Page 14 of One Day at a Time

The test.

She slipped out from under his arm. ‘Let me go do this and then we can come back to the kissing thing.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ There was an edge to his voice again, but she knew it was only nerves. God, the stress this time of the month caused them both.

By the time she came back into the room a few minutes later, he was already in a T-shirt and shorts, lying on the bed. He put his phone down and pushed himself up into a sitting position as she walked towards him.

‘I’ve set an alarm on my phone,’ she said, sitting down next to him and pulling her knees up to her chest, the stick facing downon the bed in front of her. Her hand found his as they waited in silence, with a mantra going directly from her mind to whatever manifestation powers were in the universe.

Please be positive, please be positive, please be positive…

When the alarm went off, she jumped. A minute ago, the result was too far away. Now it was too close.

Before she picked it up, she turned to her husband. ‘Ready?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Ready.’

Slowly, she turned back around and picked up the white stick, her shaking hands telling her that she really wasn’t ready at all.

JUNE

7

SHEENA

‘Darling, we need to talk.’

Gregor glanced up from his newspaper – yes, he was one of the last men in the civilised world to still read a newspaper over breakfast. He always picked it up at the local Waitrose on his way back from his morning five-mile run.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, his head still in the midst of the pages.

Sheena said nothing, just waited, and eventually he must have clicked that she was actually asking for his full attention, and he lowered the paper enough for their eyes to connect across the kitchen table. This was their standard practice for a Saturday morning. At the table in the middle of their glossy white kitchen, he’d peruse the day’s news while getting started on his required protein intake for the day by having two poached eggs and smashed avocado on sourdough while she drank her black coffee.

Sheena had waited until he’d finished eating to make her move. The extra twenty minutes it took for him to ingest his food wasn’t going to make a difference to the outcome, and besides, hadn’t she already waited for months? First, there was the delaybecause she was hoping that he’d pay attention and make changes after their last big relationship discussion six months ago. Then, there was the time that she had braced herself to break the news, but he’d ambushed her with a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party. And then, a couple of weeks ago, she’d psyched herself up to have the conversation one night after work, but when she’d got home, five of his mates were there because they’d decided to have an impromptu poker night. Sheena had gone straight upstairs, climbed into bed and binge-watched at least three nineties romcoms to restore her mental equilibrium. Since then, there just hadn’t been the right time or place. Until now.

Although, he was giving her a distracted expression that she knew him well enough to interpret as, ‘Can we get this over with so I can go back to this giddy analysis of today’s sport fixtures.’

Perhaps that was why, after months of consideration, weeks of planning, a million rehearsals of this conversation in her mind, and saying her speech aloud to Martha and Chanel over wine at their last Forty-Two Long gathering a few nights ago, she was now completely blank and didn’t know what to say. She really had to find a new line of work, because she was, without a doubt, crap at this relationship stuff.

‘Gregor, I want to talk about us.’

His shoulders dropped a solid inch and she could see that he was having to clamp his jaw shut to prevent an audible groan. They’d established over the past three decades that this was his least favourite topic of conversation. If she’d said, ‘Let’s discuss how we can put your willy in a vice,’ she’d probably have got a more positive reaction.

He put the newspaper down on the table and sighed. ‘Do we have to? I’m meeting the guys for a cycle ride in half an hour.’

Jesus. In half an hour, he’d pour himself into his favouriteLycra cycling gear – the stuff that was branded with his company’s logo. As brand manager for an obscenely expensive sportswear range aimed at the busy executive in the 30–50 range, he thought he looked great in it. All Sheena saw was a bunch of middle-aged blokes in clothes that were designed to cling to areas they had no business clinging to.

‘This won’t take that long.’ She felt her irritation rise and made an effort to suppress it, so that this didn’t end up in either a fight or a walk-out, because she really didn’t think that she had it in her to circle back to the ‘I want to leave you’ bit again in the future. She needed to be clear, concise and definitive.

Okay, deep breath. You can do this. You’re a bloody relationship counsellor. You can have a tough conversation.

‘At the end of last year, we spoke and I tried to tell you how unhappy I was and you said?—’

‘I said I’d make more of an effort, and I have. I booked that Hogmanay trip to Loch Lomond, and then there was the party to celebrate our anniversary. And I told you I’ve been researching a summer holiday in Bali…’

‘Yes, those things are true. But?—’

He rolled his eyes. Actually rolled his eyes. Like a petulant teenager. ‘Are you going to tell me that wasn’t good enough? Because, honestly, Sheena, I don’t know what else I could do.’