Maura glowed with pleasure and held out her arms for Juliet. ‘Come on then, my little treasure.’
I showered and dressed, then quickly put on some make-up, listening to Maura singing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’, ready to rush in and rescue her if Juliet cried. But she didn’t – she loved her bath and she already loved her grandma – so I left them to it and went to find Dad in the kitchen.
‘Hey, honey. Have a good rest?’
‘The best. I’m lucky, I guess – Juliet’s a good sleeper. But still, afternoon naps are a total lifesaver.’
‘Now, I need you to have a taste of this stuffing. Maura says I never add enough sage.’
He held out a spoon and I sampled it obediently. ‘It’s perfect, Dad. Delicious. And we’ve got enough food for an army here and there won’t even be ten of us. Well, eleven if you count Juliet, but she’s not exactly in the market for turkey just yet.’
‘It’s Thanksgiving, though. If you don’t stuff yourself as well as the turkey, you’re doing it wrong in my book.’
‘I can’t argue with that. Although when I invited Megan and Matt for Thanksgiving dinner, she looked at me like I’d gone mad. I think she thought I still had pregnancy brain fog, until I reminded her that Canadians celebrate it in October.’
‘I only wish we’d been able to get fresh cranberries,’ Dad fretted. ‘Linda always said they’re better than frozen for sauce.’
‘Dad, it really doesn’t matter.’ I moved closer to him and slipped my arm round his waist. ‘Mom wouldn’t mind. It’s like she’s here anyway, you know, cranberry sauce or no.’
Dad squeezed my shoulder, then said it was time he took that bird out of the oven to rest and why didn’t we open a bottle of champagne? And Maura came through with Juliet, freshly bathed and dressed in an adorable babygrow with a moose’s head on it that was a gift from her grandparents. We put her on the rug for some tummy time and even though she was so tiny she didn’t do very much yet except reach her squidgy little hands out for her toys, we were all lost in wonder and admiration at the perfect, wondrous person I’d grown inside me.
‘Right,’ Maura said eventually, ‘I’d better get that pumpkin pie in the oven. And will you push that small table over against the big one, Dean? It’s not ideal but we should all just about fit.’
The two of them jumped into action, and a few minutes later Dad opened the door to Vivienne, who’d brought a bunch of golden and orange roses and a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Soon after that, Megs, Matt and Ethan arrived with ingredients for a spiced apple sour cocktail. Bianca and Michael were next, without Charis, who sent her apologies as she was at a sleepover, but had contributed home-made chocolate truffles flavoured with maple syrup.
I sat on the couch with Juliet on my lap, except when someone else wanted to cuddle her, which was quite often. While they were doing that, I just sat, relaxing, basking in the love of my family and friends, sipping a cocktail and chatting.
It was almost dark outside now, and the windows of my little house were misted with drizzle. Beatrice had curled up on Vivienne’s lap, full of the scraps of roast turkey Dad had slipped her while carving. I could smell gravy simmering on the hob, potatoes roasting in the oven and the caramel spiciness of Maura’s pie. There was only one thing missing.
Juliet started to wriggle and put her fingers in her mouth, telling me she was hungry, so I gathered her close and fed her. She’d sleep again now, quite soon, until two or three in the morning when I’d need to wake up, feed her once more, change her, sing to her – all the little routines that I’d already become so used to that I couldn’t imagine what my nights had been like before.
Sometimes, sitting there in the dark with my baby, I felt absolutely alone apart from her, like it was just the two of us in the whole world. But now, looking around the room at all the people who loved me and loved Juliet, and would be woven into the pattern of her childhood, I realised I wasn’t alone – I never had been.
I heard the sound of keys in the lock and, with a gust of wind and a splatter of rain, Edward came into the room.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘I found fresh cranberries, but I had to try about six different shops. I tracked them down at a Turkish greengrocer round the corner eventually. I didn’t want to let you down.’
I thought of the words he’d said to me when I first told him I was pregnant – that he’d support me in whatever decision I made. I thought of the first, tentative steps we’d made all those months ago towards building a new relationship together: first as friends who were going to be co-parents and then inevitably, joyfully, as lovers who’d created this amazing new life together. I thought of how he’d stayed with me through every minute of my thirty-hour labour, holding my hand, massaging my back, giving me popsicles to suck.
I remembered the expression on his face the first time he held our daughter, which was still exactly the same every time he kissed her or changed her diaper or comforted her when she cried.
I thought of the bed upstairs that Edward had carefully made for Dad and Maura, how he’d insisted on coming with me to the airport to meet them, how he’d introduced me so proudly to his own family at his littlest niece’s third birthday party, and how welcome they’d made me feel.
I wasn’t sure – I couldn’t possibly be – that he and I would be happy together forever. No one can, if you’re honest with yourself. But I knew that my tiny daughter, who I passed over now to her daddy so I could go upstairs for the pee I desperately needed, would always have a father who loved her, just like I had.
‘You’d never let us down,’ I said.
If you love Sophie’s hilarious and sassy writing, and you enjoyed following Sloane’s journey, don’t miss out on Sophie’s huge bestseller Sorry Not Sorry, where it all began for Sloane and Myles…
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Sorry Not Sorry
Is this all there is? I scraped the last dregs of Caramel Chew Chew ice cream out of the bottom of the tub with my finger and licked it. It left a sticky smear on my phone’s screen when I typed into Google, ‘How to find love, sex and happiness.’
