‘He still left though. But you’re right,hewasn’t pernicious, not at all, just driven by work and he wanted things to be smooth when he got home at night, and he didn’t like heavy, complicated stuff, I guess.’
She caught her breath. They really were in the deep now. She had lost all sense of the seabed beneath her and the water was growing colder as they swam.
‘For a long time everything was easy, we were both enjoying our jobs, and we really only saw each other for an hour or so at night.’ She was panting now with the effort. The muscles between her shoulder blades were turning numb. ‘And our weekends were eaten up by work spilling over into them – I only cottoned on to the fact that he wasn’t really there for me when I was struggling to cope with everything, and I was at home alone all day, getting lonelier and lonelier, and just feeling… useless and good for nothing.’ She filled her lungs. ‘I couldn’t even trust my own body to do stuff it seemed any other woman can do. And when I tried to fix everything by getting pregnant again it just drove us further apart. I was a bit desperate and clutching at straws, if I’m honest. But I got eaten up by the sadness and eventually, it consumed our marriage, I suppose.’
‘That sounds common enough to me.’
‘That’s not all, really. I’ve got used to telling myself it was work that slowly drove us apart over the years, and we found we were somehow leading separate lives, and getting pregnant briefly brought us together again, but there’s more… you see… I was kind of hard to live with from May right through until he left. I was charting my temperature, and monitoring my hormones and taking all these supplements and eating pineapple cores and Brazil nuts because I heard they’d help me get pregnant, and I was calling Rich at work and telling him to come home because we had to… you know, there and then. And then when we did do it, I kept crying and it was probably a bit off-putting, and I went on and on like that for weeks. So, you see, it was my fault that he left. I scared him. Are you laughing?’
‘No, I’m not laughing.’
‘But you’re looking at me like I’m crazy?’
‘Nor that.’
‘And you don’t… pity me?’
‘Not pity, no. Admire you? Aye. Know that you’ve suffered and did your best to cope? Yes. Wish you were happier? Wi’ my whole heart.’
Who stopped swimming first she couldn’t tell, but their legs sank under the surface simultaneously and their heads came up. Beatrice glanced back to the coral beach; it was a long way off. They faced each other, circling their legs and arms slowly, stilling themselves in the water.
‘I’m sorry, Atholl, I’m being a bit weird, I know it. It’s just kissing you back there… really brought all that back, all the stuff with Rich I haven’t really dealt with.’
The thoughts had crowded in and spilled out in a rush, running as clear as the water over her back and just as cold and biting.
‘I’m sorry. That’s a shame,’ Atholl said, his own breath faltering.
‘Itisa shame. I never thought I’d be forty and separated, or temporarily homeless for that matter. And I always thought I’d be a mum.’
‘I’d hold you if I could,’ Atholl said. ‘But I’d sink us both. It wasn’t your fault, any of it. You should know that.’
‘You’d have stayed in the same situation, would you?’
‘What? If my nerves were being tested daily by someone like, say Eugene, and I was living in close quarters with them, and they were struggling to cope? Yes, I’d stay.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’re shivering again, keep moving.’
They set off again for the horizon, the water so cold Beatrice’s toes and fingers felt numb, but she could see through the crystal clear water to the white coral far beneath them as though they were in balmy tropical waters.
‘It’s nice of you to say that, but it really was all my fault. And it got a whole lot worse as my fortieth birthday started looming. Do you know women over forty only have a five percent chance of conceiving every month?’
‘I didn’t know that, but I do know my mother had my wee sister when she was forty-eight.’
She threw him a double take and blew the air from her lungs with a whistle. ‘Really? Wow! Well, the fact of the matter is I’m nearly forty. I always thought I’d be a mum by now, and here I am… five hundred miles away from my husband and hiding out in the Highlands.’
‘When?’
‘What?’
‘When’s your fortieth?’
‘Tenth of September.’
‘So, what’s that?’ He lifted his eyes to the sky as they swam. ‘Thirteen days?’
‘Something like that.’
