKE

New Year’s Eve

Nora Dervan, the bride

Harry Clarke, the groom

Bea Milton, a bridesmaid – Nora’s godsister and best friend since birth

Cleo Adkins, a bridesmaid – Nora’s best friend from university

Daisy Frankel, a bridesmaid – an American girl Nora befriended while travelling in their early 20s

Sarah Norris, a bridesmaid – the wife of the Best Man

Cole Norris, the Best Man – friends with Harry, Nora and Bea since primary school

Eli Hale, a groomsman – friends with Harry, Nora and Bea since primary school

Barlow Osbourne, a groomsman – Harry’s best friend from university

Archie Clarke, a groomsman – Harry’s younger brother

Eileen Dervan, Nora’s mother and Bea’s godmother

Cillian, Aoife, Alannah and Finola Dervan – Nora’s younger brother and sisters

Hannah Milton, Bea’s mother and Nora’s godmother

Gray Somers, a colleague of Cleo’s teaching at the Oakland Academy

Claire, a friend of Nora and Bea’s since secondary school

Darren, Daisy’s current boyfriend

Kirsty, Bea’s flatmate

Chapter Thirty-Two

Cleo studied the top of Gray’s bent head; the harshness of the overhead strip lights threw a halo of paleness around his crown. He sat in quiet concentration, his bottom lip sucked in between his teeth, click-click-clicking his pen absent-mindedly as he read through his student’s essay. He’d been doing this lately, bringing his marking along to breaks and lunch, a not-so-subtle but ever-so-polite barrier between them.

For the millionth time in her life – and at least the hundredth time since she got back from Paris – Cleo reflected on how very, very much alcohol was not her friend. Oh, how she rued that message she’d sent him, that split second while she’d been spangled on champagne and frankly giddy from being at the Moulin Rouge, but most of all she rued the fact that she’d turned her phone off for the rest of the evening and missed the three attempted calls he’d made to her in response.

A combination of hangover, embarrassment and dealing with the fall-out of the Bea / Cole big reveal had eaten up much of the next day, but – after bidding the rest of the (slightly subdued) hen party contingent goodbye at the Eurostar terminal – Cleo had sat on the tube back towards Acton, her phone heavy in her hands, a message to Gray resolutely undrafted. Copping out completely, dreaming of a chip butty and her blissful king-sized bed, Cleo had decided that a cheerful, face-to-face chat over coffee during Monday break time, where she could play down her slight Single White Female craziness, perhaps even distract Gray by telling him all the hen do gossip.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Gray had appeared at their usual spot, armed with an over-done smile and a sheath of coursework. He’d gone through the motions all right, asking if Nora had enjoyed her spinsterhood send-off, making all the right noises as Cleo showed him some of the funniest snaps on her phone. He hadn’t mentioned Cleo’s particularly passive-aggressive beauty of a message, or how it could neatly be translated into a caterwauling WHY DON’T YOU FANCY MEEEE? And so Cleo didn’t bring it up.

And here they were, three weeks later, still not talking about it, Gray still pretending to mark essays over his break (the end of term was approaching, he’d pointed out when she’d tentatively asked him what was up with the teachery diligence).

And to think – she’d been so concerned about her stupid crush ruining a great friendship. Seems like it had always been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cleo drained the lukewarm dregs of her coffee. Past Hallowe’en the staff room – along with everything inside it – retained absolutely no heat whatsoever. “Oh, man, I cannot wait for this term to be over!” she admitted, with feeling. With January and the mock exams looming just the other side of Christmas she’d found herself doing more marking, revision planning and tutoring than perhaps hours in the day strictly allowed.

“Just got to get through the big party first,” Gray pointed out, looking up from his papers with a flash of his former smile. Was it really a year since they’d properly met, over a glass of too-strong Disaronno and cranberry and a queasy, protesting stomach too-full of questionable canapés? None of that this year, Cleo promised herself (reminder again: alcohol is not your friend). Going by her track record she’d probably hitch up her cocktail dress and rugby tackle him to the floor. She looked up and met Gray’s eye-contact; he was still smiling.

