When Emily left the house in the middle of the day, leading her son by the hand, Ross and Rachel followed them. They walked in silence keeping some distance behind Emily as she interacted with her son, seemingly oblivious to all else.
She's got a child she loves and another on the way, Rachel thought, why was she being so difficult about the other two? No-one was going to take them away from her. Ross only wanted his rights...
Ross found himself missing everyone. Every mother child look he saw reminded him of Ben and Emma. They had both been left behind in New York, and he wanted to scoop both of them in his arms. He had room for two more...
When they reached a local playground, Emily took her son onto the grass with some toys. It looked as if she was going to stay there next to him.
'We can't talk to her properly next to a little boy,' Rachel whispered to Ross. She wanted a very frank discussion.
'You think we should call to her?'
'Well, yes,' Rachel said. She tried not to sound impatient, but they were doing this for him. She knew he didn't want to talk to Emily, after the way she'd rejected him and continued to reject him, but it was the only way. They had to take every last chance.
'Emily,' Ross called. Emily looked around and saw them. For a moment she glared at them in outrage and then she looked at her son, who seemed to be occupied with a toy truck. She got up and walked towards them.
'What do you want?' she demanded.
'We want to talk to you,' Ross said.
'You can do it through the lawyers,' Emily said, about to turn away.
'Can't you be reasonable?' Rachel exploded. She wasn't letting Ross stay in charge of this. He was being too soft on her.
'You'll have to discuss it with David.'
'You can't duck behind your husband like that,' Rachel said. 'You weren't this deferential to your first husband.' She hadn't been afraid to lay down her terms and conditions. Emily shot her a look of dislike and said,
'There are some things a woman should never have to put up with.' She looked over at her son and then back at Rachel.'Here and now, I have nothing I want to say to you.'
'Rachel speaks for both of us,' Ross said. Emily said,
'Well I suppose that's probably safest, under the circumstances. You can probably trust her to get her lines right.' She looked at Rachel. 'But there's nothing to discuss, and even if there were, I wouldn't do it without my husband.'
'How can this be so important to your husband? Now that he's got children of his own, surely he's going to be a bit more relaxed about the girls,' Rachel said. She understood what Monica had said, but Monica had not experienced childbirth. If she had, Rachel could not believe she would feel the same about the twins as she would about a child to whom she gave birth. She wouldn't love the twins less - but Rachel was sure a child to whom she gave birth would be loved more.
'I've explained this already,' Emily said.
'Not to me you haven't,' Rachel said. Emily looked at her briefly, as if toying with the idea of saying that she didn't have to explain anything to Rachel, but instead she said,
'When I started seeing David, he was the first person I dated after everything went wrong. It was fairly intense but I knew it was just a rebound relationship, not something that I could expect to last. It was just something to take the pain away.'
'Your pain?' Rachel asked, 'What about - '
'This is my explanation you wanted to hear,' Emily said coldly. 'I don't care if you hear it or not, but you were the one who asked.' Rachel subsided. 'I found out I was pregnant a few weeks after I started seeing David - actually he worked it out before I did. I didn't want to think about what being sick all the time meant. Being pregnant to your ex is the last thing you want to know about.
'I thought that would be the last I saw of David. I couldn't believe it when he told me how wonderful he thought it was. He knew you,' Emily said indicating Ross, 'were the father, but he also knew what you'd done to me.' Rachel opened her mouth and then closed it. She felt Ross suppress his own reaction as Emily continued,'and that I never wanted to see you again. So he said, if I was keeping the baby, I didn't have to be a single mother, he could act as the father if I wanted. I didn't have to do it on my own. He'd been told after he'd caught the mumps as a teenager that he would be infertile so that he'd never father any children.
'I didn't want to have a termination and he was so keen so I said yes. Then he asked me to marry him,' Emily sighed and looked at Ross. 'I wanted to see if that would make any difference to you so I thought I'd tell you about the wedding, but you were quite indifferent.' She should have been there, Rachel thought. She really should have been there. Again, she felt as though Ross was about to say somethingbut suppressed it. They both knew that Emily was quite capableof turning around and walking away if they annoyed her.
In spite of herself, Rachel was interested - it had never even occurred to her that Emily had had a point of view.
'So there was no reason for me not to go ahead,' Emily said.
'You didn't love him?' Rachel asked. That was impossible - you couldn't have feelings for two men at once, not true feelings. Although she didn't want to acknowledge that Emily might have had true feelings for Ross, she didn't see how it was possible that she could have had true feelings to David either.
'I didn't really believe in it any more to be frank with you. He loved me, but he was also interested in being a father and I thought that was a more solid basis for marriage.'
'Which you were ready to back out of, right until the day you married.' Or after for all we know, Rachel added to herself.
'If there was still a chance of a real relationship with Ross, I couldn't have married someone else could I?' Emily said. 'After everything that had happened, I still had hope. But of course he didn't ring back.' Emily shrugged, and looked over at her son. Ross might have been a lamp post for all the interest Emily took in him, and Rachel didn't know whether to be glad or annoyed.
'Why didn't you tell Ross you were pregnant? That would have worked,' Rachel said. She was glad that she hadn't, but Rachel still didn't understand the omission.
'He had to want me for me, not because he felt he had a duty,' Emily said. 'The chance I was talking about had to be for the real thing. I don't accept second best.'
'But your David only wanted you because you were pregnant,' Rachel pointed out. 'How can that be anything but second best?'
'He offered me the best of himself,' Emily said. 'I've always known that.' She suddenly smiled, and Rachel realised that they were suddenly being shut out while she remembered something nice. In a dreamy voice she said, 'At the wedding, I looked at him and realised that he really was the one for me...'
'That's very nice Emily, but we've come to talk about the children,' Rachel said sharply. Emily's eyes refocussed, looking first at her son, and then at Rachel.
'Talk all you want, we won't be backing down. As far as I'm concerned, you,' Emily said, looking at Ross, 'can wait until they ask for you.'
'Who says they're going to ask?' Rachel demanded.
'Oh I think they will,' Emily said. 'When that happens, you'll get a letter - from them, not from me.'
'And your husband will let them write to me?' Ross asked.
'How could he say no?' Emily said. Well Ross and Rachel didn't know. It was all in Emily's hands and they had no say in anything. 'It's going to happen one day. But that will be between you and them. Until you're invited, stay away.' She turned away and walked back to her son.
'I thought that we'd had some hard times before but this is the hardest,' Rachel said sadly as they walked away.
'They looked so happy,' Ross said. 'I can't mess that up, just for one or two visits a year.'
'You're going to give up?' Ross sighed.
'What can I do? What kind of a relationship am I going to have with them? I can't be a father, they've got one.' Rachel put her arms around him.
'He'll never be as good as you.'
'I hope he'll be better,' Ross said, 'They're my children and I can't help them if he's not a good father.'
AN: I am ending it here even though it's a bit flat,because I have no ideas for continuation.