With a puff, Kate collapses back onto the sofa.
‘Yeah, I don’t have energy for much, though.’ She reachesfor one of the biscuits that she grabbed before the call. Leonie sips her tea and Emma reaches for a glass of wine. For a second, it’s almost as if they are all in the same room together. ‘So, you never told me about the story you’ve been working on? That big meeting you mentioned?’
Both Emma and Leonie look shifty.
‘We’d love to tell you about it, but it hasn’t gone live yet and we were given a pretty severe bollocking by the editor to keep everything confidential. Do you remember that leak we had a couple of months ago?’
‘But I’m not anyone! I work there too.’
There’s that shifty look again.
‘Well, you’re technically not working right now …’
Kate does her best to adjust her expression to hide her hurt. ‘Right. OK. I get it.’
‘You know that we’d love to chat to you about it if we could. Although, honestly, it’s not the most exciting story, I’m not sure why the editor’s so hyped about it.’
‘It’s fine.’ She takes a breath, trying to make her voice sound more cheerful than she feels. ‘So, what else is going on? How’s wedding planning going, Em?’
Emma’s face brightens at the mention of the wedding. ‘Oh, you know, there’s still a lot to do. But I’m getting very excited about the weekend. Leonie booked me an appointment at this boutique in Islington where they give you prosecco and everything – the full shebang. We figured we might as well go all out. I’m hopefully only going to wear a wedding dress once!’
Kate frowns. ‘Dress shopping?’
‘Yeah, the wedding’s only six months away now. Apparently,I’ve left it pretty late to find a dress. Who knew most brides bought theirs like a year and half in advance? Classic me, trying to organise a wedding in half the usual time, but hey, I like a challenge.’
Emma is still grinning, but Leonie seems to have clocked Kate’s expression and is looking flushed.
Kate tries to keep her voice steady. ‘I’m a bridesmaid too, shouldn’t I come with you?’
Emma’s smile drops suddenly from her face. ‘Oh. I didn’t think …’
‘We assumed you wouldn’t be able to make it,’ chips in Leonie.
‘You could have asked me,’ Kate says quietly.
‘Oh God, Kate, I’m sorry,’ says Emma, her face glowing red now.
Leonie helps her out. ‘We didn’t want to put any pressure on you. What with Rosie being so little and you not being in London anymore …’
‘But obviously I’dloveto have you there, if it’s not too much for you.’
There’s so much that Kate wants to say. Like,I just had a baby, I didn’t move to a different continent. And,My best friends are moving on without me.
Kate was there when Emma and Sanjay first met. He had just joined the IT department at theHeraldwhen Emma’s computer spontaneously crashed. She was on a deadline and was terrified she’d lost all her copy. Sanjay not only managed to restore her work but, most importantly, managed to keep her calm, which was no mean feat given she’d been close tothrowing her computer out the window when he’d arrived on the news floor. Over the next few weeks, Kate had watched on, amused, as her friend mysteriously encountered a whole string of computer-related issues which required calling Sanjay to come up and take a look. She would never have imagined not being there to help Emma choose her wedding dress. And yet hurt stops her from saying, ‘I’ll be there.’
‘No, it’s fine, it sounds like everything’s organised now. Hey, I think I can hear Rosie crying, I should probably go.’
‘Wait, Kate, we didn’t mean to …’
But Kate is already waving and then hanging up. Because if she stayed on the phone any longer, her friends would see her cry and that’s the last thing she wants.
She knows she’s probably being petty. But the feeling of being left out is like a stomach ache that she can’t ignore. It takes her right back to the café that morning when she’d stepped inside hoping to feel a sense of connection with the other mothers but left feeling more isolated than ever.
If her friends don’t want her there, then she doesn’t want to go.
CHAPTER 17
When Phoebe pulls up outside her building at the end of the day, she has a brief moment where she wonders if she’s totally losing it, because the view of the high street looks very different to when she left that morning. It has been a long day, after all, so maybe she’s just hallucinating. But as she climbs down off her motorbike, she realises her mind isn’t playing tricks on her. The shop below her, which had been closed this morning and for months before, is finally open. The newspaper covering the windows has disappeared, revealing shining glass framed by a dark green awning,Giuglia’swritten across it in swirling gold font.
