Paul wanted to talk, but she couldn’t get the words out. She felt like a teenager again, on the sidelines, watching others and weighing up what to say but never quite getting it right. It was all too painful to explain, how incompetent she felt, how it didn’t matter how many times Paul assured her that she wasn’t, that he didn’t blame her. The words couldn’t penetrate her anguish, they provided no balm or salve. They were just words, meaningless words, which bounced off her and she remained feeling empty and alone.

She gambled to stop the thoughts. She gambled because it was fun. She gambled because it was easier than going on to social media, a horror story of birth announcements and pregnancy news, or going to baby showers, or having well-meaning people ask if she and Paul wanted to have a family. She told no one, not even the colleagues she’d worked beside for years (not least because they were mainly awkward, techy men). EastWest, the hedge fund she worked at, was delighted by the firebolt they’d hired. They didn’t realise that the sadder she was in her personal life, the more it drove her to succeed at work. She was fast-track promoted, again and again. If she wasn’t working, she was gambling, and sometimes she was doing both.

Gambling made everything easier. It was even easy to lose; sometimes she liked to wallow in a loss, luxuriate in it. That was a loss she could deal with. And she could just win it back anyway.

Jules wrinkled her nose as a series of notifications pinged in, obscuring her view of her cards.

When in Paris

Nina:

Are we still on for Paris in Feb? I’ve kept the apartment free. We should book our Eurostar.

Alice:

Yes! I need a break. Take me to Ladurée and stuff me with macarons :-)

Jules:

Sorry. I’m on a big transaction. They’ve said no hols for the foreseeable.

It didn’t even cross her mind to go to Paris this year. She loved Alice and Nina, they were pretty much the only friends she kept in touch with these days – and the only ones who knew about her fertility struggles – but it was easier to stay at home, easier not to have to talk, easier not to have to pretend she was coping. That was hard enough at work and she was just about managing it.

Had Alice known that Jules was sitting alone, a fortress of her own construction, the only light from her phone, sunlight having long ago leaked from the room, she would have been there, arms open wide, turning on the lights, convincing Jules to speak to someone.

Had Nina known, she would have arrived with food: foil containers with marinated lamb and couscous and pomegranate; chicken tagine, bursting with preserved lemon and olives; sweet, sticky baclava and rose-water macarons. But they didn’t know. That was the problem. Jules clicked back into her betting account and drifted further away.