In fact, maybe it would be better if she didn’t go to the Christmas party at all this year…

The house still smelt and felt the same as Sarah let herself in the front door; she didn’t know why, but she realised that she’d been expecting some sort of discernible difference. She let out the breath that she’d been holding as she’d fumbled over-loudly with her keys at the lock – it was clear from the stillness of the air that her former home was indeed empty, as she’d hoped. It was 2pm on a Tuesday – Cole was sure to be at work – but she knew that for the first week or so after she’d moved out he’d taken sick leave and hung around the house, hoping to catch her. Obviously his bosses’ patience had run out.

The pressure somewhat off her, Sarah lingered in the entrance hall, noting with a little satisfaction the furring of dust laying across the glass of the wall mirror, for all it was dim, the wintery mid-afternoon not allowing much light through the windows. She ran an experimental hand over the curl of the bannister – remembering idly that it was probably due its six-monthly oiling and varnishing. She supposed if she and Cole really did get divorced, then the house would have to go on the market sooner rather than later. Cole had fronted the entirety of the initial deposit, and paid about 75% of the mortgage – Sarah wondered if she’d even get anything from the proceeds.

She remembered their first viewing of the house. Cole had been more or less happy to let Sarah take the lead on house-hunting, but she had insisted that he make time for each and every appointment. Even though their budget was reasonable (thanks to Cole’s salary anyway – Sarah wouldn’t have had a hope of getting a mortgage on a garden shed without his uplift to their combined income) they’d quickly grown pretty disillusioned. Everything decent was too much of a commute to work. Everything more convenient was boxy, or damp, or in what her mother would have called (with a little sniff) a “rough neighbourhood”. So, when they found it, their two-bed, two-reception little town house had seemed like some sort of mirage. Cole had spent hours combing over the Homeowner’s Survey documentation, trying to work out where the catch was.

But – no catch – a few weeks, a few signatures and some eye-wateringly large bank transfers later, and the little townhouse was theirs. Sarah tried to picture another newly-engaged couple coming hopefully through that same front door grasping glossy particulars and floorplans, accompanied by an equally glossy estate agent. Her stomach rolled over itself in protest.

Feeling heavy and old, Sarah slowly climbed the stairs, distracting herself with yet another mental inventory of the bits and pieces she needed to pack, trying to focus on the task at hand. Still, she found herself hesitating at the threshold to the master bedroom and turning right, standing in the doorway she’d lost long minutes to the past. The absolute sadness of a purposeless space, of a nursery waiting for a crib – she’d flat out refused to allow Cole to buy a spare bed for overnight guests, no matter how many times he assured her it would just be temporary.

Christ. Sarah felt her top lip curl. The person she’d been in her youth would absolutely despair at the whinging, sopping woman she’d become. She turned her back on the empty second bedroom, and went to pack up the jewellery she’d left behind.

***

“Okay, Daisy,” the nurse was saying in a perfectly practiced NHS-tone as she matter-of-factly tucked a wodge of blue tissue paper into the elastic of her undies. At least this was validation that Daisy had been right to spend a little extra time on bikini line maintenance the evening before. “Now this might be a teeny bit chilly, but it will warm up, I promise!”

Despite the warning, Daisy flinched as the woman squirted a clear stream of gel from a tube directly onto the skin of her exposed abdomen; it felt like a knife of ice. The hard head of the sonographer’s wand wasn’t much better; it pressed insistently into the softness of Daisy’s belly like it was trying to iron out the folds of skin there. Somewhere, deep inside, her supposed foetus was in there, and according to the pregnancy app she’d downloaded, currently the size of a lime. Daisy held her breath, with no idea why.

The sonographer’s brow creased ever-so-slightly as she peered at the screen, maddeningly angled away from Daisy. The wand pressed in a little harder, rolling over from right to left, and then back again, before being abruptly withdrawn. Daisy felt hard, spiking panic gripping at every part of her. Oh shit. Shit. She’d only known about this baby for two weeks. She’d not really been thinking of it as real, if she was honest, but suddenly – with that faint furrow of concern between the nurse’s eyebrows – it was the realest, realest thing that could or would ever exist for her.

