subsumed by a longing tinged with loneliness and she sent him a text message saying night night love your girls xxxx. She looked at it and worried over the lack of punctuation, that he might think she was nagging him to love his girls. Hopefully He'd be distracted by all the x's instead.
Her mind drifted back to a time before Cosima. Not so long ago, really, there was a girl called Fen for whom motherhood had then been such a distant notion as to have had no realism. It was like recalling a best friend she hadn't seen for years, a soulmate who had gone so far away that their paths would never now cross. Just then, it made Fen wistfully sad. She reminisced that there had been fun in all that dangerous gallivanting. It had been liberating and energizing, being responsible for no one but herself.
She thought back to that heady time when she and Matt had just met at work and were embarking on the definitive office fling. She conjured again the feeling of exquisite anticipation, remembered so clearly sitting amongst the papers and pictures and boxes in the archives willing Matt to rudely interrupt her with a furtive snog and a grope. She relived the joy of racing down the corridor to delight Matt with her unbridled enthusiasm about some discovery or other amongst the dust and documents. She felt again the euphoric pride when their romance was exposed amongst their colleagues, when they were the centre of attention, the focus of gossip and approval, soon enough the benchmark for love and romance.
And then she thought back to those short, secret trips to Derbyshire around the same time, to those exhilarating afternoons of sex with another man; the urgency to have her desire sated but to make her home-bound train. It's really only now that she feels horror while she wonders what on earth all that was about, how bizarre it all was. At the time She'd divided her heart meticulously into two and coolly separated her body from her conscience. It had been intoxicatingly exciting for a while. It hadn't felt wrong. But then her sisters found out. And, in retrospect, thank God for Cat and Pip badgering her on the finer points of morality. Thank God she chose Matt and he never found out. And thank God She'd grown out of all of that. And grown up. And most of all, thank God for her beautiful beautiful baby.
As Fen lay thinking, her hands subconsciously assessed the changes in her body. Really, she knew she ought to adore her post-birth figure, her fuller breasts and becoming curves. But lying there, squidging more than an inch to the pinch, she did not. Instead, she tormented herself with clear images of how her body had been when it was the object of all that sexual attention. Pert and lithe and powerful in its energyand desirability. Ultimately, though, it did not come down to aesthetics. Her body was no longer her own now. It was as if, in nurturing a baby, She'd renounced sole ownership. Though she was slowly scaling down breast-feeding she knew She'd never have the same freedom with her body, she wouldn't be reclaiming it as her own.
Does Matt miss it? My body? Does he miss the way we were? I don't like to think that he might. I haven't asked him on purpose. I've just been hoping that his tolerant nature and all those ante-natal classes plus the magazines I leave lying around and the baby book That's in the loo will have filtered through, will have put paid to any resentment or disaffection.
Anyway, what was all that spontaneity actually worth? Was it really such a privilege to be able to do as we pleased whenever we liked? I suppose I'm on a crusade of sorts – that what we have now completely outweighs what we were then. Surely Matt feels the same?
Django pottered around downstairs. He couldn't find the crossword from the day before yesterday. He couldn't even find today's paper. Then he remembered He'd used one to wrap up the giblets. And He'd used another to wrap up the broken wine bottle which had tumbled onto the flagstone
Her mind drifted back to a time before Cosima. Not so long ago, really, there was a girl called Fen for whom motherhood had then been such a distant notion as to have had no realism. It was like recalling a best friend she hadn't seen for years, a soulmate who had gone so far away that their paths would never now cross. Just then, it made Fen wistfully sad. She reminisced that there had been fun in all that dangerous gallivanting. It had been liberating and energizing, being responsible for no one but herself.
She thought back to that heady time when she and Matt had just met at work and were embarking on the definitive office fling. She conjured again the feeling of exquisite anticipation, remembered so clearly sitting amongst the papers and pictures and boxes in the archives willing Matt to rudely interrupt her with a furtive snog and a grope. She relived the joy of racing down the corridor to delight Matt with her unbridled enthusiasm about some discovery or other amongst the dust and documents. She felt again the euphoric pride when their romance was exposed amongst their colleagues, when they were the centre of attention, the focus of gossip and approval, soon enough the benchmark for love and romance.
And then she thought back to those short, secret trips to Derbyshire around the same time, to those exhilarating afternoons of sex with another man; the urgency to have her desire sated but to make her home-bound train. It's really only now that she feels horror while she wonders what on earth all that was about, how bizarre it all was. At the time She'd divided her heart meticulously into two and coolly separated her body from her conscience. It had been intoxicatingly exciting for a while. It hadn't felt wrong. But then her sisters found out. And, in retrospect, thank God for Cat and Pip badgering her on the finer points of morality. Thank God she chose Matt and he never found out. And thank God She'd grown out of all of that. And grown up. And most of all, thank God for her beautiful beautiful baby.
As Fen lay thinking, her hands subconsciously assessed the changes in her body. Really, she knew she ought to adore her post-birth figure, her fuller breasts and becoming curves. But lying there, squidging more than an inch to the pinch, she did not. Instead, she tormented herself with clear images of how her body had been when it was the object of all that sexual attention. Pert and lithe and powerful in its energyand desirability. Ultimately, though, it did not come down to aesthetics. Her body was no longer her own now. It was as if, in nurturing a baby, She'd renounced sole ownership. Though she was slowly scaling down breast-feeding she knew She'd never have the same freedom with her body, she wouldn't be reclaiming it as her own.
Does Matt miss it? My body? Does he miss the way we were? I don't like to think that he might. I haven't asked him on purpose. I've just been hoping that his tolerant nature and all those ante-natal classes plus the magazines I leave lying around and the baby book That's in the loo will have filtered through, will have put paid to any resentment or disaffection.
Anyway, what was all that spontaneity actually worth? Was it really such a privilege to be able to do as we pleased whenever we liked? I suppose I'm on a crusade of sorts – that what we have now completely outweighs what we were then. Surely Matt feels the same?
Django pottered around downstairs. He couldn't find the crossword from the day before yesterday. He couldn't even find today's paper. Then he remembered He'd used one to wrap up the giblets. And He'd used another to wrap up the broken wine bottle which had tumbled onto the flagstone
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