Mistresses: The Consequences Of Desire: Beach Bar Baby / Walk on the Wild Side / Claiming His Own

‘You did. You said you needed to get away, and rethink your priorities. That you’d become too fixated on finding the right guy, when what you really needed was to find a guy,’ Ruby replied, quoting words back to Ella she couldn’t remember saying.

She’d been in a fog at the time, probably even in a state of mild shock after visiting her local doctor. She’d booked the holiday at the last minute, packed and headed for the airport the very next day, partly because she hadn’t known how to tell Ruby her news. For the first time ever, she’d been unable to confide in her best friend, and that had been the scariest thing of all.

‘I thought that’s what you meant,’ Ruby finished, sounding thoroughly confused now. ‘That you were heading to Bermuda to get laid.’

‘Not precisely.’ Ella felt the weariness of keeping the secret start to overwhelm her.

‘So what did you mean?’ Ruby’s sharp mind lasered straight to the truth. ‘This has something to do with the doctor’s appointment you had the day before you left, doesn’t it? I knew something had freaked you out. What aren’t you telling me?’

Ella could hear the urgency in Ruby’s voice and knew her friend’s natural tendency to create drama was about to conjure up a terminal illness.

‘Whatever it is, you have to tell me, Ell. We can sort it out. Together. We always have.’

‘Don’t worry, Rube.’ Ella began talking her friend down from the ledge. ‘It’s nothing terrible.’ Or not that terrible.

‘But it does have something to do with the appointment?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which is?’ Ruby’s voice had taken on the stern fear-of-God tone she used with her three children, which instantly made them confess to any and all infractions.

Ella knew she wouldn’t last two seconds under that kind of interrogation. Even from four thousand miles away. ‘Dr Patel took some tests. I’ll get the results on Monday.’ She blew out a breath, the hollow pressure that had dragged down her stomach a week ago feeling as if it had become a black hole. ‘But given my mum’s history and the fact that I haven’t had a period now in over three months, she thinks I might be going into premature menopause.’

‘Okay,’ Ruby said carefully. ‘But it’s just a possibility? Nothing’s certain yet?’

Ella shook her head, the black hole starting to choke her. ‘I’m pretty certain.’

She’d done something cowardly in her teens, that she’d always believed she would be punished for one day. And sitting in Myra Patel’s office, listening to her GP discuss the possible diagnoses, the prospect of a premature menopause had been both devastating, and yet somehow hideously fitting.

She placed her hand on her abdomen to try and contain the hollowness in her womb, and stop it seeping out and invading her whole body. ‘I’ve left it too late, Ruby. I’m not going to be able to have children.’

‘You don’t know any such thing. Not until you get the tests back. And even if it is premature menopause, a couple of missed periods isn’t suddenly going to make you infertile.’

She did know, she’d known ever since she was eighteen and she’d come round from the anaesthesia in the clinic to find Randall gone. She didn’t deserve to be a mother, because the one time she’d had the chance she’d given it up to please a guy who hadn’t given a hoot about her.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said, humouring Ruby.

‘Of course I am. You’re not allowed to go the full drama until you get the results. Is that understood?’

‘Right.’ Her lips wrinkled, as she found some small measure of humour in having Ruby be the one to talk her off the ledge for a change.

‘Now.’ Ruby gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I want to know why you didn’t tell me about this? Instead of giving me all that cryptic nonsense about finding a guy to shag.’

‘I never said shag.’ Or at least she was fairly sure she hadn’t.

‘Don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you tell me about this before? Instead of running off to Bermuda?’

It was a valid question, because they’d always shared everything—secret crushes, first kisses, how best to fake an orgasm, even the disastrous end to her college romance with Randall, and Ruby’s rocky road to romance with the sexy barrister who’d rear-ended her car on a Camden street seven years ago and turned out to be her one true love. But Ella still didn’t know how to answer it.

‘I just couldn’t.’ Her voice broke, and a tear escaped. One of the ones she’d been holding captive for over a week.

‘Why couldn’t you?’ Ruby probed, refusing to let it go.

‘I guess I was feeling shocked and panicky and inadequate...’ She sucked in a breath, forcing herself to face the truth. ‘And horribly jealous. Of the fact that you have such a wonderful family and three beautiful children and I may never have any.’ She let the breath out. There, she’d said it. ‘I felt so ashamed to be envious of you. Because everything you have with Cal and the kids, you’ve worked for and you deserve.’

The self-pitying tears were flowing freely now. She brushed them away with the heel of her hand. Hoping Ruby couldn’t hear the hiccoughs in her breathing. ‘I couldn’t bear for this to come between us in any way.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.’

‘Why?’ The question came out on a tortured sob.

‘Well, for starters, you don’t want Cal. He’s far too uptight and bossy for you. His insistence on being right about everything would make you lose the will to live within a week.’

‘Cal’s not uptight and bossy. He’s lovely.’ Ella jumped in to defend Ruby’s husband, whom she adored, if only in a purely platonic sense—because he actually was a little bossy.

‘Only because he’s got me to unwind him on a regular basis, and boss him about back,’ Ruby replied. ‘But more to the point.’ Her voice sobered, the jokey tone gone. ‘You don’t want my kids, you want your own. And if I deserve my little treasures—not that Ally and Max were particularly treasurable this morning when they decided to declare World War Three on each other using their Weetabix as nuclear warheads—then you certainly do.’

Do I?

The question echoed in her head, but she didn’t voice it, Ruby’s passionate defence counteracting at least some of the guilt that had been haunting her for over a week.

‘You’re going to make an incredible mum one day,’ Ruby added with complete conviction. ‘And, if you have to, there are lots of possible ways of achieving that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know, like artificial insemination, IVF, donor eggs, surrogacy, adoption, that sort of thing.’

Ruby’s matter-of-fact response shrank a little of the black hole in her belly. She hadn’t considered any of those options yet, the prospect of infertility too shocking to get past. But why shouldn’t she? If the worst came to the worst and Myra’s diagnosis was correct?

‘I guess you’re right, I hadn’t really—’

‘But frankly,’ Ruby interrupted, ‘I think we’re getting the cart before the stallion here.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ella, your biggest problem when it comes to having a child of your own is not the possibility of a premature menopause. It’s the fact that every guy you’ve been out with since that tosser in college has been so mind-numbingly dull even I couldn’t be bothered to flirt with them.’

Ella frowned, picturing the handful of guys she’d dated in the last decade. And realised that Ruby’s outrageous statement might not actually be all that far off the mark—because she couldn’t recall a single one of them with any degree of clarity.

When had dating become such an effort? And sex such a chore?

Was that why she’d had a rush of blood to the head at Cooper’s casual suggestion of a drink later? Flirting with him had been exciting, exhilarating, and yet she’d totally freaked out when he’d offered her the chance to take it further.

What was that about? She was thirty-four, for goodness’ sake, not ninety.

‘The thing is, Ella,’ Ruby continued, ‘I know sexual chemistry isn’t everything in a relationship—and Randall the dickhead is a case in point.’

Ella winced at hearing Randall’s name spoken aloud—a name they’d both avoided speaking for sixteen years. But the gaping wound her college boyfriend had caused—which she’d believed then would fester for the rest of her life—had scabbed over in the years since. Because the mention of his name didn’t hurt any more; it only made her feel ashamed, that she’d fallen for him so easily, mistaken a couple of really spectacular orgasms for love, and then let him bulldoze her into doing something she would later regret.