Читать книгу Through the Wall - Caroline Corcoran - Страница 16

Tom isn’t away for work at all this week, so I am forced to alter my routine. I don’t want him to know that I rarely brush my teeth before lunchtime and only put on proper trousers if I’m going out.

I already worry what this version of me is doing for our relationship. So I make an effort. We eat meals together, I dab on foundation, I attempt not to talk relentlessly about having a baby. And one night, I heave myself up from the sofa and we go for noodles and a gig in our local pub, where we order gin and tonics and everything seems young and light and bright. By the end of the week, though, the bliss has abated.

‘It’s offensive that you put your clothes on the floor and expect me to pick them up,’ I hiss, belligerent, as Tom walks past.

‘I’ve not put my clothes on the floor,’ he says. ‘What are you on about?’

I march to the bedroom and return clutching a T-shirt.

‘I dropped it,’ snaps Tom, losing patience with me. ‘But if I had put it on the floor, I don’t think it would have warranted that nastiness.’

And he walks out of the flat, to the park maybe, or the pub, or to anywhere to escape me.

Maybe we’re not used to this much time together in our tiny home, maybe we’re too used to our own habits.

But then it shifts, again.

My period comes and we’re close, he’s my family again, because this is one loss we feel together, every month.

‘I think we should go to the doctor,’ I say tentatively when we’re exhausted from the sadness.

I know he’s of the mindset that we should let nature take its course and not panic – that it’s happened once, it will happen again – but this time, he agrees. Though with a caveat.

‘Can we leave it a few more months? I have so much on at work …’

And it’s this that sets me off. I don’t know my own fuse any more, it’s different now, so unpredictable, and suddenly I’m ranting, sobbing, shouting about how he can possibly think that work is more important than this, and he’s got hold of my shoulders.

‘I never said more important, I just said …’

Then he stops sharply and he folds into the sofa.

I know he is close, the closest, to crying.

His breath is shallow. His face is a sheet of crumpled up paper. It’s pressure on him, too, and I hadn’t tended to that. Incredibly, it hits me. I just … forgot. In all of this I forgot about Tom, when Tom means the most.

‘It’s just,’ he says, shoving tears furiously from his face. ‘It’s overwhelming. It feels like being a proper grown-up. And this is the first time that that’s truly happened to me.’

He tells me that he thinks I am depressed, nervously awaiting my reaction, but I agree. Yep. Depressed. There’s a relief in capitulating.

Now, I want help. I welcome it. I will ask about therapists and contact acupuncturists and invite the help from every corner where it makes itself available.

‘Let’s go to the doctor,’ says Tom. ‘You’re right. We need to move this on. It’s not doing us any good being in limbo.’

Later I lie awake, thinking about what I – or trying to have a baby – have done to him. I stroke his face, kiss his head, tell him I’m sorry, cling to this man who I love.