There had been a time when he would shout my name when we made love, and then he would stay, his skin on mine, our limbs wrapped around each other. Our eyes would be locked, our lips inches apart.
‘You’re everything,’ he would tell me.
‘You’re more,’ I’d reply.
We would talk, laugh, fight over who was going to go get drinks, or shower first, or make breakfast the next morning. Mostly we’d just talk. Just be.
Tonight, as soon as it was over, he slid off me, gave me a brief, meaningless kiss, muttered something about it being great (it wasn’t) and then lifted the remote control for the TV from the bedside table. He flicked through the channels until he found something he wanted to watch and then slipped his arm around my head, nudging me into his chest.
The message wouldn’t be any clearer if it flashed up on the television. Cuddle in, keep quiet, chill out, don’t bother me with waves that will disrupt my still pool of peace and harmony. Classic Colm. Sure, he’d make token enquiries, with the occasional, ‘Good day? or ‘How’s things?’ but I’d learned over the years that unless there was an impending apocalypse, an imminent death or the TV was broken, he really just wanted to hear ‘fine’. Every now and then, I’d test him by going off on a rant about something and he’d invariably zone out within a minute and a half. Colm wanted upbeat fun, an easy life, and a good laugh – and didn’t see why he couldn’t have all of those things on an ongoing basis. It was a big part of the reason I’d fallen in love with him. And he was right. Except when he wasn’t.
I pushed away from him and – keeping my knees tight together – spun around so that I could put my legs up the wall. I nudged a pillow under my buttocks to help tilt my pelvis in the right direction. The fertility guide recommended that this position was maintained for half an hour, but I usually stretched it and tried for at least an hour. I know it irritated him, and in turn, he irritated me because I didn’t understand why he was irritated! It wasn’t him who was filling himself full of fertility drugs and he wasn’t the one who was spending half their life checking ovulation charts and pregnancy tests. He hadn’t discovered that he had a condition called polycystic ovaries, which meant he rarely or never produced eggs. This didn’t make him feel like a total failure. And no, he didn’t have to lie with his legs up a bloody wall. Yet, he was irritated?
‘The treatment finishes this month,’ I mused aloud, hoping he’d be up for talking about it. It was all I’d been able to think about for days. The treatment plan had consisted of taking a fertility drug that was our big hope, but had so far only brought us huge disappointment.
Now we’d hit the recommended limit of three courses, the doctor was reluctant to prescribe more due to the possibility that overuse of the drug could raise the chance of ovarian cancer later in life.
If this didn’t work, it was back to the drawing board. More tests. Different drugs. Investigating other options. We’d discovered I wasn’t a candidate for IVF because I didn’t have any eggs to fertilize, but we could look at the possibility of using donor eggs or a surrogate, or perhaps even abandoning the pregnancy process altogether and considering adoption.
So much to think and talk about, yet Colm was watching Match of the Day.
‘What, love?’ he replied, not taking his eyes off the screen.
‘The fertility treatment. This is the last month we can take it and then we have to look at other options.’
‘Okay.’
Still hadn’t looked in my direction.
‘Okay?’
‘Yeah.’
I could feel a wave of anger whipping up a storm in my stomach. I fought to stay calm.
‘So I take it from your reaction that you don’t want to talk about this then?’
He sighed and finally turned to meet my gaze. ‘Now? You want to talk now?’
‘When else do we have, Colm? Between my job and yours, we’re lucky if we get to spend a waking hour together every second day.’
I wasn’t exaggerating. Since he’d set up the business he was travelling a lot, pitching for clients, while I was working round the clock to keep us afloat. I wasn’t complaining – I knew it was part of the deal and I’d agreed to it. I wanted him to have his dream. I just didn’t expect it to come at the expense of mine.
He pressed the off button on the remote control and threw it on the bed, clearly irritated.
‘Okay, shoot.’
‘What do you mean “shoot”?’
The wave of frustration and anger at his attitude was rising and I wasn’t sure how I was going to stop it. It was in my throat now, ready to let loose. I could honestly say Colm and I had had maybe three or four major fights in the entire time we’d been together. Unless I could get this under control, we were on course for adding to that tally.
He sighed. ‘Shauna, you’re the one who has all the opinions on this subject, so you tell me – what are we doing?’
‘You mean you can’t even be arsed having an opinion? Is that where we’re at now? I hear you talking about a bloody football game with Dan for hours upon endless bloody hours, and yet you can’t even be arsed talking about this for five minutes? This is not just me we’re talking about here, Colm. It’s us. Our family.’
‘We’ve already got a family,’ he shot back and something inside me snapped. Actually broke.
‘I don’t!’ I was definitely shouting now. ‘I don’t have a family. I know we have the boys, and I truly love them, but they’re not mine. My parents couldn’t give a fuck. And there was you… there was always you… but what’s happened, Colm? What’s happened to us? When did you become so detached that you couldn’t even be bothered talking to me about something that’s important?’