Charlotte has always been a good girl. But being good is getting boring…
She’s not just stuck in a rut – she’s buried in it up to her chin. The only company she has in bed is the back catalogue of Netflix and falling in love feels like the stuff of fairy tales. So when she stumbles across a popular podcast, ‘Sorry Not Sorry’, which challenges women to embrace their inner bad girl, she jumps at the chance to shake things up.
Old Charlotte would never ask for a stranger’s number, go on a blind date or buy lacy lingerie… But New Charlotte is waving goodbye to her comfort zone (with a side order of margaritas). And it turns out that good things happen to bad girls…
A fabulously feel-good novel that will make you laugh till you cry and leave you living life to the full, margarita in hand! If you’re a fan of romantic comedies by Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk or Matt Dunn, and love TV shows like Girls, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, you won’t be able to put down this hilarious read.
Get it here!
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Books by Sophie Ranald
Sorry Not Sorry
It’s Not You It’s Him
No, We Can’t Be Friends
Out with the Ex, In with the New
It Would be Wrong to Steal My Sister’s Boyfriend (Wouldn’t it?)
A Groom with a View
Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?
You Can’t Fall in Love with Your Ex (Can You?)
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
Out with the Ex, In with the New (available in the UK and the US)
It’s Not You It’s Him
New Year’s Eve. The most overrated night of t
he year, right? I have to get through a night of enforced fun, drink all the prosecco and talk about new beginnings. But I don’t want new beginnings. I want my old beginning back.
It’s been ten days, two hours and forty-three minutes since Tansy got dumped. Two heartbreaking weeks since Renzo, who made her weak at the knees and dizzy with excitement, found out Tansy’s secret – and ended it on the spot.
Since then, she’s spent every evening scrolling through their old photos, drunk texted him twenty-six times (he stopped reading after five), and lost count of how many packets of Kleenex she’s cried her way through.
That’s where Operation Get Renzo Back comes in. She ropes in a new wing-woman, maxes out her credit card and accidentally-on-purpose bumps into him at every opportunity. Oh, and she finds a fake boyfriend, as you do…
But while she’s busy pretending, Tansy’s plan is thrown a major curveball. She has to learn the hard way that it’s not her, it’s him – and that sometimes, a break-up can end up being the making of you.
A fresh, funny and fabulous novel for anyone who has been dumped, got a post-break-up haircut, stalked an ex on Facebook, and then realised they were WAY better off without them. Fans of Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk and Matt Dunn will love this laugh-out-loud read.
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A Letter from Sophie
I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read No, We Can’t Be Friends. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
No, We Can’t Be Friends is my eighth novel (I don’t count the one that’s stashed away in a digital drawer somewhere on my hard drive, never to see the light of day), and so I feel I’m qualified to say this: it doesn’t get any easier!
There are those wonderful days when the words flow and the characters come alive and I think, ‘YASSS, I’ve got this!’ – and then the next time I sit down in front of my keyboard imposter syndrome kicks in again and I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to think I could do this job.
Just me? I don’t think so. All the authors I speak to online and in real life say the same – writing, then letting our characters and their lives loose in the real world, is a scary business. It’s like the people, places and even animals we’ve spent hours creating aren’t ours any more – they’re products to be put out there, packaged, marketed and reviewed.
That’s daunting – but it also leads to some wonderful interactions. Over the past year, I’ve had so many readers reach out to me on social media or through online reviews to tell me that my characters have resonated with you, made you laugh and even brought tears to your eyes – or even just that they’ve helped to pass your time on a long-haul flight or provided some distraction when you’ve been ill in bed.
I’m so enormously grateful to every single one of you who’ve got in touch to share your thoughts with me – and of course for those who haven’t, but have taken the time to read my books and comment on them on Amazon, NetGalley or Goodreads. I hope you’ve enjoyed spending time in the world of No, We Can’t Be Friends and, as always, I’d love to hear from you.
Love from Sophie
www.sophieranald.com
Acknowledgements
If some novels are a marathon to write, No, We Can’t Be Friends was a sprint – and I’m no Usain Bolt! Writing on tight deadlines requires the support of a team with absolute ninja skills, and I am extremely lucky to have just that.
At The Soho Agency, the amazing Araminta Whitley, Alice Saunders and Niamh O’Grady have looked after me throughout this process, answering my questions, dispensing advice and being there to provide digital pats on the shoulder and ‘there, there’ noises when I threaten to go into meltdown.
I’m also unbelievably fortunate to have the best people in the business supporting me at my publisher, Bookouture. My editor Christina Demosthenous worked her magic on a very rough first draft, taking a scalpel to redundant storylines and pointing me in the right direction to transform the book into something I can be proud of, and which I hope my readers love.
Noelle Holten, Kim Nash, Peta Nightingale, Alex Holmes, Lauren Finger and Alex Crowe have also provided invaluable support behind the scenes on publicity, production and promotion. Rhian McKay, an absolutely forensic copyeditor, took a deep dive into the manuscript and eliminated countless errors and glitches. Caroline Young has come up with yet another cracking cover that totally captures the spirit of the book. Thank you all.
At home, I’ve had love and cuddles from my darling partner Hopi, and Purrs and Hither the cats. I love you all very much.
Published by Bookouture in 2019
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Sophie Ranald, 2019
Sophie Ranald has asserted her right to be identified
as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-135-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 30
