Last night, Gabby had a choice; she had many choices. She could have gone home with her friends. She could have called a cab from the bar. She could have declined to go back to the hotel with him, because, however much she may try to deny it, even to herself, she knew the possibility was there.
That moment in the hotel lobby, late, quiet, when their eyes locked and held, neither of them speaking, chemistry surging in waves … well, she had a choice then. She could so easily have stayed, let him lean forward, kiss her gently on the lips. He didn’t, but she knows he could have done. She sits, playing this moment over and over again in her mind. He didn’t, but he could have done. He didn’t, but he would have done.
And if he had, how would it have felt?
And if he had, how would she be feeling now?
She shudders with lust, but then guilt replaces the small smile that unbeknownst to her has been playing on her lips since she started thinking about him.
She didn’t do anything. She has nothing to feel guilty about. She is married, not dead. This isn’t anywhere near the big deal it could have been, and if she can’t stop thinking about it, so what? This is just … flattery. This is just … pleasurable. Having the undivided attention of someone other than her husband, feeling the sparks of attraction fly between them, was … exhilarating.
Even now, she is torn between feeling sick with guilt at even considering the thought, and elated at still being desirable, still having a sexual power she’s not sure she was ever aware of having. She and Elliott have always had a great sex life, but it is great partly because they are so comfortable with each other. Making love with Elliott is a tried and tested routine, with little variation. She has never wanted more variation, has been perfectly happy with the routine they have; she is almost always brought to orgasm and feels entirely sated afterwards.
But it doesn’t light fires any more. She’s not sure it ever did.
Last night was a blaze of glory.
She pictures Elliott moving inside her, his eyes filled with longing and love, and feels … content. She pictures Matt, imagines him flipping her over, his fingers inside her, his mouth on her nipple, and she gasps, her entire body flooded with desire.
Thank God nothing happened, she thinks. For if he
were to phone now, and say, ‘Come with me; I need you at my side,’ she honestly isn’t sure she’d be able to say no. But there was no talk of them staying in touch. Even though Gabby could get hold of him – his contact details flash up on the home page of his website – she knows already she will not.
He is too dangerous, she decides. She cannot be in touch with him.
So it is with a mixture of horror and delight that she suddenly remembers mentioning her own email address during a silly conversation they had at one point in the evening about vanity number plates, vanity names, vanity email addresses … But she convinces herself he’ll never get in touch. Why would he? He must have thousands of women flocking to him, and she was just a passing fancy. Perhaps he has a penchant for older women; perhaps he is attracted to the unavailable. Either way, last night has to be written off as a fun flirtation. It needs to filed away and never thought of again.
Elliott tries to move away but Gabby is holding on tight, and he laughs, stepping forward again and lifting her up.
‘Wow!’ he murmurs into her hair. ‘You really missed me, huh? I should go away more often.’
‘No!’ Gabby says into his shoulder, then she pulls back to gaze at her husband, the man she loves, and wells up with shame at the thought of what she could so easily have done, of even having the temerity to daydream about another man when Elliott is here, with all the familiarity, and comfort, and love that she needs.
How could she possibly have thought about anyone else?
‘I missed you.’
‘Liar,’ he teases. ‘I heard you last night. You were having a great time with the girls. I bet you didn’t even think about me.’
‘I’m just glad you’re home,’ she says, kissing him full on the mouth. He smiles in delight and raises an eyebrow, gesturing towards the house.
‘Ewww.’ Olivia brushes past them, scowling the typical scowl of a seventeen-year-old. ‘Can you not do that in front of us? That’s gross.’
‘Kissing is entirely natural,’ Elliott says. ‘And we are your parents. It’s not like there’s anything illicit going on here.’
Gabby quickly looks away. Why did he say that? Why would he choose those words? She looks at him carefully but there is no way he knows anything, not that there’s anything to know; it was merely a harmless flirtation. Thank God.
