Page 82 of In This Together

Hannah stepped forward. ‘Andi…’

‘Please, Hannah, just leave.’ She looked up to Hannah, her eyes full, and whispered, ‘Please.’

Hannah hated him. She hated that bastard. She wanted to drive a stake through Hunter’s stone-cold heart and tear it to shreds.

* * *

It wasn’t her fault, Hannah knew that, but as she walked into the French boulangerie and saw Rosalie waiting for her, Hannah’s lips curled, almost snarling. There had been a time in all of this that Hannah had felt terribly sorry for Rosalie, unsuspecting as Andrea screwed her dad. Now, all she saw when she looked at Rosalie was Hunter’s child and the fact Hannah had just bore witness to that vile man throwing a credit card at her best friend and telling her to go kill her unborn baby.

She had to separate the two things. Lunch had been a bad idea, in hindsight, but she had fretted about Andrea too long before realising it was too late to cancel on Rosalie, especially since Andrea, for obvious reasons, had done a no-show.

But there was a sickness in Hannah’s stomach that wouldn’t go away. It was hatred for Hunter, combined with disgust over Andrea and Hunter’s affair, mixed with sympathy for her best friend, who would be feeling truly lost. She knew exactly how lost Andrea would be feeling because she remembered being a young woman, barely more than a child, in the middle of college, finding out that she was pregnant and not having a clue what to do, or how to tell people, or what Rod would say. With everyone who should have supported her being disappointed in her.

The difference was, Hannah had never thought, not for a second, that she wouldn’t have the baby. Rod had never thrown money at her and told her to sort it. She couldn’t imagine what she would have said to someone who told her to abort her child. Her parents had alluded to it and that was part of the reason, seventeen years on, that she didn’t have a good relationship with them.

Yet here she was, kissing Rosalie on her cheeks and trying to pretend like her dad wasn’t a murderous dick.

‘Are you all right?’ Rosalie said as they took seats opposite each other. ‘You look… bothered.’

Hannah was staring at her friend, in a moment when she could air it all – the affair, the baby, the abortion – but knowing that it wasn’t her story to tell. There would come a time, who knew when it would be, that everything came out in the wash. Would she lose Rosalie’s friendship then? Wasn’t Rosalie as much a victim in all of this as that unborn child?

But Andrea meant everything to Hannah. They had always been by each other’s side. Andrea had been the only person there for Hannah and Luke in her darkest days. Hell, Hannah suffered an agonising commute every day to work for Andrea and she knew that, without Hannah, Andrea had no one to truly rely on, or at least that was what she believed.

And so, Hannah told Rosalie, ‘TJ is out of nursery again.’

‘Oh, that poor mite. You know you can call me when you’re stuck, right? I’ll be there in a flash.’

Hannah gave a soft smile, hating that she was lying to Rosalie. ‘Thank you. Should we have a look at the counter? This place does the best focaccia.’

She knew what she would pick for lunch, though she had no appetite, but feigning looking at the options in the glass counter bought her a few minutes to centre herself. It was Rosalie. The same Rosalie as yesterday. Her friend.

They paid the cashier for their orders and resumed their spots at the table.

‘I’m hoping you’re going to tell me all about this perfect baby daddy you’ve found,’ Hannah said, as brightly as she could manage.

‘Perfect baby daddy? Ohhh, Lance?’ Rosalie asked. ‘Oh, you know, I’m not sure that’s going to work out, after all.’

‘But I thought he was perfect. Good job on Wall Street, matching values, all that jazz?’

‘Good looking, too. Like, Idris Elba good-looking.’ Rosalie smiled from behind her coffee cup.

‘Let me get this straight, he ticks all of your boxes and he’d make gorgeous babies with you but you don’t think it will work out? Didn’t you get along when you met?’

‘Oh yeah, we really did. He’s funny and sweet. Obviously smart. I like him a lot, but I got thinking about, you know, what kind of baby I want…’

Hannah bit down on her lips to stop herself from saying something unkind. Rosalie. Andrea. What was it with the women in her life that they thought they could pick and choose which babies they had or didn’t have or what kind of baby they had? No one ever asked Hannah and she adored all three of her kids, regardless of whether they had been planned, what shape or size they were, whether they were smart or just a little bit dumb, whether they were athletic like Rod or anti-athleticism, like her.

‘…and the thing is, I want a baby that looks like me.’

Hannah felt her features twist in confusion. ‘I thought the idea was it was your baby? Your egg, womb, all of that.’

‘No, it would be, I don’t mean, like, have my nose or whatever.’

Then Hannah understood. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked fake breezily.

‘You know… Like, when I was looking after TJ, people asked if I was babysitting or whatever. They didn’t look at TJ and think he was mine.’

Hannah felt her temper rise. ‘You mean because he’s black?’

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