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‘Before you had Ben.’
‘I don’t know what to say. Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘You were pregnant.’
And there it was: a wedge in our friendship that I’d never known about.
‘Who was the father?’
‘Do you remember Tom from Bath?’
I did. He was a married man, who she’d met through work.
‘Did he know?’
‘He paid for it. God, Rach, I’m sorry. It’s stupid of me even to mention it now. I don’t even know
why I’m telling you. It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through.’
And here’s the thing: I couldn’t deal with it. If Laura wanted us to feel solidarity at that moment
then she’d just said completely the wrong thing. It was simply too much to cope with: the intentional
loss of a child.
A week previously I would have been there for her, supported her, but at that moment it was
viciously, unbearably painful to hear, and my brain, addled with her news, with everything, did a flip.
The exquisite and painful pleasure of our reminiscences about Ben disappeared in an instant. The
earlier warmth of her friendship, and her company, suddenly felt frosty and brittle. Goose bumps ran
across my skin like squalls agitating glassy water.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no, no. I can’t hear this now. Why are you telling me this?’
And then another thought, a corrosive one, as the distrust that my sister had sown as a seed now
bloomed freely in my mind. I voiced it with a tone that was raw enough to surprise even myself, the
tone of somebody who has reached the end of her tether. ‘Are you feeding stories about me to the
other journalists? To your friends out there? Is that why you wanted to talk about Ben?’
I got to my feet, and my wine glass tipped over in my hurry to stand, the wine everywhere, pooling
on the table, on me, dripping onto the floor and Laura stood too and shock had peeled away any
softness in her expression so that her cheeks looked cold and smooth as marble.
‘Jesus, Rachel! I know you must be feeling desperate, but…⁠’
I pushed her. She came around the table towards me, wanting to hug me, and I pushed her away. I
grabbed her coat, and her bag and I shoved them at her and I hounded her all the way to the front door,
ignoring her pleading words, and her tears, until she was out, and gone, like Nicky, and the press, her
so-called friends, took photographs of her on the doorstep while I sat back down at the kitchen table,
on the chair that was damp with wine, and I sobbed.