‘Hi, sweetie.’ Gabby puts an arm round Alanna and pulls her in to kiss the side of her head. ‘Did you have fun?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Alanna manages, her attention focused on her phone.
Gabby suppresses a pang. Grief would be too strong a word for it, but oh how she misses the days when her girls were tiny, when they adored everything she did; when they wanted nothing other than to spend time with their mother.
Looking at them now – Alanna so petite, with her dark blonde hair streaming down her back, the image of her father, and Olivia, tall and curvy, her curly hair just like Gabby’s, just beginning to find comfort in her skin – it is hard to reconcile them with the small girls they once were.
Olivia, when young, wouldn’t let her mother leave the bedroom at night. Gabby would go in to snuggle, adoring how Olivia’s tiny body fitted so perfectly into hers, adoring how Olivia would chatter away, doing everything she could to make her mother stay longer.
Gabby never wanted to leave, and only ever did when the clock ticked on, and she knew Olivia had to go to sleep.
Now, Gabby doesn’t remember the last time she snuggled in behind Olivia and gave her a cuddle. At seventeen, Olivia barely allows Gabby into her room. Even Alanna, at eleven, so calm, so wise, is now far more interested in her friends than in her mother. Gabby knows so little about what is going on with Alanna in school that she has started doing the unthinkable and going through her texts. Still, she learns nothing.
Oh how she misses the early years, the delicious all-consuming love, the hours and hours of doing nothing other than playing with the babies, watching them with wonder and love, unable to believe she had created these two miraculous little lives.
‘Tell me she didn’t spend the entire camping trip on the phone,’ she says, turning to Elliott.
‘Not the entire time,’ he says.
Alanna looks up. ‘I’m not on the phone. I’m on Instagram.’
‘Oh.’ Gabby nods. ‘Well, that’s okay, then. So how many followers do you have now?’
Alanna smiles. ‘Three hundred and forty-two.’
‘Wow. You are popular!’
‘Mom!’ She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s not about popular.’
‘So what is it about?’
Alanna shakes her head dismissively as she disappears inside. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Elliott corroborates, pulling their bags from the car and handing some to Gabby. ‘Neither would I, apparently. We’re too old.’
Usually Gabby would laugh and agree, except she didn’t feel old this weekend. For the first time in years she didn’t feel like she was past it, and she’s not ready to relinquish the feeling that life still holds possibilities, that there are still adventures to be had, even if she will never repeat the adventure of last night.
‘How was Alanna? Was she sweet?’
Alanna, always known as the good one, has become more of a handful over the past few months. Middle school, not easy for anyone, has seen Alanna finally accepted by the girls she has always referred to as ‘the Populars’, and with that acceptance comes an attitude that Gabby and Elliott have not welcomed in the slightest.
‘She was pretty crabby when we got there, but she settled down. We really did have a lovely time. Tim and I think you and Claire should come next time.’
‘I thought you said you understood that sleeping bags weren’t my thing any more.’
‘We could get a blow-up mattress. It was amazing, being out in nature.’
‘I’m totally happy being out in nature, as long as it’s at a spa.’ Gabby grins.
‘By the way, Tim said we should go to theirs for dinner tonight. He’s got a ton of burgers and dogs he needs to get rid of.’
‘Perfect.’ Gabby sets the bags down on the floor of the hallway. ‘I’ll ring Claire and see what I can bring.’
‘First, I think you should come upstairs.’ Elliott puts his arms round her from behind, nuzzling her neck, and Gabby, who so often pushes him away, telling him no, insisting she’s too busy, or his timing is horrible, or she’s not in the mood, allows herself to be led to their room.
With the door locked, Gabby sinks to her knees, unbuckling Elliott’s belt while he murmurs in surprise and delight.
It is, she realizes, the least she can do.
Years ago, when they were first married, they swore they would never become the kind of couple they so often saw in town. The couple who would sit in a restaurant and gaze around the room, having nothing to say to each other. They swore they would never become like the people they knew who would laughingly relate how little sex they had: who has the energy? Who has the time?
