“Then let’s not argue. I love you. I don’t want to argue with you.”
He doesn’t say anything.
He does lift his right hand to run it through his hair, and as he does, the ring on his middle finger glints in the sun. One of his exes, Chrissie, bought it for him. It was a long time ago, after he left university, and he says he wears it because he likes the Maori pattern on it, not because she bought it. I know that he asked her to marry him, though, but she turned him down, and they broke up shortly afterwards. I’m convinced that, deep down, he still has feelings for her. I asked him once and he got angry with me and said it all happened years ago, and I’ve never mentioned it again, but it’s always there, niggling, like a tiny stone in your shoe.
I bite my bottom lip. “Do you still love me?”
He looks at me then. His eyes are a very light brown, the same as a fox’s. “Yes,” he says simply. “But my position has become untenable.”
“What do you mean?” I ask impatiently.
“You talk about your sister all the time,” he snaps. “It’s all I hear, whenever I’m with you.”
My jaw drops. “That’s not fair.” I know he’s not correct because I purposefully don’t mention her or her problems at all as I know the subject annoys him.
“It is fair,” he insists. “You’re constantly speaking to her on the phone, answering her texts, talking to your mum about her, and worrying about conceiving and fertility when we’re not even married and haven’t talked about children at all.”
I blink. There’s no point in firing accusations back because it’ll just result in an out-and-out war. I change tack and try to accept my part in the problem. “I know it’s a big part of my life at the moment, and I apologize if I talk about it too much. But it is a huge concern of mine. I’m not getting any younger, and I have endo, and it plays on my mind, that’s all.”
“You’re twenty-nine. You talk as if you’re forty.”
“Yes, I know, but even if we were to start trying now, we’d have to wait a year before they’d even consider IVF, and even if it only took three rounds the way it took Mum, that means I’d be thirty-three, and I know it’s not old but every year makes it harder, and—”
“Donna fell immediately!”
“That’s because her endo is classed as mild. Mine is moderate.”
“You said it was mild to moderate.”
“Well… yes… but it’s not an exact science…”
“You’re imagining the worst. There’s no reason to assume you’ll have the same problem as Kim. And your personalities are different anyway. She’s making things a thousand times worse by stressing out about conceiving. Simon told me that their sex life has gone completely out of the window. All she thinks about is getting pregnant, and she refuses to have sex while she’s having a cycle.”
“That’s because the doctor told her not to, so it doesn’t interfere with implantation!”
“Babe, don’t you get it? Is having a baby really worth ruining their marriage?”
“It’s not ruining it. I mean, I know they’re struggling, but in sickness and in health and all that. Relationships have their ups and downs. They’ll pull through and it’ll make it stronger when they eventually do get pregnant.”
“They won’t,” he says simply, looking me in the eyes as if he’s a doctor trying to tell a patient she has an incurable disease. “And it’s going to destroy them.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say.” I blink away tears. “If she thought like that, she wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. She has to have hope.”
“No, she needs to come to terms with the fact that it’s not going to happen. She needs to focus on Simon and their marriage.”
“He wouldn’t leave her because she can’t get pregnant!”
“No. But he will leave her if getting pregnant is more important to her than his happiness.”
I stand stiffly. The music in the Quad behind us has been turned up and the conversation has risen to match it. Nobody’s taking any notice of us.
My life developed tiny cracks some time ago, and they’re spreading through me. Through us.
I’m not stupid. Jude tolerates Kim and doesn’t like Simon at all, and he certainly doesn’t care about their marriage. “What’s going on?” I ask. “What’s this about?”
“Don’t make this more than it is.”
“No, I know you well enough to realize there’s an undercurrent here. What aren’t you telling me?” I go cold. “Is… is there someone else?”
