by Josie Silver
I don’t think I need to make any other resolutions. That one is monumentally life-changing enough for one year, isn’t it? Oscar has promised me that he’ll talk to his boss again about moving back to the UK. We stand a much better chance of getting pregnant if he’s home more, and when I do have a baby, it stands to reason that he’s not going to want to be absent so much.
2) Oh, shit, I forgot. It pains me to write this, but there is another—I’m going on the wagon. It increases the odds of conception, apparently.
JANUARY 26
Laurie
“Did you definitely remember to take your folic acid every morning?”
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, my cell on speakerphone on the bedside table.
“Of course I did,” I say. “But I doubt it’s all down to whether or not I ingest enough nutrients. It’s more to do with, you know, eggs and sperm meeting up at the right moment.” I’m sure Oscar didn’t mean to make his question sound like an accusation; he’s just disappointed.
He doesn’t reply.
“Very few couples get pregnant on the first cycle,” I say more seriously. I spend my days writing women’s health features, and I’ve covered pregnancy-related issues dozens of times. If it were left up to me I’d just get on with life and try not to obsess over whether or not we were getting pregnant. But Oscar’s results-driven nature seems to have taken over, and I don’t quite know how to tell him to calm down without hurting his feelings. It’s quite sweet, really.
“I know, I just thought maybe we’d ace it first time around, you know?” He sighs.
“I know. We’ll just have to give it an extra effort next time you’re back, hey?”
“You’re right. I mean, it’s not like it’s a chore or anything. Let’s book a whole night in, just you and me.”
FEBRUARY 23
Laurie
“Laurie, you’ve been in there a while.”
Oscar has actually delayed going to Brussels today to see if I’m pregnant. I’m not. I’m sitting on the toilet holding a negative pregnancy test and trying to work out how to let him down gently.
“I’ll be out in a sec,” I call, flushing the toilet.
He’s loitering in the hallway waiting for me when I open the bathroom door. I shake my head, and he can’t keep the disappointment from his eyes as he hugs me.
“Early days,” I say. Only two months in and the shine of trying to get pregnant has already well and truly worn off. Who knew it would be so stressful? I’d like it if we could just take our foot off the gas and relax, but it’s not in Oscar’s nature to be so laissez-faire. He’s used to being able to make things happen; it’s clearly a huge frustration to him that he can’t dictate this so easily.
“Third time lucky.” He presses a kiss against my forehead and picks up his briefcase. “See you in a few days, love.”
MARCH 14
Jack
“Are you cold?”
Amanda looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “We’re in the Arctic, Jack.”
She’s right, of course, but we’re also underneath several layers of fur hides and drinking rum. We’ve escaped to Norway for a few days and it genuinely feels as if we’ve landed in wonderland. I’ve never seen so much snow; we’re currently watching it fall from the comfort of our huge bed beneath the glass dome of our igloo. If she’d had her way we’d have made a run for the sun, but we made a bet and she lost, so we’re here scratching my itch to go aurora hunting. We’ve been unlucky so far; tonight’s our final night here, so it’s all or nothing.
“What’s been your favorite thing so far?” I say, kissing Amanda’s forehead. She’s naked and nestled in the crook of my arm on the pillows, and she wrinkles her nose as she thinks.
“Probably the reindeer sleigh ride,” she says. “Too romantic for words.”
“More romantic than this?” I say, my hand cupped possessively over her breast. “Game of Thrones has got nothing on us.”
“I thought…” She trails off and sighs heavily.
“What?” I say, taking her glass from her before I roll over and pin her beneath me.
“Nothing,” she says. “Forget I said anything.”
“What is it?”
She looks to the side and kisses my shoulder. “It’s silly,” she says, pink-cheeked. “I thought you might be bringing me here to propose.”
I hope my shock doesn’t show on my face. I thought she’d been acting a bit weird this evening. “You did? Shit, Amanda, I’m sorry. It’s just that we’ve never really talked about, you know, marriage.” I don’t know what to say. We’ve never talked about anything so serious—marriage just isn’t in my head when it comes to us. When it comes to anyone, really. She’s looking up at me, and I’m gazing down at her, and I know that what I say next matters.
“You’re very lovely.”
Her smile is too small as she shakes her head. “Shut up.”
I kiss her, because it’s safer than trying to let her know how I feel with words, and then I nudge her knee wide with my own and watch her close her eyes as she lets go of her thoughts and gives in to her feelings instead.
Afterward, she clings to me, her mouth on my neck.
“Look up,” she whispers. “Look up, Jack.”
I slide from her body and lie beside her, and gasp. Above us the skies are flooded green and azure and purple, rolling swaths of glorious color.
“It’s breathtaking,” Amanda whispers.
We lie on our backs beneath the majesty, naked and spent, and I wonder what the fuck I’m waiting for.