“Okay, Daisy,” the woman repeated, all cheerful business. “Now what I need for you to do is to bend your legs, bring your heels up to your bum for me, then lift your hips and give everything a good shake.”

Daisy, who was halfway through complying with the instructions to bring her feet up to her middle before the nurse got to the end of her sentence, almost fell off the table.

“A good shake?” she echoed, panicked. “Why? Is there something wrong?” Was this how they encouraged along miscarriages of unviable pregnancies? Surely not. Daisy felt sick. For the millionth time in the last fourteen days she cursed every single alcoholic drink she’d consumed, every ibuprofen pill she’d popped, all of the hundred foetus-unfriendly things she may have done while she was still unknowing.

“Nothing’s wrong,” the sonographer assured her immediately, putting a capable hand to one of Daisy’s knees to gently force her legs and feet back into the instructed stance. “Baby’s just in an awkward position, and I just want to see if we can make them move around and say hi!”

Still numb with anxiety, Daisy did as she was told, lifting her hips from the bed and waggling them repeatedly from left to right.

“Okay, let’s try again.” Once again the wand pressed in unrelentingly. “That’s a little better!” the sonographer said, brightening, before reaching out with the hand that wasn’t holding the wand to push the screen on its bracket so that Daisy could see too.

It was exactly as she’d expected at first. A nondescript grey landscape, like the kind she’d seen a thousand times in movies, or on her Facebook newsfeed. The pale shape in the centre twitched and moved – moved! – and suddenly Daisy realised she could see an arm, could see the little slope of a nose.

“Okay, so this is the head,” the nurse confirmed, clicking a button and zooming in on the relevant part of the image. Daisy realised she was craning up on her elbows a little, desperate to see. “And legs, and arms – see one of them is up by the side of the face?” Oh, yes, Daisy saw. “That little black area in the middle there, that’s baby’s stomach. They’ll already be swallowing and passing the amniotic fluid, so that’s very good. And I’m just going to log the heartrate, but I can already tell it’s about right.”

And Daisy started to cry: big, deep, unladylike, gasps – because there it was, the baby she hadn’t even known had been growing inside of her for these long weeks, the true cause of her endless fatigue, her loss of appetite, the “stomach flu” that had seen her off sick from work with her head down the toilet. And it was fine. Its little heart was right there, bright and flickering and strong and fine.

“Okay, so from the crown to rump length, I’m putting you at… 11 weeks and 6 days,” the sonographer confirmed with a smile. “So that will put conception back around, ooh, September 20th or thereabouts.”

Daisy’s eyes fluttered closed. Darren’s birthday weekend. Well, they’d done the drunken duvet dance several times that night after dinner, so she guessed the odds were always going to have been that way inclined. Oh god. How was she ever going to look this child in the face whilst knowing that it was conceived during a stay at a self-advertised “Sex Hotel” in Blackpool that had had a mirror stuck to the ceiling?

The sonographer chatted away happily, snapping pictures of the baby, zooming in and away and from different angles. Daisy drank it all in, ignoring the rub and burn as the lubricating gel ran thin and the ultrasound wand pressed across her, cry-laughing as she noticed how the baby squirmed away as if the pressure was bothering it. She couldn’t believe how much it was moving – a bad dancer already, just like its mommy! – yet she couldn’t feel the slightest thing. It was like a dream.

“Just a few more measurements now and we’re all done. And you can go to the loo!” For all Daisy didn’t want the appointment to end, this was welcome news: the appointment letter had been quite insistent that she come to the scan with a full bladder and she was more than a little uncomfortable at this point.

“Say, see you in two months, baby!” the sonographer trilled – before withdrawing the wand and leaving Daisy feeling oddly bereft – pulling the blue medical paper from the elastic of her underwear and swabbing up the smeared remnants of the gel on Daisy’s stomach with it. Her skin still felt tacky and cold under all her winter layers as Daisy – stumbling and shell-shocked – exited the ultrasound suite. The slightly peaky-looking, I-need-the-toilet-jiggling woman sat in the waiting area outside shot her a conspiratorial smile. The husband or partner glanced up from his laminate-bound parenting tome to expectantly watch the suite doors, not-so-patiently awaiting his turn to greet his offspring.

