A frustrated groan thundered deep in his chest. Last night should never have happened. It was supposed to have been a quick in-and-out London trip with Mav, but somehow (he knew how) they’d ended up at a little pub where he’d thought he’d be able to have a couple of beers unnoticed. But the second beer had quickly morphed into a third, which had paved the way for a scotch, and then another. Then Rachel had turned up and the rest of the night had raced towards an embarrassingly predictable conclusion.
Mo worked some shampoo into his hair, his fingertips digging angry zig-zags across his scalp. Mav had told him last night that he wanted to move out. Rent his own place, finally. Stand on his own two feet. He said Mo had given him everything his whole life and it was time to do something for himself. Mo, like an idiot, had drunkenly offered to justbuyhim an apartment instead, which, in hindsight, had been a spectacular miss of the mark.
Mo groaned and thumped his palm against the tiles. Yes, he’d given Mav a lot. Maybe too much. But if only Mav knew. Mo scrunched his eyes tight.If only he fucking knew what I took away.He felt the familiar murky anxiety rise in his gut, closed his eyes, and turned the hot water up to savage. He deserved it.
Chapter Three
NETTA
Netta woke on Saturday morning with hair that smelled a little like the takeaway pad Thai she’d had for dinner and a fresh new resolve. The night before, with the company of her eked-out solo glass of wine and a heavy dose of trash TV, she’d come to a comforting conclusion. Her past may have been full of dodgy men, but the one sleeping next to her, with his arm slung over her hip, was not one of them. What they had was worth trusting. Her tendency to analyse—to comb through things until nothing felt like it was one hundred per cent right—was not helpful. At all.
She extricated herself from Pete’s embrace and padded down the hallway to the bathroom to do another ovulation test and have a shower. As the room filled with the scent of her overpriced shampoo—the one that had promised longer, thicker hair but had thus far failed to deliver anything other than clean hair—she mentally went through some options for the weekend. She’d heard about a great farmers’ market in a cute country town an hour or so away. They could go and spend way too much on organic honey and eggs and then stop off at a posh country pub on the way home to stuff themselves with woodfired pizzas. They’d both enjoy that. All was not lost. Netta Phillips would not be beaten by a garden variety, and highly likely entirely imagined, relationship slump.
She stepped out of the shower and glanced at the stick. A flashing face smiled optimistically back at her. Rising fertility. Not peak yet, but it would be soon. Maybe even later today, if she was lucky. Netta allowed herself a flash of hope. This could be the weekend they finally conceived.
She quickly dressed and made her way to the kitchen to wrestle a coffee from their dinosaur of a machine, which, along with reliably underwhelming coffee, also served up an antagonising daily reminder of the golden St Kilda days when she’d had her pick of amazing cafés within a stumble of her front door. As usual, the memory tugged on her heart a little as she pulled a clean mug from the dishwasher and retrieved the milk from the fridge. Netta and her mum had hopped around rental homes for Netta’s entire childhood, so buying the apartment had felt like a monumental achievement, the stability of having her own place the ultimate luxury. At thirty-five, when she’d bought it, she’d decided men were out and radical independence was in. But then a couple of years later, she’d met Pete, and the old dream ofnotdying tragic and alone had come rushing back. He’d seemed so refreshingly grown-up that it’d been easy to skim over the nine-year age gap, ex-wife and two kids. He’d assured her that her heart was safe in his hands and the security of that feeling had been intoxicating.
‘Morning.’
Pete’s mumbly voice wrenched her from her thoughts. He stood in the doorway, rubbing his hair with one hand and grasping the top of the doorframe for a stretch with the other. He came into the kitchen and kissed Netta good morning, first on the lips and then on the forehead.
‘Sleep okay?’ asked Netta as he turned away to make a coffee.
‘Yeah, not bad.’
Netta waved her arms in the air. ‘Hey, it’s the weekend, baby!’
Pete regarded her from his post at the coffee machine. The look on his face wasn’t promising. He clearly didn’t think there was any need for the Ibiza arms. ‘I’ve got Hannah and Sam this weekend, remember?’ he said. ‘Theirmotheris off on some spa retreat or something. Probably spending half my annual child support to have a hose shoved up her arse. They’ll be here any minute.’
‘Oh. I don’t think I knew about that,’ said Netta. ‘The kids, that is, not the irrigation of Heather’s colon.’
Pete raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s been on the calendar for a couple of weeks.’
Netta smothered her exasperation with a smile. Pete lived and died by that bloody calendar. ‘Well, it’ll be nice to see them.’
Pete nodded mutely, his attention fixed on his phone.
‘Also, just so you know, I’m ovulating this weekend.’
‘Oh, come on, Netta,’ said Pete, not lifting his gaze. ‘You know how I feel about that when the kids are here.’
It had been months of trying now. Every ovulation for the last five cycles they’d had well-timed sex, and every time she’d remained profoundly unpregnant. It was beginning to feel urgent for Netta. Forty was so close she could practicallyseethe collagen jumping ship from her skin and, from what she’d read, her eggs would be dwindling in both number and quality. They didn’t have time to mess around.
Netta valiantly kept the disappointment from her face and gave her hips a little shimmy. ‘We could go for a quickie now?’
Pete laughed. ‘Oh. You’re serious.’ He shook his head no and lifted his mug. ‘I’ve just made a coffee, Netta.’
***
By noon, Pete had the kids in the car ready to go out for lunch. Just the three of them. Netta waved goodbye as they backed down the driveway and swallowed the knot of disappointment that she hadn’t been asked to join. She adored Hannah and Sam and wanted to be closer to them, but Pete seemed quietly determined to keep his two worlds separate. Netta had respected it at first. She’d thought it adorably papa bear of him to want to protect them until he was sure he and Netta would go the distance. But she’d been living with him for two years now and they were trying for a baby—how much more of a sure thing did they need to be before he made her part of his family?
Netta closed the front door and paced around the house, restless. She was anxious this window for conceiving was going to slam shut in her face and it’d be a whole month before they’d have another chance. And beyond that, why would he have said no to a quickie? And for a coffee! The pods they had at the moment weren’t even that good! She distracted herself giving the kitchen benches an aggressive wipe down and shoving a load of washing into the machine, but the walls were closing in. She needed to get out of the house to get out of her head. She tugged her runners on, grabbed her sunnies and slammed the front door behind her. The footpaths of Altona North were about to get a pounding.
She stormed past old blonde brick houses in various states of repair interspersed with flashy townhouses that stood out like gold teeth among their humble neighbours. She sidestepped a rapidly melting Bubble O’ Bill ice cream on the footpath, flashing a sympathetic smile at the young mum comforting the little boy who’d dropped it, and resisted the urge to pluck olives from the trees that sprang from nearly every nature strip, some carefully netted, others surrounded by tight clusters of marigolds. Her favourite garden in the neighbourhood insisted she slow to admire it—every square centimetre crammed with vegies and fruits and flowers—while the one next door to it hurried her along, its front garden full of written-off cars giving off distinct potential-felon-lives-here vibes. Every step she took brought her back from the edge a little and as she settled into a rhythm, she searched for a new angle on Pete’s rejection. He just wasn’t a quickie kind of guy. He liked to take his time. Maybe his ‘no’ had actually been a ‘later’ and the coffee thing had been unrelated.
Netta’s phone pinged, demanding her attention.
What are you up to today? Let me live vicariously, I’m dying here.