MARCH 23
Laurie
The third time isn’t a charm in our case. My regular-as-clockwork period keeps me waiting until nine in the evening to bother showing up, by which time Oscar has called me five times and I’ve been to the bathroom at least fifty times. I ring him and we console each other, and then I break my no-drinking rule and pour myself a huge glass of red. I briefly consider calling Sian, my friend from the office. We sometimes grab a drink after work or go to the movies on the days Oscar’s in Brussels, but the ins and outs of my monthly cycle feel too intimate to burden her with. I speak to Mum most days too, but obviously I haven’t told her we’re trying for a baby; if I tell her, it’s someone else to let down. I don’t think it would be nearly this disappointing if Oscar was here, but being apart gives everything this sense of urgency, of make or break.
Miserable, I take myself to bed with my laptop and lie propped up, flicking through all the fabulous things everyone but me is doing on Facebook. As predicted, Australia is all over Sarah like a rash. They can’t get enough of her British accent or her sunshine smile. I reach out and touch the screen as I watch a video she’s posted on her page of an interview she and Luke gave together on morning TV over there about Anglo-Aussie love matches. She’s my Super Sarah: super-loved, super-successful, just super. God, I wish she was here. Our Monday-night Skype sessions are one of the highlights of my week, but it’s not the same as having her actual shoulder to lean on.
I feel stupid for crying, and click from her page on to Jack’s. Our friendship has effectively ended since the night of Sarah’s farewell dinner. The furthest our friendship goes is me liking his photos on Facebook, and him occasionally commenting on mine. From what I see on his page it looks like he’s on one long holiday with Amanda. From mine it must look like I have absolutely no social life at all. Just a long, blank post-less space. Perhaps I should unfriend him and be done with it.
JUNE 9
Laurie
“Close your eyes!”
I’m in the kitchen making dinner (Tuna Niçoise) when Oscar comes home after his usual three-night run to Brussels. He sounds cheerful for once, and I feel a wave of relief crash through me. Things have grown progressively more tense between us; there’
s still no sign of Oscar’s promised full-time return to London, and we’ve been trying for a baby for almost six months now without success. Not that that’s so massively unusual, especially when you throw in the fact that we’re sometimes in different countries at the optimum time for conception. Yes, I know all about these things now.
“Are you sure? I’m holding a kitchen knife.” I laugh, laying it down and doing as he’s asked.
“You can open them again now.”
I do, and he’s standing there with a bouquet so large he can barely see over the top of it.
“Should I be worried?” I smile, taking it from him.
He shakes his head. “I’d have bought champagne, if we weren’t off the hard stuff,” he says. He’s been really good about the not-drinking thing, doing it too out of solidarity.
A knot of dread ties itself in my gut. It’s four days until my period is due or not due. It seems a bit premature to be celebrating.
“Ask me, then,” he says, and I realize there’s something else. I stop searching for a vase big enough to hold such a generous amount of roses and lay them down.
“What is it?” Already I’m second-guessing what he might be about to tell me. Could this be it? His Brussels run coming to an end? We can be a full-time couple again at last.
“Come and sit down,” he says, prolonging the moment as he takes my hand and leads me through to the sofa in the sitting room.
“You’re making me nervous,” I say, half laughing, half worried.
He sits next to me, his body angled toward mine. “Brantman turned up and called me in for a meeting this morning.”
I knew it! “And?” I smile.
“You’re looking at the bank’s newest director!”
His face is wreathed in smiles like a child whose Christmases have all come at once. I catch the whiff of alcohol about him when I lean in and hug him—our drinking ban must have fallen by the wayside today.
“Wow, that’s brilliant!” I say. “And very deserved too, you work really hard for them. I’m glad they see that. Have they given you a date to move back to London?” I squeeze his hand.
“Well, it’s not exactly less time in Brussels.” His smile falters. “Or not at all, actually.”
I go still, filled with a sudden sense of foreboding that there’s more to come and I’m not going to like it.
“I’m not leaving Brussels, Laurie,” he says, holding on to my hand. “In fact, the job will be based there full-time.”
I stare at him, aware that I’m blinking too fast. “I don’t…”
He reaches for my other hand and looks at me imploringly. “Don’t say no straightaway. I know it’s out of the blue, but I’ve been thinking about this all day and it’s the right thing for us to move out there, I’m sure of it. You, me, and the baby too, soon. Brussels is a gorgeous city, Laurie, you’ll love it, I promise.”
I stare at him, shell-shocked. “But my job…”
He nods. “I know, I know. But you’d have to give up work for the baby, anyway; this way you get to take your pregnancy off too.”
“Would I? What if I wanted to go back to work?” I don’t know yet that I do, but how dare he just decide for me? How typically old school of him to assume that I’ll be a stay-at-home mum. And how silly of me, I realize, to not have talked to him about this before.
He frowns, as if I’m throwing up unnecessary obstacles. “Well, there are plenty of jobs out there too. But honestly, Laurie, I’ll be earning so much you won’t need to…Think about it, please,” he says, pressing on without giving me a chance to speak. “You can drink coffee—well, mint tea—in the square, and wander by the river. We can get to know the city before he or she is born, it’ll be like when we first met. There’s loads of expats, you’d make tons of friends.”