Darren. She had to tell him. Daisy’s palms suddenly felt very sweaty. She slipped the tiny square sonogram images the nurse had given to her into her planner to keep them safe. She pulled out her mobile phone. Shamefully, shamefully, she’d already deleted his number. She’d have to Facebook message him. Poke. Hey, remember me? Smiley face. Well, you certainly left me something to remember you by…

Well. Obviously her opening approach needed some careful crafting.

Heading in the direction of the toilets, hoping she had enough time left before her appointment for her blood tests, Daisy opened up her WhatsApp and tapped into Nora’s Bridesmaids group for ease.

Big news, she typed out to her friends. Immense, large-scale news. Immediate discussion mandatory. Dinner this week? xx

Chapter Thirty-Three

I was the maid of honour at a wedding where the bride and groom had written their own vows, and my mate gave them to me to look after until they were needed. Needless to say, beautiful empire-line bridesmaids’ dresses do not have pockets, so I safely placed her beautifully written words of love into my cleavage whilst helping her with last minute touch-ups… Halfway through the ceremony it was time for the vows. My friend stared at me for a full minute before I remembered. So, right there at the front, next to a priest, I had to reach in-between my boobs, only to find the folded paper had slipped out of place and moved, making for an awkward, terribly silent few moments of me digging around.

Becka, Bath

Bea inspected the Order of Service she’d just folded together with a critical eye. She was the better part of a glass of wine down and she suspected her accuracy might be suffering the effects. She tried to mitigate the wonky spine by lining up the corners a little more neatly. It was passable; she duly added it to the nearby pile.

Harry breezed through the front room, hairy shins and knees bravely bared to the December cold; Bea shivered in sympathy inside her cable corded knit and sipped gratefully at her glass of warming red.

“I won’t be too long,” he promised Nora as he smoothed her hair back and kissed her jaw line. “I’ll just do the one set.”

“Still, your willpower puts me to shame,” Nora pointed out ruefully, inclining her own glass of wine towards him. Most brides hike up the weight loss efforts in the last few weeks but Nora, particularly with Christmas indulgences sat squarely between herself and the altar, seemed content to slide off the wagon (glass of red in hand). Still, she had definitely slimmed down over the months since her engagement; even just sat cross-legged in front of the sofa in leggings, fluffy socks and an over-sized jumper she seemed sharper, more gamine. Bea was put in mind of the teenaged Nora, that window of time between the melting away of pre-puberty puppy fat and the poor diet of the student years, where Nora had been a bit like this, all cheekbone.

“Well, can I pick up anything on the way back?” Harry offered, eyes twinkling. “Something for dinner? Another bottle?”

Nora paused in her folding, clearly tempted. “I shouldn’t…”

“Are you sure? I’m literally walking back straight past Happy Dragon…”

“Oh, well then, it would be rude not to!” Bea laughed. “Make mine sweet and sour chicken balls, please!”

Nora sighed dramatically. “Well, I suppose it will be you that has to deal with the melt-down if my dress doesn’t button up on the day.”

Harry clapped his hands to his ears at the hint of bridal buttons and Nora laughed. He didn’t want to know even the tiniest detail about the wedding dress.

“Okay then. How many calories can there even be in special fried rice? Don’t answer that! Let me just see what I’ve got in the way of cash.” Nora unfolded her legs and hopped up to search out her eternally errant handbag, Harry trailing after her as he made a note of what to order later using an app on his phone. Knowing there would soon be greasy takeaway to soak up the alcohol and hopefully improve the straightness of her folding, Bea took another drink. She inspected Nora’s own pile, which didn’t seem all that much better than her own, and felt a little better.

Maybe she was just looking for the weight of tension, but would Harry normally go out to the gym when she was over? Had he met her eyes for a normal length of time when she’d asked for the chicken balls? For sure Cole had refused to speak to her since her return from France, had ignored every single phone call, every message left, pleading with him to let her explain.

