I see her from a distance at first and she looks the same, but then she comes round the corner and it’s there: Anais’ baby bump; huge now, at nine months.
I have steeled myself for this, having not seen her since it was much less obvious, and yet still my stomach deep-dives and I am aware of my armpits, damp.
There is a mode, though, that I know how to access, and it’s Peak Girl.
‘Oh God! Your bump!’ I shriek, and she shrieks back and it’s not real. It’s surface. It’s everything we are not.
Then we order green juice and avocado toast and post selfies on our social media, and she talks for a long time about eggs that she can have and eggs that she can’t have, and I nod and it’s hideous.
Right now, I hate that we must talk, talk, talk about everything. I want to be vacuous. Discuss pop culture and nothing with meaning. Not her pregnancy diet and the day they found out and what they’re doing with the nursery.
When the food comes, though, there is a lull of silence as we start eating. I look up at her, devouring her toast and oblivious to my awful thoughts. And I get a lump in my throat, because I should have been organising Anais’ baby shower, buying too many Babygros, messaging with ideas for baby names. I’m sorry, Anais, I say to her in my head, I’m sorry that I can’t be that good, kind friend at the moment. I wish desperately that I had the words to explain out loud.
But then, she doesn’t make things better.
‘In an ideal world I’d have travelled a lot more first,’ she says, examining an egg yolk on the end of her fork, and my heart starts thumping. Don’t, Anais. Just don’t.
One of my bugbears, through all the time that we’ve been trying for a child, is people who act like babies are a right and something you can plan for the month you want them, in between that trip to Argentina and the promotion you are after at work. How offensive to those of us who would take it anytime, anyhow.
‘Mmm-hmm,’ I say, then I go to the loo and take five deep breaths, like the mindfulness book I have put my Patricia Highsmith novel to one side to read has taught me. Now, I can’t even read my comfort-blanket favourites. I must read books to stay sane. Fertility is like the creepiest weed scuttling all over your life.
My breaths are weak in the face of the thoughts in my head.
‘What are you doing tonight?’ Anais asks as the decaf coffee she just ordered arrives. ‘Does it involve wine? Go on, make me envious. God, I miss wine.’
‘Well, you’re pretty lucky getting to have a baby.’
I can hear myself, snippy and short.
I have put my knife and fork down now. My breakfast sits, half eaten, as I leave all the fun parts out in my drive to be healthy.
She looks chastised.
‘Oh, I know, I am lucky!’ she backtracks. ‘Just … if I could have planned it.’ Then she reaches over. ‘D’you not want that pancetta?’
Take it, take it all.
‘Well, it’s not something that works to people’s schedules, is it?’ I say, same tone, same face as she crunches down my bacon.
There’s no denying it: I don’t feel happy for her and I’m not magnanimous, I just think it’s unfair that Anais is having a baby and she didn’t – doesn’t – even want one – and that we are now steadfastly ignoring that fact. And I have to go hospital and wait for someone to get a different-sized speculum and take twelve different types of drugs if I even want to stand a chance of getting pregnant.
I look at the clock above Anais’ head. I want to get this over with, go and turn off my phone and hide away in my pyjamas.
I look up and Anais has stopped eating. She looks weird. I can’t work out if she’s sad or angry. We get the bill and leave without the muffins we normally finish with, or the stroll around Borough Market that we normally take our time over before we head home.
The hug’s cold and there’s no Lovely to see you text. And I feel more relaxed on the bus home, faintly aware of two or three strangers’ body odour, than I did throughout the whole meal. This is my life now. I’m like social-event poison. It’s why staying in or riding buses alone is easier; out there, I make both other people and myself awkward and uncomfortable.
I go home and I sit cross-legged on the floor, zoning out of everything except for Harriet, playing on her piano. Listening to Harriet is a version of mindfulness, perhaps. An odd one, but still – it soothes me.
After a few minutes Harriet stops and I swear I can feel it, an instinct that she is there on the other side of that wall. I lean my head gently up against it.