Aro's is an old jazz club. Edward and I stumbled upon it a couple of years ago, a night that ended up with us dancing ourselves sober to a swing band. It became our place after that. But I don't want to go now. Aro's won't make this any better.

"I dunno," I say, "I'm just not sure I'm in the mood."

We go anyway, after all I'm not in the mood for anything. It's only just gone 6.30 p.m. by the time we arrive and thankfully it's almost empty.

We sit at the bar sipping on Shirley temples which makes me want to laugh and cry all at the same time. Laugh because Edward is sipping on a drink with a cherry and an umbrella in it, as a show of solidarity, when really, he'd kill for real drink, and cry because why did we have drink with umbrella and cherries in anyway? It didn't feel like we were celebrating.

"Sorry, I'm a mess, I don't know what's wrong with me," I say, forcing a smile.

"Hey, come on," says Edward, dragging his stool closer, "Look at me., I'm scared too you know." He takes my hands in his, trying to ignore the snail trail of snot up on side where I've wiped my nose. "I'm scared shitless to be honest."

"But you seem…you're amazing…you're just handling this so well, so much better than me. It's like you're, I don't know, happy about it all," I say.

He thinks about this, clears his throat. "Well, I'm definitely not unhappy about it. I'm thirty Bella. I don't want to end up some sad old bachelor boy, no children, no life, answering the door in my boxers."

"You do that already."

"Oh. So I do."

The barman places a bowl of peanuts on the bar which only makes me want to cry some more. Mainly because I can't have one. No peanuts, Dr Littlesea said. I can't even have a stupid peanut.

"Give it time," Edward says, "It's so early."

"I know, it's just, I can't help feeling this has fucked everything up. You could have met someone else, got married, done it properly, we both could have. But things are going to be much more complicated now."

I lean back in my chair and squeeze my eyes shut. Every time I think of one consequence of all this, another rears its head.

"But I was never after a wife, Bella, you know that," says Edward, making me look at him. "All that wedding, two point four kids conventional thing was never something I dreamt of."

I look at the floor.

"But I did, Edward," I say, looking up at him. "I did dream of that."

An unpleasant silence. Edward stares at his drink. It's only as the words leave my mouth that I realise how true they are. I had it all planned. I had it all filed under 'goes without saying'. Meeting 'The One', the white wedding, the mortgage and the ceremonious last pill as we give up on drinking in preparation of our forthcoming child. The Sex, as we'd take to our bed on sun-drenched afternoons. The leaping into each other's arms with joy at the positive test and the first scan on dad-to-be's phone. And who is that dad-to-be in my mind's eye? Not Edward, my friend, the man I love platonically but I hadn't even considered casting for this role. No, that man I imagined, before this whole 'life plan' went utterly to shit was Jacob. But I let him slip through my hands, just like fine golden sand, like play on a potter's wheel. Like life itself.

'This is so ludicrous," I say suddenly.

"What is?"

"This. Us."

My cheeks burn. I don't want to go on like this, but I've opened the floodgates now and it's all coming out.

"What do you mean?"

"People don't do this, Edward. Have a baby with their friend. We're not a couple, are we?"

Edward closes his eyes and groans.

"We were never actually an item. You're a grown man, a teacher, a responsibly person, apparently," I hate myself now, it's not his fault. "What sort of thirty-year-old man doesn't even have a condom?"

Edward snorts. "What?"

"A condom Edward, you know, a contraceptive?"

He blinks and splutters, disbelieving at this last comment.

"It takes two to tango Bella and anyway you were drunk."

"We both were!"

"And you were wearing that underwear. Frilly and black. I mean, they were hardly a contraceptive."

He's gone crazy.

"And so, what?! So this was bound to happen? The face I favour vaguely attractive underwear over enormous belly-warmers was one day destined to get me knocked up? In case you've forgotten, you were in bed with another woman when I called to tell you I was pregnant."

"You've never said that bothered you," Edward says. "If you had…"

"It doesn't bother me. That's the problem!" I say, throwing my hands in the air. "Don't you think it should? Don't you think it should bother me, just a bit, that the father of my baby is fucking someone else?!"

