Five

I’ve been blind. While focusing on my desires and disappointments, I’ve ignored the fact that the children need all the love and attention I can give them. One of the most heart-wrenching questions Felix asked me recently was if he was ever going to get a new mummy and if so, would she be nice to him? Good can come out of my heartache because I’ll have more free time. We are in a horrible pizza place, the lights are too bright, the service is slow, the food uninspiring, yet I feel immense maternal pride as the waiter refers to my son and daughter. I belong.

It doesn’t yet fill the hole left by Ben’s betrayal—I feel sick at the thought of him with someone else—yet I can’t deny that maybe...maybe...a part of me allowed it to happen. His actions mean that my hand has been forced and perhaps it’s not such the terrible thing it initially appears.

Now that I can be more honest with myself, I can admit that I didn’t ever feel totally secure in our relationship. Ben never truly forgave me for the pregnancy scare not long after we met on an online dating site. He said he did, but he was lying to himself. We’d already arranged to set up home together when I discovered that I wasn’t expecting after all, and it resulted in a rushed overfamiliarity with our bad habits, rather than a more natural or romantic beginning. Even though I had good intentions (Ben is the overly indecisive type), I was aware that Nina and others would have negatively judged my methods, so I didn’t share the whole story. But now, he’s fulfilled a dream that was initially mine, not his.

“Fancy the park?” Stuart says the moment Felix and Em finish their ice creams.

I smile, pleased at our complicit desire to talk alone.

Stuart and I sit on a bench as the children pull themselves up a climbing frame.

“Careful,” I shout out to Emily.

Nina came to the conclusion that it was best not to overprotect the children as they got older, to let them make mistakes, fall, hurt themselves. I disagree. I sense that Stuart feels the same; he is watching Em as she climbs higher and I can tell that he’s ready to run if need be.

“Phew,” I say as she descends before running off to the slide.

“I’ve thought about what you asked...” Stuart says.

I hold my breath.

“Perhaps it could work, but my parents’ flights from Brisbane are booked. The guesthouse was deliberately kept free for them over the Christmas period. They could stay in the main house with me, but I’m not sure how my dad, in particular, will cope with the children’s noise. How about you move into the guesthouse in January, depending on how it all works with future bookings?”

“There are none. I checked.”

“Oh. Nina used to be quite on it when it came to marketing the place,” he says.