Gabby and Elliott have never been a couple to sit in silence. In the mornings Elliott turns to Gabby and invariably starts a conversation about something he’s been thinking about since he woke up. It could be politics, the solution to the town parking problem, his fears for the future of the world.
In turn, Gabby shares everything with Elliott. Unlike so many of her friends whose husbands are gone for
most of the day and who turn to their girlfriends for everything in their lives, Gabby has never needed much more than Elliott. She has Claire, her closest friend, and is included in the group of girls, but she would never phone any of them for a chat, wouldn’t think to turn to them if ever there was a problem in her life. The only best friend she has ever really had, has ever wanted, could ever really count on, is Elliott.
He says it’s because they have been together twenty years, but there are plenty of couples Gabby sees who have been together as long – longer – and they are not friends in the way she and Elliott are.
After their chance meeting, Elliott was talking about marriage by the end of their third date. Everyone told Gabby she was crazy, and much too young, at twenty-three, to even think about settling down.
Which is why she waited to get married until she was twenty-five. And still everyone was wrong.
Although, and it is only grudgingly she will admit this, their sex life is not what it was. Gabby loves the smell of Elliott, the warmth and closeness their lovemaking brings, but, and she would never say this to him, if they only had sex every once in a while, it really wouldn’t bother her.
It isn’t that she doesn’t think about sex. It isn’t that she doesn’t get turned on reading certain books, or watching certain films; it isn’t that she doesn’t masturbate. It’s more that Elliott is her best friend, her family, and although she always enjoys their lovemaking once
they start, the idea of making love with him is just one she rarely suggests.
Frankly she’d rather read a good book and have an early night.
Claire and Tim watch porn together, which Claire says has transformed their sex life. Tim has no idea that both Gabby and Elliott know this, and although Elliott persuaded her to do the same, the few times they tried it Gabby couldn’t stop herself critiquing the acting, the fake boobs and the thrusting that went on for so long that she found it exhausting.
It didn’t do anything for her, although Elliott was demonstrably more imaginative for a little while.
Oral sex, while an imperative part of their lovemaking during those early years, rarely happens any more, and it is unheard of for Gabby to initiate it.
Until now. Naturally Elliott doesn’t think to question why. Doesn’t wonder if this is the female equivalent of the guilt gift – women get jewellery when their men have strayed, or thought too seriously about straying.
And the men? They get blow jobs.
He just closes his eyes and succumbs to the waves of pleasure washing over him.
Pushing open Claire’s back door, a door they know almost as well as their own, Gabby, Elliott and the girls walk through the mud room, gingerly stepping over the sneakers and backpacks littering the floor, through to the kitchen, where Claire is making a salad.
‘Hi, girls!’ She greets Olivia and Alanna first. ‘Sasha is outside on the trampoline, and I think Jolie’s upstairs. Go on out. Or up. Did you have fun camping?’ she calls after them as an afterthought, but they’ve already gone out through the back door.
Gabby puts her bowl on the table and slides out of her fleece as Elliott walks outside to find Tim. She is grateful to be here tonight, to do something as familiar and normal as a barbecue at Claire and Tim’s. Each normal step she takes is a step away from the events of last night, from thinking, in what is rapidly becoming an obsessive way, about what could have happened.
‘What did you make?’ Claire peers over at the bowl Gabby brought.
‘Asian slaw.’
‘Yum! I love that slaw. Trish is coming too. She’s made some kind of meringue dessert.’
‘Oh God. It’s going to be some kind of perfect dessert.
I wish I’d known she was coming. I would have made more of an effort,’ says Gabby.
Claire laughs. ‘Will you stop? Why do you always have this thing about her? You think she’s judging everyone else by her standards, but she really isn’t. She doesn’t look to see what other people bring, and, before you say anything, she doesn’t care what anyone looks like either. Despite what you’re always saying. You know it’s your insecurity and nothing to do with her.’
