Free Emma's Baby by Abbie Taylor

tracks one evening, halfway across the Blue Grape in Clapham with three drinks in her hands. The owner of the smile wasn't even looking in her direction at the time, but it knocked the breath out of her for a second.
    'Who's that bloke Barry's talking to?' Emma hissed, back at the table, sliding Joanne and Claire over their glasses of vodka and cranberry juice.
    Joanne twisted around on her high stool to see.
    'Oh, him,' she said. 'Oliver Metcalfe. Works in
Barry's company.'
    'He's got a girlfriend, if that's why you're asking,'
Claire Burns said. Claire had been to uni with Emma and Joanne, and was one of those people who always seems to know everything about everyone. 'I've seen him with an Asian girl with hair down to her bum.'
    'Oh.' Emma was disappointed. The best ones were always taken.
    Still, though, she couldn't help checking out Oliver
Metcalfe as the evening progressed. What was it about him? She hadn't felt this attracted to a bloke in ages. She watched him over Claire and Joanne's shoulders as he laughed and chatted with his mates.
He was tall, half a head higher than most of the people around him, standing under the window with the streetlight in his hair. The hair was dark blond, long enough so that his fringe brushed his eyes. He was part of the work-suited crowd, but where the others had shirts and ties under their jackets he wore a yellow
T-shirt with a picture of Homer Simpson on the front.
He had a pair of extremely tatty trainers on his feet.
The outfit would look ridiculous on a normal man –
Barry, Joanne's boyfriend, for example, whose pink belly strained at the buttons of his shirt – but Oliver got away with it. Emma guessed he was a person who knew absolutely what he was doing with clothes.
They just hung right on him.
    Two Sea Breezes later, Emma had made her mind up. She slammed her glass on the table and grinned at
Claire and Joanne.
    'Well,' she said, 'I don't see any Asian girls over there tonight. How about I go and say hello?'
    'Cheeky bint,' Joanne called as she left the table.
'Hasn't that Brian bloke from your work been begging to take you to dinner for weeks? You never chase men.'
    'So maybe it's time I started,' Emma muttered. She checked her reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
Her new green Topshop dress was holding up well.
The neckline was perfect; not too low, not too high.
Her hair was freshly washed and shiny. Her mascara was still in place, not yet at the stage where it had begun to slide down her face. OK, so no one was about to mistake her for Kate Moss's younger sister, but she wasn't an absolute toad either. She looked all right.
    Barry looked astonished to find Emma greeting him as enthusiastically as if they were the best of friends.
Normally they didn't have that much to say to each other. He grunted at her, and she turned to Oliver.
    'Hi.' She smiled. 'I'm Emma.'
    'Oliver,' he said politely, shaking her hand.
    She was slightly thrown to find that up close he was even better looking than she'd thought. In fact, there was no way around it, he was very, very good-looking.
He waited, eyebrows courteously raised, clearly wondering what she wanted. Emma's confidence wavered but she stood her ground.
    'We know people in common,' she explained. 'I live with Joanne, Barry's girlfriend.'
    'Oh, really?' Oliver had a lovely voice. Deep, very well-spoken. 'How do you know each other?'
    'We were on the same course in Bristol. Business
Studies and Marketing. And we went to Sydney for a year together after uni.'
    'Sounds interesting,' he said. 'Bristol's a good place.'
    'Yeah, it is.'
    A pause.
    'What are you reading?' Emma asked, spotting a book sticking out of the pocket of his jacket. There was a picture of some sort of cockroach on the front.
    'Kafka,' Oliver said. ' Metamorphosis .'
    'I've heard of that. What's it about?'
    'A man wakes up one morning and finds he's changed into a giant insect.'
    'Oh.' Typical male. 'Sci-fi.'
    Oliver laughed then, as if she'd said something