Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 24

there are few wives who do not heartily desire a child

As you laze on your deckchairs a heavily pregnant woman strides to the swimming pool like a galleon in full sail, robust and proud and complete. You’ll be trying for a baby soon, once the first year of marriage is done.

Let’s just enjoy ourselves for a while, Cole has said.

But thank goodness a pregnancy is secure in the plans. Man, house, child: such happiness is obscene in one person, isn’t it? There’s such an audacity in the joy you now feel. How could anyone bear you? You glance across at Cole: he looked too young for so long, not fully formed, but now, in his late thirties, when a lot of his peers are losing hair and gaining weight, it’s all starting to work. He’d been in a state of arrested adolescence but now he’s filled out and he’s handsome, at last. He has the potential to age into magnificence and you’re only just seeing it.

Shouldn’t it be wearing off, this fullness in your heart fit to burst? When’s it meant to wilt? You throw down your Vogue and place your body on Cole’s, belly to belly, and breathe in his skin like a mother does with a child. Will that scent ever sour for you? You can’t imagine how. He pushes you off, mock grumpy, and slaps you on the bum. You shriek and settle again on your lounger. A young waiter walks by. You narrow your eyes like a cat and laze your arms over your head and tell Cole that if you’re not treated properly it’s the waiter you’ll be marrying next.

Yeah, and all he’ll have to do to get rid of you is say I divorce thee three times. I wish it were that easy for me.

You laugh; you’re filled up with joy, it’s all bubbling out. The pregnant woman steps out of the pool. People have begun asking when Cole and you are going to start a family and your husband always replies that he’ll have a child when he considers himself grown-up, and God knows when that will be. You tell them soon.

All women must want children eventually, you’re sure, that furious need is deep in their bones, you don’t quite believe any woman who says she doesn’t. The urge has begun to harangue you as your thirties march on, it’s an animal instinct grown bold. Your heart will now tighten whenever you see the imprint of a friend in her child’s face. It’s something that’s in danger of overtaking your life, the want.