Impossible to Forget(42)

Maggie was there first – of course – and had already been to the bar. A crisp gin and tonic and a pint of snakebite sat on the table in front of her.

‘I assume that’s okay,’ she said as Angie sat down, nodding in the direction of the pint glass.

Angie looked at the glass, then back at Maggie and twisted her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Maggie, getting quickly to her feet. ‘I just assumed. I’ll go back to the bar. What do you want?’

‘A pint of orange juice?’ replied Angie.

‘Hungover?! On a Wednesday,’ said Maggie, but then she must have seen that she was wrong. ‘Oh my God! You’re pregnant!’

The routes that Maggie’s mind followed never failed to impress Angie. She would never have leapt so deftly to that conclusion. In fact, she doubted whether it would even have occurred to her. And yet Maggie had nailed her news in one shot. It was almost disappointing.

She nodded.

‘And . . . ?’ Maggie continued.

She was being asked whether this was a good thing or not, Angie understood. Here she was, not four hours since she had discovered the truth for herself and she was having to jump one way or the other.

But she found that this was not a difficult answer to give.

‘It’s good,’ she said, nodding as she spoke as if confirming the fact to herself. ‘Yes. Definitely good. A surprise – it’s most definitely a surprise – but a good one.’

Maggie beamed; a big broad smile that held nothing but joy at the news.

‘I’m delighted for you,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. Let me go and get you that orange juice and then you can tell me all about it.’

She returned a few minutes later with a pint glass full to the brim of orange juice, ice cubes clinking against the side as she put it down carefully on the table next to the abandoned snakebite. Angie thought that the snakebite actually looked far more appealing. She’d had a shock, after all. But she dismissed the thought. This could be the first of the very many sacrifices that would follow.

‘So?’ said Maggie. ‘Tell me everything.’

‘Not much to tell. I did a test this afternoon and that’s pretty much it.’

‘And what did Jax say? I assume it is Jax’s?’

Maggie knew about Jax now, although she had never met him. He wasn’t the kind of partner that you paraded at a dinner party, and their time together was so rare that Angie guarded it preciously.

She stretched her face into a look of mock horror. ‘What are you saying?’ she said.

‘Okay.’ Maggie smiled. ‘But it’s always best not to make any assumptions. So, what did he say? Is he pleased too?’

Angie scratched at her dreadlocks. ‘He doesn’t know yet. In fact, no one knows but you and me.’

The look of flattered delight that appeared on Maggie’s face touched Angie’s heart. But then Maggie returned to her pragmatic self.

‘How come?’ she asked. ‘Are you worried he won’t be as pleased as you are?’

‘It doesn’t really matter what he thinks,’ replied Angie, a tinge of defiance in her voice. ‘It’s my body.’

‘Yes, obviously,’ said Maggie. ‘But it’s his baby. He has a right to be consulted.’

‘And I’m not saying that I won’t tell him. I’m just saying not yet. I’m barely four weeks pregnant. There’s no harm in keeping it to myself, and you,’ she added, ‘for a couple more weeks whilst I think through all the implications.’

Maggie gave a little nod in recognition of the validity of the point.

‘And how do you think he’ll react?’ she asked.

Without having met him, Maggie had no way of predicting this for herself, Angie realised. Then again, Angie wasn’t entirely sure she could call it, either.

‘I think he’ll be shocked at first,’ she replied. ‘But then I think he’ll like the idea.’

‘And if he doesn’t . . . ?’

Maggie always did this – asked the question that Angie would rather not know the answer to.

‘If he doesn’t then he can swivel,’ she said with more vitriol than she had expected. ‘But I think he’ll be okay with it.’

Maggie nodded, accepting this. ‘And what about you?’ she asked more gently. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I’m excited,’ Angie said. And as she said it, she realised that she really was.

‘Well, I have news too,’ said Maggie with a smile, ‘although it’s pretty paltry by comparison to yours.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Angie, taking a slurp of her drink and pulling a face as she tasted orange juice and not the alcohol that her brain had clearly been expecting.

‘I’ve been asked out. On an actual date,’ said Maggie, one eyebrow raised.

Maggie’s love life was quiet, to say the least. In all the time they had been friends, Angie had never known her go out with anyone for more than a couple months.

‘My life is my work,’ Maggie had said more than once. ‘When I’m busy there isn’t time for a relationship and when I’m quiet I just want to sleep to get ready for when I’m busy again.’

‘But don’t you get lonely?’ Angie had asked. She had stressed the last word, the question really being about the apparent lack of sex in Maggie’s life, but Maggie had batted the question away.