‘When it became all you talked about!’ he yelled back, making me flinch. Colm had never shouted at me. Not ever. It could have snapped me out of my fury, but it didn’t. It made it worse.
‘Because I’m trying to get you to care! You act like it doesn’t matter, but it does. It’s our future.’
He twisted to face me now, eyes blazing, body language screaming conflict. ‘So why does it have to include more kids? Look, I’m not adverse to a baby. If it happens, fine. But I’m not going to lose sleep over it and I wish you’d just fecking drop it and let us get on with our lives. It’s become like a bloody obsession.’
‘Because I feel like I’m doing it on my own!’ I screamed. ‘Just me, Colm. On my fricking own. Trying to make something happen that’s important to me. And no matter how hard I try I can’t get you to share it.’
‘Why do I have to?’ His face was pure fury now, a look I didn’t recognize, had never seen before. Oh God, this was a fight on a whole different level from anything that had gone before.
‘Because… It matters. I want this. I’ve asked you for nothing since the day we met, and now I’m asking you to do this for me.’ I couldn’t make my mouth stop moving and I knew with absolute certainty that I was about to cross a line but I couldn’t pull back. ‘I take care of your boys every weekend, have done for all these years. I look after them, I love them, my money contributes to their maintenance and I never complain. I NEVER FUCKING COMPLAIN. I do that for you. And for them, but mostly for you. Yet you can’t do the same for me.’
I paused, took a breath, then fired on.
‘You wanted to set up your own company and that means I have to double my income to pick up the slack, so I’m on fourteen-hour fucking days, not because I want to but because it’s important to you. It’s your dream, just like having children is mine. I’ll do anything to help you make it, Colm, anything at all, because that’s what you do for people you love. Their battles become yours. You fight for them. Do everything you can to make their lives as amazing as they can be.’ I took a gasp of breath, my chest hurting with the sheer exertion of trying to force all this out past a huge boulder that had lodged somewhere around my heart. ‘But you seem to think that doesn’t apply to you, that you get it all on your terms. Well you can fuck off. Seriously, Colm. Enough. I’ve spent my whole life with parents who couldn’t give a crap how I feel, who wouldn’t go out of their way to do something for me if their life depended on it and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life doing it with you. I’ve got to be worth something and if I’m not, then I don’t want to be here.’
I jumped out of bed, needing oxygen that wasn’t available in a room that suddenly felt toxic. He said nothing, not a word, as I flew downstairs.
In the kitchen, I poured a coffee from a pot that was off, but still warm, then opened the doors to the garden. It was almost a relief to feel the cold air, my vest and pyjama trousers no match for the night-time chill. I sat on the step, staring out at the hut Colm never painted, the greenhouse he never repaired and the empty space where he’d never build a swing set or a paddling pool. Empty. Void. An exact mirror of how I was feeling now that the anger had gone. No tears. No wails. No pacing up and down. Just cold empty stillness seeping into numb pores. I had a fleeting longing to call Annie, dismissed because a midnight call would startle her and I didn’t want to break her sleep.
Maybe half an hour, perhaps an hour passed, time lost in the vacuum, before I heard him approach behind me.
‘You’d really leave?’ he asked, gently now, and as he sat down beside me everything about him suddenly felt familiar again.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly, still staring forward, unwilling and unwanting to see his face.
‘I could hide all your shoes so you couldn’t go.’ A tentative joke, his message hopeful, almost pleading. I could have ranted that this was no time for jokes, that he wasn’t listening, that I was buckling under the pain of this, but none of it would have meant a thing because this was the man I married, the one who made my heart melt on that first night, and who I’d loved because no matter what life threw at us he was that positive, funny guy. Even through the chaos of conflict, I knew that I couldn’t have it both ways. I couldn’t love that attitude, but hate it when it applied to me. It was who he was.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. No jokes. No witty banter. Just a serious man that I wasn’t sure I’d ever met before. ‘I know I’m crap at this and I know I haven’t been fair. You’re right to want me to support you but, Shauna, honestly, I don’t know how to change how I feel. It’s not that I don’t want to. If I could somehow switch on a desperate longing for another child then I would, but it’s just not in me.’
I wanted to argue, but I also wanted to let him keep talking, fearing that if I cut him off during the first real conversation we’d had about this then he’d never start again, and the chance to resolve this would be gone. I just stared straight ahead, his silhouette mirroring mine, and listened as he carried on.
‘You know, I think in life that there are givers and takers, and you’re a giver. You can put other people before yourself, and you’re brilliant with the boys and you’re always the first person to pitch in when anyone needs help. You’re constantly wondering how other people are feeling and you genuinely care if there’s something wrong with them. I think you’re the best person I’ve ever known. And the kindest. But I can’t be like that. I just can’t.’
