I heard Bea shuffle out from her cubicle, the door gently closing. When I eventually emerged myself, the door accidentally slammed loudly behind me. I looked over at Bea, who had red cheeks with mascara-stained tears streaking down them.

‘You OK?’ I asked.

‘It’s … negative,’ she said, sniffing.

Oh … shit. She actually wanted it to say she was pregnant? Were those tears of disappointment?

I looked down at my hands cupped around the pissy plastic container. ‘Me too. Negative,’ I said. I couldn’t help but sound relieved. I thought of Jacob then, and I tried to imagine what he’d say. If I told him.

Two women, one result, two totally different responses whirring around in our heads, I could feel them clashing in the air. I thought we were in this together, Bea and I; I thought we wanted the same thing. We always did. I felt my utter joy and relief deflate slightly. I was well and truly off the hook – not pregnant! Yes! We could carry on living our sweet, sweet lives. Wahoooo! But I couldn’t bounce up and down, I had to pretend to look sad. Also: Bea’s reaction had really knocked me for six. How did I not know she was trying for a baby? We knew absolutely everything about each other.

Pfft. This was ridiculous. We didn’t want kids. We were only in our early twenties. And I thought Jeremy was away all the time for work. She’d be really screwing herself over if she got pregnant now. We hadn’t even been out of university that long, and there was so much time stretched out ahead of us to do big crazy things before we settled down. We had parties to attend, careers to smash, hangovers to indulge in, impromptu cinema trips and dinner parties to throw. I had a work acquaintance who had just had a baby and she said that even a trip to the cinema cost her over £50 because they had to book a babysitter on top of the tickets, snacks and car parking. Was that really what we wanted, so soon? Our lives to be put on hold?

After a slow afternoon back at work we went to a small bar just off Soho Square – we both needed a drink after all of that lunch-time palaver. We ordered a bottle of rosé. Then another one. After that we ended up in a dingy basement club nearby, where the barman gave us a free bottle of champagne – I lied and said it was Bea’s birthday.

‘This is the silver lining eh, Bea – if you’d had a different result you wouldn’t be able to drink this delicious ch-champagne!’ I slurred, sloshing my glass around.

‘Oh sshhhh,’ she said, smashing her champagne flute into mine. Luckily they were plastic.

Part of me wanted to ask her about the test, her disappointment: why a baby now, Bea? And why couldn’t you tell me? But the bigger, more selfish part of me kept quiet.