The barman clears his throat, loudly. A party of businessmen have just gathered at the bar.

Edward's got his head in his hands now.

"But don't you understand, this isn't about us anymore," he says quietly. "It's about this baby, a baby that needs us, more than anything now. There's thousands of women who can't even get pregnant, have you thought about that?"

I had actually, and loathed myself for being so ungrateful but I couldn't help myself.

"Forgive me," I say. "But I'm not feeling my most charitable right now."

"I can see that," says Edward, standing up and getting his coat. We leave, go home. Our separate homes.


Rosalie leans back on the window of the café, fold her arms and groans.

"I suppose you're thinking, 'told you so'?" she says, through half-shut eyes. "I suppose everyone saw it coming but me."

I put my hand of her arm. "No," I say, but I don't say anything else. I know the drill.

It's been almost a fortnight since Royce dumped her, by the cruel form of text, half an hour before she was due to meet him at a party, and she's still in self-loathing mode. This means she doesn't want my sympathy or my analysis of what went wrong, she just wants me to be her punch-bag whilst she lets it all out.

It's Sunday and this was the day I was going to tell Rosalie about the baby. I intended to wait until the scan like I promised Edward, but she already knows, I swear. She found my book, the Bundle of Joy book, you don't get much more incriminating than that. I came home from work to find her reading it in the kitchen, sneering at all the pictures of women cradling their bumps.

Rosalie is not what you'd call baby-friendly. In face to be perfectly honest, she's actively anti-baby. She and Alice used to be best mates, we all did. But since Alice and Jasper eighteen months ago, went to the other side, as Rosalie sees it, their relationship has defiantly suffered. Rosalie treats Ali like she's holding a bomb when she's holding Sophia and when Alice relayed the story of her horrific birth, Rosalie was sick in her mouth. So, I wasn't surprised in the slightest at her reaction to the book. It was only when her face fell, and she said… "oh my god, is this yours?" that's I went a deathly shade of pale.

"I'm doing a health piece on pregnancy, it's for research," I lied, sticking my head inside the fridge.

This was the weekend I was to spill the beans, but so far, it's not looking good. When things don't work out between Rosalie and men, which tends to be the norm rather than the exception, there's a set process, a series of 'modes' to be gone through, each one having it be exhausted before the next can begin.

Up until this point, for example, she's been very much in hurt mode. I got home from the cinema to find her chain-smoking in the garden, looking like she's suffered some kind of anaphylactic shock her face was so swollen from crying. She was so upset she accepted a hug and that's saying something.

The café's emptying now, half eaten breakfasts left on its round mahogany tables with the retro tablecloths. Used coffee mugs are piled high. I zone back to Rosalie, her fighter mode's at full throttle now, her mind churning over the last week's events, scouring for evidence of when the demise began.

"I wouldn't fucking mind," she says, downing an espresso, "but only last week he was going on about how he was really falling for me. How I was the most intelligent women he ever met, ha! What a load of shit. So intelligent I can't see what's right in front of my eye half the time. A total A-grade cunt."

I bite my lip and stare at the floor. It's always slightly embarrassing when Rosalie starts on one like this, especially in a public place. Very audibly.

"Don't torture yourself, it's best you found out now that he was a shit. Imagine if you were really into him and he found out. You'd be well fucked off."

"Guess so," she mumbles. "His loss not mine and all that. Anyway, I've had it up to her with guys, I reckon I'm better off single. I mean, what's wrong with me? Do I have 'I only date idiots,' written across my forehead?"

The face is, Rosalie's always gone for men who are destined to let her down. She did have a decent boyfriend once, Paul Lahote, all the way though university. But Paul's doting just did her head in the end, she had to put him out of his misery, the morning after graduation ball just to add insult to injury, poor guy. Ever since then she's been in search of someone more exciting, someone edgy. Mr so-called Perfect.

The problem is that if a thirty-five-year-old man's key qualities are that he is edgy and exciting, then chances are commitment and unconditional love are not likely to be his forte. But Rosalie hasn't quite grasped this.

The windows of the café are all streamed up from the persistent Seattle rain. IT's only two p.m. but it feels much later, probably because we got here two hours ago. Since then, we've drunk two lattes, an espresso and a cup of tea between us and seen whole seating arrive, eat and leave.

