Page 63 of The Plot Twist

‘Wait, what, seriously?’ Allie put down her drink in surprise.

‘Allie! I’m kidding. This is the hottest club that’s opened this season in London. Didn’t you see the queue of people waiting to get in? We’re pitching to them next week,’ Jess continued, ‘to do all their marketing and PR. This,’ Jess pointed to their two drinks, ‘is research.’

‘Nice.’

‘You want another one by the way?’

‘It’s my round.’ Allie made a move to stand, but Jess was faster.

‘No,’ she gestured to Allie to put her purse away. ‘It’s on me, I can expense these.’

‘Well, thank you, I’ll have the same again, please. What are you drinking by the way?’

Jess looked slightly furtive. ‘Oh I can’t remember what it was called, it’s a bit like a gimlet, I think, but all the drinks in here have burlesque dancer names. I’ll have to ask the barman to remind me.’

‘I’ll have the same then if it’s good.’

‘Oh, no. You don’t have to. You like the one you have.’ And before Allie could protest further Jess had left and was already chatting to the barman, who, by the way he was looking at Jess’s cleavage, seemed happy to make her up any drink of her choosing.

When Jess returned, Allie reached over and picked up Jess’s drink. ‘Can I try a sip?’

‘No!’ Jess grabbed her glass back, spilling some of the drink on the table as she did so.

‘Everything OK?’ A thought had begun formulating in Allie’s mind, a small but insidious voice that was starting to shout louder and louder that Jess was being weird. She had been weird when Allie had phoned her the other day, evasive about where she and Tom were going. And now she was being downright odd about her drink, about its name, about Allie not choosing the same one, even about Allie trying a small sip of hers. Either Jess had become exceptionally territorial over her drinks, or she was…

‘Everything’s fine!’ insisted Jess. ‘Just Tom has a cold, and you know how it is. I probably have it too. Not that I have any symptoms yet, but you know they always say you’re most contagious before you’re symptomatic. So maybe best if we stick to our own drinks tonight. I don’t want you catching anything.’ She smiled slightly manically at Allie and then took a sip of her carefully guarded drink.

Allie narrowed her eyes. ‘What about the olives?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Allie pointed to the plate of antipasto that was on the table in between them and which Jess and Allie had been happily sharing, right up until this revelation about Tom’s ‘cold’.

‘We’ve been sharing those all evening. Are you worried about that too?’ Allie tried to contain her smile, she was enjoying tormenting Jess.

‘Gosh, you’re right. I’m so sorry. I hadn’t thought. Probably germs all over them now…’

Allie waited a beat, wondering if this was the moment that Jess would cave and confess her news that Allie was now convinced she was sitting on. It would be a challenge for either of them to spend the rest of the evening with an untouched plate of food between them, just to maintain the point that Tom had a ‘cold’. But Jess said nothing and eventually Allie gave in. It was just too wrong to deprive a pregnant woman of food, if that was indeed what was going on. Let her keep her secret for a little while longer, surely she would tell Allie when she was ready. Jess shifted awkwardly in her seat and Allie was struck again by her boobs, which, now she came to think of it, could actually be entirely natural and nothing to do with the structured engineering of an excellent bra. Allie felt momentarily saddened by the fact that she was not about to be gifted the knowledge of a secret new bra that would transform her life.

‘Don’t worry,’ Allie said, leaning forward and using one of the tiny cocktail sticks to divide the contents of the antipasto in half. ‘There, you have that half and I’ll have this.’ Jess’s reaction at being allowed back to her seat at the charcuterie board made Allie smile and decide she had definitely done the right thing, for now.

‘So, what are you going to do about Will? How did you leave it?’

‘Awkwardly, as we have already established.’ Allie sighed. ‘God I really don’t know, Jess. He was so sweetly surprised to see me. Do you remember what it was like when we were teenagers and you were surprised into introducing your boyfriend to your parents? It was just like that.’ Allie looked wistful.

‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ Jess said through a mouthful of chorizo. ‘Remember I went to a convent school. Didn’t even talk to a boy who wasn’t related to me till I hit freshers week.’

‘And we all remember how that went down.’

‘Hey!’ protested Jess. ‘You weren’t eventhereduring my fresher’s week.’

‘Yeah, but I’ve heard the stories, and seen the scars.’ Allie grinned at Jess as she held up her hand where you could still see the faintly ghostlike trail of a line of stitches that Jess had earned after paying the student barman in kisses for all the tequila she had drunk that night, which resulted in her plunging her hand straight through a glass door. Jess still maintained that she hadn’t seen the door there, but Allie had it on reliable information that prior to this incident Jess was proclaiming she had magic powers and could walk through walls.

‘OK, but you can imagine what it must have been like. Proud you had a boyfriend, embarrassed that you were about to have to introduce them to your parents? Mortified that everyone in the room would know you were having sex?’

‘Guess so,’ Jess said noncommittally. ‘Anyway, what happens next? Martin presumably now knows that you and Will are…’ Allie interrupted with a strangled noise in protest at discussing precisely what Martin did or didn’t know about the status of her relationship with Will. Jess ignored her. ‘And Will now knows that you’re Martin’s secret writing partner? And neither of them seem cross about it so that’s good, right?’

‘I don’t actually think theyknowthough…’

Jess cocked her head. ‘Explain.’

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