‘I’m afraid I’m guilty of stealing them from my landlord’s garden,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to give you something for making last night so special.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, blushing like a teenage girl at the memory of him cooking dinner for her and what happened afterwards. And which was the reason for her aching in so many places this morning.
Goodness, what would Colin have thought!
More to the point, what would Martha and Willow think?
Chapter Four
Tom Adams was on his way to work. It was now two days since Martha had secretly tested herself to see if she was pregnant.
He knew that his wife kept things from him, but then he kept things from her. Every couple kept shtum about something, he believed. Those who said otherwise were not being honest with themselves. To his way of thinking, it just wasn’t feasible, or sensible, to pour out every worrying thought one ever had.
It was because he loved Martha as profoundly as he did that he didn’t want to burden her with half of what went on inside his head. She had enough to cope with as it was with her longing to have a baby. They were only ten months into the process and already it was beginning to take its toll on her.
On him too.
They had always operated as a team, taking pride in the strength of their partnership. Whatever they took on, they gave it their combined two hundred per cent attention. There were no short measures with them. All or nothing. And that was what increasingly was worrying him.
He wanted a child as much as Martha did, he really did, but he didn’t want to lose who they were in the process of creating a baby.He’d read up online how easily it could happen, and it frightened him.
‘We won’t become one of those awful couples that destroy their relationship by being obsessed with wanting a baby,’ Martha had said before they found that things didn’t fall into place as easily as they had assumed they would. She wasn’t used to failing and he knew that was how she now viewed their inability to conceive at the click of their fingers.
How long before blame was apportioned?
And why did it worry him so much that he might be the one who was at fault?
Having a family had always been a part of the deal for them. When they were getting to know one another, they’d each raised the subject of children quite early on. Better to flush out the dealbreakers sooner rather than later, had been their mutual take on dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s before committing to a serious relationship. He could remember how relieved they had both been when they’d tackled the subject and each heard the answer they’d wanted to hear.
They had married four years ago and had agreed to establish themselves as a couple before taking the step of becoming parents. They had everything planned, everything neatly figured out.
But then with all that had happened in the last few years Tom had suddenly not been so sure it was a good idea to bring a child into a world that could so easily be tipped on its axis. Previous generations had worried about war or a nuclear bomb destroying mankind, now it seemed that it could be something far more insidious.
His mother had caught the virus in the early stages of the pandemic,before anyone really knew just how bad it was going to be. She had spent five awful weeks in hospital on a ventilator before she died. During that time neither Tom nor his sister, Lynn, had been able to see her in hospital. Their father hadn’t been able to either. She had died alone, with only the kindness of an exhausted nursing team to watch over her.
Fifteen years older than Mum, Dad had always joked that he’d be the first one to check out. He’d been heartbroken at her death and he still hadn’t recovered from losing her. In poor health anyway, and at Lynn’s insistence, he had moved to live nearer her.
Tom felt guilty that his sister had so readily taken on the responsibility of keeping an eye on their father, but geography had rather dictated things. The family home had been in Harrogate, where Tom had grown up, and with his sister and husband living nearby in Northallerton, it had just seemed more sensible for Dad to remain in Yorkshire, rather than up sticks to move down south.
Tom had upped sticks himself when he’d graduated from Leeds University and left Yorkshire for a job in London as a graduate trainee accountant. He’d ended up specialising in forensic accountancy, which, with his nerdy propensity for detail, was a perfect fit for him.
Just over three years ago, he and Martha moved out of London and he took the plunge to start his own business. He rented office premises near Guildford where he and a small team could operate. Their client base had since grown at a very pleasing rate, even with the challenges of coping with a pandemic, and they’d just successfully been hired by a prestigious law firm to provide evidence in court against an insurance company accused of defrauding customers.
Martha had encouraged him every step of the way when he’d said he wanted to abandon his relatively secure and well-paid job in London and go it alone. He’d always be grateful for that, that she was happy for him to take the risk. A risk that so far was paying off handsomely.
In return for that support and encouragement he would love nothing more than to make her dream of having a baby come true. But how far would he go?
What if further down the line desperation kicked in and Martha proposed IVF?
The thought of that filled him with dread. Not just the outlandish cost, but the misery it could bring – hopes raised, only to be crushed with each failed attempt.
He hoped to God he could spare Martha that pain.
When he’d found the latest pregnancy test kit Martha had kept from him, not a word had he said to her about it. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. She clearly wanted to keep him on a need to know basis, wanting to test herself in secret and then delightedly give him the good news if it was positive.
If he were honest, he wanted to be there with her when she did the test, to share the moment of discovery.
He hadn’t been deliberately snooping through the bin when he’d found the kit, but he’d had his suspicions roused earlier in the evening when she’d disappeared straight upstairs to the bathroom the moment she’d arrived home from work. He had caught the unmistakable rustling sound of a bag. He knew her routine as well as his own, so any variation from the norm was like a klaxon going off.
