Grace laughed, but inside she could feel a slow flutter of panic. Am I pregnant? she thought. Would I know if I was? Even as a teenager, she was never exactly sure when her period would come. She had a long, irregular menstrual cycle which meant she could never pinpoint when it would arrive. Even so, thinking back over the past few weeks, she had definitely missed one, if not two. And Caro was right: for the last couple of days it had been hell on the boat. Grace had tried to put it down to choppy waters, but the truth was it had been calm all week.
Caro was searching her face. ‘You’ve missed your period, haven’t you?’ she asked softly.
‘I’m a bit late, that’s all.’
‘Late or missed?’ pressed Caro. ‘Crucial difference.’
Grace forced herself to look at her friend. ‘Missed, I guess,’ she croaked, her throat dry. ‘But I’ve only been seeing Gabe a few weeks.’
‘A few weeks? All it takes is one night.’ Caro put her hands on her hips. ‘OK, let’s find out for sure. We’re going to take a test.’
Grace’s already sick stomach turned over at the prospect. ‘No, Caro, I’m fine,’ she said.
Caro fixed her with a severe look. ‘Take a test. In fact I’ve got one upstairs. I had a false alarm a few months back with Jago, that backpacker from Stockholm. Anyway, the test came in a two-pack.’
‘Caro, I’m just tired . . .’
‘Well if that’s true, you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you? Wait here, I’ll just be a minute.’
Grace walked through to the bathroom and looked at herself in the round mirror above the sink. All the colour had drained from her face. Yeah, well things were going too well, her reflection seemed to be saying.
She wiped a towel slowly over her face. She couldn’t be pregnant. OK, for the first month of her relationship with Gabe, she hadn’t been on the pill – it had felt as if she was tempting fate, as if doing something so planned would put a jinx on the relationship. It had been so effortless, so spontaneous, going to a doctor for contraception seemed far too calculated and unromantic. But it wasn’t as if they hadn’t taken precautions. For all of Gabe’s staunchly Catholic upbringing, they’d used condoms every time they’d had sex. She felt her heart drop. Except that first time on the beach.
Caro ran back in waving a small pink cardboard box. ‘I think it’s still in its Best Before lifespan.’
Grace took it cautiously, then went into the bathroom. She was a practical girl and she actually found comfort in carefully following the instructions inside the box. It meant she could concentrate on this one task and pretend that the outcome would take care of itself.
Instructions followed, she walked back into the bedroom and handed the stick to Caro. ‘You read it,’ she said numbly.
‘Positive,’ said Caro, reaching out for Grace’s hand.‘Is that a good thing?’
Grace couldn’t speak. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. Perhaps she was just ill, delirious. Perhaps she was still asleep in her bed, dreaming this nightmare.
‘OK,’ said Caro, jumping up and taking Grace’s dress from the wardrobe door. ‘Here, put it on. The taxi will be here any moment and we haven’t done your hair.’
Grace looked at her friend with disbelief. ‘And what? Have a laugh and a joke with Gabriel, pretending I’m not having his child?’
Caro shook her head. ‘Of course not. You have to tell him.’
‘What? No! I can’t. He’s due to fly back to New York on Friday.’
‘Grace, listen to me. You have to go tonight. You have to tell him.’
Exhaling slowly, Grace willed herself to keep calm.
‘Put some bright red lippy on,’ said Caro. ‘Pour yourself into that dress and you’ll be ready to face the world, I promise.’
Grace stood up. Face the world. That was the last thing she wanted.
Grace gazed out of the taxi window, staring at the dark sea as the car wound around the steep coastline. The party to celebrate the end of filming Cast No Shadow was being held at the director’s rented Balinese-style house in the lush hills behind Port Douglas. Grace had been more than a little surprised to receive the invitation; after all, she’d only been seeing Gabriel for a few weeks and would hardly have dared consider him her official ‘boyfriend’. Since that first night together on the secret beach, they had seen each other at least three times a week, but if Grace was totally honest with herself, there was a good chance this was nothing more than a holiday romance.
Then again, it wasn’t as if Gabriel had to be on the set. She had dared to wonder if he had stayed in Port Douglas for her or whether he had just been sucked into the allure of Hollywood. She grimaced. Whichever. When he hears about this, he’s going to be off like a rat up a drainpipe.
‘Grace, there you are! I want you to meet some people,’ said Gabe as soon as she’d seen him through the crowd.
Grace froze. ‘Some people’ was David Robb, the star of the movie and one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Robb exuded that slick, untouchable confidence that all ultra-successful people seemed to possess. He pumped Grace’s hand as they were introduced, holding it for a minute longer than necessary, a trick that her father used to draw people into his confidence and anoint them with his glow, if just for a few precious seconds of his time.
‘So, Grace, what do you do out here?’