She stops being sick. She swells. The soft structures of her pelvis ache. She has certain cravings. One is for pomegranates and Tim buys them from a stall in St. Nicholas Market. He cuts them open, scrapes out the seeds, feeds them to her, likes that dull look of pleasure that comes over her face at the taste of them. She also has what he calls ‘an offal thing’. She keeps it in bags in the fridge. Kidneys, liver. Once a lamb’s heart in a spattered bag on the shelf beside his yoghurts. He does not see her eat it. The heart is there and then one evening it’s gone, the bag in the swing bin, empty, a fine haze of cooking smoke under the kitchen ceiling.
She has not become tearful or irrational. She is not subject to mood swings. The way she moves has changed, slowed, become a little clumsy. Now and then, watching her, he thinks of one of his mother’s words—slovenly. He notes that she goes a week without washing her hair. He offers to do it for her; she says she’ll do it herself but doesn’t. And one morning, emptying the laundry basket on the floor by the machine, he sees a brazen shit-streak on the soft cotton of her knickers. He soaks them in hot water and too much detergent. He puts on yellow Marigolds and scrubs them. He would rather break a thumb than mention it to her.
There is not much sex, almost no penetrative sex. They touch each other, though on the last few occasions she has gently removed his hand from between her thighs then gone on with him until he was finished. It’s a connection of sorts but it feels like something a paid woman does to a man in his car.
They watch television. They look at the house brochures his parents send them. Lodestar is out of the water, covered over until the spring. Spring or whenever, in this new world, they can get back to her.
‘How do you feel?’ he asks, taking her hand, a Sunday dusk in the living room, her four-month belly soft under a sea-blue jumper.
‘I’m O.K.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not just physically,’ he says.
‘Not just physically,’ she says.
‘And you’re not sorry?’
‘About what?’
‘About this.’
‘You know I’m not.’
‘I’m checking.’
‘I’m not sorry.’
‘It would be O.K. to be a bit sorry.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re going to be a lovely mum.’
‘I hope so.’
‘The Inkling will worship you.’ Inkling is his name for the baby. It’s a name the Rathbones have used before for unborn children. The Inkling. ‘Tell me if you’re frightened,’ he says.
‘O.K.’
‘Are you frightened?’
‘No.’
‘A little?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good.’
There’s a white plate on the floor, white china with red gravy. She looks at him, he looks at her.
‘Hello,’ he says.
She nods and he thinks how close everyone is to a kind of madness. Maud, his parents, himself presumably. There is nowhere obvious to take this thought.