‘If you ever embarrass me like that again,’ Dad was saying to her mum, ‘I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?’
Heather had got out of bed and followed the noise as far as the lounge. By then her mum was crying loudly, saying ‘please’ and ‘stop’ in halting bursts. Heather peered around the corner. Mum’s back was against the fridge and Dad was holding her by the throat.
‘It would be so easy,’ he was saying to her, ‘I could just press my thumbs a little harder. Like this . . .’
Her mum made a gagging sound. He’s killing her, Heather thought. My dad is killing my mum. The worst part was that Heather didn’t do anything. She didn’t run to help her. She just stood there, frozen.
After what felt like an eternity, he let go and Mum fell to the ground, gasping for air. Heather heard the sound of her scrabbling away from him on the kitchen floor.
‘So easy,’ her dad repeated.
Heather ran back to her room, but she didn’t fall asleep for hours. In the morning, when she came out of her room, Mum was in the bathroom. The shower was running, but when Heather opened the door she found her Mum sitting on the floor drinking wine straight from the bottle. Her eyes were glassy and tired.
‘Why is the shower running?’ Heather asked.
‘Because when the shower’s running,’ Mum said, not looking at her, ‘he doesn’t come in.’
‘I wanted to check you were all right,’ Heather said, closing the door and sitting beside her. ‘You know . . . after last night.’
Her mum frowned for a second, as if trying to remember what had happened last night. Then her hand rose to the pinkish mark on her neck. ‘Oh.’ She took another sip of wine. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I thought he was going to kill you,’ Heather said.
‘Nah.’ Another sip. ‘He just likes the drama.’
‘But he was strangling you. He said he would kill you.’
Mum held out the bottle to Heather. She took it.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, after Heather took a sip. ‘He’s too fucking chicken.’
But, as it turned out, Mum was wrong.
Since that day, drinking in the bathroom had helped Heather to deal with many things. For example, the baby thing.
She and Stephen had had the discussion the first morning she woke up in Stephen’s bed.
‘I have a tricky subject I’d like to bring up and I think it would be pertinent to bring it up sooner rather than later,’ he’d said.
It was one of the things she loved about him: his forthrightness, his refusal to shy away from difficult discussions. Also, his casual use of words like ‘pertinent’。
‘The fact is, I’m at quite a different life stage from you. As such, I feel it would be irresponsible of me to proceed with you any further – and, to be clear, I very much want to proceed further – without making you aware that I am not interested in having any more children.’
It wasn’t a surprise. Heather understood there weren’t many men in their sixties with adult children who wanted more kids. Some might be willing to go there for the sake of the relationship – but no one wanted it. And it was fine with Heather. Or if not fine, at least it didn’t injure her the way it might have injured a different, more maternal sort of woman. For Heather, it was primarily something she felt intellectually rather than physically or biologically.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
It was such a middle-class question. People her age spent so much time musing on it. What do I want? What do I want? Heather didn’t bother. After all, it didn’t matter what she wanted. Life happened; you didn’t get to choose it. And sure enough, it had just happened to her again. ‘I want to be with you.’
Stephen accepted that at face value. He didn’t press her on whether she had ever wanted children, or whether this would be a sacrifice. He didn’t want to know and she didn’t want to tell him. She just needed to reframe, that was all. People reframed all the time. People who realised they weren’t going to live a long life. People who lost a loved one, suffered an accident, lost use of a limb. They reframed. And Heather would too. No babies for her. They wouldn’t be part of her journey.
She heard the rumbling of the garage door opening. Stephen was home. She downed the rest of her whisky, left the glass on the counter, and turned on the shower. She’d just stepped out of her clothes and into the stream of water when there was a knock at the door. ‘May I come in?’