‘Do you know why?’ Nia asked gently. ‘You always seemed disappointed when you told me you’d got your period, that it hadn’t happened again.’
Anna put her head in her hands. Just then, a waiter came over.
‘Everything okay over here?’ he asked.
Nia nodded. ‘Have you looked at the menu? Shall we just get the sharing platter and then dessert?’
‘Yes,’ Anna agreed.
‘Could I have a glass of Riesling and can we have the sharing platter, please? And then we definitely want to see the dessert menu, even if we say we don’t later.’
Anna laughed. ‘I won’t say that.’
‘Are you feeling sick?’ Nia asked, once the waiter was gone.
‘A bit, but nothing I can’t handle. I just have to keep eating. But, I don’t know, I just keep lying awake at night, thinking about being at home with two of them, about leaving work again and then going back, never progressing, and I just feel scared, and sad. It’s partly about work, I think. Ellie, the girl who joined as a publicist at the same time as me, is Deborah’s favourite. And it sounds so braggy, but I know I am better at the job than she is. But she’s the safer bet, because I’m part-time and sometimes I get called away, if Thomas is ill or whatever. It’s like you choose – kids or career. Still, in the twenty-first century!’
‘What does Edward say?’
It was a reasonable question. She and Edward were in this together, of course. Except that they weren’t, not yet, because she hadn’t told him. In fact, when he’d asked when her period wasdue a few days ago, she’d said that it had started that morning, and he’d pulled that face he always did, and said that maybe it was time for them to talk to a doctor about it.
‘I haven’t told him,’ Anna said.
She expected even Nia to blanche at that, but she didn’t. She just nodded. ‘Because you’re not sure what you want to do?’
Anna didn’t need to consider that for long. No, she had no plans to end the pregnancy. She just wasn’t quite ready to face his uncomplicated joy at the news that had so thrown her.
‘No, I’ll tell him. I’m just not quite ready.’
There was silence, and Anna took a sip of her drink.
‘Is there something wrong with me?’ she asked. ‘I mean, Edward’s great and he looks after us, and I have Thomas, and he’s wonderful and exhausting and all those things a toddler should be, and we’ve been trying for a year to have another one, and this should be the best news I could possibly get, and yet…’
‘It isn’t,’ Nia finished helpfully.
‘I mean, it might be. I just don’t feel quite how I expected to.’
‘Maybe you just don’t feel how you expected to yet,’ Nia said. ‘And you shouldn’t feel bad about it. How you feel is how you feel.’
She always knew, Nia, how to say just the right thing. Anna wondered whether it was a skill she had with everyone, or whether it just worked with Anna because they knew one another so well.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘God, for everything. There’s no one else I could admit all this to, you know? Also for not asking the waiter whether any of the staff are called Joe or John.’
Nia laughed, reached out a hand and put it on top of Anna’s, on the table. ‘There’s a time and a place,’ she said. ‘Even I knowthat.’ Then her voice turned serious when she spoke again. ‘I love you. And we’ll work this out.’
And after days of worry, Anna believed they would.
The food arrived then, and they began to eat.
‘Try the prawns,’ Nia said, pushing the dish a little closer to Anna.
Anna took one. ‘So good,’ she said. And then she was crying without knowing she was going to.
‘Anna,’ Nia said. ‘Anna, come here, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’
