Page 71 of One Night With You

We reach the address that William has saved into Google Maps, and look for Amelie’s surname on the shiny engraved plaque. It activates a phone, and a youngish voice answers with: ‘Oui?’

William announces us in what sounds like fluent French, and there’s a pause as the person at the other end sounds annoyed, and then she switches to perfect English to say: ‘Hold on, please. I will come down to you.’

We wait, the cold gathering around us as the weather prepares to rain. JP’s eyes are searching through the small glass strips between the weighty wooden door and the walls, and then a woman who looks almost identical to the person in his photograph appears. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes red-rimmed, as if she’s been crying. I’m surprised I haven’t cried yet myself; it’s an emotional day for all of us. No doubt I will.

She opens the door and stands, looking at JP. She doesn’t even have to speak for my heart to sink. She waits just a beat too long, and it shifts the weight of the air between us. In half a second, my eyebrows drop and my forehead creases, because something isn’t right. I have an ominous feeling. The young woman looks at JP sadly, and then at the rest of us. She’s shaking her head.

‘I’m Sophie,’ she says, her accent making it sound impossibly glamorous. ‘Amelie’s granddaughter.’

We all make subdued noises ofoh!andnice to meet you!but she doesn’t smile. In fact, the longer I look at her the more it becomes clear. She looks devastated.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, in the quiet of our expectation. And it’s weird, but I know what she’s going to say before she says it. We’re too late.

‘My grandmother died this morning,’ she confirms. ‘You just missed her.’

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Nic

‘Sorry,’ Jackson says to me, his pint centimetres from his lips. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Millie is pregnant,’ I repeat. ‘With child. Having a baby.’

He puts down his glass.

‘Millie, your ex Millie?’ he clarifies.

‘Millie my ex.’

‘And … sorry, I don’t think I’m understanding here,’ he says. ‘And it’s yours?’

‘Yes,’ I say. It’s enough to make me pick up my own drink and down two-thirds of it. Jackson watches me chug it, glug after glug after glug. It barely touches the sides. I wave a hand at the barperson to signal two more. Both are going to have to be for me.

‘Mother of God,’ Jackson says, when I’m done. ‘You’re going to be …’ He doesn’t say the word.

‘A dad,’ I supply. ‘Yup.’

It’s his turn to down a drink. We sit.

‘I thought it was weird she text, and even weirder that she knew I was up,’ I say. I’m shaking, and my voice is high-pitched and strained. I keep rubbing under my eye, like a new tic from the shock. ‘Turns out Mum had told her, after seeing her and her bump in Asda. Millie didn’t confirm anything, but you know mums – they connect dots faster than anyone else sees them. So …’

‘So it’s soon? If there’s a bump …’

‘She’s five months,’ I say. And then: ‘Oh God, what am I going to do, Jackson? I’m not ready for any of this. Especially not with her.’

‘But you said she doesn’t expect anything from you,’ he confirms.

I nod. ‘That’s what she said. I mean, it’s not like I can just abandon her or whatever. She’s seeing somebody already, but I mean surely he’s not going to stick around? It’s all a bit of a blur to be honest. I went over to hers, to her new place, and she made coffee and I complimented her wallpaper and then she said that when we had sex before I left, she’d got her cycle wrong. We always used a sort of natural method of contraception – she takes her temperature every morning and puts it in an app and it lets her know when she’s ovulating. It worked the whole time we were together. We never even had a scare. And then before I moved I went to pick up a box of my things she’d accidentally taken to hernew place, and in the most frenzied, spontaneous act of affection we’ve known as a couple I went to kiss her cheek goodbye, somehow hit her mouth, and then we did it, right there in her hallway. It lasted less than ten minutes. We didn’t even talk about it afterwards – we just said see you around and good luck. I’d even pushed the fact that it happenedout of my head, because it didn’t mean anything other than a full stop to everything.’

‘And now the full stop is a dot, dot, dot …’

‘Ha, ha.’

‘Sorry,’ Jackson says. ‘I shouldn’t be making jokes at a time like this.’

‘The whole thing is a joke,’ I say. The barperson puts our drinks on the end of the bar and Jackson goes to fetch them. When he sits back down I say, forlornly, ‘You know, walking over here, I saw my reflection in a shop window and I just thought to myself, like, who am I? The new shoes and the way I’ve styled my hair – has it all been a performance, a big game of dress-up? Everything I’d told Ruby, and you, when we’ve chatted and whatever, it’s been true: how it felt to take a chance on myself, to trust I could thrive here. I’ve been so proud of myself. And now I’ve got all these thoughts in my head and none of them are nice.’

‘Like what?’ asks Jackson.

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