It’s not like I meant for this to happen, Bea had typed what felt like a hundred times over by now. This isn’t my fault. Maybe if she typed it another hundred times, she’d start to feel like it was true.

At least her relationship with Nora didn’t seem, on the face of it, to be too shaken. In fact, Nora never mentioned it, even going so far as to awkwardly try and change the subject if Bea ever tentatively approached it. After being able to talk to Nora about anything and everything since, well, the moment Bea could talk, it felt slightly painful.

She’d contacted Sarah too, of course. She’d jacked in her job and bolted to her mother’s house in Wales (she’d literally fled the country) and the horror and the guilt and the shame of it made Bea want to rip off her own skin with her fingernails. Bea remembered how she’d used to get so annoyed by how nicey nice Sarah was. Sarah was so nice, in fact, that she’d taken the time, somewhere in the midst of the demolition of her life and her marriage, to send Bea a short but polite message, saying that while it was Cole she blamed, not Bea, she’d appreciate it if Bea would stop calling, and leave her alone. And – after a brief paroxysm of indecision about whether or not agreeing to leave Sarah alone allowed for one more response confirming that she would indeed be doing that – Bea had decided to respect her erstwhile friend’s wishes.

Bea had also heard very little from Daisy in the past few weeks. She wasn’t ignoring her, not as such, more avoiding her. Bea had been desperate for some of her American friend’s straight-talking sympathy, but after the third of fourth invitation somewhere for a bottle of something and a catch-up had been awkwardly swerved, Bea had gotten the message and stopped asking.

Weirdly, it was Cleo who was being the most normal around Bea. Maybe she was just taking her cue from Nora and refusing to get involved, but where Bea had expected only snide comments and recriminations from her best frenemy, Cleo had been kinder to her than she ever had been in the decade or so Bea had known her. So maybe that was something…

Harry called out his farewells from the flat door and Nora wandered back through to the front room, holding her handbag in one hand and her mobile phone in the other, idly checking her messages.

“I wonder what’s so important,” she mused, her thumb working the touch screen. “It’s going to be a ballache finding somewhere for dinner short-notice in the city in December.”

She was referring to Daisy’s enigmatic message of earlier that day, Bea realised. She’d messaged all four of them saying she had important news she needed to share.

“I think she’s back with Darren,” Bea shrugged, folding another Order of Service as neatly as she could manage. “It’s that time of year, isn’t it? Everyone wants someone to snuggle on the sofa with and watch Christmas films. Everybody wants somebody to kiss at midnight…” Her voice tailed off, remembering that this year, of course, when Big Ben chimed in another January, it would be signalling the end of her best friend’s wedding day. Cole would be there, of course and so – as Nora had confirmed – would Sarah. Not having anyone to kiss at midnight would probably be the least of Bea’s concerns.

Nora gracefully folded herself back down into her sitting position and grabbed up her glass of wine.

“Oh dear,” she laughed, surveying the unimpressive piles of completed Orders of Service. “We’re not being all that productive this evening, are we?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mel,” Bea assured her, trying to keep her voice light, folding up another and adding it to the pile. “You’ve still got, oh, three weeks.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Daisy made sure that she was fashionably late, glancing around the rammed gastro-pub as she arrived. Across the exposed kitchen bar, Nora looked up from her menu, meeting Daisy’s eye contact and waving her over. Already there was a bottle of white wine ordered, opened and empty, four equal glasses poured out. Cleo and Bea were there already too, smiling expectantly. Sarah hadn’t been able to make it over from where she was staying with her mom – December train fares were extortionate apparently (and, of course, Sarah currently had no income) – although Daisy did have to wonder if the negative RSVP had more to do with Sarah’s unwillingness to be sat around a table with the woman who’d once boned her husband and kept it secret for two years… who knew.

Daisy nervously smoothed her dress over her stomach as she made her way across to her friends. She wasn’t showing yet and probably wouldn’t for a fair while, but still, it had become somewhat of a nervous habit over the past few weeks. She might not have a bump, per say, but already her jeggings and work chinos were feeling uncomfortably tight, forcing her into dresses. At least the festive season prevented her from looking suspiciously formal.