I feel completely railroaded, and furious that I don’t seem to hold any of the cards. I’m well aware that his earnings are more than enough to support a family, whereas mine are barely enough to support myself, but he seems to have made all of his assumptions without any thought for my wishes, as if my job is a hobby rather than a career. I don’t know what to say or what to think. I’m truly glad for Oscar that his hard work and long hours are being recognized, but I don’t want to leave my job or London or my life. It’s not fair that his success should mean I lose so much I hold dear.
“Did you genuinely expect me to say yes just like that?” I say, incredulous. He’s not a man given to thoughtlessness; I can only imagine that his excitement overrode his usual common sense.
“I expected you to consider it, at least,” he says, stung. “You must know how much it means to me.”
“And I thought you knew how much my job means to me too, how much I want to be around for my mum,” I shoot back. “Isn’t there a position they can offer you here in London? Why does it have to be in Brussels? It’s unreasonable to ask it of you. Of us.”
“I think they see it as a reward rather than a penalty.” Petulance creeps into his voice as he sighs and shakes his head, impatient. “Can’t you see that too?”
I flick my eyes away from him, because he’s making me feel like I’m being unreasonable and without good reason.
“Don’t you think our families would miss us?” I change tack. “Your mum would hate seeing so much less of you, and what happens when there’s a baby in the mix too?” I can’t keep the note of defiance from my voice. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am by his flowers and celebrations approach. We’re married, we need to make these decisions together, regardless of who the main earner is. “I don’t want to be in a different country to my mum when I have a baby, Oscar. She loves being a gran, I want her to be involved.”
We stare at each other, at an impasse. We never used to argue; now it’s all we seem to do.
“It’s not fair to just drop it on me like this and expect me to be thrilled,” I say. “I need some time to think about it.”
He sets his jaw, his dark eyes full of consternation. “I don’t have more time. This is banking, Laurie, you know how fast things move. Brantman wants an answer on Monday morning, and the only possible answer I can give him is yes, because if I say no, then what’s the fucking point of me working there at all?” He throws his hands up, a helpless gesture. “My career at the bank will be done for; you don’t last in a place like that by being complacent and unambitious.”
I shake my head, reeling at the injustice of being cast as the bad guy.
“I’m going to have a shower,” he says, jerking his chair back. He pauses for a moment, as if he expects me to offer an apology, and I sigh and look away until he leaves the room. It’s becoming painfully clear that it’s wishful thinking to believe Oscar ever hoped to stay true to the man I met on a beach in Thailand. Perhaps he didn’t realize it himself back then, but this hectic commuter life of deals, dinners, and boardrooms is exactly where he belongs. But more than that. It’s where he wants to be.
JUNE 13
Laurie
It’s one minute past midnight, which means my period is one day late. Oscar left for Belgium on a particularly sour note yesterday, after spending the entire weekend trying to railroad me, which only made me dig my heels in more.
It’s now officially Monday, and he’s no doubt officially a director, and I’m officially late. I curl into a ball on my side and screw my eyes shut. I’m officially deeply lonely.
JUNE 16
Laurie
“I’ve bought a pregnancy test.”
“Have you done it yet?” It’s five in the evening here and two in the morning in Perth, but Sarah’s wide awake. I’m an unheard of four days late now, and she was the first person I told.
I dump my keys and bag on the hall table, my cell phone tucked under my ear. “No. I’m too scared of what it might say.” What I don�
��t tell her is that I think I’d be more scared if it were to say yes.
“Oscar’s not home yet, then?”
I sigh in the empty flat. “He should be back in a couple of hours.”
“Hang on,” she says, muffled. I can hear her moving around, and then she’s back and clear again. “Sorry, just getting out of bed. Right, I have wine and I’m not going anywhere. Get the test out, Lu.”
“What, now?” My voice is unnaturally high.
“Yes, now. Or would you rather leave it until Oscar’s home?”
She’s right, of course. Given the way we are just now, it’d be much better if I do it with her and know for sure one way or the other before he comes in.
“Okay,” I whisper, shaking the test out of the pharmacy’s paper bag.
I turn the box over and scan it, reading the by now familiar instructions aloud as I kick off my shoes and lock myself in the bathroom. Why, I don’t know, seeing as I’m the only one home. “I’m in the bathroom.”
“Good. Open the test.”
I struggle as always with the fiddly packaging, finally releasing the white plastic stick from its foil seal. “There. Got it.”
I look at the stick and then at the toilet, and then I sigh and get on with it.
“I can hear you peeing.” Sarah’s voice floats out of my phone on the floor.
“Just be glad we’re not on Facetime,” I mutter, wrangling the stick into the right place, managing to pee on my own fingers in the process. “Why do they make these things so bloody difficult?”
“Don’t drench it!” she shouts, unhelpfully.
I sigh as I extract the stick. Straightaway I can see something happening in the windows, so I snap the lid on quick smart and put the stick on the edge of the sink.
“Start the clock,” I say, washing my hands.