uietly.
‘Is that your idea of a joke?’ Jemma derided, sitting back in her chair and pointedly placing her hands on the top of her rounded stomach.
‘No.’ Trina shook her head. ‘I mean it. I think you should go and meet him...I think it’s time, Jemma, for you to ask for his help.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ she snapped, going to get up from the table, but Trina stopped her by grabbing hold of one of her hands.
‘You’ll stay here and hear me out!’ she insisted. ‘Jem,’ she appealed at the other girl’s glowering hostility, ‘carrying his baby has been harder than you anticipated! It’s weakened your health! Left you without a job—’
‘I quit working as a temp because I couldn’t stand being shunted around all over the place!’ she reminded Trina angrily. ‘It had nothing to do with my condition!’
‘It had everything to do with your condition!’ Trina sighed. ‘You were off sick so often they had to let you go—you know they did!’
‘Which has nothing to do with my meeting Leon!’
‘It does when you’re only just managing to exist on social handouts,’ Trina said bluntly.
‘Thanks,’ she muttered, thinking of all the things she had to go without so that she could pay her share for living here. ‘Rub it in, why don’t you?’
‘I am not trying to rub anything in!’ Trina cried. ‘Jem—Leon has a responsibility to help you!’
‘He does not!’ she snapped, and walked away.
‘When are you going to stop being so stubborn?’ Trina demanded, following her with a determined look on her face. ‘What right have you to decide what Leon may or may not want? It’s no use you tripping off to the bathroom in the hopes I won’t follow you because I will!’ she warned as Jemma turned in that direction. ‘You’re on your last legs, love, and if Leon is holding out a hand towards you you’ve got to take it!’
She turned at that, blue eyes flashing in a way they had not done for months now. ‘Since when has he become flavour of the month for you?’ she gibed. ‘I always got the impression that you thought him the worst thing to happen to me!’
‘I did,’ Trina conceded. ‘And I still do. But it doesn’t alter the fact that he did happen, and the results of that are staring me right in the face!’
‘Hear that, lump?’ Jemma said acidly to her stomach. ‘Your aunty Trina is having a go at you!’
Despite herself, Trina had to laugh. ‘I wish you would stop talking to that thing as if it were alive,’ she protested drily.
‘It is alive,’ Jemma pointed out. ‘And my problem.’ Her hand possessively covered the lump. ‘No one else’s.’
‘Wrong,’ Trina disagreed. ‘That lump has a father. Do you honestly have the right to deprive it of that?’
No answer—simply because Jemma did not have one, since it was one of the very things she had agonised over herself since she and Leon had split up.
‘I’m still not going to meet him,’ she said with a stubborn thrust of her full bottom lip. ‘Leave it, Tri!’ she cried when Trina opened her mouth to argue again. ‘Just—leave it!’ she whispered, and turned away, leaving Trina standing there staring helplessly after her as she locked herself in her bedroom.
By the time she reappeared, Trina had left the flat to go to work. In the spotlessly clean kitchen, lying like a pointed threat in the dead centre of the scrubbed table, was Leon’s note. Jemma sat down, drawing the piece of paper towards her.
She read it slowly, wanting to read more warmth into the few short sentences than was actually there and knowing that it would be folly to try. Friends, she reminded herself. We parted friends—or at least we didn’t part enemies, she corrected ruefully, remembering the way she had run out of the house. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he had said, as a friend would say to a friend. This note was just a friend wanting to look up a friend while he was in town.
He would be hurt when she turned him down. ‘It hurts me to turn you down,’ she whispered, a flush of hot tears blurring her eyes. But she folded the letter back into its envelope anyway. ‘I’m sorry, lump,’ she murmured as she stood up again. ‘But it just can’t be.’
When Trina returned late that afternoon, Jemma was tossing a light salad in the kitchen. ‘I’m whacked,’ the other girl said, throwing herself down into a chair. ‘We’ve had to spring-clean a six-bedroomed town house from top to bottom today. You know what these old houses are like,’ she sighed. ‘All twelve-foot-high ceilings with intricate cornices specifically designed to gather dust.’ She stretched tiredly then rotated her shoulders, wincing when the aching muscles protested. ‘Tomorrow we re-hang the curtains—huge heavy things with swags and flounces—but at least when we’ve done that it’ll be finished.’ She picked up her mug and gulped thirstily at her tea.
‘That’s the house near Grosvenor Square, isn’t it?’ Jemma asked lightly. Since giving up her own job, Jemma had taken over Trina’s office work for her and over the last month or two she had become quite familiar with Maids in Waiting’s customer roll.
Trina had gone still, her face coming out of her mug to look narrowly at Jemma. She wasn’t a fool; she knew exactly what Jemma was going to do. With a jerk, Jemma fished a letter from her pocket and placed it on the table. ‘Tomorrow is Friday, and I want to be sure Leon will receive this or I would have sent it by post today,’ she explained. ‘Will you take it for me, Trina—please?’
Trina was a long time answering, her expression difficult to interpret as she looked from Jemma’s pale, defensive face to the sealed envelope then back again. Feeling uncomfortable, Jemma shrugged her shoulders awkwardly. ‘I would take it myself,’ she murmured awkwardly. ‘Only I have a hospital appointment tomorrow and...’ She shrugged again; Trina knew how long and tiring those expeditions were.
‘All right.’ Trina picked up the letter. ‘I’ll take it,’ she agreed, but the look of grim disappointment on her face made Jemma feel worse.
Was she becoming a heavy weight around Trina’s neck? she wondered suddenly, and felt a new fear rip right through her. Without Trina, she just didn’t know what she would do!