Through all this time, Rosalie has barley drawn breath whilst I've nodded and ummed and generally kept my mouth shut for so long, we've worked up an appetite worthy of an all-day breakfast.

I don't mind, this won't last for ever. After a day or so, this rant mode will subside, making way for a brief period of calm and self-reflection. This will move seamlessly into mild euphoria as Rosalie embraces her new-found single status, a period which usually finds her dragging me out to hideous speed-dating nights, until she finds herself another totally unsuitable man, at which point I'll be largely redundant.

"Do you know what really annoys me?" she says.

"I spent a hundred and thirty dollars on my dress to wear to that party of his."

"Can't you just take it back?"

"Possibly, but it's the principle of the matter Bella," she snaps, "the face I went and wasted my own money, just to please him! Look at us, eh? pair of total idiots."

"Speak for yourself!" I laugh. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't mean anything bad by it," she shrugs. "I just mean, you know, look at us."

"Look at what?"

"Our lives, I suppose, look at our lives. We're in our late twenties, prime of our lives, humorous, gifted, overwhelmingly gorgeous…"

"Now you're talking."

"Exactly. And can either of us get it together to find a boyfriend? Can we fuck."

I try to think of something positive to say, but all I can think about is the wave of nausea currently washing over me. I wish Rosalie would stop talking.

She doesn't.

"I mean look at you and Edward. That was never going to work."

She says this nonchalantly, but I flinch.

"I really like Edward, you know, despite his obvious shortcomings…"

What were they?!

"… and I think he's mad for not snapping you up. But it would have happened by now if it was going to happen. You need to stop messing around, you two, find the real thing. I always thought you and Jacob would go the distance, if he hadn't messed it up, that is. You two were so cool together. You were just too young."

I feel the colour drain from my face. Should I have gone on the date? Should I have emailed back anyway? Maybe I am selling Jacob short assuming he'd never want to date me because I'm pregnant? He is a grown man, he can make his own decisions, after all.

"And then there's me," Rosalie does on, "not a fucking clue what's good for me. I thought Royce was great, so different from anyone else I've ever gone out with. Thank God we're got each other eh? Who'd have thought we'd be still living together now."

Rosalie's on a roll now but I'm not listening, I suddenly feel vert, very sick. If I keep quiet, I'll be okay. If I just concentrate, this nausea will pass right?

Wrong.

The adrenaline rushes through my veins, my cheeks suddenly burn, my mouth fills with liquid, I'm going to throw up.

"Bella, what's wrong? Are you alright?" I hear Rosalie say, but it's too late.

I stand up, throwing my chair behind me. I make a dash for the door. I grab hold of the handle of the door, fling it open, lurch onto the pavement and… let's just say it's not pretty. I hear Rosalie swear from inside the café, then rush outside.

"Fuck Bella," she says to me, "What brought that on?"

"Who knows," I say, wiping away the tears. "Probably just some twenty-four-hour bug."


The nausea passes as quickly as it came. After a glass of water drunk shakily and some baby wipes donated by a glamorous mother.

"You scared me then," Rosalie says. "Why the hell didn't you tell me to shut up?"

"Easier said than done," I say.

"True," she says, "Sorry about that."

By the time we make it home, the bottoms of our jeans are soaking wet and it feels like we'll never get warm. I go change whilst Rosalie puts the kettle on, turns up the central heating on.

I want to tell her. I'm burning to tell her, so I won't have to handle this alone and yet, I want to savour this moment, hold it forever. Never again, when I've told her, will we stand in this kitchen as two, single childless friends with nothing but ourselves and the rain battering the roof for company.

"Gina," I say. MY heart throws a punch at my rib.

She leaps to her feet. Shit, this is it!

"I know, we'd better get on with it. Which one shall we watch? "she says, marching over to the bag of DVDs.

I think about my promise to Edward, how we said we'd wait until after the scan to tell anyone… but the words are too big, they don't fit my mouth any more, out they topple like I've got Tourette's.

"Rose," I say "I'm pregnant. I'm having a baby."