Page 98 of Be More Lucy

‘Come on. We don’t want to be late.’ Jack shepherded them all outside and down the steps into the courtyard.

‘Shall I be chauffeur?’ Mark offered.

‘Do you drive like your mother?’ Em didn’t want to spend the last half hour of her single life clinging to the car seat in terror.

‘Yes, he does,’ Jack said before Mark could answer. ‘I’ll drive.’

53

The four of them sat in the waiting room at the Register Office, Em tapping her feet and Jack drumming his hands on the arm of his chair.

‘Will you two relax? This is supposed to be a joyous occasion,’ Lucy said.

Mark got up and peered through the door into the ceremony room. ‘No one in there. You must be the first ceremony of the day. I thought you were supposed to be late for a wedding.’

‘Not at a register office. They expect you to be on time,’ Em said. ‘And we have to be interviewed to make sure we’re not being coerced into doing this.’

‘Isn’t your dad going to be upset that he’s not here?’ Lucy asked Em.

‘No, I sounded him out. I said I was so fed up with the venue situation, would he mind if we decided to disappear somewhere and get married on our own? He said it would be a relief - he hates giving speeches.’

Two smartly dressed women emerged from one of the office doors. ‘Ms Gillespie, would you like to come with me,’ one of them said. ‘Mr Carver, my colleague will interview you.’

Em and Jack disappeared down a corridor, leaving Lucy alone with Mark for the first time in weeks. She sneaked a looked at him. Despite her jibe about the red shirt earlier, it did suit him now his summer tan was fading.

‘Where’s Hannah?’ she asked.

He took a deep breath. ‘In Spain. Moving her stuff out of my apartment.’

Had she misheard him? ‘What did you just say?’

‘She’s moving out.’ He looked as if he were gauging Lucy’s reaction.

She stared back at him. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

Mark looked away and focused on the floor. ‘It’s not my baby.’

‘Oh my god.’ She resisted the urge to hug him. ‘How do you know?’

‘We had a massive row last week. She said I was rubbish in bed. Not like Josh.’

‘Josh?! When did those two get a chance to do the deed?’

‘In London, after we all went to bed on the Saturday night. On the sofa in the living room and then again on the kitchen island, so she told me.’

Lucy was speechless. Josh had fucked Hannah, then got back into bed with Lucy like nothing had happened. She remembered now. She’d woken up when he walked through the bedroom door in the small hours of the morning. She’d assumed he’d been to the bathroom. She’d tried snuggling up to him, but unusually, he’d resisted her attentions. She’d thought he was still pissed off because they hadn’t gone clubbing. ‘I ate my breakfast on that kitchen work surface. How come none of us knew? The flat’s not that big.’

‘It must’ve been those martinis that Jack whipped up after we got back from the concert. I thought he was heavy-handed with the vodka.’

Lucy tried to process the information. ‘How do you know the baby’s not yours?’

‘You can get pre-natal paternity tests that analyse the mother’s blood against the prospective father’s DNA. Some of the baby’s DNA crosses the placenta into the mother’s bloodstream. So I paid for a test, and the result said there is a 90% chance that I’m not the father.’

‘And Josh is?’

‘I assume so. Unless she’s been playing away with someone else as well. I don’t know what to believe now.’

‘But there’s a 10% chance it could still be yours?’

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