Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty Page 0,117

a betrayal.

She should have said it last night, when his face was all soft and she felt like they were two halves of one person. She’d felt like that was a beautiful truth the drugs had helped her discover, but it had been a beautiful lie.

“Yeah,” said Jessica. She lifted her chin and remembered the kissing and how, as they’d kissed, a single thought had blinked on and off like a neon sign in her head: We’re okay. We’re okay. We’re okay.

But they weren’t okay. Nothing she’d thought last night had been real. It was all just drugs. Drugs lied. Drugs fucked you up. She and Ben knew that better than anyone. Sometimes Ben’s mother sat and cried over the pictures of Lucy before she fell for the lies of drugs. Now that was a “transformation.”

“Don’t waste your money on this stupid retreat,” Jessica’s own mother had said before they came here. “Give all that money to charity and go back to work. Then your marriage will be just fine. You’ll have something to talk about at the end of the day.”

Her mother seriously thought Jessica could go back and work in that shit-kicker job when she now earned more in bank interest in just one month than she used to earn in a whole year. Jessica couldn’t make her mother understand that once you had that much money you were changed forever. You were worth more. You were better than that. You couldn’t go back because you could never see yourself that way again. Rationally, she knew it was just dumb luck that had gotten her rich, but deep, deep down an insistent voice in her head told her: I deserve this, I was meant for this, I AM this person, I was always this person.

“Oh dear. Take it from someone who knows: getting pregnant is not the best way to try to save a marriage,” said Carmel.

“Well, thanks, but I wasn’t trying to save my marriage,” said Jessica.

“What were you trying to do, Jess?” asked Ben quietly, and for a moment it was like last night, just the two of them together in their little boat floating down a river of Ecstasy.

“I wanted a baby,” said Jessica.

She was going to document her journey on Instagram. Sideways shots of her “baby bump.” A stylish gender-reveal party. Blue or pink balloons would fly out of a box. Hopefully pink. People would put heart emojis in the comments.

“I was scared you’d say no,” she told Ben. “I thought if we were going to break up I’d better hurry up and get pregnant.”

“Why would I say no? We always said we’d have children,” said Ben.

“Yes, I know, but that was before we started to have … issues,” said Jessica. She couldn’t have borne to hear him say, “Are you kidding? Us?”

“So this baby isn’t anything to do with me,” said Ben. “You assumed we were breaking up and wanted to have a baby on your own?”

“Of course it’s to do with you,” said Jessica. “I only wanted your baby.”

She could see him soften, but then, idiotically, without thinking, she said, “You’re the father. You can see it whenever you want.”

“I can see it whenever I want!” exploded Ben. You would think she’d said the worst thing in the world. “Gee. Thanks.”

“No, I didn’t mean—I just meant, God.”

Their words no longer flowed like water. Now their conversations stopped and started in hard little jabs.

“It’s probably premature to be sorting out custody visits,” said Lars.

“I doubt she’s even pregnant,” said Carmel.

“I am pregnant,” insisted Jessica. “I just hope these drugs haven’t hurt the baby.”

“You won’t be the first or the last to have got drunk or high in the very early days of pregnancy,” said Heather. “I’m a midwife, and the things some mothers have admitted to me, especially when the partners have left the room! If you are pregnant, there’s a good chance your baby will be fine.”

“So much for being the antidrug crusader, Mum,” said Zoe.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done now,” said Heather under her breath, although Jessica could hear her perfectly well.

“I’ve been taking folate tablets,” Jessica told her.

“That’s great,” said Heather.

“Yep, so great: folate, a little LSD, and some Ecstasy,” said Ben bitterly. “The perfect start to life.”

“Don’t worry about it, she’s probably not even pregnant,” said Carmel in a low voice.

“What is your fucking problem?” Jessica’s voice rose to an embarrassingly high pitch. She knew she shouldn’t be swearing and showing her emotions like this, but she felt