Monica tells Chandler

Feeling exhausted, Monica told Chandler the whole story as soon as she got home. He listened in silence while she told the whole thing, sometimes incoherently.

'Wow,' Chandler said, when she'd finished, 'Two little girls.'

'Yes,' Monica said. 'Not one, two.' Chandler frowned.

'You know, I think I've seen them.'

'You what?' Monica exclaimed, 'You saw them and you didn't tell me? How could you not tell me? My God, Chandler!'

'I didn't know they were hers did I?' Chandler said reasonably. 'There was another woman there, I thought they belonged to that woman, not to Emily. I just never thought of Emily with children and even if I did, I would have expected her children to be younger, you know.' He shook his head in amazement. 'And you say she's got three, with another on the way.'

'She might be expecting twins,' Monica said bitterly. 'Then she'll have five.' And Monica would have... Chandler took her in his arms and hugged her.

'Mon, don't think about other people. We may not have our babies the way we wanted them, but we've got them, and we're going to give them better lives than people who just have children by accident, because we wanted them and we chose them.' For the moment, Chandler didn't care that Rachel and Ross had had an accident with Emma, he cared only about Monica.

'I know,' Monica said, feeling torn. 'But you know how I feel.' Chandler did - he felt the same. They had been there so many times before that they didn't need to re run the conversations. 'Anyway, it's not just any children she's got, she's got my brother's children, and she's been keeping them from him.'

'How did he take it when you told him?' Chandler asked.

'He was shocked of course. He couldn't believe it, but he had to, it's not something I would ever joke about.' Not something anyone could joke about... Chandler gave a short laugh.

'Gee, all we need now is for Chloe to turn up with a child -' Chandler was surprised that Monica hit him very hard, screaming as she did so. 'I'm sorry,' he said, trying to protect himself as she struck at him.

'This is not funny!' Monica cried, 'Not funny at all. How can you say that? How can you make a joke of my brother? I thought you were his friend!' She hit him a few times more. Of all the times to crack a joke, if you could even call it that. How could he not take it seriously?

'I am his friend,' Chandler protested.

'It doesn't sound like it!' Monica retorted. She had stopped trying to hit Chandler and had put her face in her hands. It was just too awful.

'I'm sorry,' Chandler said.

'It's not a joke,' Monica said indistinctly, but she let Chandler rub her back.

'I know. But your brother's made a habit of being careless,' Chandler said, 'I mean he's had one slip up with Rachel and now this.' He realised that it was really the other way around but he couldn't help of thinking of Rachel first. They knew Emma first. They didn't even know what these little girls were called.

'Like he said, how careful are you when it's your fiance?' Monica said bitterly. How she would have loved an accident... But she had to stop getting distracted by these thoughts.

'So what's he going to do?' Chandler asked.

'Find her, talk to her, if he can, if she'll listen.' Monica didn't have high hopes of that. The fact that Emily was trying to keep it secret, even keep it secret that she was in New York at all suggested she wouldn't be willing to talk to Ross.

'What about Rachel? When is she going to be told?' Chandler asked.

'He wants to leave telling her until he knows where he stands with Emily. You know, is she going to be a stepmom - I mean a stepmom again or not?' Chandler nodded. 'I don't like it, but I can see his point.'

'Rachel's not going to like it, no matter what.' She would hate that Emily of all Ross's exes was the one to have another child by him. Even Chloe wouldn't bother her that much because whatever she said, she knew that Chloe never mattered to Ross. Her problem with Chloe had always been how Ross's behaviour reflected his feelings for Rachel. But Emily, he had chosen, and if circumstances had been a little different she could still be married to him today.

'How could Emily do this? Hide his children?' Monica exclaimed. She couldn't help thinking of everything he'd lost already, by missing out on them.

'Well they'd split up,' Chandler said.

'I know, but they were his children, he had a right to know. Just because they split up didn't mean he didn't have a right to know.'

'I know Monica. I guess she just wanted a complete separation.' Monica frowned.

'I just can't understand how she could hate him that much.'

'Hate?'

'She must hate him to do this to him,' Monica said.

'Well she probably doesn't have any good memories of him, what with the wedding and then the airport. I guess that wiped out anything that went before,' Chandler said. 'But I don't know whether it's hate that's at the bottom of this. If she didn't need his help to bring them up, then she might have just seen telling Ross as just a problem for her, keeping her in contact when she didn't want to be in contact.' Not if he didn't want her for her. 'And you must admit, it would have caused problems.' Maybe Ross and Rachel would never have been able to get together. Chandler couldn't imagine how it would have been but there would surely have been quite extensive wrangling between Ross and Emily. Ross would not have been able to move from Emily so easily if he was still tied to her. In fact it was even possible they wouldn't have got divorced at all. He'd had enough problems with it being divorce number two - divorce two with pregnancy two might have been more than he could resist. That may well have meant that he would have had to move to London - they had already seen how hard Emily could bargain and they couldn't imagine that if she had told him, that she wouldn't have used her pregnancy as a way to make him live with her. Would that have worked? Life would have been totally different.

'I just don't know what Ross will do if she says no,' Monica said.

'Do you think she will?' Chandler asked.

'Well I don't see that she's going to suddenly turn around and be reasonable. She's not known for being reasonable,' Monica said. 'She might start making demands again as a condition of seeing the children.' That was the problem. Emily had all the power in this situation and they knew she wasn't afraid to use it. This time, Ross would not be able to turn his back on whatever demands she made. Monica couldn't think of what these might be for the moment but she was sure that she might make some pretty unpalatable demands.

'True, but Ross has got rights. And it's all years ago since anything happened between them, maybe she might have a different attitude,' Chandler said.

'She's had nearly six years to get a better attitude,' Monica said, 'And she definitely didn't want Ross to know she was even here, let alone that she had children.'

'I know but she probably hasn't thought about it at all. She lives in another country. It's not as though she's going to be running into Ross or into people who know Ross, so that she's going to have to admit that she's had his children.'

'I hope she's going to have a better attitude,' Monica said. All she had was hope.