A Part of Me Read Free

face was rosy with controlled delight, which made something loosen in me, some invisible hawser rope that had kept me steady all these past months, suddenly letting me go enough that I might keel over yet. James nuzzled a kiss against my cheek, his thumb chasing the first wet track as it coursed down my face. He said something to Anna as a broken message began organising itself in my mind.
    We’re going to have a child. Somewhere out there, our little boy or girl is waiting for us to bring them home
.
    Skirting along the periphery of my thoughts, I was aware that Anna was saying something in reply to James. She patted my back reassuringly, just a small gesture of comfort but enough to trigger the domino effect. I hadn’t meant to dissolve so whole-heartedly in the middle of that room, to be so completely disabled by my own happiness and rendered such a useless blubbering mess, but after twenty-one months of being cool under fire I couldn’t keep it inside another second.
    There was room for only one thought, one thread of coherence in my mind, and each time it lapped around mybrain, so began a new wave of uncontrollable sobs, muffled only by James’s M&S jumper. The jewel-like embellishments on the toes of Anna’s shoes shone and danced like a kaleidoscope refracted through my rather impressive deluge of tears, and then James leant back in to my hair and said the words. Said them out loud so that we could hear the truth in them.
    ‘We’re going to be parents.’

CHAPTER 2
    ‘W ELL, YOU KNOW what they say.’ Phil grinned, chocolate eyes peeping from under her blunt designer fringe. All around us, the city’s populace of on-trend urbanites basked in the funky basement atmosphere of Rufus’s Cocktail Lounge. It had always been our favourite place.
    ‘Go on, Phil, what do
they
say?’ I asked, indulging her.
    ‘If your sex-life is crap and you argue all the time, you might as well have kids.’ Phil finished her words of encouragement with a blood-red smile and a playful shrug of her shoulders.
    ‘I think you mean
get married
, Phil. If your sex-life is crap and you argue all the time, you might as well
get married
, isn’t it?’
    Phil hooked a long glossy fingernail around a hair that had affixed itself to her newly reapplied lippy and swept it back in with the others. ‘Whatever. They’re both bad ideas.’ She winked.
    ‘Well, I know which one I’m interested in,’ I said, over the mellow beats of Rufus’s in-house DJ. ‘And it doesn’tinvolve a big white dress.’ I smoothed out the creases of my silk pewter vest while Phil let her eyes follow a group of men towards the bar. In the dimness of the club’s ambience, her dark brown bob looked closer to black, giving her an air reminiscent of a Japanese doll. Whatever had caught her attention at the bar wasn’t enough to hold it there.
    ‘We’ll see,’ she cooed. ‘Once junior arrives, you’ll be all loved up and Viv will be banging on about
nuclear families
, and you’ll buckle. I’ll put money on it. You’ll be Mrs Coffrey before the end of next year.’
    Phil knew my family too well. Mum had already tried every angle she could to talk me into the virtues of marriage, despite my father having put an abrupt end to theirs after falling for mine and my brother’s babysitter. It wasn’t that I was against marriage exactly, and in fairness to my father after eighteen years it seemed to be working for him and Petra, but as far as commitment went, I just couldn’t see that there was anything more binding than raising a child together.
    ‘Mum just wants the whole wedding faff, Phil. She missed out when my brother married Lauren because Lauren’s mum did it all. That’s why she’s going nuts with this bloody party she’s talked us into having. Did I tell you that she’s made me order a massive cake for it?’
    Phil broke into a husky giggle. ‘If she’s content with throwing you a mock-wedding reception, Ame, cake and all, take the deal and