Page 43 of One Day at a Time

Maddie laughed. ‘Orla, this is Jessie, who owns the salon, and Alyssa, who owns the café. I’m the underachiever who just works here.’

‘Don’t listen to her. We’d be lost without her in here. And if you change your mind, I’ve got some free slots today,’ Jessie said, warmly, as both she and Alyssa got up.

‘Let me get you drinks. And some breakfast too, if you’re hungry?’ Alyssa offered, and Orla suddenly realised she was ravenous.

Ten minutes later, she had tea, and the best pain au chocolat she’d ever tasted in her life, and she and Maddie had already swapped the stories of the moment they’d found out they were pregnant. Maddie didn’t go into detail about the father, just said it was a brief thing with an ex-boyfriend.

‘And how does your ex feel about your baby now?’

‘Well, actually, I haven’t told him…’

Just when Orla thought that an unfaithful husband gave her the most surprising pregnancy story, Maddie had swooped right in and taken the top prize.

An hour later, they’d covered some milestones from their pregnancies, swapped work backgrounds and shared their family ties. Orla was sad to learn that Maddie had lost her mum and had no relatives left at all, and was about to say so when the bell on the door dinged to announce a new arrival. Maddie quietly groaned. ‘That’s my first customer, but I just want to sit here and chat to you all day.’

Orla felt exactly the same, but she didn’t want to impose. ‘Me too! But I’d better let you get on… unless…’ Just being here was motivating her to perhaps add a little self-care into her life. She’d been so focused on getting through the days that she’d pushed allher old routines to the back burner. ‘Do you think Jessie meant what she said about having available appointments today?’

‘Course I did, pet – get yourself back here,’ came a voice from behind the wooden dividers that crossed the middle of the room, separating the café from the salon.

‘She’s like a one-woman radar – she misses nothing,’ Maddie said, giggling. ‘Please stay. We’ve got several more months to cover and I’m loving our chat.’

In the end, Orla had stayed for hours. She’d had her wild mane of red hair conditioned, cut and styled into loose waves, her nails done, the best facial she’d ever experienced, and then they’d had a long chilled-out lunch before Maddie had to go back to work on her afternoon clients.

‘Let’s do this again,’ Maddie said, hugging her goodbye, and Orla knew that they would. She had the strongest feeling that her first ‘mum’ friendship was going to be one that lasted. Maddie was just one of those people who made you feel better about yourself, and she and the baby could do with as many people like that as she could find.

She was still on a high when she asked the taxi driver to drop her in the city centre instead of heading straight home. There, she wandered down Buchanan Street, picked up a pretty new maternity dress in Next, and a gorgeous coat in Mango, and for the first time in a long while, she felt like she had rejoined the normal world.

* * *

‘Wow, you look gorgeous,’ Kyle said, when she came downstairs later, ready to go on their date.

‘You don’t look too bad yourself,’ she replied. He’d rushed inthirty minutes ago from work, but now he was in a smart black shirt, and dark jeans, and his favourite leather jacket. It made her heart swell that he’d made an effort for her, dressing up a little, taking her out somewhere and spending time alone together. It gave her a bit more confidence that everything was going to be fine. They were going to make it through this.

They were on the way out the door, when she stopped, remembered. ‘Oh, we need to take your van, because…’ At that point, her gaze went to her car, and she saw that there was no longer a flat tyre. Aidan must have reinflated it for her.

‘Because why?’ Kyle asked her, but she suddenly felt weird about telling him, given that he hadn’t been happy last time he’d seen her speaking to Aidan.

‘Actually, it’s fine. I thought for a moment that I didn’t have petrol, but I’ve just remembered that I filled up on the way home.’

Lying to him felt awkward and wrong, but she didn’t want anything to spoil tonight.

They chatted all the way back into the city, as she told him about her day and the women she’d met at Maddie’s salon. ‘You know, it makes me miss my mum, though. And I feel bad saying that, because Maddie’s mum isn’t with her anymore. At least I get to have mine sometimes.’

‘You’ve got me, too. Sounds like she’s going to be doing this on her own if the dad isn’t in the picture. That’s got to be tough.’

It was a good point. Orla had a husband, a mum, her baby, and it was time to be grateful for what she had and stop spending every day waiting for something to go wrong again. When had she become so negative? Actually, she knew the answer to that, but she wasn’t going to go back there right now.

When Kyle pulled into a parking space outside Carlo’s Trattoria in the west end of the city, one of the other restaurantsowned by Yvie’s fiancé, Orla’s smile got even wider. She loved it here, and it just showed how thoughtful Kyle was being that this was the restaurant he’d chosen.

He took her hand as he walked her to the door and for the first time in a long time her anxiety was replaced by a surge of something else. Love? Affection? Gratitude that he was here with her, not at some party in a trendy bar with his former mistress? She was trying to nail down the feeling as he opened the door, and then a whole load of things happened at once.

He squeezed her hand, then let it go and gestured to her to go in front of him.

There was a rousing cheer of ‘Surprise!’ from inside the restaurant.

She turned to see Yvie, Keli, Emmy and all her friends from work.

And enough pink balloons to lift a space shuttle into orbit.