I sigh, tiredness beginning to pull at my eyelids. ‘We’re just discussing the meds the doctor gave me. They seem a little too strong.’ Right on cue my left eye begins to twitch, another symptom which has plagued me for the past two days. ‘See,’ I say, pointing at it. ‘No way should they be giving me facial spasms.’
‘Well, no, not really,’ says Annette. ‘I mean, side effects can occur with the ones you’re on but they should be pretty mild. Unlike the meds your sister is on.’ She turns her attention to Magda. ‘She needs to come off them if you ask me. I remember a few years ago we had a woman with a prescription for the same stuff. Batty it made her, convinced she was communicating with Uri Geller. Her husband said she made a right bloody mess of their cutlery draw.’
Magda looks down at her feet, clearly not amused. ‘Speaking of Helen, I should really get back in there. Poor love hasn’t eaten or drunk a thing all day.’
‘Or cracked a smile come to that!’ Annette glances over at me, amusement dancing in her eyes.
‘I can’t say I blame her, in all honesty.’ I turn to Magda, wanting Annette to see her catty comments for what they are. ‘So, as I was saying, Mags, do you think I should come off the medication?’
Magda slides her eyes over to Annette, concern knitting her brows together. ‘Well…’
‘Absolutely not!’ Annette jumps into the conversation. ‘They aren’t bloody Smarties, Louisa, and if you’ve been prescribed them it will be for your own good.’
I sigh for the second time in as many minutes. ‘I know, you’re probably right.’
‘Anyway…’ Annette finally chucks the napkin full of glass into the bin before turning on her heel. ‘I best get back to Ron; poor little lamb gets nervous when in the sole company of a female. He’s awfully shy, you know.’
I watch her leave, wondering, not for the first time, if I’m the only one who’s stark raving mad!
‘Well, if you please, I think I’d like to make a toast. To Louisa, James and the lovely Cory, who have welcomed us into their home and made us part of their family.’ Magda raises her flute of champagne in the air, her bright-red Christmas hat sitting lopsided on her head.
I look around the table at a sea of faces all gawping at me. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘That’s really lovely of you. Isn’t it, James?’
James looks across the table at Magda and swallows loudly. ‘Mags, you’re one in a million. You have supported us from the moment we met you.’
‘I am truly blessed to be a part of your journey,’ she says to him, her eyes burning holes into his. ‘Louisa is the luckiest lady I know.’
My jaw stiffens, something about their exchange not sitting well with me. You’re just being paranoid. Stop it! ‘It was really lovely to finally meet you,’ I say, turning to Helen in an attempt to pull my thoughts, and eyes, away from Magda and James. ‘Mags tells me you don’t live far from here. You’re always welcome to nip round for a cuppa.’ For a reason I can’t quite put my finger on, I am drawn to Helen. Perhaps it’s because both of our lives have been ravaged by tragedy, or maybe it’s because, in the back of my mind, I know I have seen her some place else. ‘Have we met before?’ I ask her. ‘You look familiar.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she mutters, dropping her gaze onto her lap while rubbing the gold crucifix around her neck. ‘Since Luke… well, I’ve hardly been out.’
‘The pharmacy…’ I say, all of a sudden remembering seeing her two days ago as she’d crouched down beside the female hygiene aisle, her hair as dirty and lank as it is today. ‘I think you were in the pharmacy the other day.’
‘Yes, maybe.’ Her cheeks redden and she looks as if she’s about to burst into tears.
Oh shit! I could kick myself as I suddenly remember the phone call Magda received while in the coffee shop; Ron’s assistant concerned about Helen loitering around the pharmacy. Obviously I’ve touched a nerve, and I could bloody kick myself.
‘That solves it then,’ I offer through a smile. ‘I am sorry for your loss, by the way. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for you.’
‘Well…’ interrupts Annette, an after-dinner mint clasped between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Ron and I would like to make a little toast of our own.’ She looks over at Ron who appears to be virtually comatose. ‘Ron!’ she shouts, causing him to sit up straight like a soldier called to attention. ‘I was just saying we have an announcement, dear… and it would be preferable if you were alive to witness it.’
‘Right you are, dear,’ he slurs, his head lolling back down onto his chest. ‘Break a leg.’
A rush of blood surges through me for a reason I can’t quite articulate.
‘Louisa, are you still with us?’ she asks. ‘’You’ve gone a little pale.’
‘No, I’m fine,’ I say, fanning myself with my hand in an attempt to cool down. ‘Go on, what’s your announcement?’ I flick my eyes over towards James who shakes his head at me, clearly as much in the dark as I am.
Silence descends all around us, the slow ticking of the clock acting as a physical countdown. ‘Come on then,’ I say, unable to take the tension for a moment longer. ‘What is it?’
‘Well…’ Annette takes a deep breath and rubs her stomach in semi-circles. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Magda stiffen. ‘Ron and I are going to be parents!’
I sit open-mouthed, momentarily unable to speak.
‘You haven’t even had another round of IVF lately,’ says Magda, her voice rising both in pitch and volume. ‘Unless you have and didn’t tell me?’
I look over at Annette, see a smirk formulating behind her eyes. ‘Oh no… this one wasn’t IVF,’ she says, the smirk sliding down onto her lips. ‘This was all natural. I guess miracles do happen after all.’
‘I’m sorry, I think I’m going to be sick!’ Magda jumps up and flies out of the room… her muffled cry as painful as the pounding inside my head.
‘Mags, you in there?’ I tap open the door to the master bedroom, feeling like a stranger in my own home. The overspill from the landing light seeps into the darkness, illuminating Magda who sits on the edge of my bed, the weak light reducing her multicoloured hair to varying shades of grey. She is cradling Cory in her arms, her face wet with tears. I leave the door ajar so I don’t have to switch on the bedroom light. For some reason it doesn’t feel right to do so, as if seeing Magda anything less than perfect will somehow shift the dynamics between us. Since I have known her, she has fought to be the ‘happy one’ in our friendship; always battling through her sadness with a smile, pasting over her grief with yet another hair dye, reinventing herself over and over again as if searching for the person who isn’t maternal, for the woman whose womb doesn’t ache for a child that never comes.
She doesn’t speak as I gently sit down beside her, the mattress indenting under my weight. Cory is asleep in her arms, his face relaxed and devoid of expression, reminding me of a china doll. Magda reaches out and strokes his fingers, her touch gentle. I hold on to my words, understanding that she needs to have this moment with my son. Her pain is so familiar to me and yet I suddenly feel like I am no longer eligible to share it. The bond which bound us together has been broken. No longer are we two mothers without children. No longer are we a united front against the ‘others’: the woman in the coffee shop who ordered two muffins because she was ‘eating for two’, the frazzled-looking mum in the supermarket who juggled identical twins and a trolley full of food. We envied them, we admired them, we wished we were them…
And now I have become them. Annette has become them. And Magda has become ‘the other’.
‘I understand how absolutely shit this must feel.’ I reach out to her, placing my hand on top of hers.
She sniffs up. ‘I must seem like a bitch. Annette and Ron have been trying for ever… and after losing that little one at eight weeks. Oh God, I’m evil.’
‘No, you’re not. Look, if it was me, and Annette had looked at me with that smug grin, I’d probably have rammed the pigs in blankets down her throat.’