*
I told him at the allotment. Every day that I’d known, before Venice, in Venice, the week that had passed since, I had set out to tell him but in whatever moment, I found a different reason to defer. He was tired, he was holding his phone, he was wearing a jumper that I did not like. He was too content in what he was doing. That day, a Sunday, I woke up and read the note he had left me. I got dressed and went to find him.
He was sitting on the fallen log, holding something. I did not think I could do it, once I was close enough to see what it was. I could not rupture his existence, reveal my deceit and bifurcate Patrick’s future while he was holding a Thermos.
There was only ever one reason. Once I told him, it would be real and I would have to fix it. There wasn’t any time left. I just said it.
In the period of forestalling, I thought I had imagined every reaction Patrick might have, but it was worse than any I could invent myself – my husband asking me how far along I was. It was a phrase too specific to an experience we had not had, or one we were not allowed to use in our version of it.
I said, ‘Eight weeks.’
He didn’t ask me how long I had known. It was too obvious. He said, ‘I don’t know how I didn’t guess’ as if it was his fault and then, sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, looking at the ground, he said, ‘We’re not deciding what to do though.’
‘No, I’m just telling you.’
‘So there’s not an immediate rush.’
‘No. But I’m not going to wait for no reason.’
He said okay. ‘That makes sense.’
I tipped the tea out and handed him back the cup. ‘I’m going to go. I’ll see you at home.’
‘Martha?’
‘What?’
‘Could I have a few days?’
I told him I hadn’t booked it yet. There would be that much time anyway.
*
Patrick did not mention it when he got home or in the days that followed but he moved differently around the house. He came home early. He wouldn’t let me do anything. He was always there in the morning but whenever I woke up in the night, he was somewhere else. I knew it was the only thing he was thinking about.
Sunday, again, he came into the bathroom while I was in the bath and sat on the end. He said, ‘So, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. I’ve just been thinking, you definitely don’t want to keep it?’
I said no.
‘You don’t feel like, if we did – because I honestly think you’d be –’
‘Please don’t. Patrick.’
‘Okay. It’s just, I don’t want it to be something that later we wish we’d thought about.’
I pushed the water with my foot. ‘Patrick!’
‘Alright. Sorry.’ He got up and threw a towel over the wet floor. ‘I’ll get you the referral.’ His shirt, the leg of his jeans, were soaking.
As he was walking out of the bathroom, I said, ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’ I told him, it was never a thing. But he didn’t turn around, just said okay, yep.
I slid down, under the water, as soon as he had closed the door.
*
It was a miscarriage anyway.
It started the morning of the appointment, while I was pushing my bike along a steep bit of the towpath. I knew what it was and kept walking. At home, I called Patrick at work and waited in the bathroom until it was over. It had been so cold outside that I was still wearing my coat when he came in.
He drove me to the hospital and apologised on the way home, hours later, for not being able to think of the right thing to say. I said it was fine, I didn’t want to talk about it then anyway.
I did not tell anyone what had happened and, afterwards, only cried if Patrick was out – as soon as he left, from the effort of containing it. In short, intense bursts at the recollection of what I had been about to do. For minutes, as I moved around the house, weeping in gratitude that she had let go of me first.
*
Much later – too much later – when Patrick and I talked about what had happened, I said, ‘to her,’ he asked me how I knew it was a girl.
I said I just did.
‘What would you have called her?’
Flora.
I said, ‘I don’t know.’
*
There are things, crimes in a marriage, that are so great you cannot apologise for them. Instead, watching television on the sofa, eating the dinner he made while you showered after the hospital, you say, Patrick?
Yes.
I like this sauce.
*
We said the Cotswolds, a walk or a pub or something, just to get out of Oxford. We said, it will be good. We said, we’ll be there in half an hour. Let’s just go.