‘Together?’
‘If you like. You can cuddle me all night if you can manage that.’
‘It will be too hard.’
‘What the cuddling, you mean?’
‘You saucy gal, now get here now.’
Leo pulled her towards him and hugged her tightly.
‘I mean it, Grace, I won’t ever let you down.’
SIXTY-SIX
What do you mean Cynthia Princeton can’t represent me anymore?’
Ed held his hand to his head as the posh voice at the end of his phone continued.
‘Exactly that, Mr Duke. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are having to put your case in the hands of Mister Dominic Westley.’
‘But he knows nothing about me. Or about the case. This is not good at all.’
‘Mister Westley is a very experienced member of our team here. Please don’t be concerned. Now, when can you come and meet with him?’
Ed put his phone back in his pocket and threw himself down on his sofa.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he said aloud.
He needed de-stressing; maybe he could catch Gracie between events and persuade her to come back to his. He tried her mobile but it went straight through to answerphone. Strange, he noticed she’d been offline for hours as well. His instinct had already told him that she was not really with a friend last night. Not picking up his phone would be exactly what he would do if he was up to no good, too.
What was she playing at? Surely she hadn’t gone back to Lewis? It was bad enough losing his trusted barrister, let alone the woman who he was beginning to have real feelings for.
SIXTY-SEVEN
A tired but happy Gracie smiled as a couple of ladies appeared for the Miscarriage Matters session. One was a familiar face who had repeatedly miscarried at six weeks and another was new: a well-dressed woman around her own age.
She had arranged a talk today on health and nutrition from somebody Ali had suggested, who worked at the same hospital as she did. Gracie was happy with the attendance of eight today and busied herself making teas and coffees as the talk commenced.
A few of the group stayed on for general chat after the talk but just one – the new lady she had seen earlier – came and sat with Gracie. She had a doll-like face with almost perfectly round red circles on her cheeks, steel-blue, almond-shaped eyes and wore her hair in a neat plait. Her buxomness suited her. Gracie, although not short herself in the chest department, felt a little in awe of the woman’s peachy looking breasts poking over her green T-shirt.
‘Gracie Davies? That’s you, isn’t it?’ She was softly spoken.
‘Hello, yes. The one and only.’ Gracie grinned.
‘I’m Renee. I’ve heard such good things about this group, I had to come along. I think you should be really proud of what you’ve achieved. In fact, I think groups like this should be set up around the country. Women need to talk about fertility issues, about loss. It’s a big part of a lot of our lives.’
‘Well, thank you, Renee, that’s really sweet of you to say and I think you’re right. No more sweeping miscarriage aside as if it means nothing. It’s everything if it happens to you.’
Renee stood up.
‘Thanks for coming, Renee.’ Gracie could tell the lady had more to say. This happened quite often, people wanting to talk to her but not being able to release the words that had been trapped for so long. Usually the thanks-for-coming line jolted them back into telling her what they had really come here for in the first place.
‘I don’t want this to be painful for you, Gracie, and I hope you don’t mind me coming to you about this, but I’m going through IVF and one of the other ladies told me you’d been through it, too.’
‘Yes, been there, done that.’ Gracie smiled. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Scared,’ Renee replied, bluntly.
