Page 102 of The Fall-Out

‘Zara told me she can’t have children,’ Abbie said, her words coming out on a long sigh of breath. ‘She said she was in Poland at the beginning of the pandemic, and lockdown happened and she had to stay there. She found out she was pregnant while she was there and of course abortion isn’t legal, so she had to find someone who’d help her.’

Kate and Rowan’s faces bore the same look of blank disbelief I knew mine did. Here it was – another of Zara’s stories, carefully calculated to have the maximum impact on its audience. I felt a surge of anger – we should have known not to believe her, but we had. We all had, because she knew exactly how to draw us in.

‘She haemorrhaged and nearly died,’ Abbie continued, ‘and when they got her to hospital they had to take her uterus out, she said. She was crying when she told me. So of course I told her about Matt and me, and how we went through infertility treatment but it didn’t work. And then she said it was a relief for her, in a way, because she’d have been a terrible mother.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Rowan said darkly, and I felt another, almost imperceptible lightening of the mood around the table – as if, once we were able to laugh about this, we’d be able to laugh at absolutely anything that ever happened to us in the future.

Abbie went on, ‘I told her Matt and I have made peace with it now. And it’s true, we have. It’s been a relief in a way. But she told me that Kate had said – that you’d said, Kate – that you were relieved too, because you thought if I had a baby we wouldn’t be able to be friends in the same way if we weren’t the only ones in the group without children any more.’

‘I never said that,’ Kate burst out furiously. ‘I promise I never did. But I…’

‘You thought it,’ Abbie whispered.

Reluctantly, Kate nodded. ‘I’m sorry. Long ago, I did think that. But once I knew what you and Matt were going through, it didn’t matter any more. I just wanted you to be happy.’

‘It’s okay.’ Abbie managed a smile. ‘The only thing that would have made it not okay is if we weren’t friends any more.’

‘Don’t you see,’ Rowan asked, ‘what she tried to do? She tried to split Naomi and Patch up, all those years ago. And then when that didn’t work, she came for us, as friends, to try and destroy what we have together.’

‘And it’s working,’ Kate said sadly.

I nodded slowly before saying, ‘The question is, are we going to let it?’

I’d barely noticed that, outside, clouds had formed and it had been raining – one of those summer showers that catches you unawares, making you pack up your picnic and run for the car or dash into Boots and buy an emergency umbrella. But now the rain had stopped and the clouds had parted. A shaft of bright sunlight spilled through the window, reflecting off the varnished table so it was almost too bright to look at.

‘No way,’ Abbie said fiercely.

‘No,’ Kate echoed.

‘Hell to the no,’ Rowan almost shouted.

A few minutes before, I hadn’t been able to hear my friends’ breath breaking through the oppressive silence. But now I could – an audible sigh, a shared release of tension from us all. I felt relief so heady and intense it was like being drunk.

‘You know what,’ Rowan said, ‘I think we need another jug of that Pimm’s.’

‘I’ll get it.’ I jumped to my feet and hurried over to the bar. The surly, tattooed landlady stopped wiping its surface and looked at me curiously, and I realised I’d practically skipped across the pub, like I’d just been proposed to or something.

‘Same again, please.’ I beamed at her. ‘Pimm’s with soda water, not lemonade, and plenty of extra gin. And two packets of pork scratchings.’

My mood must have been infectious, because she actually cracked a smile when she pushed the jug across to me.

‘Thank you so much.’ I tapped my phone on the card reader and heard its familiar beep.

And then a new notification caught my eye and all my elation melted away.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Slowly, I returned to the group with the jug and snacks. My friends were in the familiar posture: leaning in, elbows on the table, laughing. The setting sun streamed in through the window, reflecting off Rowan’s glossy hair, making the diamond on Abbie’s finger sparkle with rainbows, turning Kate’s eyes an impossibly bright blue.

‘Guys,’ I said, ‘I think you need to see this.’

I held out my phone so they could all see what I’d seen: a new WhatsApp message, a strip of paler grey against the black screen, a white ‘play’ arrow at one end, a green dot alongside it, and the thumbnail image of Zara’s face at the other end.

‘She sent you a voice note?’ Kate asked incredulously.

‘Looks like it.’

‘I mean, what are we meant to do, play it right here in the pub?’ Rowan said disbelievingly.

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