‘Not even for me?’ I asked, my voice struggling to raise above a whisper.
‘Shauna, I love you with all my heart,’ he said, deflecting the question. ‘But how I feel is how I feel. I can go along with what you want, but I won’t pretend I have a burning need for it to happen and I won’t be devastated if it doesn’t. The thing is, it seems that the more you want this, the more I lose my wife, and I know that’s made me avoid the situation and maybe even challenge it. I know I’ve been unsupportive and have been an arrogant prick.’ There was an embarrassed smile of honesty as he said that. ‘But I just want my wife back, the one that was happy with us, the one who woke up smiling and who lived for today, just happy because we were together. Shauna, I think that if we carry on this way it could cost us everything.’
His voice cracked as he said that last line, a raw honesty dripping from every word. I heard him.
‘I don’t know how to fix this, Colm. I love you. You know I do. But this is my life and…’ I needed to just say it. ‘I need more than you in it. I want to be part of something…’
‘You are part of something.’
‘I’m not. Not in the way that I want to be. I love my friends, but when it comes down to family, let’s be honest, I have Annie and you. That’s it. And of course, I’ve got the twins, and I’m so grateful to share them, but they belong to you and Jess. I want more than that. I want to be part of a unit and to create the kind of family I wanted so badly when I was a kid, to have someone that calls me mum and who will be the missing part of this life we’re living now. I can’t give up on that. Not even for you.’
That brought us back to silence for a few more moments. Eventually, he sighed. ‘Okay.’
Okay what? Okay, you don’t have to give up your longing for a family, but I’ll just pack and go now? Okay let’s have another go at making a baby this instant? I waited for more.
‘Okay,’ he repeated, more resolute now. ‘I understand how you feel and I’ll do anything to keep you, Shauna. I promise I’ll stop being a dick.’
Even through the apprehension and sorrow, that made me smile.
‘I’ll get on board with this but can we just…’ He struggled to find the words. ‘Just pause for a minute?’
‘What do you mean?’
The hands that were under his chin, supporting it, now pushed through his hair as he exhaled. ‘Just give ourselves some time? I feel like we’ve lost each other and we need to get back to being us again. And let’s be honest, with the business and the finances the way they are, this isn’t the right time. We’d be financially screwed if you couldn’t work. You know that’s true.’
I did but I didn’t care. That was the difference between us.
‘So what do you want to do?’
‘Just take some time off the baby thing. This round of treatment is finished, so let’s just wait a while before doing anything else. Let’s get the business up and running properly, then you can cut back to working normal hours and we can get some cash in the bank, a bit of security so that if you do have a baby you can take maternity leave and we won’t be stressing. Let’s just take the heat off the urgency, and in the meantime, let’s just be us again. I know we’re knackered and up against it with work, but let’s drop all the bullshit stresses and try to make time for each other again, remember how to love each other without all the resentment and the strains. And when the time is right for us, I promise I will do everything I can to make this happen.’
There were a whole lot of promises flying around here, none of them coming with guarantees. I could see that every word he said made sense, but I wasn’t sure it was that easy. How did I switch off this deep, inherent need? How did I look at him again without feeling let down? But then, how could I live without him? I loved him.
He was still in full flow. ‘I’ll make my body available for sex twice a day and I’ll wear loose boxers to help the swimmers. I’ll put my legs up the wall too.’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘I don’t actually think that you doing that makes a difference in the process.’
‘Doesn’t matter, I’ll do it anyway just to keep you company.’
Oh God, he was so sweet and funny he made my heart break. My Achilles heel, this man. The only person I’d ever known who could change how I was feeling with just a look or a word.
‘You know, when I see that family I want it’s always with you,’ I said, vocalizing my thoughts without editing them first. ‘I can’t imagine ever having that with someone else. I love you. If that’s what we need to do then I can do it.’
Even if it had to be on his terms, I knew there was no other option than to try.
As I turned to face him properly for the first time since he sat down, I saw his face flood with relief.
‘I’m not saying it’s going to be easy though, Colm. I don’t think I can just snap out of this and go back to being the way we used to be. It’ll take some time, a bit of adjustment, but I’ll try.’
My mind flicked back to what he said earlier, about me being a giver. He had to know that I wasn’t giving everything over to him here. He had to understand that this was conditional.
‘But Colm, when I think the right time has come, it won’t be up for debate. I’ll take a break for you, but when it comes, you’ve got to be ready to be there for me.’
His arm slipped around my shoulders and for the second time tonight – this time with so much more feeling – he gently pulled my head into his chest. I could feel the thudding of his heart and the change in my breathing as it synchronized with his.
‘I will be, I swear.’
I believed him, even if I wasn’t sure he believed himself.
It was going to be okay. I could do this. We could make it work. That positivity wasn’t entirely mutual.
‘Think I’ll still hide your shoes, though, just in case.’