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last-minutes bits and pieces. I was sitting on the top step of the gallery while Nat was standing on the stepladder.
“To the left a bit,” I directed.
“There?”
“A little bit more. Stop.”
“There?”
“Hmmh, just a tiny bit to the right . . . hang on, stand back for a sec.”
She climbed down from the ladder and we both stared at the photo on the wall.
“Looks good to me,” she said.
She picked up another one and dragged the ladder across the floor to do the same thing again.
“Look, Nat, I’m sorry about the other day – of course I am happy for you but it’s just a messy situation.” It had been two weeks since Will had left his wife for Nat. We’d had another argument about it a few days before and we still weren’t really on speaking terms. We communicated where necessary about things for the exhibition or when an email came in from Tabitha asking about something but that was the extent of it. I just wanted everything to be normal between us again. I hated this constant battling between us. Even when we were speaking, all it took was one stray remark to get Nat’s back up and unravel the whole thing again.
“No offence, Kate, but no matter how ‘messy’ you think it is, it really doesn’t impact on you, now does it?”
“Well, no . . . I guess not.” I paused. “Please, Nat, can we just forget about it? I hate fighting with you.”
“Sure – it’s all forgotten about.”
But I knew by her tone that it wasn’t.
I set about sticking the vinyl of the artists’ names in the window while Nat was doing something up on the mezzanine. When she came back down the stairs, I offered to get her a coffee from the deli, my treat. I wanted to get myself a scone anyway. I was so hungry all the time these days. I would bring little tubs full of fruit and nuts or carrot sticks with houmous to work with me but inevitably I would have eaten them all by ten o’clock and I would be still hungry, so I’d have to run down to the deli for a scone to keep me going until lunchtime.
“Nearly there now,” the woman in the deli said to me as usual. She had been saying this to me since my bump became noticeable.
“Yeah, I’ll be glad when it’s all over . . .” As usual I forced a smile on my face. We had this same conversation every day. She said to me, “Nearly there now” and I usually replied with a variation on my standard response as above but, unlike me, she never seemed to find our daily exchange awkward or embarrassing whereas I was cringing at its predictability. In fact I think she enjoyed the repetition, maybe she was the kind of person that hated surprises. Maybe she liked to know exactly what was coming next in life, even in her conversations. The machine started hissing and splurting as she busied herself frothing milk. When she was finished, I chose a red velvet cupcake too because I knew they were Nat’s favourite. I paid for the lot and she handed me the coffee for Nat with my brown-paper bag and paper napkin. And I knew we would do the same thing all over again tomorrow . . .
When I got back to Jensen’s I handed Nat the coffee and cupcake.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s my way of trying to say sorry.”
She smiled then. “Thanks, Kate.”
I started spreading butter and then jam thickly onto my scone.
“I wish I was pregnant so I could eat all around me with no guilt.” She sighed as she watched me.
“There are matchsticks bigger than you! You’re tiny – I’m really starting to think you have body dysmorphia!” Nat always thought she was much bigger than she actually was. “Anyway eating for two is a myth, you know. You only actually need an extra three hundred calories a day when you’re pregnant.”
“What? But that’s not even a Yorkie bar!” She was horrified.
“I know.”
“But that’s not fair – I’ve been looking forward for years to making a complete pig of myself when I’m pregnant!”
“Yep – it’s cruel all right.”
“Christ on a bike, I’d go so
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