‘I know. She’s so nice, but she’s so perfect, and, really, how is it possible for one person to be amazing at
everything
?’
‘I don’t know, but she’s bringing some guy she’s dating. Ella said he’s gorgeous.’
‘Of course he is. As if she’d date anyone less.’ Gabby peers at Claire. ‘Speaking of gorgeous, you look good. Did you spend the entire day in bed? You look totally well-rested.’
Claire smiles. ‘I feel good. Hang on.’ She goes to the back door. ‘Tim? Will you come in? You too, Elliott.’
Tim walks in and leans down to give Claire a kiss before standing next to her with his arm round her shoulders.
‘O-kay,’ Gabby looks at Elliott, then back at her friends, ‘would someone mind telling me what’s going on here?’
‘We have some news.’ Claire grins. ‘We wanted to tell you together and we wanted you to be the first to know.’
Gabby frowns. It can’t be what she thinks, because Claire is older than she is, and it wouldn’t be fair, and
she has never talked about it, and she knows Gabby wanted …
‘We’re pregnant!’ Tim says, and Claire’s eyes fill with tears.
‘Can you believe it?’ she says to Gabby, opening her arms to embrace Gabby in a hug.
‘Oh boy!’ Elliott embraces Tim, then Claire, and Gabby does the same, as a dagger of pain slices her heart in two. It’s exactly what she was dreading, exactly what she has always wanted – but for her.
‘That’s huge!’ says Elliott.
‘It
is
huge!’ Gabby says. Her eyes have filled with tears, but she smiles through them, leading Tim and Claire to believe she is as overwhelmed with joy as they are. ‘When did you find out?’ she asks.
‘About an hour ago!’ Claire laughs. ‘I’m not telling anyone else because God only knows what’ll happen. I mean, I’m forty-four! But I told Tim I had to tell one person because I just can’t keep this excitement in, and you’re our closest friends, so … We shouldn’t celebrate, not yet, but I couldn’t get through the evening pretending everything was normal.’
‘I’m glad you told us,’ Gabby says, hugging Claire again before excusing herself to go to the bathroom.
She doesn’t go to the bathroom off the kitchen. She walks through the house to the formal powder room because it is quiet there, and secluded.
She doesn’t want anyone to hear her cry.
Six months ago, Gabby finally did the unthinkable, sorting through her closet and boxing up all her maternity clothes. She was less tearful than numb at finally, reluctantly, acknowledging there wouldn’t be another child; her baby days were done.
She pulled the baby seats and buggies and bouncing chairs out from the attic, collected up the brightly coloured toys her daughters had long outgrown, and piled them into the car, then she dropped them off at a charity shop, feeling nothing.
She had never been able to get rid of the baby things before, knowing she wasn’t done with having children, no matter what Elliott thought. Her two girls were wonderful, but three was the magic number, the number she had always dreamed of. She didn’t care whether the third was a boy or a girl, only that there would be a third.
After Alanna was born they decided to wait for a while before having another baby. Elliott said he needed time to feel more established in his specialty, and a doctor’s salary wasn’t what it used to be. He always said, ‘Let’s wait until we have some more money in the bank; until we can really afford it.’
The years went by, and it never seemed like the right time. Gabby wondered whether she should accidentally-on-purpose fall pregnant: say she was on the pill but forget to take it, secretly puncture a condom, tell him the timing made pregnancy impossible, say that she had finished her period that morning, when in fact she was at the height of ovulation.
But she couldn’t lie, couldn’t wilfully deceive the man she loves. Not then. So she waited for the right time, for Elliott to decide that they could do it. At thirty-nine she started to panic, and Elliott started to voice his second thoughts. They were already settled; they had two beautiful girls; their family was complete.
