they’d visit for weeks and came back only when she hit her breaking point.
I was just about to reply when an e-mail popped up. It was from Tom, sending a link to the estate agent’s site:
Good morning, Ruby. Hope you’re OK. Just to let you know that our house is officially on sale now x
Bleary-eyed, I sat up in bed and pulled my laptop toward me so that I could see the photos of my house. I’d asked for them to be sent to me for approval, but obviously they’d taken no notice of me.
My heart ached as I scrolled through the listing. I hadn’t been inside our house for weeks and I missed it so much. It was tidy and clean, though I’d put good money on the local Molly Maid being responsible for that. I stared at the picture of my living room. Tom had removed the photos from the mantelpiece and replaced them with a glass bowl from the hall. I zoomed out so that I could see the whole room. He’d moved the sofas, so that they were adjacent to each other instead of facing. I zoomed in on them. The sofas reminded me of the day we bought them. I’d thought I was pregnant that day and hadn’t wanted to tell Tom just yet. Every month at that point I’d get so excited and then I’d have that crushing sense of disappointment when my period arrived. At the time we’d bought the sofas, I was obsessed with becoming pregnant and would take test after test each month. It became a joke that really wasn’t funny, with Tom coming home saying, “On my way home from London I just happened to walk past a pharmacy and they had these tests you’ve never tried! I bought you some for good luck.”
On that day we bought the sofas, I was two days late and a few tests had proven negative, but I was still sure that my next test would be positive. And while the salesman made his pitch, telling us about the fabric and the size and all the rest of it, all I could think was, I’ll be feeding my baby on this sofa. I’ll put my feet up on this footstool and I’ll rest my head against these cushions and there’ll be a baby lying there on my chest. A little girl, maybe. I’ll feel her soft breath against my neck, feel the weight of her sleepy body against mine. Her soft and downy hair will brush against my face as I kiss her gently, secretly hoping she’ll waken. And I was so caught up in this story I was telling myself, that when I sat on the sofa to test it, I closed my eyes and I could almost feel the weight of the baby against me and smell the milkiness of her breath.
“Ruby!” Tom had called. “Don’t go to sleep!” He and the salesman had laughed. “Shall we go for this one?”
I’d laughed, too, but for the rest of the afternoon I could feel the sensation of the baby inside me, relaxing into me, and I’d known, I’d just known that I was pregnant. Until I got home and found that I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. I never was.
And I looked down at the photos of the living room, with those reminders of my infertility looming so large, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to keep them or to never see them again.
My phone beeped again. Tom.
It looks good, doesn’t it? x
I replied, Yes, it does. I hate to think of people viewing it though. As I pressed Send I winced. I didn’t want him to misinterpret that. All I’d meant was that I couldn’t stand to think of people walking around it and judging it, trying to knock the price down. Not that they’d get far with Tom, as far as that was concerned.
He replied immediately. Me too. It was our home for so long xx
I couldn’t let myself think about that but as I stood in the tiny shower cubicle, banging my head on the showerhead, then mopping up the suds on the floor afterward, I thought of Tom and the messages he’d sent since I left him. All of them were nice.