LITMIR.BIZ

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dropped me at the airport – and so much had changed. She looked different from the Sarah I’d left behind; this new Sarah was more sophisticated, with a sleek haircut that feathered around her face, sunglasses pushed on top of her head. Her skin was tanned and smooth and she was wearing an empire-line blue dress that flowed over her pregnant stomach.

      I felt my fingers lightly brush the swell of my own stomach.

      Yes, so much had changed.

      When Sarah spotted me, she beamed, ducking under the barrier, hurrying towards me, squealing.

      We held tight to each other, our pregnant stomachs adding a strange awkwardness to the embrace, as if we couldn’t quite get close enough. ‘You’re here! You’re here!’ she kept on saying. Her hands moved to my bump, clutching it. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘We’re both having babies!’

      Standing back on home soil, it suddenly felt very real. ‘We’re going to be mothers!’ We hugged again.

      ‘God, I missed you,’ Sarah said. When I stepped back, she took my hand, turning me in a circle. ‘Look at you, beautiful girl!’

      My long skirt flowed around my ankles, and my hair had grown almost to my waist. My skin had tanned to a deep mahogany, the pregnancy bringing out a cluster of freckles across the bridge of my nose.

      ‘I thought I’d never get you back. Nick and I were planning how we’d hunt you down.’

      Nick and I. It felt painfully fresh, like the sting of soap on newly shaved skin.

      I caught sight of Sarah’s engagement ring glittering on her slim hand. I screwed my eyes up in mock bedazzlement. ‘Check out that diamond!’

      ‘I know!’ she beamed, waggling her fingers.

      On the drive home, we talked non-stop. I was relieved that there was no lull in conversation, no awkward pauses – we snapped back into our old rhythm as if I’d never been away.

      ‘Tell me about Cubbie,’ she said, one hand on the steering wheel, the other squeezing my knee.

      ‘We met in Nepal. He’s from Norway. God, Sarah, he was beautiful. Truly the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. He had thick blond hair that he wore long, and this lovely regal nose – straight and long and perfect.’

      ‘Good genes, then.’

      ‘Here’s hoping! Three days, though – that was all we spent together. We were staying in the same homestead. After that he travelled north, and I headed south.’

      ‘You let him go?’

      ‘I didn’t know then. It was only a couple of months later that I began to suspect I was pregnant. We’d not swapped numbers, or addresses – nothing. I don’t even know his second name. Is that awful? I travelled back to the homestead to track him down, and left messages on the pin-boards of hostels asking if anyone knew of him, but I couldn’t find him.’ I’d agonized over Cubbie, unsettled by the idea that he’d never know he was to become a father. Eventually I had to accept there was nothing I could do, no way of locating him. I pressed my palms against the tiny swell of my stomach and promised my baby that I would make it up to him or her. That I would be everything.

      When we pulled up at the house Sarah now shared with Nick, she cut the engine, then reached across and squeezed my fingers hard. ‘Nick and I. Are you sure?’

      ‘I’ve told you a thousand—’

      ‘I know. But I want you to look me in the eye and tell me. Not over the phone. Not by letter. Face to face. Are you certain?’

      I pulled up her sunglasses, and pressed the tip of my nose against hers, staring her right in the eyes. ‘I’m certain.’

      She exhaled with relief.

      ‘Anyway, bit late for me to change my mind, don’t you think?’ I said, pointing to her bump.

      Sarah had talked to me about Nick from the start. When I’d called from a hostel in Goa, she’d told me about their first drunken kiss at The Rope and Anchor. Later, I think I was travelling north into the mountains, when she told me, ‘There’ve been more kisses, Isla. If I told you I thought I was falling for him, how would you feel?’ I was thousands of miles away, hiking through rice terraces, sleeping on overnight buses with my head on the shoulders of travellers I’d only known for hours. My relationship with Nick was a fond, warm memory. I cared about him deeply – but I didn’t ache for him. ‘I’d be happy for you both,’ I’d told her, and meant it.

      By the time I phoned Sarah again, three or four months later, she told me that Nick had proposed. ‘He laid a picnic rug on the beach, and when he opened the hamper, there was a ring box inside! We’re engaged.’

      Engaged. The word caught me off-guard, like a fist in the stomach. I managed to catch my breath and smile as I said, ‘Congratulations.’

      At seven months pregnant, I knelt on the beach, scooping my hands into the damp sand. The sun was warm on my back, and I could feel the weight of the baby shifting within me.

      I made two large holes, sculpting them smooth with my palms. ‘Done!’ I called to Sarah, who was walking towards the shore carrying a jug of cordial and a bowl of strawberries. In her bikini, her bump protruded so neatly it looked as if she’d swallowed a beach ball. I carried wide, and everyone told me I was having a girl because of the extra width at my hips, and the new thickness to my thighs.

      I lay our beach towels side by side, covering the holes I’d dug. ‘You go first.’

      Sarah, who was eight months pregnant to my seven, put the tray down, then knelt forward, gradually lowering herself on to the beach towel, her rounded stomach disappearing into the bump-sized hole. She made a low sound of pleasure at the back of her throat. ‘I will love you forever for this.’

      I positioned myself next to her, my bump fitting snugly into the groove beneath my beach towel. It’d been months since I’d been able to lie on my front. At night, the only way I could get comfy was by lying on my right-hand side with a pillow gripped between my knees, and another wedged beneath my bump.

      For a while, the two of us lay in silence, enjoying the bliss of stretching out flat. I lazily flicked the crescents of sand from beneath each of my fingernails, and every so often I’d feel the baby kick, a powerful little jab just below my ribs.

      Sarah and I were spending most of our time at the sandbank. Nick’s parents had bought a holiday home in Spain, so had gifted their beach hut to Nick and Sarah. I’d picked up a part-time job waitressing but, whenever I wasn’t working, I’d be at the beach hut.

      Sarah turned her head towards me, her cheek pressed into the beach towel. I could see the gold flecks in the green of her irises and smell strawberries on her breath. ‘You, Isla Berry, are a genius. Thank God you’re home.’

      I grinned and squeezed her fingers. Sarah and I both looked up at the sound of Nick’s voice. ‘I’m looking for two pregnant women. I know they headed this way. Have you seen them?’

      ‘Nope. Not seen them,’ I said.

      ‘Now stop blocking our sun,’ Sarah told him.

      He stepped aside, then stripped off his T-shirt and looked out over the water as if contemplating a swim. Then, as if he thought better of it, he patted his stomach and said, ‘Reckon you can make me one of those sand holes?’

       It would be easy, I’d thought back then. The three of us would be best friends. We could make it work.

       And maybe we would have done if Samuel had stayed in my life. If Marley had, too. Maybe, when they left, the space I carved for Sarah and Nick became too big – held too much weight – and it set the balance all wrong.

       Or maybe it wasn’t my fault at all.

      

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