The Marakaios Baby. Кейт Хьюит

tell her friend yet.

      ‘Very well,’ Sophie said, and went inside.

      Margo sat back in her chair and blindly watched people stream by, heading home or to a bar like this—people with plans, with jobs and busy lives...

      Hours ago she’d been just like them—at least on the surface. To the world she presented an image of the confident, sophisticated career woman who had everything she wanted. She’d always known it was nothing more than a flimsy façade, but no one else had.

      And now the façade was about to crumble. Because she was pregnant. Pregnant with a baby...a child of her own...

      Instinctively her hand crept to her still flat stomach. She imagined the little life nestled inside her, the size of a grain of rice and yet with a brain and a beating heart. A baby...

      ‘So what’s going on?’ Sophie asked as she returned to the table and handed Margo her glass of water.

      Quickly Margo dropped her hand from her middle. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You’ve been acting strange all afternoon. Almost as if you were in a daze.’

      ‘I’ve been working.’

      Sophie just gave her a look; she knew her too well for Margo to dissemble. She took a sip of water to stall for time.

      ‘Is everything all right?’ Sophie asked quietly, abandoning her usual flippancy for a sincerity that made Margo’s eyes sting.

      She didn’t have many friends. She had acquaintances and colleagues, people on the periphery of her life, but no one had ever been at its centre. She hadn’t allowed anyone to be, because loneliness was safer. And maybe it was all she deserved.

       If you’d married Leo he would have been there.

      But she couldn’t think that way because she’d made her choice. She couldn’t change her mind now, couldn’t wonder or wish for something else.

      ‘Margo?’ Sophie prompted, real concern wrinkling her forehead.

      Margo took a deep breath. ‘Actually...I really am pregnant.’ She hadn’t been planning on admitting it, but now that she had it was such a relief to share the burden, even if Sophie looked as dazed and shocked as she’d felt a few hours ago.

      ‘Seriously? But...’

      ‘I took a test at lunchtime.’

      Sophie shook her head slowly. ‘I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone seriously.’

      ‘I wasn’t. It was...casual. He lives in Greece.’

      ‘And...? Have you told him?’

      Margo let out a trembling laugh. ‘Sophie, I told you, I just found out at lunchtime.’

      ‘Right.’ Sophie sat back in her seat and took a sip of wine. ‘So you’re still processing it, I suppose?’

      Margo passed a hand over her forehead. Telling Sophie had made her pregnancy seem more real, and she felt a bit shaky as a result. ‘I don’t think I’ve even started.’

      ‘Well,’ Sophie said, ‘I didn’t think you wanted children.’

      ‘I didn’t. Don’t.’

      Sophie raised an eyebrow and Margo realised her hand had strayed once more to her middle. She let out another uncertain laugh and dropped it.

      ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said quietly, and felt everything inside her lurch at this admission.

      ‘What about the father, this Greek guy? How long had you been with him?’

      ‘We were together for two years—’

      ‘Two years?’ Sophie’s jaw dropped. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me, Margo?’

      ‘I...’ Why hadn’t she told Sophie about Leo? Because, she supposed, she had been afraid to allow Leo to seem that important to her, and yet she was afraid it had happened anyway. ‘It was just a fling,’ she said lamely.

      Sophie laughed in disbelief. ‘Quite a long-term fling.’

      ‘Yes, I suppose... In any case, our...relationship is finished. Completely.’ Margo stared down at her glass of water. ‘It didn’t end well.’

      ‘If you’re thinking of keeping the baby, he should still know,’ Sophie pointed out.

      Margo couldn’t keep herself from wincing. How on earth could she tell Leo now? Considering what she’d said to him the last time they’d been together, he might not even believe the baby was his.

      ‘I can’t think about all this just yet,’ she said. ‘It’s too much. I have time.’

      ‘If you’re not going to keep it,’ Sophie replied warningly, ‘the sooner you decide the better. For your own sake.’

      ‘Yes...’

      A termination, she supposed, might seem like the obvious answer. And yet the most fundamental part of herself resisted the possibility, shrank away from it in horror.

      She hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected pregnancy to awaken anything in her but dread and fear. And yet she couldn’t deny the faint stirrings of hope, as ephemeral as a will-o’-the-wisp, that had gathered inside her. A baby. A second chance.

      ‘You do have some time,’ Sophie allowed, reaching over to pat her hand. ‘Don’t make any rash decisions, in any case.’

      ‘I won’t,’ Margo promised, but already her mind was spinning, spinning. If she actually decided to keep the baby she would have to tell Leo. And how on earth would that work? Would he believe her? Would he want to be involved?

      She left Sophie an hour later and took the Metro back to her apartment on the top floor of an eighteenth-century townhouse on the Île de la Cité. As she stepped into the little foyer, with its marble table and antique umbrella stand, she felt some of the tension leave her body, uncramp her shoulders. This was her home, her haven, lovingly created over the years and the only real one she’d ever known.

      She ran a bubble bath in the claw-foot tub and sank gratefully into its warmth, closing her eyes and trying to empty her mind for a few moments. But thoughts crept stealthily back in. A baby. How would she manage with her job? Childcare in Paris was expensive, and she was entitled to only sixteen weeks of maternity leave. Even though she made a decent salary she didn’t think she’d be able to keep her apartment and pay for the full-time childcare she’d need.

      But far more concerning, far more terrifying than the financial implications of having a child, were the emotional ones. A baby...a human being she would be entirely responsible for, a person who would be utterly dependent on her...

      A person she could love. A person she could lose. Again.

      And then, of course, there was Leo. She didn’t even know if he would see her or listen to anything she had to say. And if he did...would he want to be involved in her child’s life? And if so...how much? How would they come to a custody arrangement? And was that what she wanted for her son or daughter? Some awful to-ing and fro-ing between parents who as good as hated each other?

      Exhaustion crashed over her and she rose from the tub. She couldn’t think about all this yet. She certainly couldn’t come to any decisions.

      * * *

      As the days and then the weeks slipped past Margo knew she had to decide soon. Sophie had stopped asking her what she was going to do, but at work she could see the silent question in her friend’s eyes and knew she was concerned.

      And then the sickness really hit. The faint nausea that had been plaguing her for a few weeks suddenly turned into something else entirely, something horrendous that left her barely able to get out of bed, and unable to keep anything down.

      Lying