Page 2 of The Last to Know

January 2024

“I want to have a baby.”

That was the statement that started it all.

Grace sat in a chair in a coffee shop, with a mug of hot chocolate in her hand, and uttered those words aloud to her best friend, Caz.

“Right. Well, you’d better get on those dating apps then,” Caz replied, a little glint in her eye as she sipped a matcha latte opposite her and picked grease from under her fingernail. There was always a stubborn bit that wouldn’t wash out.

Grace stared at her for a moment, before her head tilted a little and she followed up her original statement with, “I want to have a baby…with you.”

Had Caz not been blowing on her drink to cool it, she’d have spat it right out, spraying the entire table. Because, never in the almost twenty years they’d been friends, had Grace ever said anything like that.

“What?” She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, anyway, putting the mug down and buying herself some time to let the shock of it wear off to the point where she assumed Grace would laugh and say, ”Just kidding.” She didn’t.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed I do not have the body parts for that, and equally, I’m gay, you’re not, and we’re best friends.” Caz pointed out what should have been bleeding obvious. Picking up her mug to hide behind, she took a sip, burnt her lip, and promptly began blowing again.

Grace shrugged. “I’m thirty-seven, and you’re thirty-nine, and neither of us have ever had a better relationship than the one we have with each other.”

“Which is because we don’t have sex with each other and aren’t attracted to one another,” Caz said wisely.

She put her cup down once more and pulled the hair tie from her hair, gathering it all up and retying it in an act she knew bore out of nervousness more than the need to look tidy.

“I know,” Grace concurred, “but that doesn’t detract from the fact that, actually…I am at my happiest when I’m with you. And I can’t think of another human being I’d want to help me raise a child. You’d be a great dad.”

Caz wrinkled her nose. “I might work on cars for a living, and wear trousers and shirts—often a suit, I’ll grant you, but I am not a man—”

“I don’t mean you’re a man. I mean, you’d be the one who took them to the park and ran around with them. You’d be the one they could talk with about football, or girls, and fix cars.” She smiled. “You’d be the yin to my yang.”

“Stop pulling my leg,” Caz joked, but she didn’t laugh. There was too much truth in those words. And Grace’s face still didn’t read like she was about to burst into laughter and shout, “Gotcha!”

“I’m deadly serious,” Grace said, holding Caz captive with her eyes and the same steely determination she’d often seen in her best friend’s stare. “Did you, or did you not, say that was the last Christmas you were spending trying to date?”

Caz fidgeted in her seat. “Yeah, because it’s just nutters, kids, and more nutters on the prowl for hook-ups.”

“Exactly. Whereas, you know what you’re getting with me.” She nodded, sure of everything she’d just said. “Stable. Steady. I’ve got a good job. We laugh so much. And I already know all your secrets.”

Caz sat back and thought about it. Grace wasn’t one to suggest something she wasn’t serious about. And she wasn’t wrong; they were happiest when it was just them. And romance was a big fat failure for them both thus far—but a baby?

Putting her cup down again, Caz leaned back in her seat. “Alright, hypothetically, let’s say I agreed to this harebrained idea. How are you seeing it working?”

Grace smiled in the way that said she knew she might be winning.

“Well, obviously, we’d buy a house together. Big enough so we both had our own bedrooms, and then we’d just be a family like any other couple raising children.”

“Just like that? No rules? No boundaries?” Caz picked up her mug again. Her drink was becoming a yo-yo in this conversation. “How would we work out bills? And what if you met someone and wanted to be with them? What about me and the child?”

“I’m not going to meet anyone,” Grace said adamantly. “If we do this, I’ll marry you and you’ll be the official parent to said child.”

“Fucking hell, Grace, marry? And never have sex again in my life?”

“You won’t be having sex anyway. You’re sworn off of dating.” And then Grace shrugged nonchalantly. “We could have sex, or you could find someone to—”

“Woah, what? Say that again, more slowly so you can hear yourself talking utter nonsense.”

“I said, we could—”

Caz held up a hand. “I can’t have this conversation, Grace, it’s madness.”

“Is it, though? When you really think about it?” Grace leaned forward. “Between us, we earn a good wage. We would have the perfect house, a nice car, holidays abroad every year, and the family we both want.” She sat back again. “We’d have each other.”

“We already have each other.”

Grace sighed. “So, what I’m not hearing, is a ‘no’.”

“No,” Caz said firmly, but something in the back of her mind meant she had reason to pause. “No, you’re not hearing a ‘no’.”