Other people fight about money, disciplining kids, in-laws. The only thing Gabby and Elliott fight about, have ever fought about, is this. Once Elliott voiced his opinion about not wanting any more children, his stance grew ever firmer. Gabby thought she could change his mind, persuade him otherwise, but he was clear: there were going to be no more children.
And even though Gabby knew she would never deliberately trick him into having a baby, she also knew she could be a little less … careful. She learned to be forgetful about taking the pill; she welcomed going on antibiotics, knowing it reduced the efficacy of the pill, praying each time that she would become pregnant.
In the back of her bathroom cabinet was a paper bag filled with pregnancy tests, and each time she had been ‘forgetful’, she would unwrap a test on the first day her period was due then hold her breath with excited anticipation as she peed. Her whole body would be flooded with disappointment when the tests had a negative result.
Six months ago, Elliott announced he was having a vasectomy. He had been thinking about it for a long time, and there was no question in his mind that it was
the most efficient form of birth control. He couldn’t ask her to have her tubes tied, and, frankly, it was bad enough that she had to take the pill. She had gone through childbirth twice; now it was his turn.
It was the fair thing to do.
The operation, minor, was booked, he said. They sat down to discuss it, and Gabby expressed her upset, her reasons for not agreeing, her wish to have another child.
‘How dare you make such a momentous decision unilaterally!’ She had burst into tears. ‘You can’t do this without my agreement.’
‘But you know I don’t want more children.’ He was confused. He had no idea how serious Gabby was about her need for another child; he had no idea she had a stash of pregnancy tests, was still hoping against hope for another baby, despite her advancing age making it unlikely. ‘You knew this. You knew I wasn’t going to change my mind.’
However many times they talked, and fought, there was nothing Gabby could do to change his mind. He was only able to see it from his point of view: once she got over her disappointment, he reasoned, how could she fail to see how much easier it would be – they would be able to make love spontaneously! No more pills! No more condoms! It would free them to truly enjoy the rest of their lives.
Gabby ran out of patience explaining her reasons for him not to do it, the subject eventually becoming a
no-go area. Every time they tried to talk about the vasectomy, it ended up as a fight. It was easier to stop talking about it and sweep it under the carpet.
Elliott went ahead with the appointment, figuring he would ask forgiveness, not permission. This was the right thing for their family.
Gabby, silent with resentment for a week, finally boxed up her maternity clothes and gave away her baby toys.
And still she hasn’t forgiven him. It is done. The deed cannot be undone, nor can any number of apologies heal the pain of knowing she will never again hold her newborn baby in her arms, smell the new-baby smell as it suckles at her breast, blow raspberries on a chubby little belly as her tiny infant waves its arms and legs in the air, giggling with delight.
Gabby loves Elliott. She will never not love him, but she is not certain she can ever forgive him for going ahead and having the vasectomy. It is akin to how he would feel had her machinations worked, had she suddenly found herself pregnant, but that is irrelevant.
It has made the past year a hard one. Gabby knows that time will heal, that as each day goes by she will feel less anger, less resentment, but standing in the kitchen, looking at Tim and Claire aglow with joy, she felt, just now, nothing other than overwhelming fury.
It should have been them.
In the bathroom Gabby weeps. She puts the lid down on the toilet and sits, her head in her hands, her
entire body wracked with sobs. She is quiet, but not so quiet that she can’t be heard by anyone who should happen to be standing directly outside.
‘Gabby?’ Elliott leans his head on the door, his face a picture of sadness.
Gabby tries to compose herself. ‘I’m okay. I’ll be out in a second.’
‘Let me in, Gabs,’ he says, and she unlocks the door, unable to look at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, taking her in his arms. ‘I am so sorry. I never realized how much you wanted this. I thought you’d be okay, that you’d get over it. I was wrong.’ Gabby bursts into a fresh round of sobs, her head against his chest, her tears soaking his T-shirt.
That he finally admitted it should make it better, should make the pain go away.
But it doesn’t.