After a round of greetings – Daisy realised that this was the first time she was seeing her friends since they’d returned from Nora’s hen weekend (she’d been a little distracted, after all…) – Daisy settled down into the chair left for her, concealing her smirk as Cleo pushed the fourth glass of wine towards her encouragingly.

“So, come on!” Bea demanded, characteristically unbothered with preamble. “What’s the big news?”

“Did you get that promotion?” Nora asked, all excitement.

“Oh, no. It’s not that.” Daisy felt a little pang – she doubted the board would be considering her for that new managerial role once she informed them that she would be going on maternity leave in half a year’s time. She rallied. “It’s more exciting than that!”

Bea and Nora exchanged a glance. “Are you… seeing someone new?” Nora tried again, after a moment.

“Or, seeing someone again?” Bea bluntly clarified their drift. Oh. So they thought she’d gotten back together with Darren. Oh, the irony.

“Not really,” Daisy smiled. “But you’re getting warmer.”

Her three friends swapped baffled looks.

“So… this isn’t anything to do with Darren?” Cleo asked, after a moment.

Daisy sighed. “Well, actually, yes. It does have something to do with Darren I suppose. And that’s why I need your help.”

“He’s not bothering you, is he?” Bea’s brows had snapped together threateningly.

Daisy laughed again. “Oh, god, let me just tell you what’s going on, before I get the poor guy in even more trouble.” Where to begin? “Well, do you remember when I had that bad norovirus thing?” It took only that for ever-quick Cleo to join the dots; she pressed her lips together like she was stopping herself from reacting. “And I’d just felt so shitty for weeks and weeks. And when we got back from Paris I thought, this is ridiculous, I’m going to ring the doctor. And when I was making the appointment, the receptionist was clicking through the booking calendar and said, super casual like, “you don’t think you could be pregnant, do you?”

The twin expressions of worry that Nora and Bea had been sporting melted away, as they realised what the truth of the matter was; Nora put her hands up to her mouth and pressed her fists against her wide smile.

“And I immediately went, oh no, no – but then I thought, actually, when was the last time I got my period?” Daisy continued, smiling. She was laughing about it now, but she’d remember that moment as one of the most defining – and horrifying – moments of her life. “And so, I bought a test. And then another one. And another one.” She laughed. “And after three positive results, it finally started to sink in.”

Nora could take no more; she leapt to her feet and threw her arms around the still sitting Daisy, squealing into her ear. “Oh my god, oh my god!”

“Wait, wait, wait! I’ve got pictures.” Daisy fumbled in her bag for her scan pictures and spread them out across the table top. Her eyes felt hot and prickly with tears. She’d already told her mom and older sister over Skype, of course, but this was the first time she’d been able to feel the excitement, the hugs, the joy that news of her child’s existence brought to the world. She crossed her arms in her lap, picturing that little bean, somewhere deep behind her pelvic bone, sensing its mother’s heart racing and blood rushing and wondering what on earth was going on out there.

“What did Darren say?” Cleo asked, after a few minutes of passing the little square scan pictures around and indiscriminate cooing. “Is he excited? Horrified? Both? Somewhere in between?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t told him yet. I don’t suppose any of you guys have kept his phone number actually, have you?”

The girls exchanged a look as they shook their heads.

“I might have his email address still saved,” Nora offered.

Daisy laughed sharply. “Well, I suppose that’s marginally better than sending him a Facebook message.”

“Marginally, yes,” Cleo agreed, wide-eyed.

“Oh god, can you imagine? ‘Dear Darren, how are you? Please see attached. File name, 12-week-scan-dot-jpeg. Can we discuss. Best, Daisy Frankel.’”

“Best?” Bea snorted. “You’re currently incubating his sperm into a person. You can stretch to “kind regards,” I think.”

“I need to get his number,” Daisy groaned. “You don’t think Harry has it do you, or Cole?”

“I don’t think so hun,” Nora said, apologetically. “They weren’t exactly bezzie mates or anything, were they?”

