And now she was late and he could tell she was convinced that this was it. For the last two days he had watched her move from a state of quiet introspection to nervous excitement. She thought she was pregnant.
If she’d told him, he would have suggested not getting her hopes up, but it was too late for that now. Her hopes were flying high and turning into dreams of the future and there was only one thing that would bring them down.
Which, from the sound of things, had just happened. There was no cry of excitement or rush of steps to come and tell him the good news. Only the thud of the bathroom door closing and a slow, heavy tread towards the bedroom.
The door opened and she came in. She stood by their bed, her face set and unsmiling.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘My period was late. I took a test.’
Alfie sat up on his elbows. ‘And?’
Tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She shook her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and held out his arms. ‘Come here.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to be alone. I’m going to have a shower.’
‘I don’t think so. Not before a hug.’
‘I’m OK.’
‘It’s not for you. It’s for me. I’m disappointed too.’
It was clearly the wrong thing to say. Her lips quivered and tears welled in her eyes. She let out a loud, wracking sob then slumped on the edge of the bed and buried her face in his neck.
‘I tried not to hope,’ she said. ‘I told myself not to get my hopes up, but it’s impossible. I want this so much.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘And it’ll happen. It takes time for lots of people.’
I know,’ she replied. ‘But what if we’re the ones who it never happens for? What then?’
‘We’re a long way from that,’ Alfie said. ‘A long way.’
‘But what if?’ Claire said. ‘What if we can’t have kids?’
‘Don’t think like that.’
She nodded. ‘I won’t. I’m going to have a shower.’
When she came back her eyes were red.
‘You not feeling too good?’ Alfie said.
‘I was sure I was pregnant this time,’ she said. ‘I felt different, somehow. And I’ve been so regular. I don’t know why my period would suddenly be late.’
‘Stress can do that,’ Alfie said. ‘This is a difficult time for you. For us.’
She wiped a tear from her eyes. ‘I can’t stop crying. It’s the sense of loss. Even though I wasn’t pregnant – so there was nothing to lose – I’d let myself think I was, and I was already imagining a future with us as parents. And now it’s gone.’
‘Only for now,’ Alfie said. ‘We’ll get there in the end, I know it.’
He held her tight, then sat up.
‘I have to get ready for work,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an early meeting.’
In the bathroom, Alfie stripped off. He looked in the full-length mirror. He flexed his pectoral muscles, then turned sideways and admired his flat abdominals. His chest and back were waxed and smooth, unlike the thick, brown hair on his scalp. He kept himself in shape; the only thing he couldn’t do anything about were the pock-marks on his face, the scars left by the acne he’d suffered from as a teenager.
He turned on the shower and stepped in. He let the hot water run over him. He washed his hair, massaging the shampoo into his scalp. The shampoo he used cost over thirty pounds a bottle, but it was worth it. According to his hair stylist, he had the kind of hair that movie stars had. He could be a hair model, she said, and it was worth paying the extra for good shampoo. So he treated himself.
And besides, they could afford it. Claire’s dad was both rich and generous.
When he was finished, he wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed his razor. As he started to shave the bathroom door opened.
‘Would you take out the bin?’ Claire said. ‘The test is in there. I don’t want to go near it.’
Alfie nodded. ‘OK.’
‘And thanks,’ she said. ‘For being so supportive. I’m lucky to have you. And we’ll be pregnant, one day.’
He smiled. ‘We will. I know we will.’
She closed the door and the smile fell from his face. He looked at himself in the mirror and shook his head.
Stupid bitch. She wanted him to take out the bin. Of course she did. She was too infantile to deal with a negative pregnancy test so she needed him to deal with it for her, like it was a fucking python or something. It was pathetic.
It was typical of her.
As was the way she used ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. ‘We’ll be pregnant, one day.’ He hated that ‘we’. Hated the cloying, saccharine refusal to accept the biological truth of the situation: it was her who would be pregnant, not him.
The irony – and he took great pleasure in it – was that, whatever words she used, she was wrong. They – she – wouldn’t be pregnant any time soon. Ever, in fact.
Because what she didn’t know was that her husband had no intention of having children. They were the last thing he wanted. There were many reasons why, but the main one was because the arrival of kids would render all his careful plans redundant.
They would tie him to the simpering bitch forever, and there was no way he was letting that happen.
But she couldn’t find out he didn’t want them. Not yet, at any rate. He still needed her for a while, which was why he had never mentioned – and did not plan to – the reason why she would not be getting pregnant any time soon.
Her husband had had a vasectomy.
He’d had it done a year after they married – almost exactly two years earlier, now – when she had started talking about having kids in earnest. He’d gone to see the doctor, told him what he wanted – the doctor was surprised given how young he was and had tried to talk him out of it, but he had referred him nonetheless – and then, one morning, Alfie had gone to the hospital and had the operation.
He’d been back at his desk the same afternoon. He was a bit sore, but it was OK.
And it would remain his little secret.
He glanced at the bin. The negative pregnancy test lay there, pointing at him, accusing him.
‘Fuck you,’ he said, then wiped the shaving cream from his face.
Claire picked up her phone from the bedside table and glanced at the time:
Ten a.m.
She lay back on her pillow, her head thick with a nasty hangover. Friday had been awful, but at least it was Friday. She’d gone out with her colleagues to a bar in the West End and drunk away the disappointment of the pregnancy test. She didn’t even mind the headache. It took her mind off it all.
She did mind the cramps. Her period had arrived and the cramps were worse than they had been for a while, each one reminding her of what had happened.
She turned on her front and buried her head underneath her pillow. She heard