Page 69 of So Thrilled For You

‘Shut up. I’m not telling you where I am so you can come and pretend you care when really you’re trying to sabotage my life.’

‘What?’

‘I want a baby and I can’t have one with you!’ My shouts bounced out over the dark water of the Thames.

She sighed. ‘I can’t hear you properly over the music. Hang on, let me step out.’

But I wouldn’t let her have a second to get her story straight. As I staggered along the river, swerving in all sorts of directions, vaguely aware I should probably give up and order an Uber soon, I let Phoebe know all the conclusions I’d come to. How she’d tricked me. Used me. Deceived me. When the music died in the background, so had the care in her voice.

‘. . . and, yeah, so, I just want you to leave me alone, Phoebe. Get out of my life. I love Matt. We’re going to start a family.’

‘OK.’

‘Is that all you’re going to say?’

‘OK. I’ll leave you alone, like you’ve asked.’ Her voice was crisper than the night air seeping through my Zara coat.

‘Well . . . er . . . good.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Umm. Yes.’

‘Thanks Nicki. I appreciate the call. I wish you every happiness in your totally beige life filled with utter self-denial.’

She hung up and left me in a rare silence of the capital city, staring at my phone. A grief started tickling the back of my throat. An urge to cry. I was shaking, but only because of the cold, I told myself. I fell to a nearby bench and shivered as I replayed every memory of Phoebe that I had. The lunches, the laughter, the late nights, the thrill, the sweet taste of her mouth, and I let one tear fall down my frozen cheek. ‘Stop it, Nicki,’ I whispered, and instead I pictured Matt’s hand in mine on a maternity ward. His face bleary with tears as he held our baby before leaning over and kissing my forehead. ‘Yes,’ I said, into the dark. I stood up and swallowed the feeling that part of me was dying, an important part. In the following months, before Phoebe took a giant promotion at a mainstream kooky jewellery company, we only traded formalities. I didn’t even go to her leaving do. I had dinner with the Little Women and their partners instead. I cooked them a strange meal of the only things Lauren could stand eating during her pregnancy. It was part of Matt and I’s plan to return to ourselves – surround ourselves with people who support our way of life, our path. People who think it’s lovely, not weird, that we’ve been together for a decade.

Steffi was replaced as the albatross in Matt and mine’s marriage. We were now victims of Phoebe. Just as well we never had to see her again. It was all a strange blip. But we told ourselves it was a necessary blip because it made it clear to us how much we loved each other, how much we wanted to move forward as a couple. Start a family. Go to the next step. Phoebe’s interference actually moved us forward and our happiness was our revenge on her.

When we had our first scan, and our baby’s heartbeat echoed through the darkened hospital room, I wept at what we’d created. At how worth it everything was. Afterwards, I stared at the pixilated scan several times an hour, tracing the blob that was our baby with my finger, clutching it to my chest, and felt sheer relief and gratitude.

My baby.

I’d made the right decision.

I’d made the best decision.

And I still feel that way. I do. At this ridiculous baby shower, with everyone I love around me, and a mounting pile of tiny clothes to my side that will soon have a warm and wriggling creature in it, it feels so right.

But, as my eyes are dragged back towards Phoebe’s, something else feels right too. So utterly, wonderfully, complicatedly, right. My eyes moisten, and I pretend it’s at the sheer joy of receiving an ugly plastic teething necklace. The delusion I’ve cloaked myself in drops away to the ground, and the extent of my sacrifice pummels into my chest.

Phoebe tilts her head at me, knowing. She knows the tears aren’t for the atrocious necklace.

They’re for her. Forus.For the life – and love – I had to throw away to get here. Not just throw away – torch to the ground and act so atrociously she could never forgive me and try and tempt me again.

But Phoebe’s here, despite my horrific behaviour, she’s here. Does that mean she has forgiven me?

Or is she here to mess with me? As one final act of revenge?

Lauren

Nicki’s practically blended into the mountain of opened presents around her. Only her face sticks out from the pyramid of pastels and duck-adorned thingymajigs.She’s been very polite about the fact she’s unwrapped four hand-knitted blankets and artfully reacted to each like she’s never seen one before. I’m not sure why anyone gives you baby blankets. I counted seven by the time Woody was one week old, and they were mostly used to mop up milky reflux or stuffed around myself to try and concoct a comfortable breastfeeding position. (Note: Comfortable breastfeeding positions do not exist – embrace the inevitable calcifying into a Quasimodo-esque hunchback).

It’s hard not to remember my own shower of presents – sitting here, watching her coo over a tiny sunhat that will make her baby have a sunflower head. Since that awful birth conversation, I feel like I’m only half here. The other half of me is trapped in the memories of everything that came next and I can’t press pause . . . No Lauren, think of the good times. Think of that lovely spa day you had with the Little Women. Little did I know – blobbing around a hydrotherapy pool – that it was more a goodbye to my friends before I was wiped from the face of my own life, like chalk being blown off an eraser. A goodbye to the person I was before the bad things happened . . . the birth . . . so awful . . . then . . .

The movie is determined to play. I’m yanked, once more, from this party and into the hell pit of those days. My hands grip on the baby monitor in a failed attempt to combat the PTSD, but I’m lost again.

Lost.

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