I nodded, not sure if getting too excited at this point was the right way to go but unable to rein it back.
‘Is he still away at that conference?’
Mel nodded. ‘Yes, until tomorrow night. I should know one way or the other by the time he gets back.’
I lifted my hands, revealing four sets of crossed fingers. ‘Well, here’s hoping I’m finally going to be an honorary auntie – not that I’ll have a clue what that involves, mind you, but I already know it’ll be the best damn job I’ll ever have.’
Mel looked at the quadruple symbols of good luck and covered them with her paint-stained hands.
‘No way are you going to be an auntie to any future child we have,’ she declared.
She sounded emphatic, and I could hardly blame her. What I knew about young children could be written on the back of a very small Post-it note.
‘Steve and I have already decided you’re going to be his or her godmother.’
Now it was my turn to grow misty-eyed. I wanted to say thank you, that it was an honour I didn’t deserve, but the words were locked down in my throat. Mel smiled and gently nodded. She’d heard them anyway.
‘Will you do a test tomorrow?’
‘If I can hold out that long.’
‘Well, if you need any help. I could...’ My voice trailed away. ‘I was going to say hold the stick while you pee on it, but that sounded kind of gross.’
‘It is,’ Mel said, wrinkling her nose prettily. There was a look of excitement on her face. ‘I could do one of the tests now.’
‘You have more than one?’ Her eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead. ‘Of course you have more than one,’ I said, knowing her in a way that still filled me with gratitude. ‘How many exactly?’
‘Four,’ she replied with an impish smile.
It was the longest three minutes of my entire life. And the most nerve-wracking. I knew the answer the second the shop’s bathroom door opened. She’d walked into that room with so much hope and expectation, but there was none left when she lifted her face to mine.
She was dry-eyed. She’d been through this moment many times before. My face, however, was awash with tears.
‘Oh, Mel, I’m so sorry,’ I said, folding her into my arms. She felt so small. So fragile. So lost.
She sniffed. ‘It was always a long shot. A million-to-one chance.’
‘Maybe it’s a false negative?’ I was torn between raising her hopes and clutching at straws.
She shook her head sadly. ‘Unlikely. None of the other negatives have ever been wrong.’
I wanted to sob, to howl out at the injustice of a world where the one thing, the only thing, my friend wanted was denied her. But my tears weren’t going to help her, and so I just held her, as she stood upright but broken in my arms.
‘It will happen for you. One day it will happen.’
She nodded mutely against my shoulder.
‘At least I spared Steve from having to go through yet another disappointment.’
Even from the depths of her sadness, the love she felt for him was uppermost in her thoughts.
And for the first time, I envied her that. Because that was what I wanted too... from a man who didn’t want to commit.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Ellie?’
I looked up from the bottle of Rioja I was about to put in my basket and glanced up and down the supermarket aisle. I could see no one I knew.