Fiona Harper - Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Break Up to Make Up / Always the Best Man

She heard footsteps in the hall and turned to see a woman enter the room. Nick was instantly off his feet and squeezing the life out of her—much the same kind of greeting that Andy had blessed her with.

‘Phoebe! It’s great to see you again. How’s it going?’

Phoebe laughed and smiled as Nick hugged even tighter and rocked her from side to side until she began to lose her balance. A stabbing feeling in her tummy caught Adele by surprise. It didn’t ease up, not even when Phoebe whacked Nick on the arm and told him to let her go.

Phoebe wrestled herself away from Nick and turned to face her, still beaming.

‘You must be the famous Adele.’

Adele rose from the sofa she was sitting on, her arms and legs suddenly feeling stiff and brittle. She held out a hand. Phoebe raised an eyebrow just a fraction, but shook it anyway.

Words of greeting failed to form an orderly queue in her head. What could she say? These people seemed to know all about her but, until five minutes ago, she’d not even known of their existence. Why? Had she really tuned Nick out every time he’d talked about the fine details of his work? Had she really been that self-absorbed?

‘Hello,’ she said, trying to smile, but feeling like a cardboard cut-out.

Phoebe smiled back. A proper smile. She’d obviously decided to give her guest the benefit of the doubt. Adele felt as if she’d shrunk an inch or two. If only there were a telephone box somewhere around where she could do a twirl and come out as her.

‘Come out to the barn, Nick. I want your input on something I’m building. I’m supposed to be making a crazed tennis-ball machine for an ad I’m working on, but it’s just refusing to be as diabolical as I want it to be.’

‘If you want diabolical, I’m your man,’ Nick answered, already starting towards the door.

Phoebe shook her head.

‘Lunch will be ready in about twenty minutes, you two. Don’t make me come and fetch you, OK?’ She turned to Adele and gave her a wink. ‘Boys and their toys, right? Our two are worse than most, I suspect. Why don’t you come through to the kitchen and we can chat while the men start pulling that machine to bits?’

‘Sure.’

She wanted to be bright and sparkling and charming—Super Adele—but her super powers seemed well and truly buried under a whole heap of other junk. Out of order. Please try again later.

Phoebe seemed really nice. She would go into the kitchen and make small talk and be as pleasant as she knew how to be and ignore the unsettled feeling fluttering in her stomach.

Suddenly, being stuck in the little hatchback with Nick seemed like an attractive prospect. Being here, watching Phoebe potter round the kitchen, was like watching a horror movie. Only this movie had a difference: instead of everything being much, much worse, it was far, far better—what her life should be like, but wasn’t.

It was like having her worst failure served up for her so she could choke on every mouthful.

They had it all: the home, the happy marriage. They had roots. Despite herself, she was insanely jealous.

More than anything, Adele wanted roots.

WHATEVER Phoebe was stirring in that pot smelled utterly fantastic.

‘I hope you like soup. It’s broccoli and Stilton.’

‘That sounds lovely.’ Adele sat down at the breakfast bar and stared blankly at Phoebe’s back as she stirred. Then she remembered her resolve to make polite conversation, but it was a bit like when she’d first learned to drive. Nothing came naturally. Every word had to be planned and mentally rehearsed. It took all her concentration.

‘How long have you lived here?’

Phoebe tasted the soup and frowned. ‘About two years,’ she said, adding more salt as she spoke. ‘We decided to slow down a little. We both had such hectic work schedules that we hardly saw each other—but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that.’

Adele dipped her head and fiddled with her fingers. She’d assumed their hosts didn’t know about her marital problems. Although she’d been cross Nick hadn’t told his family the truth, it wasn’t comfortable having her problems out in the open and sullying the atmosphere of perfect domesticity in this cottage.

‘My hat goes off to you and Nick if you’ve found a way to make it work without one of you cutting back on your work.’ Phoebe gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘I’m sure Andy and I would have been heading for the divorce courts if we hadn’t moved here.’

She opened and shut her mouth. Just a lucky guess, then. Her secrets were safe after all.

Phoebe was stirring the soup again. Thank goodness she didn’t seem to mind the long gaps in the conversation.

Adele fiddled with a lemon from a bowl on the central island. A move to the country wouldn’t have saved her marriage. That would just be a geographical shift. Nick would still be Nick, and Adele would still be Adele, and roses round the door weren’t going to suddenly make them compatible.

Phoebe banged the wooden spoon on the saucepan. ‘Done. Do you think you can keep an eye on it while I call the lads and get Max?’

Adele nodded. A dog called Max. That was the name she and Nick had picked out for the puppy they were going to get when their respective projects had been put to bed. But then there had been another deal, another project, and the time had never come.

Nick and Andy entered the kitchen a few minutes later, still deep in conversation about mechanics and motors. She shuffled in her seat and waited for Phoebe to return. At least with another female in the room there was a vague possibility the conversation might turn towards something that didn’t sound like Klingon.

Phoebe’s footsteps outside the kitchen door helped her perk up.

These were nice people. She could chit-chat, if she really put her mind to it. She just needed to get into character, telephone box or no telephone box. She bared her teeth in the beginnings of a smile, but then Phoebe pushed the door open and every molecule in Adele’s bloodstream turned to ice.

Max wasn’t an Alsatian, or even a Jack Russell. It was much worse than that.

Max was a baby.

A pink, gurgling bundle that sat in his high chair and blew bubbles at Adele while she tried to get her pulse rate under control.

It was official. Babies were now top of her things-to-be-terrified-of list. Worse than spiders by a long shot.

It was OK if she was warned, as she was when she went to Mona’s house, but when little dimpled creatures appeared out of the blue she went into a tail-spin. A crawling feeling in her tummy made her want to push back her chair and run.

She couldn’t look at him. He was too cute. His intoxicating baby scent was drifting towards her and it was killing her. She sipped warm liquid off her spoon and tried to block it all out.

The chatter around the table filtered away, almost as if she were listening to them talking underwater, and she was left alone with the knowledge that, if things had not gone so disastrously wrong, she would have had a crumpled pink newborn to call her own right this very minute.

She sucked in a breath through her nostrils and tried to shake the images away without actually moving her head. Pictures of her and Nick: laughing in a large cream kitchen, eating soup and taking turns to pace the room with a tiny bundle on their shoulder as it hiccuped.

And then the images became even more disturbing. The confusion she’d felt only days after her husband had walked out on her when she’d found the second pink line on the pregnancy test. The horror a couple of weeks after that when the bleeding had started. And finally, the deep blackness that had shrouded her for months afterwards.