Free Three’s a Crowd by Dianne Blacklock Page B

couldn’t find any reason not to go out with him. So they became a couple, and got invited out to dinner with their couple friends, and generally fitted in. By the time Rachel realised that birds didn’t suddenly appear every time he was near, they were already engaged. She couldn’t let him and everybody else down by pulling out of the wedding. Rachel decided it would all turn out okay, she’d grow to love him, and if she didn’t . . . well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
    The taxi turned into the street and Rachel jumped up to meet it at the kerb, waving madly. She didn’t want the driver to sound the horn and disturb anyone. She climbed into the back and gave him her address, settling into the seat as he pulled off again.
    As usual, Rachel’s preferred strategy left much to be desired, and Sean was devastated when she sat him down one night after four pallid years, when she realised she had not in fact grown to love him but was instead beginning to loathe the very sight of him. But that wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t done anything wrong, so she just said something vague to the effect that it wasn’t working. ‘Is it the sex?’ had been his first question. Why did guys jump to that straightaway? Reassured on that front, he moved on to ‘What can I do to make you change your mind?’ ‘Can’t we work it out?’ ‘Maybe we should have a baby?’
    That was when Rachel fled. Why did people treat babies like some kind of glue to hold a relationship together? Sean was obviously not her other half, they were not a good fit, and no amount of glue was going to hold them together. And certainly not a baby.
    Sean quickly got over his heartbreak. Two weeks later he was on the internet happily dating a line-up of willing women. He later told Rachel that breaking his heart was the best thing she could have done for him. ‘Chicks dig it!’
    Rachel got out of the taxi when it arrived at her block andwalked up the steep drive, and then up the three flights of stairs to her flat. She often wondered why she didn’t have better legs considering the heights she had to scale just to get to her front door. As she let herself in, she noticed the light flashing on her answering machine, and she pressed it as she walked past it down the hall. There was a series of messages from Catherine, each more slurred than the last.
    Where are you?
    Where the fuck are you?
    What the fuck are you doing out so late?
    She would be unbearable if she found out that Tom had asked her to stay on after everyone had left. Catherine had always been a little jealous of their friendship. She’d had her eye on Tom when they were back at uni, but nothing had ever come of it. Catherine needed to believe that every second man was secretly attracted to her; could barely control himself around her, in fact. Despite appearances, she actually had quite a fragile ego. Rachel knew better than anyone how much the circumstances surrounding Alice’s birth had knocked Catherine’s confidence, but she would never admit it. Instead she just got pissed off when her flirtatious behaviour went unreciprocated, or worse, unnoticed and she had to find ways to rationalise it; ergo – Tom was not the kind of man who was going to be interested in a woman with a child. He was a good-time guy, he didn’t want to settle down. Then Annie came along, with a child in tow, and Tom duly settled down. Rachel could still feel the steam coming off the pages of the letters Catherine had penned to her across the world.
    Rachel knew it was not so much that Catherine couldn’t get over Tom; she just couldn’t get over why he’d passed her over in favour of someone like Annie. Annie had transferred to their university from the Conservatorium when she couldn’t cut it there, according to Catherine. Actually, she didn’t go back after Sophie was born because of the