The Archers make out they’re a close-knit group, but their youngest, Daniel, moved to Bali to be an artist. This left Steve, with all his abandonment issues and blatant disregard for any career in the arts, spitting feathers, and now it’s like they only ever had one son with his financially stable career. I actually bought a few of Daniel’s paintings and had them shipped to the UK. Every time Lynn and Steve come over, they compliment those pieces without even knowing they were created by their forgotten son, and I get a little kick out of it.
I was just about to tuck into a slab of chocolate fudge cake when Ethan whipped the plate out from beneath my poised fork and held it up. ‘Mum, can you cut this in half?’
I glanced at him.
‘It’s too big,’ he told me. ‘Do you need all that sugar and cream?’
A few months ago, this comment would’ve made me hate my body and go on another diet to shrink my size eight waist, but this, along with his sly attempts to manipulate me via Ruby, made anger sizzle. I bit my tongue though, not wanting to cause a scene in front of his family.
Steve chortled. ‘Lynn doesn’t have any self-restraint either.’
To my outrage, Ethan laughed.
‘Ada, I picked up some prenatal vitamins for you,’ said Lynn, taking her place beside her husband.
I stiffened, then glanced at Ethan who was studiously focusing on his dessert. This was another set-up.
‘Ethan mentioned you two are … struggling. I read it’s never too early to take prenatals,’ said Lynn. ‘It’ll all be worth it in the end. My life just wouldn’t be the same without children.’
But this is the thing. For years, Lynn’s life consisted of weekends spent at the side of a rugby pitch in all weathers while shedding her carefully chosen friends and replacing them with other mums from the school gates, pouring hours into her children’s homework to ensure they go to good universities, only to have them grow up and fly the nest. Meanwhile, she is a wife, a mother and nothing else. I don’t want that for myself. And it’s taken me long enough to admit it.
Everyone’s eyes were on me, waiting for me to speak. ‘That’s nice.’
‘Nice?’ Lynn seemed perplexed by my choice of word. ‘It’s wonderful. Isn’t it, Steve?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Choosing not to have children is rather selfish in my opinion.’
I looked again to my husband who was nodding. Agreeing with his family that I was selfish for not wanting him to spunk inside me and fill my womb with a child he had very little interest in raising since it was ‘my fucking job’ to do so. ‘I think it’s easy for a man to tell a woman she should have children, especially when he’s not the one who has to give birth.’
‘Well,’ said Lynn after a pause, ‘birth can’t be that bad, I’ve done it twice.’
Yes, and you’re married to Steve, which proves you’re a glutton for punishment, I thought, imagining you thinking the exact same thing.
‘When you have a baby, if it’s a girl, you can name her after your late sister,’ said Lynn. ‘We wouldn’t mind, would we, Steve?’
You have been missing for five months. Not once in that time has anyone been so bold as to refer to you as deceased in my presence. I’m not stupid, I’m sure most people think it, but not many are insensitive enough to say it out loud. I put my fork down. ‘I’m sorry?’
Lynn looks to her husband for reassurance. ‘Yes,’ said Steve. ‘We thought when you have a child, it would be a kind thing to do.’
‘She’s not dead.’
There was an awkward silence.
Steve cleared his throat. ‘Sorry?’
‘She’s not dead,’ I said again. ‘My sister isn’t dead.’
He sat up straighter, puffing out his chest. ‘A body hasn’t been found yet but let’s be serious …’
I turned in my seat to Ethan, forcing him to finally acknowledge me. Reluctantly, he looked up.
‘Are you going to let them say these things to me?’
I waited. I’d spent our whole relationship carefully treading the line of defending myself as much as I could without being rude or difficult. But it wasn’t fair. These were his parents. We were supposed to be a team and I’d never let our mum and dad speak to Ethan the way his had spoken to me. We stared at one another. His parents were jabbering at us, but we ignored them. A line had been drawn in the sand of our relationship and he had a choice to make.
‘Well?’ I pressed. I was calm. I was so very calm as I waited for my husband to decide: tell his parents what they said was insensitive or don’t.
Ethan shook his head like I’d let him down, then turned his attention back to his cake.
That’s it then.
I shouldn’t have been surprised; Ethan very rarely went against his parents. Until right then, I’d accepted that, but Ruby was right, I was different now; your disappearance had changed me in more ways than I realised.
I stood. ‘Thank you for this evening—’
Ethan’s head whipped up. ‘Ada, sit down.’
‘—it’s been enlightening.’
I pushed my chair back and exited. Ethan followed me down the hall, catching up with me at the front door and grabbed my wrist, spinning me to face him. ‘If you leave now, I swear to god—’
‘What?’ I cut him off, not caring if his family overheard. ‘You’ll do what, Ethan? We aren’t happy. We haven’t been happy in a long time.’ I spoke the truth out loud, felt it crystallise in my hands and held it up in the weak winter sunshine streaming through the windows. ‘You spend more time at work than you do with me, you aren’t supportive, you go behind my back and try to manipulate me. Ruby and then this dinner with your family, it’s a set-up. It feels like all I’ve had for months, even with my sister missing, is people wanting to know when I’m going to let you knock me up!’
‘Oh sure, it’s all my fault. Everything is my fault.’
‘No. It isn’t. We got married without ever talking about children and you assumed I wanted them.’ I held up a hand to stop his protest. ‘Which isn’t an uncommon assumption to make, but neither of us ever brought it to the table to discuss. And when I did think I was pregnant, you were awful.’
‘It wasn’t convenient.’
‘For you. It wasn’t convenient for you.’ I sighed. I think, at one point, I did want children, then he reacted the way he did to the pregnancy and I realised if I did want them, it could never be with him. ‘We can’t do this anymore.’
I was expecting to be met with anger and insults but what I saw in his face was sorrow and resignation. He took my hand in his and just held it. We were both submerged in the quiet mourning of a relationship we knew was ending even though neither of us were ready to say it out loud, to discuss divorce lawyers and dividing up the house. Ethan wiped away tears from my cheeks before I realised they were there.
He let me go.
I took my coat and left the house, my heels clicking down the stone steps. I strode past the car, deciding instead to walk home, and come back for it tomorrow. It was cold, my breath streaming out in front of me. You can pour years into a relationship, pour into it hopes for the future, memories from your childhood, mix laughter and sex and love into it and with one conversation on a sunny, freezing afternoon in January, you pull the plug and watch it all drain away.