She’d been annoyed not to hear from Jules and Alice at first, but as the niggling doubts she felt over having a baby grew louder, she began to feel grateful. Telling Jules she was pregnant would have been hard enough, telling her she was pregnant and considering not keeping it was unthinkable. As well as that, since being pregnant and spending that weekend in Paris, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was time to tell Alice what had happened with Ted. She wanted to move forward in her life, with her friendships, with a clean slate, not another secret.

‘How long until you need to decide?’ Flynn slid his hands into the pockets of his denim cut-off shorts and held his elbows close to his body.

‘I’m still less than ten weeks, which makes it easier. It’s just a pill…’ She tailed off because they both knew it was so much more than just a pill. ‘I’ve booked an appointment for Friday,’ she added quietly.

Flynn’s eyes widened. ‘Oh. Okay.’ He swallowed. ‘Well, I can stay over that weekend, or if you want space I can be just a phone call away if you need anything…’ His voice quavered.

Nina nodded and felt a rush of tears.

‘Come here,’ he said threading his arms around her waist and pulling her in to a hug. She resisted at first, mindful not only that she was hurting Flynn, but also of the way her blouse was sticking to her sweaty skin. But then she breathed in his scent, wood smoke and tangerine, and she melted on to his chest, her face tilted on his shoulder, a crescent moon, orbiting this man who in a short month had become her sun. Did she love him? Sometimes she thought she did. But where did pregnancy hormones end and true love begin?

She wasn’t proud of what had happened but she was proud of one thing: that she’d brought Flynn in, hadn’t gone through the process alone like last time. The situation was different in innumerable ways, but as she looked at Flynn’s face now, his soulful eyes weighted by grief, she had to admit all that she had taken from Ted, without his knowledge. He deserved to know what had happened, just as Alice did.

*

Jules

It was a condition of her returning to work that she would have a weekly therapy session. On Wednesdays at 11 a.m. she left the office, turned right to avoid La City Pâtisserie, and crossed over London Wall, to a private psychiatrist. She marvelled that even at her lowest ebb she was being cushioned from her fall by the corporate machine. She had to hold on to her job. Not just for her salary, but for the other perks: food, transport, distraction. Her work had become her world. And she hadn’t gambled. Not since that weekend.

Home was a trap: she couldn’t watch TV without being bombarded by adverts for gambling; even daytime TV was sponsored by bingo. She thought of the women stuck at home without the options she had and shuddered. This wasn’t her first time in therapy. At Paul’s insistence, she’d started seeing a therapist after her second miscarriage. When she would return from work on Friday, get into bed in her suit, and not move again until Monday. She spoke about her loss, about the way it made her feel as a woman, but her gambling never came up. Why would it? Jules had grown accustomed to compartmentalising her life. She was good at it.