Kim lost her car keys and was late for an important client meeting. Sarah was understanding. But it happened again, and then once more when her alarm didn’t go off. Sarah had no choice but to give her a verbal warning, an exchange that was so horribly excruciating for both women that Kim couldn’t hold back the tears over dinner that night.
Rohan asked if she wanted to hand in her notice. When Kim said that sounded a little extreme, he’d put his fork down, reached into his jeans pocket, and dug out a clean folded tissue for her.
“You’re crying, Kim. No job’s worth making you feel like this.”
Rohan was busy with his own work, too, in a way that made him seem preoccupied at times. During a distracted conversation one night, he let slip the fact that Shane had cheated on Naomi, years ago when they were together, and Shane was still playing. Kim already knew about that, because everyone knew about that.
“I guess that was just Shane back then,” she’d said. “Some men are like that. Can’t say no.”
And in that moment there had been a beat of pure silence in which she’d heard, unspoken but unmissable, the wordCharliepulse between them. She had stared at Rohan, who had busied himself shutting down his laptop. He wouldn’t meet her eye.
“What?” Kim felt sideswiped. She tried to keep her voice light. “Did Charlie?”
“No.”
“Did he? Rohan?”
“Kim, no.” He gave a short laugh. “No.”
“You can tell me. I don’t care.” Although she did, because of all Kim and Charlie’s problems—and, okay, there had been a few—that had never been one of them. Or so she’d thought. Charlie had his faults, but Kim had always trusted him.
The idea that she had been wrong about that, that he might havebeen unfaithful and, worse, successfully hidden it from her, slipped into her side like a blade. She told herself she didn’t believe it, while at the same time picking over old conversations and scrutinizing mental lists of his casual acquaintances.
Rohan had changed the subject swiftly and not brought it up again, until eventually Kim had had to.
“Just tell me,” she’d said a few tormented days later. “I’d rather know.”
“Kim, seriously.”
“Well, did the others all know? Gemma and Dean and everyone?” The idea that her friends had kept something like that from her made her want to cry.
“Jesus, Kim. Please, let’s not.”
“What would Gemma say if I asked her, though?”
Rohan had looked at her strangely. “Why are you even thinking about this now?”
“I don’t know. You brought it up.”
“No. You did.” He was still watching her, concern all over his face. Finally, he’d shrugged. “Look, ask Gemma, then, if you really need to. Or Naomi. They’ll tell you the same as I am.”
Kim felt ashamed by the way he was staring at her and was simply too angry and embarrassed to have that same conversation with someone else. Next time the phone rang, Kim sent it straight through to voicemail.
She realized she felt stressed and sad all the time. She went to the doctor about oversleeping and losing her keys. She came away with a prescription for antidepressants. Things got worse at work. She lost another file. She handed in her notice before Sarah had to ask her to. She went back to the doctor to see if her memory was okay. Another prescription was written and dispensed, along with a sleep aid to help her rest properly.
After that, Kim stayed home for a while, carrying out half-hearted job searches at the granite table in the kitchen that had been paid forwith Rohan’s engineer’s salary. She started to feel sick in the mornings and then she stopped looking for work.
She had to go back to the doctor again, because now she was pregnant.
The baby looked just like Kim.
She and Zoe had been home from the hospital for a week when she first caught Rohan staring at their daughter with an odd look on his face.
“Everything okay?” she’d asked, drained and fractious from another broken night.
“Her eyes are very dark,” Rohan had said simply, but in a way that sounded like things were not okay at all. Kim was too tired to try to work out what he meant.
“Yeah,” she said. Her caesarean wound was aching. “I suppose so. It’s nice, though. She’s so pretty.”