“I’ll have to Facebook him and ask him to call me. At least I didn’t get around to de-friending him. Having to send him a Friend Request first would just have been the pits.” Daisy eyed up the obviously untouched fourth glass of wine, feeling that despite her continued low-level nausea she quite possibly had never wanted a drink more in her life than she did in that moment, imagining her soon-to-be-had call with her ex-boyfriend turned unexpected baby-daddy.

“Okay, well just make sure that it’s actually Darren who’s calling you from an unknown number before you go blurting anything out,” Bea advised wisely, as she picked up her own glass. “You don’t need to be telling some telemarketer from an Indian call centre that you’ve gotten yourself up the duff.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Cleo bustled herself through the revolving doors into the hotel lobby with more haste than class, shaking the smears of sleet from the shoulders of her dark coat and crossing her fingers that her hair wasn’t too frizzy. It had only been a short dash from the nearest tube to the venue, but, still, she wished that she’d been able to cram her umbrella into her diddy clutch bag.

Removing her damp coat and throwing it over her arm, Cleo followed the signs for the Oaklands Christmas Party through the warren of a hotel, noting that she wasn’t noticing any familiar faces. She’d been going for fashionably late, but maybe she’d veered into the offensively late bracket. She’d spent a little bit longer in the bath than she’d meant to, and far too much attention to her makeup (which, please god, had hopefully managed to stay put through the pressing fug of the tube journey and the spitting shower of sleet).

As she approached the atrium for the second-floor function area a blank-faced man in a dark suit appeared as if from nowhere and offered to take her coat and scarf to the cloakroom; Cleo gave up her damp, wintery burden gratefully. This place was even fancier than she’d anticipated. There had been talk that it would be. The headmaster’s ancient PA had finally retired that last summer, and with her went the tradition of a limp three-course turkey dinner in the little reservable area near the toilets at the pub a couple of roads away from the school. The PA’s replacement (who didn’t look like she was long out of secondary school herself…) had absolutely no interest in the fusty local, nor a mandatory novelty jumper rule. Cleo smoothed her palms against her new cocktail dress nervously. A stupid expense (particularly this close to Christmas) – but when she’d seen it in the shop she knew she had to have it. It was a soft and shiny material in rose gold which slouched forward a tad daringly off of her shoulders and hung loose across her frame, allowing it to flow over her body, catching the sheen of the lights. It felt festive and decadent and sexy (Cleo hoped that she herself would accordingly follow suit).

The broad space of the function room was lit at low-level only, but the white, silver and blue colour theme served to brighten the area. It felt more like a wedding than an office Christmas party, each round, white-clothed table sporting huge centre-pieces – oversized martini glasses filled with prickly sprigs of holly and soft, fat plumes of white feathers. Glitter-dipped laser-cut snowflakes in shades of gleaming silver, snow white and ice blue hung from the high ceiling, like something out of Frozen. Bright strands of silver lametta draped from the branches of a distastefully large real Christmas tree taking up one entire corner of the room. The standard rust-coloured hard-wearing carpeting detracted from, but didn’t ruin, the general effect.

Spying a work mate taking an artfully-angled photo of the tree, Cleo made a bee-line over to her.

“You look amazing,” Tia told her, approvingly, aiming an air-kiss in the vicinity of one cheek, then the other (events like this were weird, thought Cleo – it’s not like they greeted one another in the staff room like that). “Have you got a drink?”

“No, not yet. I’m going to pace myself. Don’t want a repeat of last year and all that!” Cleo laughed self-depreciatingly.

Tia raised one expertly-threaded eyebrow. “Well, don’t wait too long. There’s a budget behind that free bar, you know.”

Cleo double-took. “Free bar?”

“Yup. The management board has put an undisclosed sum behind the bar as a little festive bonus. You know, in lieu of us getting paid actual festive bonuses? But when it’s gone, it’s gone,” Tia shrugged, taking a generous gulp from her generously-large glass of white wine.

Cleo glanced behind her – that definitely explained the popularity of the bar area, which was already thronged with people. “Well, in that case,” she laughed. “I wouldn’t want to miss out on my bonus!”

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