‘It’s carvery night,’ replied Elle. ‘The only time you can pile your plate high with as many roast potatoes and slices of roast beef as possible, like food is going out of fashion, and no one bats an eyelid.’
Suddenly Elle noticed Eleni at the bar, chatting to Mim.
‘Keep your eye on the prize, I’m just nipping to the bathroom,’ she said, handing Pippa a ten-pound note.
‘Eye on the prize?’ Pippa queried.
‘Yes, the queue. Don’t let anyone push in, otherwise there will be arguments.’
Pippa grinned at me. ‘The usual?’
Elle nodded before waving across to Eleni and Mim, who’d spotted them.
By the time Elle returned, Pippa had been served and was sitting down at a table alongside Eleni and Mim. She pulled up a stool and reached across to pinch one of Pippa’s crisps.
‘Perks of being your landlady,’ she declared, before popping it into her mouth before Pippa could object.
That afternoon they’d lugged all of Pippa’s belongings from her family home to her new room. Elle had never seen so many clothes or shoes in her lifetime, and what’s more, Pippa seemed to have a different coloured handbag for every day of the week. Her mum had joked that Pippa could set up her very own boutique. She had tried her best to hide her tears as she stood on the doorstep and waved them off.
‘Shall we fight our way through to the bar again and pay for a ticket for the carvery?’ Elle suggested, suddenly feeling ravenous.
‘No need!’ Pippa smiled as she handed one over. ‘It’s on Fraser – a moving-in present.’
Elle smiled towards Fraser, the landlord, and he caught her eye. She waved at him, mouthing, ‘Thank you’, and he nodded in acknowledgement.
‘Are you two eating?’ Elle looked between Eleni and Mim.
‘Yes, I’m just waiting for them to bring out a fresh tray of roasties.’ Mim smiled. ‘And I may even be tempted to try a sticky toffee pudding for dessert.’
‘I believe you kept my fiancé up until the early hours last night,’ said Eleni.
Pippa grinned. ‘Yes, sorry about that. It was my fault.’
‘They did a marvellous job,’ Elle chipped in. ‘You wouldn’t recognise the room. This time last week it was a junk room and now it’s been totally transformed.’
‘It’ll do Jack good. He needs to get the practice in so he can decorate the nursery.’
As Elle and Pippa watched, Eleni slowly looked down towards her stomach and patted it before looking back up at them. She grinned.
‘No way! Really? You’re expecting? Aww!’ Pippa jumped up and moved round the table to give Eleni a hug.
‘This is amazing news! Congratulations! How far gone are you?’ Elle asked.
‘It’s still very early days, only eight weeks. It’s not what we would have planned just before the wedding, but we’re very happy and I can’t wait to be a mother. My destiny is calling…’
The next words were a blur for Elle. Eleni’s words tumbled over in her mind as her brain contemplated her own situation. She wondered what her biological mother had thought when she first discovered she was pregnant. Was she happy, like Eleni, or was it the worst thing in the world to have happened to her? Elle tried to push the unanswered questions out of her mind. All she could do was wait to see if her search would uncover something concrete.
‘Although I’ve started to feel hideously sick all the time,’ Eleni added. ‘We wanted to keep it quiet a little longer, but I have the slight problem of the hen party fast approaching, and if the bride-to-be is only drinking soft drinks, I’m sure questions will be asked.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Elle replied, glancing quickly towards the food queue as her stomach let out a huge gurgle.
‘Hen party? Did someone say hen party?’ Pippa grinned.
‘Ha! First of all, she blags an invite to your wedding—’ Elle began.
‘As your plus one, and anyway who else are you going to take?’ Pippa pretended to look hurt.
‘And now she wants to gate-crash your hen party!’ Elle joked.
