Eva glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and made a swift decision. She would nip out to the chemist while her laptop was booting. There was a faint chill in the air outside, but she could feel it dissipating even as she walked. The air was soft with morning haze and laden with a summery feeling of abundance. A little way along the street she startled a squirrel on the ground, sending it scurrying up the trunk of a nearby cherry tree, where it knocked off a blossom that fluttered down to the pavement in front of her. It was an almost laughably idyllic morning, she thought, feeling rather as though she ought to be clicking her heels together as she went. Even the irritable traffic queue and barging pedestrians on the High Street couldn’t puncture her mood; it just reminded her how lucky she was to be out of the rat-race and not having to battle her way across London to an office each morning.
In the chemist, a bored-looking assistant was positioned beside the aisle wielding a fragrance bottle. It was the only route to the counter and Eva readied herself to fend her off, but before she had a chance to protest the trigger-happy perfumier engulfed her in a cloud of something strongly reminiscent of Toilet Duck. Her body’s response was instantaneous and unstoppable: the coffee she’d drunk shot up from her gullet without warning, forcing her to bend forward and deposit it noisily on the mat in front of the make-up counter. The physical relief was immediate but as she straightened up she was confronted with the face of the assistant, whose complacent expression had given way to barely concealed revulsion.
‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me,’ Eva gasped. ‘Can I help to clean it up?’
They both looked down at the mess and the assistant shook her head. ‘Do you know, I think I’m just going to put that whole mat into a bin bag and chuck it out.’
For a moment Eva considered bolting but she knew there was no other chemist open nearby, so she staggered to the front, grabbed a pink box from a display next to the checkout and threw it onto the counter. The young woman on the till looked down at the box and then back up at Eva, the distaste on her face slowly being replaced with a look of dawning comprehension. She winked as she ran it under the scanner, whispering, ‘I think we both know what that’s going to say!’
*
Ten minutes later Eva was sitting in her bathroom watching a single blue line stubbornly refuse to turn to a cross. Three minutes, then four, then five ticked past until it was clear that the pregnancy test was not going to change from negative to positive. But what about her churning stomach? Could the test be wrong? Could it just be too soon? Her phone started to ring in the sitting room and Eva went to answer it, still holding the stubbornly unchanging test.
‘Eva? It’s Sylvie. There’s no way you could look after Allegra today, is there? I’ve got a stomach bug, been up half the night vomiting.’
Eva groaned. ‘I think I’ve got it too. But I could come over and help if you’re completely out of action. Give me a few minutes to pack up my laptop and paperwork and I’ll bring it over and we can do some combination of work, throwing up and looking after Allegra together.’
She hung up and carried the pregnancy test into the kitchen to bury it at the bottom of the bin where Benedict wouldn’t see it. She wouldn’t bring it up; if anything, the continual focus on it was making it less likely to happen. Sex could almost be a chore when you had to do it to schedule. It was becoming a lonely journey for this sort of reason, both of them leaving things unvoiced because they feared that talking about them would only make it harder. It was a horrible feeling after the closeness that had enveloped them for most of the two years they’d been a couple, and an unwelcome reminder of the time there had been too many things they couldn’t talk about and their friendship had faltered.
Being together was so overwhelmingly right that it seemed impossible they could ever return to such a state, but now a distance was starting to open up between them, no one’s fault, but a function of a situation that neither of them could fix. Eva couldn’t count the number of times she’d imagined telling him, saying the words, I’m pregnant, and watching his face as he realized that in her belly was a baby that was theirs, that belonged to them both. Now the fantasy brought tears to her eyes and she pushed it roughly from her mind. She closed the bin lid and was just about to go and pack a bag to take to Sylvie’s when her phone rang again. It was still in her hand and she looked down at the screen, noting before answering that this time the call came from an unfamiliar number.
*
Benedict was strolling along the Brompton Road towards Imperial College when his phone started to ring. He tugged it out of his pocket and saw that it was Eva, which was strange because he’d seen her only half an hour ago. It couldn’t mean. . could it? Benedict was painfully aware that her period was due; he didn’t mention it, tried to keep the pressure off, but each month he was on tenterhooks. He was starting to worry that it would never happen for them. It had been well over a year since they’d ditched the condoms, and as the months rolled by it was getting harder and harder for them both to act nonchalant each time her period arrived.
He’d known what she was thinking: that Lydia had got pregnant at the drop of a hat, so there was nothing wrong with him and it must be her. You couldn’t open a newspaper these days for articles about how female fertility drops off a cliff after the age of thirty-five. Rationally, they both knew that what the GP said was true, that it could take a while to happen for some people, but there had been that nagging voice in his head saying, it’s all too good to be true, nothing’s ever perfect, you can’t have it all.
He so desperately wanted for Eva to experience what he had with his kids, the love, the enchantment, the sheer wonder. He still regularly burned with a mixture of adoration and shame when he saw them. He’d been such an imperfect father, and watching the pain and confusion that the divorce had caused Josh and Will had been agonizing. In the dark of night a small voice whispered to him that this was the reason that he and Eva couldn’t conceive, that he was being punished for not being a good enough father to his existing children.
Still, the boys seemed happy enough these days, in fact once everything had been settled they had seemed to take the new arrangements in their stride almost better than he had. After he and Eva had got together she’d insisted he read a book on helping children to cope with divorce and stepparents, and try to follow the advice in it. It hadn’t always gone to plan, he remembered, thinking back to the last time he’d attempted to give them the recommended ‘safe space in which to express their emotions’.
‘Boys,’ he’d said, clearing his throat. ‘I thought this might be a good time for a bit of a chat. Obviously there has been a lot going on, and Mum and I both know you’ve had to cope with a lot of uncertainty. I know that my moving in with Eva is a big change for you. Is there anything you want to talk about?’
‘Oh, Dad,’ grumbled Josh. ‘Do we have to talk about the divorce again?’
‘Well, no, we don’t have to,’ said Benedict, taken aback. ‘Not if you’d rather not. It’s just that it’s better to talk about things that are upsetting you and not keep them bottled up inside.’
Will and Josh looked at each other.