steamed vegetables, and she’d taken up exercising again and lost a little bit of weight too. Still, cooking for two really meant cooking for two in this house. James liked jacket potatoes and butter with everything and he hated steamed vegetables, which were what Ava liked. She’d started eating really healthily when she’d lost the first baby, and she couldn’t quite let go of it, but she was trying to get her old self back.
‘Do you want veggies?’ she asked as she served up, and he gave her the oddest look. ‘I mean, you’ve lost weight, I thought maybe you’re on a diet.’
‘I joined a gym.’ James shrugged. ‘I can eat what I want now,’ he said. ‘It’s great.’
No, she wanted to correct him, because it wasn’t just about that, but she didn’t want to start the night with nagging. She’d already pursed her lips when he’d come home with cartons of chicken and stir-fried rice from his mum’s.
‘You look like you’ve lost weight too.’ James followed her into the living area and they sat down at the table for the first time in a very long time. She felt more awkward than one of her patients on their first visit. ‘I’ve been riding,’ Ava said, ‘and swimming.’
‘That’s good,’ James said. ‘That’s good, Ava.’
It was good, except she felt as if she was giving up on her dream … She’d given up so many things trying to hold on to their baby. Their first pregnancy the doctor had said that of course she could ride, given that she regularly did, and she was incredibly fit after all. So she’d carried on riding and swimming each morning and they had made love lots, as they always had.
The second pregnancy, she’d given up riding, figuring that it seemed stupid to risk a fall.
The third pregnancy, she had felt as if she were on a tightrope and had given up swimming, and by the fourth she had given up James.
And when she’d lost that one, Ava simply knew she couldn’t go through it again. It had been a relief to go on the Pill, to decide that children weren’t going to happen for them, to get on with their lives.
Except they hadn’t.
She sliced her grilled chicken, tried not to think about it. She didn’t want to think about babies. It was hard not to, though. She never had any problems getting pregnant. It was staying pregnant that had proved impossible. Six weeks, nine weeks, seven weeks and then ten weeks once …
She remembered Finn dragging her to the door.
Remembered his voice as he’d called her husband, but by then it had already been too late.
‘So what did you get up to in Brisbane?’
‘Not much. The teaching was pretty full on.’
‘You seemed pretty busy.’
He stood to get another bottle of water.
‘Might treat myself to sparkling,’ James said, and she knew it was a dig, because after three months apart they should be popping corks.
‘Can you check I turned the oven off?’ She watched his shoulders stiffen, knew it drove him crazy when once it had made him laugh, but she was forever checking things like that.
‘Well?’
‘It’s off,’ he said, cracking open the sparkling water, filling his glass and then raising it. ‘Cheers!’
She was quite sure he hadn’t checked but didn’t say so, very determined not to start a row.
Or face that conversation.
‘I got you Mum’s present for her birthday.’ God, but it was awkward. They hadn’t seen each other for three months so they should be at it over the table right now, completely unable to keep their hands off each other. Instead, there had been no contact and, worse, the conversation was strained. They simply had nothing to say to each other—it was worse than a first date.
‘How’s your work?’ James asked.
‘Busy.’
‘I heard about Finn’s operation being cancelled.’
‘Postponed.’
‘Ava.’ He’d finished his chicken and she had barely started hers. ‘While I’ve been away, I’ve been—’
‘I had a chat with Evie …’ They didn’t speak at the same time. James started and she interrupted and then stopped. ‘Sorry.’ She knew she had to face it. ‘You were saying?’
‘It can wait,’ James said, because he didn’t want to face it either. ‘How was Evie?’
They watched a movie, or tried to, but it was a crime one and she hated those, so midway through Ava gave up and went on her computer, writing up patient notes, fixing other people’s lives instead of her own.
‘I’m going to bed.’ She didn’t bend her head to kiss him and James hardly looked up, neither quite brave enough to have that talk.
He sat in the semi-darkness, teeth gritted, and tried to concentrate on the film, because if he didn’t he might just march into that bedroom and say something he’d regret.
Some welcome home.
He was a night person, and once Ava had been. She’d been a morning person too—up at the crack of dawn and swimming on weekdays, riding at weekends, and he was glad she was doing that again. It was the early nights he couldn’t stand and she was going to bed even earlier. Now it was lights down at ten, like some school trip.
James hauled himself from the sofa and wandered into his study, saw the wedding photo on the desk and he barely recognised them so he closed the door, went back into the living room, opened up his case then headed to the cupboard and took out a blanket and pillow and tossed them down.
God, but he hated that sofa.
There was a small bathroom in the hall and he was quite sure she’d prefer that he use it, but he refused to, so he took out his toiletry bag from the case and walked into the bedroom where she lay pretending to be asleep as he went into the en suite.
James took off the shirt and discarded the linen pants on the floor, then he rinsed off the cologne and looked at her make-up bag, saw the little packet of pills that was supposed to have been the solution. He thought about having a shower, but decided that it could wait till morning. There was a show he liked starting soon, so he put a towel around his hips and walked past her bed on the way to the sofa. They’d talk tomorrow, he decided, or maybe they should wait till after his mum’s birthday. He was starving. One piece of grilled chicken and a baby potato with a tiny knob of low-fat sour cream—there hadn’t been butter in the apartment for years, another thing that was banned. Maybe he should ring for a pizza; that would really get under her skin …
And then he stopped.
He just stopped.
Because he could do this no longer, because it had come to this. He was sick of the sofa and sick of not wanting to come home—and, as hard as it was, he had to say it—he was an oncologist after all, should be able
