Bloody hell, the music was loud. She was going to have a headache within about five minutes.
‘New woman,’ Emma instructed again.
‘Yes, I am.’ Izzy slapped a smile on her face. ‘I’ll get the drinks in.’ Everything would probably feel better once she had a couple of very alcoholic cocktails down her.
Obviously actually buying the drinks was easier said than done. Everyone else around the bar was so bloody tall.
‘This is going to sound like a really bad chat-up line, but for someone so pretty you’ve got very poor bar presence. I’m Dominic. Can I buy you a drink?’ Dominic was good-looking in a classic, boy-next-door kind of way. If he were American, he’d be preppy. He wasn’t American, though, and Izzy was not going to think about Sam.
Dominic actually had a very nice smile. Open. Pleasant. It wasn’t doing anything tingly to her, but that whole love-at-first-sight thing was obviously total crap, and she was a New Woman. As far as she was concerned, Sam might as well not exist. Dominic did exist and he was right here, and he might well be the perfect man for her. It felt like a little piece of her soul was shrivelling up and dying, letting go of Sam. But she’d never had him. And never would. Maybe that part of her had to die so that she could actually live like a normal person.
Izzy gave Dominic her best smile. ‘I’d love a drink.’
Three
Izzy
March, six years later
Izzy heaved herself and her shopping out of the supermarket. Why did people like being pregnant? Why did people talk about pregnant women blooming? Izzy was not blooming. She had bags under her eyes from nightly 4 until 6 a.m. insomnia. Her skin was stretched unpleasantly taut over her water-retention-huge feet. She was wearing flip-flops even though it was only about five degrees, because her feet were too fat to fit into any of her shoes. Her toenails looked like total shit because she’d tried to paint them herself when she realised that she was going to have to wear flip-flops but she couldn’t reach properly and then it had felt like too much hard work to reach down there to remove it. She couldn’t breathe because the baby had its feet up, squashing her lungs. She needed to go to the loo all the bloody time because its head was on her bladder. Nine months was an eternity.
Her right flip-flop caught on the corner of a pavement stone and she tripped, in weird slow motion. She was going to fall right over. Or drop her shopping. She let go of the bags and put one arm out to catch herself on the wall of the shop and the other around her stomach to protect the baby. It might get hurt if she fell. No, panic over, she was still upright on her uncomfortable feet.
She looked down. Her bags were not upright. Her groceries were scattered all over the pavement. Bloody hell. Now she was going to have to bloody bend over. Like that was possible.
‘Hey, that doesn’t look good. Can I help?’ The man was already gathering up her shopping, working about a billion times faster than she could have done. He reminded her of someone. The man she’d once asked out on his wedding day. Sam. Same dark-blond hair, same wide shoulders, same gorgeous New York accent. He looked up over his shoulder at her and smiled. ‘All done.’
It was Sam.
He was still stop-the-traffic handsome. Despite being a happily married woman, she might even still fancy him a bit if she weren’t too pregnant ever to have or even think about sex again.
‘Hi, Sam.’ Now that was an example of speaking without thinking. He wasn’t going to remember her. He was going to be completely freaked out that she knew his name. Think she was some kind of insane stalker. She should just gloss over it. ‘Thank you so much. Really kind of you. I’m not great at bending down at the moment. Thank you.’
‘Hi, Izzy.’ He remembered her name too. Wow. Wow. He must have a freakishly good memory, given that she’d clearly meant nothing to him. His smile was still gorgeously infectious. Her own lips were widening in response. ‘Not a problem. Can I carry your shopping somewhere for you? Where’re you going?’
‘That’s actually a very good question.’ She hadn’t thought things through when she’d gone into the supermarket. She’d come out to wander around the shops for a bit, because when your husband and all your friends were at work and you were too unbelievably fat and uncomfortable to do, or enjoy, anything you might normally do, maternity leave was actually extremely boring. She’d finished work ten days ago and was now having to kill time every day. She was actually looking forward to the week of intensive ante-natal classes that she’d booked for Monday so that she had something to do.
The gooseberry yoghurt had called Buy me to her from its shelf and she hadn’t been able to ignore it, and once she was in there she’d realised that there was a lot of other food she needed, and now she had to carry it all. But she didn’t want to go home yet because it was only about two o’clock and Dominic wouldn’t be home before seven, at best, and she might actually die of boredom sitting on her own in the house for five hours again. Okay, she was going to go to a café and read her book for an hour or two with a cup of uterine-wall-strengthening, labour-shortening raspberry leaf tea and some cake. And then maybe get a cab home because she was never going to be able to carry all her groceries.
‘I’m thinking a café,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind carrying my bags for me?’ It was okay being a pathetic accepter of male bag-carrying help when you were eight and a half months pregnant. ‘It’s just round the corner on Kenway Road.’
‘Definitely not a problem. Late pregnancy always looks like very hard work to me. How long do you have to go?’
‘You think I’m pregnant?’ This very weak, it had to be said, joke was the best bit about late pregnancy, possibly the only good bit. Sam did some serious eye contact avoidance before squinting down at her tummy again.
‘Erm?’ he said.
Izzy waited a few seconds before sniggering. ‘Sorry, bad joke. Obviously. It’s fun winding people up though. On behalf of pregnant women everywhere suffering from the “You’re huge, is it twins, ha, ha ha” and “Eating for two enormous ones, I see” type comments.’
Sam laughed. ‘You got me good. Genuine moment of panic there. So how long do you have to go?’ He bent down and gathered the bags up.
‘Thank you very much.’ Izzy gestured at the bags and started walking in the direction of the café. ‘One week and six days until my due date. Not that I’m obsessively counting down the days or anything. I mean, I’m very pleased to be having a baby but I’m really not enjoying my third trimester. Do you have kids?’ He probably did. He’d been married for over six years. Sadly, the date of his wedding was engrained into Izzy’s mind pretty much as strongly as her own. She should really have managed to forget it by now.
‘Twins. They’re nearly six now.’ His wife must have been pregnant on their wedding day.
‘Wow. That must be hard work.’
‘Yeah. They’re amazing but yes, definitely also hard work. But worth it, you know. Obviously.’
‘The café’s just along here.’ Izzy pointed. ‘Why don’t you join me?’ Yes, she’d embarrassed herself hugely in front of him several years ago, but it had to be obvious to Sam that she’d very much moved on given that she was married and pregnant, and he seemed very nice, and Izzy was bored. ‘I owe you for the bacon.’ Oops, stalkerish again. Though surely she could be forgiven for remembering. Unless, of course, she looked like someone who’d ask so many men out that she’d forget if one of them had been getting married that day. ‘If you remember. Forty quid. That’ll buy you a very nice coffee and I could even throw in some cake.’