Page 10 of An Island Promise

‘Oh, well, sorry if I’m not bloody perfect like you.’

Laurie gaped at her like she’d been slapped in the face. ‘There you go again, proving my point.’

‘Hey, you two.’ Belle held out her hands and glanced behind them at the courtyard terrace filled with wedding guests. ‘That’s enough. Remember where we are.’

Gem folded her arms and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. And inside before, I spoke without thinking. I just assumed.’ She gestured clumsily towards Laurie’s stomachand Belle winced again. ‘You’ve talked so much about wanting children… What’s going on, Laurie? You can tell us.’

‘I’ve wanted to, it’s just difficult because I’m not pregnant.’ Her jaw tightened as she cast a glance between Gem and Belle. ‘And it’s highly unlikely I’ll get pregnant naturally as I’ve been diagnosed with a low ovarian reserve. The more time that passes and the further away the chance of me getting pregnant gets, the harder I’m finding it to talk about, because it upsets me so much.’ She shook her hand in front of herself. ‘Leaves me an emotional mess particularly at times like this when I remember our hopes and dreams on our own wedding day.’

‘Oh Laurie, that’s hard when I know how much you want a baby.’ Belle delved into her clutch and handed her a tissue. She’d known something was wrong, so why hadn’t she asked the difficult question before Laurie was forced into this situation? Actually, there was nothing hard about asking ‘how are you really?’ She’d held back because she hadn’t wanted to deal with someone else’s disappointment and stress when she’d been dealing with her own worries. Some friend she’d been. ‘What about fertility treatment? Is that an option?’

‘We did our first cycle of IVF at the end of last year.’ Laurie dabbed her damp cheeks with the tissue. ‘Obviously it wasn’t successful.’

Belle tried not to show her shock that Laurie had been through something like that without telling them, but Gem’s reaction was less subtle.

Her eyes widened. ‘Bloody hell, Laurie. How on earth have you not said anything?’

‘It wasn’t intentional. Honestly, after more than three years of trying I felt like a failure. And there was so much to deal with juggling appointments and injections around work and everything. I was hoping for a good outcome and then I’d havebeen able to let you know the happy news. I didn’t want to have to share our disappointment.’

‘It didn’t work at all?’ Belle asked softly. ‘As in, you didn’t get pregnant?’

Laurie shook her head. ‘Four eggs were fertilised and two were transferred, but neither stuck.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Belle hugged her.

‘Me too.’ Gem wrapped her arms around them both. ‘And you’renota failure. You’re going to try again, right?’

‘I actually started the stimulation injections a couple of days ago, so yes, we’re trying again.’

Belle squeezed her tighter. ‘Oh Laurie, that’s great, so there’s hope.’

‘That’s all I’ve got,’ Laurie said sadly as they let go of each other.

A waiter with a tray of drinks paused next to them, a sufficient distraction as Gem grabbed a glass of Prosecco and Laurie and Belle opted for elderflower. They left the shadows by the hedge and found a free table next to the stone fountain at the centre of the courtyard.

‘Please keep it to yourselves,’ Laurie said quietly once they’d sat down. ‘The only other people who know are our parents and I wish I’d never told mine. Mum’s doing my head in offering advice like I haven’t already tried everything and phoning every day asking how it’s going, how I’m feeling. I know she’s only trying to help, but it’s a lot.’

‘So that’s the reason you didn’t stay with them last night,’ Belle said.

‘They don’t seem to understand that I want to talk about anything else, rather than focus on something that’s out of my hands and down to a combination of science and luck.’

Belle completely understood Laurie’s reluctance to talk about the thing in her life that was upsetting her the most, so she took the hint and led the conversation in a different direction.

It was a beautiful early summer evening, the clear sky speckled with stars. Light spilled from the barn and dance music filtered out through the large open doors, a reminder of happy times. Not that Belle was desperately unhappy, just lonely even while sitting with her best friends. Discontented was the perfect word to describe how she was feeling, exactly as she’d admitted to Hannah, but it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about with Laurie and Gem.

The music switched to Calvin Harris’s ‘I Need Your Love’ featuring Ellie Goulding, which immediately transported Belle back to Ibiza. It was funny how music did that; certain smells would too, vividly whisk her to an earlier time in her life.

‘Oh God, this song always reminds me of Ibiza.’ Gem’s look of longing was hard to miss.

‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’ Belle looked between them both. ‘And it’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for ages. This summer will mark ten years. We’ve got to have another holiday there together.’

‘Do we though?’ Gem picked up her Prosecco and took a gulp. ‘Maybe we should go somewhere completely different.’

Belle sat forward. ‘Oh come on, Gem. YoulovedIbiza. You were the one who made us promise to have a ten-year reunion holiday, so I’m going to hold you to it.’

‘If you hadn’t noticed, my life is very different to what it was back then, because I have responsibilities and bloody…’ Gem trailed off and tried to hide her annoyance and sadness with another gulp of Prosecco.

Belle looked at Laurie. ‘I know you’ve just started IVF again, but what do you think?’

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