She knew him better now. Having a child was not essential to him – he would never be the kind of father to change nappies or take time off for sports days – but he was also the kind of man who’d follow any woman who presented him with his own flesh and blood. The idea of being left for someone younger, someone untainted, was so crippling that Elle knew she had to get in first. If she was pregnant, if they had a child, he would never leave her. They’d be a family. And now here was the doctor telling her it maybe wasn’t possible. They knew it wasn’t him with the problem – he’d told her he got a girlfriend pregnant years ago, at university. She hadn’t kept it, and sometimes, when Elle woke at night, she found herself wondering about that child. What it would have looked like. If it was a boy or a girl. A child that wasn’t hers, but was his – that would be enough for her, maybe.

‘There’s IVF,’ said the doctor soothingly, in those expensive tones. ‘Perhaps your husband would be willing to try?’ She thought of it, the indignity of cups and tests and the plastic sterility of it all. The planning. That wasn’t him. He liked things to be passionate, spontaneous. Increasingly, he did not touch her at all in that way, simply stroking her hair and saying, you must be very tired, darling. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t tired.

‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said, gathering up her Marc Jacobs tote. ‘Thank you, doctor.’ And as she walked out the door, she believed that she would. She’d cook him a wonderful dinner, light candles, open wine, and later on she would broach the idea of getting a little helping hand to start their family.

Suzi

Suzi

Sometimes, lately, I felt like I was losing control of myself. It was just little things, like I found myself sweating, so I got up to turn down the thermostat, only to find it set way low, seventeen degrees, or I’d be shivering when the dial was up at twenty-two. As if the climate came from inside me.