To: Ava, Sophie
Oh my God! Tell me more! Send a pic! How very, very exciting! O.x
Sophie laughed at their different responses and was about to write something back when another email pinged through.
9 August, 11.12pm
From: Olivia
To: Ava, Sophie
Ava Anne Henderson, don’t be such a misanthrope. What mum would or wouldn’t say isn’t important here. What matters is that our sister is in love with a man, for the first time in her life. Why can’t you be supportive of that?
9 August, 11.14pm
From: Sophie
To: Ava, Olivia
It’s okay, guys. Liv, I know Ava’s just looking out for me. And she’s right. You know she is. Mum learned her lesson the hard way and wanted us all to avoid the same fate. No way am I going to end up pregnant to this guy. And he’s nothing like our father. Or what we know of him, anyway. He was a jerk. A first grade a-hole who ditched a pregnant woman because he was married.
Alex is wonderful. I could write pages and pages and pages telling you how amazing he is, but you still wouldn’t get it. He’s just … perfect.
I love him.
And I know you’re worried about me, Ava, because that’s what you do. But you don’t need to be.
Have you ever met someone and just known? That though it doesn’t make sense, and there are a million and one reasons to be cautious and go slowly, you just simply can’t? Because you trust that person, and you need that person, and you loved that person, from the first moment you met them …? That’s how it is with us. I’d trust him with my life.
I love him.
Okay, on that sappy note, it’s late here. I need to sleep. Don’t argue over this. It’s a good thing. Trust me. You’ll see.
Xxx
She flicked her iPad into flight mode to avoid the barrage of emails that she was certain would follow and fell back onto the bed. Her smile was enormous on her face.
She was crazy! The whole thing was crazy!
A knock sounded at her door and she pushed up onto her elbows, her heart immediately beginning to pound as she prepared for the sight of Alex.
Only it was Eric instead.
“Sorry to intrude,” he murmured in that terribly British way he had. There was something indefinably Hugh Grant about him that always made her smile.
“You’re not,” she lied, crossing her legs at her ankles and smoothing her nightgown down past her knees. “Is it the twins? Are they okay?”
“Yes,” he waved a hand in the air dismissively and sat on the foot of the bed. “We were talking the other day and we got cut off.”
“We were?” She searched her memory and found only Alex. Little fragments of recollection of their time together that were too pleasurable to sweep past. Walks to his house, and through his house, cups of tea on his terrace and long, passionate love-making in his enormous bed.
“Soph?”
“Oh!” She felt her cheeks burn and shook her head. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“No,” he had a slightly teasing tone to his voice. “You were saying, yesterday, something about Christmas and the twins.”
“Oh!” She nodded jerkily. “Of course.” How had she forgotten? “I hate asking you this,” she said hurriedly, and she truly did. “But I want to get them something special for Christmas. There’s a performance at the Royal Albert Hall, only tickets are …” Her blush deepened. “Well, they’re almost a week’s pay for me. I wondered if you’d …”