Hiya, life is a toad for getting in the way of writing isn't it? Thank you for all the lovely reviews, this is a little bit of je ne sais quoi, but I hope you enjoy! Jessie xx

Home Alone

Sandra woke alone on Saturday morning with a groan. She shoved off the covers and stumbled through the room to the doorway, negotiated the furniture in the living room and rounded the corner of the kitchen bar; finding her way eventually to the fridge. Yanking open the door with an unnecessary force, she pulled out a tin of ginger beer, flicked the token and drank steadily from it until the pain in her head alleviated and the over-whelming desire to throw up had abated. It was apparently a long-standing-Strickland tradition that Rob had introduced her to and had so far proved surprisingly effective in reducing the effects of her condition.

"Don't worry, it'll go away soon," came the amused voice of her chief bridesmaid.

She turned to see Mia walking towards her with Bella in her arms. She smiled. "I bloody hope so," she responded. "You alright?"

"I'm fine," Mia said, sitting Bella in the high chair. "Somebody woke up and decided it was breakfast time. Think I need to introduce the idea of Saturday lie-ins to this little one!"

Sandra laughed. She felt surprisingly ok. Outside of work, she was allowed to be herself more than she had been for years. More than that, she was allowed to be pregnant. Everyday that week at work, she had had to push the idea away from the forefront of her mind; forcing herself to concentrate on the case, training Nick and saying goodbye to Brian. Not that it was goodbye. As they had assured each other at the pub the previous evening; it wasn't goodbye it was just, we won't see you at work anymore. She sighed.

"How was it?" Mia asked through a yawn as she opened the cupboard and pulled out various boxes.

"How was what?" Sandra sat down and tickled Bella under her chin, making the baby laugh.

"Your friend's leaving do last night?" Mia winked as she sat opposite Sandra and tried to get her daughter's attention. "What do you not want breakfast now? It was your idea!"

"Yes, it was, it was alright, thanks," Sandra watched as Mia murmured to herself, eventually gaining the correct angle for introducing breakfast to her child. Bella started to respond to the breakfast she was being offered. In seven months time there would be another little baby in the Strickland household; her and Rob's baby. It would be small; wouldn't understand the concept of a lie-in; and it would be hers. She smiled to herself; if anyone had told her two months ago that this was how her life would be she'd have told them they were crazy. It was too soon to start imagining another little face, she knew that the being within her was still barely formed, but it wasn't too soon to start enjoying it.

"Coffee?" Mia asked as Bella bored of breakfast.

"Mmm, thank you," Sandra replied. "What are you doing today?"

"Coursework," Mia groaned. "Then we've got a playgroup date, haven't we Bella?" She shook her head as Bella looked at her non-plussed. "I know, I know, I'm not looking forward to it either! I think we're meeting Tanya for lunch after. Probably be back about three."

By three o'clock, Sandra had managed to turn the living room into a carpet of papers. Mia shushed Bella who was wriggling to get out of the pushchair as she struggled to locate her father's fiancée in the confusion. "Sandra?"

"Hmm? What?" Sandra stirred as she heard her name. Blinking slowly, her eyes were met with the mess that she had fallen asleep trying to make sense of. "Mia?"

"Yep," the girl grinned as she lifted Bella out of the pushchair and walked over to the living area. "You alright?"

"Yeah," Sandra pushed away the hairs that had fallen in front of her face as she sat up. "I must have dozed off. Bugger. I was trying to … something…" she looked around in vain at the things around her trying to deduce what she had been doing when she'd fallen asleep. "What time is it?"

"Just gone three," Mia laughed as she checked her watch. "What time did you nod off?"

"I have no idea," Sandra admitted pathetically. She could hear her phone ringing underneath a catalogue open on the coffee table. "Hello?" she answered. "Hi Rob. Yeah, I'm fine. What? Oh, no, I fell asleep, didn't hear it. How's the conference?"

Having ascertained that the conference was boring the pants off her fiancé and assured him that she, Mia and Bella had so far failed to become embroiled in dire peril without him; she hung up and noticed that Mia was still imitating a cheshire cat. "What is it?"

"I'm sorry," Mia was only just stopping herself from laughing. "It's just funny."

"Right, well," Sandra huffed in jest before giving in to the blankness in her mind. "What's funny?"

"What is all this?" Mia asked, shuffling Bella on her lap.

"Erm…" Sandra cast her eye over the imprecise filing system she had devised on the living room carpet, coffee table and sofa and listed off their indefinite designations. "There's some stuff to do with the wedding, the house, work…"

"Which bit sent you to sleep?" Mia teased.

Sandra looked at the young girl and abandoned any visage of organised control she had left, laughing herself she offered herself up to the crime of being human. "I don't know! Probably all of it! Never mind. How was your day?"

"Less productive," Mia grimaced. "Lunch and shopping great, group crap."

"How so?" Sandra cleared a space on the floor with her foot and knelt in the area, re-gathering what had once been a pile back to that structure.

Mia sighed. "I don't know. I think, maybe they think… I don't know. Everyone's dead nice. To your face."

Sandra studied the slightly despondent expression of her fiancé's daughter and in the moment she took before she spoke, tried to imagine herself in Mia's position. "Are they older?"

"No," Mia mused. "It's for young mums so they're all sort of my age. I think the oldest is twenty-one. It's not that, it's… you know their kids are all dressed in like designer baby-grows and there's no way that they can afford them. But they look down on us because we've got the hand-me-down pushchair and I carry spare nappies and that in the same bag as my purse."

Sandra smiled sympathetically. She didn't really know what to say. "So why do you go?"

Mia shrugged. "I don't know really. My aunt says it's good for Bella to play with other children, like socialising her. And I suppose it's meant to be good for me, to meet up with other young mums."

"Do you think you need that?"

"No," Mia replied flatly.

"So don't go anymore," Sandra offered simply. She looked up at Mia's sulking face and reached out to touch her knee. "Listen, Bella is constantly with people who talk to her and play with her, you, me, your aunt, your dad, the childminders. And she plays with other kids at the minder's too, right?"

"Yep," Mia agreed.

"So you're not really going for her are you?" Sandra rationalised. "And if you think these other mums are only being nice to your face, then they're not worth going for, are they?"

"Nope," Mia grumbled.

"Na…" Bella added.

"Right, well now that's sorted," Sandra grinned. "I was thinking pizza for tea tonight and you'll both come with me tomorrow to have lunch with my mum right? Good, now where did I put that address book?"

"Subtle Sandra, subtle," Mia laughed as she watched Sandra pretend to look for the address book.