Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham

plan their redecoration. In fact, she had done nothing more than go downstairs, eat some breakfast and come back upstairs again. She felt heavy and inert; slightly depressed by the weather; unable to galvanize herself into action.
    â€œHi, Giles?” she said into the receiver.
    â€œHow are you doing?” said Giles cheerily down the line. “It’s lashing it down here.”
    â€œFine,” said Maggie, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “It’s raining here, too.”
    â€œYou sound a bit down, my sweet.”
    â€œOh, I’m OK,” said Maggie gloomily. “My back hurts, it’s pissing with rain and I haven’t got anyone to talk to. Apart from that, I’m doing great.”
    â€œDid the cot arrive?”
    â€œYes, it’s here,” said Maggie. “The man put it up in the nursery. It looks lovely.”
    Suddenly she felt a tightening across the front of her stomach, and drew in breath sharply.
    â€œMaggie?” said Giles in alarm.
    â€œIt’s OK,” she said, after a few seconds. “Just another practice contraction.”
    â€œI would have thought you’d had enough practice by now,” said Giles, and laughed merrily. “Well, I’d better shoot off. Take care of yourself.”
    â€œWait,” said Maggie, suddenly anxious for him not to disappear off the line. “What time do you think you’ll be home?”
    â€œIt’s bloody frantic here,” said Giles, lowering his voice. “I’ll try and make it as early as I can— but who knows? I’ll ring you a bit later and let you know.”
    â€œOK,” said Maggie disconsolately. “Bye.”
    After he’d rung off she held the warm receiver to her ear for a few minutes more, then slowly put it down and looked around the empty room. It seemed to ring with silence. Maggie looked at the still telephone and felt suddenly bereft, like a child at boarding school. Ridiculously, she felt as though she wanted to go home.
    But this was her home. Of course it was. She was Mrs. Drakeford of The Pines.
    She got to her feet and lumbered wearily into the bathroom, thinking that she would have a warm bath to ease her back. Then she must have some lunch. Not that she felt very hungry— but still. It would be something to do.
    She stepped into the warm water and leaned back, just as her abdomen began to tighten again. Another bloody practice contraction. Hadn’t she had enough already? And why did nature have to play such tricks, anyway? Wasn’t the whole thing bad enough as it was?As she closed her eyes, she remembered the section in her pregnancy handbook on false labour. “Many women,” the book had said patronizingly, “will mistake false contractions for the real thing.”
    Not her, thought Maggie grimly. She wasn’t going to have the humiliation of summoning Giles from the office and rushing excitedly off to the hospital, only to be told kindly that she’d made a mistake. You think
that’s
labour? the silent implication ran. Ha! You just wait for the real thing!
    Well, she would. She’d wait for the real thing.

    Roxanne reached for her orange juice, took a sip and leaned back comfortably in her chair. She was sitting at a blue and green mosaic table on the terrace of the Aphrodite Bay Hotel, overlooking the swimming pool and, in the distance, the beach. A final drink in the sunshine, a final glimpse of the Mediterranean, before her flight back to England. Beside her on the floor was her small, well-packed suitcase, which she would take onto the plane as hand luggage. Life was far too short, in her opinion, to spend waiting by airport carousels for suitcases of unused clothes.
    She took another sip and closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of the sun blazing down on her cheeks. It had been a good week’s work, she thought. She had already written her two-thousand-word piece for the
Londoner
on holidaying