10.50 pm

‘Do you love me?’

‘Ruth, what? Of course.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘What is this? Yes.’

‘“Yes.”’ Ruth raises her hands and lets them fall. ‘What does that mean to you, Aidan? What does that even mean, if this is how you react?’

‘My reaction? What about yours? Honestly, you act like it was just another decision, “No more trying.” But it is our life, it is our whole life together.’

‘You’re so angry with me.’ Ruth’s voice comes out like a whisper.

‘I’m not even – I’m not angry, Ruth. I’m disappointed.’

‘I’m sorry, Aidan.’

‘“Sorry.” Seriously? Like we’re strangers. Like you’re not affected by any of this?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I just said, Aidan, don’t you know that I blame myself?’

‘It’s not about blame. It was a procedure, you had to have it! You just said it, it’s not anyone’s fault.’

‘You’re missing the point.’

‘Ruth, I was never trying to blame you.’

‘But that’s how it feels, Aidan. Come on, look at everything you say to me! It’s like I’m only a baby incubator to you.’ Ruth can’t believe she’s actually saying it. ‘A broken incubator.’

Aidan only shakes his head at her, though at least he is finally looking at her.

‘You’re not broken, Ruth. Though maybe you want to be, maybe it makes it easier to justify to yourself. I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t even mean that.’ Aidan shakes his head again.

Ruth can’t take it any more and she has no plan, no truth, no answer, no idea of what to do. She leans forward and lays her forehead on the island between them, as if in supplication. The wood is hard, blotting out the world.

‘I can’t talk to you if you do that,’ Aidan says.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Ruth’s voice is muffled by the wood. ‘Do you want me to say I’m happy?’

Her scalp shows through her hair, which has fallen to one side, spooling on the wood, the skin grey and pink. Aidan wants, strangely, to stroke it. He looks at the window, at their reflection, Ruth’s head on the counter, him towering over her, both of them grotesque. How has he brought them to this?

‘Ruth.’

‘I can’t really breathe like that,’ Ruth says, rising up. Her face is red, the tip of her nose white, she wipes her eyes. ‘Do you remember the Alhambra last year?’

Why must she always do this? Which was it, the miscarriage she felt guilty for, or that miserable trip to Spain? Which was the important thing?

‘Do you remember,’ she asks, ‘there was some confusion with the coach at Malaga?’

‘You’d organised tickets,’ he says, despite himself.

‘You were calm, that’s what I remember,’ Ruth says. She remembers frantically tapping at her phone, retrieving their booking, zooming in to see the details on the tiny screen. ‘And you said we were in the right place and if we just waited, it would be okay.’

Aidan nods again.

‘It was after we’d stopped,’ Ruth says. Because it was after the fourth cycle.

‘I thought we would keep going, later, I thought we would,’ Aidan says.

‘Do you remember the Nasrid Palace?’ Ruth asks, because the voice in her head says, stay. Aidan looks blankly at her, but she will not give up. ‘How hot it was and how I kept threatening to climb into one of the fountains?’ Aidan grants her another nod. ‘It could be like that again,’ Ruth says.

‘Like what, Ruth?’ Aidan says.

‘Good. Happy.’

Aidan looks at Ruth and there is the blank expression again.

‘I don’t mean,’ Ruth says, ‘just on holiday, I mean it was good because you were there.’ Ruth pauses, because Aidan is giving her nothing, and she does not know how to say this next part. ‘And still, I knew,’ Ruth says, and her voice wavers with a long-held pain, ‘I knew there was something missing. I kept thinking how much better it would have been to show it all to a child, all the carved screens and secret rooms, to dangle a baby’s feet into the cool water. I kept getting these flashes, images of us, with our child. I wanted to be there as a family.’

This feeling. Aidan knows it. He had wanted the same, exactly the same.

‘You never told me.’ His voice sounds too sharp.

‘I didn’t know how to. And I couldn’t bear to bring it up again, for either of us.’ Ruth’s face looks at him. She is leaning against the wooden counter, one hand resting on its surface.

‘I thought you didn’t care,’ Aidan says, looking directly at her now. And suddenly he remembers. Not Granada, but the hospital room. Of how he had felt, too, that he could not go on.

Ruth gives a slight shake of her head.

‘I thought that you’d moved on,’ Aidan says, voicing the old accusations, but without conviction. ‘You were working all the time.’

‘I miss the children we did not have,’ Ruth says, and there are tears in her eyes once more. ‘I will never know our child, never hug them, or have a conversation with them, or look at them out in the world. I will never get to love them. I don’t think I will ever be over that, Aidan, I don’t think I will ever stop grieving that.’

It is almost too much, when you hear the thing you have waited so long, too long, to be spoken aloud. When you hear it and realise that you are not alone in your loss. How could he have persuaded himself she felt nothing? Aidan looks at his wife and feels, at last, a rush of love like a pang of grief. They could not go on, so she had said stop.

‘I miss them too,’ Aidan says. ‘We both miss them.’