Читать книгу The One with All the Bridesmaids: A hilarious, feel-good romantic comedy - Erin Lawless, Erin Lawless - Страница 12

‘I’m just saying, I think it’s better that we go sooner rather than later.’

‘I appreciate that, love, I do. It just seems a little bit drastic. We’ve only been trying for a couple of months, after all.’

Sarah stared at her handsome, stupid husband. ‘I came off the pill when we got engaged, Cole. It’s been seventeen months. Seventeen cycles.’

Cole winced away. ‘Jeez, do you have to say ‘cycles’? It’s so clinical. What the hell happened to let’s just have fun, have sex; let’s just see what happens. You promised me you wouldn’t turn into one of these nut-job women charting their temperatures and testing the consistency of their cervical mucus.’ He pulled a face of utter disgust. Sarah, who had been doing exactly those things secretly by way of an app on her phone for almost a year now, struggled to regroup her thoughts.

‘Cycles, months, whatever. Whatever wording you want me to use, I think it’s obvious that we have a fertility problem. And we need to see a doctor about it.’

‘How can we have a fertility problem?’ Cole blustered. ‘You only went for that test you have to do this year, and you said it all came back fine?’

‘Cole, a smear test is nothing to do with fertility,’ Sarah snapped. ‘And besides, why do you automatically assume any problem has to be with me?’

The set of her husband’s jaw was mutinous. ‘Hey, don’t pile this on me. I’m doing my bit.’

‘Your bit?’ Sarah repeated, incredulous.

‘You know what I mean,’ Cole snapped, refusing to take the apology bait. ‘Don’t be like this. God, I don’t remember you being half so over-the-top when we met.’ He grabbed up the navy Superdry hoodie he’d thrown over the back of their armchair. ‘And as you’ve taken it upon yourself to tell my friends that we’re too busy to help them with their wedding planning, I’m going to give Harry a call and see if I can do anything. I’ll see you later.’

And that was that. Cole pulled the front door closed a little harder than was strictly necessary. Sarah sank into the armchair, pulling her feet up underneath herself like a child. She’d known that he was going to be on the defensive like this – she’d practically scheduled in this fight after all, clearing their weekend for it – but the row still echoed through her all the same, for all it was the same old story: Cole could do no wrong; ‘their’ friends became ‘his’ friends; she was taken to task for not being the same person she’d been when they met, like he was thinking of going to Trading Standards and demanding a refund because his carefree, twenty-something girlfriend had become his thirty-something wife: a dress size or two larger, a hell of a lot more stressed and always ever-so-slightly behind with her waxing.

And perhaps with redundant ovaries to boot.

Sighing, Sarah reached for her phone. Although she didn’t know who she was planning to call. Her mum and the rest of her family were all the way over in Wales and her old school and uni friends were now just people on Facebook with new surnames and fat-faced babies as their profile pictures. She could call Nora, or one of the other girls, she supposed, but – as Cole had been very quick to remind her – they were all foremost his and never just for her.

So instead she spoke to Siri.

‘What’s the ideal weight a woman should be to help with conception?’ she asked, ruefully.