‘Because what do I do if I don’t like the answer?’
‘What do you think you should do?’
This is followed by the horrible silence which unnerves me so badly. Maybe it’s time to move on from Judgemental Judy. Therapists are supposed to be impartial. Does craving a baby with a long-term partner make me a bad person? No, it does not. Ben will make a wonderful dad. On the whole, we’re a great team and it’s normal to have wobbles. A baby is a big commitment. It’s good, in a way, that he’s doubting himself. It means he’s taking things seriously.
‘The thing is,’ I say, choosing my words carefully, ‘Ben took some persuading.’
The whole truth being that he thought it wasn’t just about him, that it was primarily all about me and my desires.
‘I feel like I could be just any man,’ he has said many times during our arguments. ‘As long as you get a baby, the father is irrelevant to you.’
I’ve worked so bloody hard on our relationship to prove that isn’t true. I’ve made so many compromises, told him whatever he wants to hear.
‘Everything will be fine,’ I say out loud to Judy. ‘Once Ben made the decision to go ahead and start a family, he was committed. Ben is a man of his word.’
I don’t like the expression on her face.
I got it wrong. As I leave Judy’s (five minutes early, I couldn’t bear it any longer), I switch on my phone. Ben wants to talk.
In my experience, no one ever wants to talk about anything positive. I hate it when people do this, Ben knows that. Perhaps it’s his way of letting me know quite how pissed off he is with me in general. My parents wanted to talk about ‘forming other friendships and not relying solely on Nina’ and ‘the importance of telling the truth’. Nina wanted to talk about lots of things, but I’m good at diverting conversations away from the unpleasant and back to neutral, less scary ground. It’s where I feel safe.
I rehearse what I’m going to say to Ben: I’ve sensed he’s had doubts, that I have them, too (I don’t). That Nina’s death has hit me so hard that I wake up feeling winded (true). However, the most effective thing will probably be if I tell him that I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
‘It’s too late,’ according to Ben. ‘It sounds clichéd, but we’ve been drifting apart for a long time,’ he says. ‘It’s easy to blame external things, like the amount of time you spent at Nina’s, how low down your list of priorities I feel, but I know I’m not perfect either.’
I sip the freshly ground coffee he made me before he instigated our talk. He’s made it exactly the way I like it, full-fat milk, not too strong. I wonder if this is the last nice thing he’ll ever do for me.
‘I’m sorry if this sounds cruel, but I’m glad we couldn’t conceive after all,’ he carries on. ‘It makes it easier for us to part amicably, without complications.’
‘Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.’ I stop. There’s a gentle art to applying emotional pressure. If I pile it on too heavily, too soon, he’ll feel cornered. ‘A baby wouldn’t be a complication,’ I say. ‘It would be an extension of our relationship. It would cement us, give us more common ground.’
‘I . . .’ He stops. He turns away from me and looks out of the window before looking back again with an added air of determination about him. ‘This is hard, harder than I thought it would be to say, but I’m going to be honest. No more lies.’
‘Lies?’
Oh my God, please no. I know what he’s going to say, it’s so painfully obvious, I bet even Judy’s guessed. I try to block out the words that will make me hate him, force me to agree to us splitting up, upend my whole life, my dreams.
The words, when he says them, are even worse than I feared. It’s not just that he doesn’t want a baby. He does want one. Just not with me. He’s been seeing someone – no one I know, apparently – and he’s desperately sorry, didn’t want me to find out from someone else (thoughtful of him) but . . . she’s pregnant. Only just found out last night apparently! Unplanned, unfortunate, unexpected.
Un-fucking-fair more like! On and on the excuses, justifications and apologies stream from his mouth: a mess; he didn’t mean to be weak and cruel; he should’ve addressed the issues between us earlier, blah blah blah.
None of this helps me because I can’t fight something as catastrophic as this. Truth is a painful bastard. Lying to yourself is a much better option – it’s the purest form of deception, the best protection there is.
‘How long?’
‘I told you. She’s only just found out.’
‘How scary for you, potentially two pregnant women at the same time! You know very well that what I mean is how long have you been sleeping with her?’
‘A couple of months.’
Horrible realization hits hard, deep in my gut, that it means the problem must lie with me if Ben is capable of conceiving with someone else with such ease. I throw my coffee cup against the wall.
Ben flinches, but doesn’t move. For a few seconds we both stare at the brown stain trickling down the white wall.
‘Who is she?’
My mind scans all the possibilities I know. No one springs to mind.
‘I told you. No one you know. A colleague. She moved here from France and—’
‘How cosy. Get out!’ I scream. ‘Get out!’
Which is exactly what he wants to do, but of course not what I genuinely mean.
I want him to stay, to put his arms around me and tell me that none of what he said is true.
Ben is the only man I’ve ever lived with. I dislike the thought of living alone. When my elder brother left the family home, it was the little, unexpected things that highlighted his absence: his trainers missing by the back door, his blue bike leaning unused against the garden fence, his not being around to take the piss out of me. The things that drove me mad about him were the things I missed the most after he had left with his backpack for ‘Asia, Africa, Europe – wherever I feel drawn to.’ He has yet to return to the real world, and I envy him. Sam chose freedom, leaving me with conformity.
Ben puts on his cycle helmet, clips the strap beneath his chin and walks out the front door. He must be going to see her.
It’s a struggle to catch my breath. I have to push away the horrible, intrusive thoughts insisting that I deserve this karmic payback because of past bad decisions.
Ben is – was – my partner. I was drawn to him partly because he wasn’t a natural risk-taker. He loves being a firefighter, but outside of work he is happy with weekends close to home, a pizza in front of the TV on a Saturday night, plus the odd trip to the cinema. We tend to go for long country walks in the forest, followed by a Sunday pub roast when he’s not working. I wrongly assumed that he was a safe option.
Ben said he felt low down on my list of priorities. I hope I haven’t thrown away my chance of becoming a mother. I tried everything possible to conceive. I was prepared to give anything a go because initial tests showed that there was nothing medically wrong. According to one of the fertility experts I consulted, I just needed to relax. Which was easy for her to say. I tried everything: herbs, hypnosis, yoga, reflexology, acupuncture, a healthy diet. The lack of control and disappointment chipped away at hope, month after month. I feel alone in my desperation.