Page 46 of The 3am Shattered Mums' Club

‘Yeah, where is he by the way?’ Jeff looked around the kitchen.

Sophy let out a hard sigh. ‘He’s in the lounge, you passed him on your way in?’

‘Did I?’ Jeff scoffed.

‘So, I was saying, that as we are moving on, as a family, we should maybe start acting like one?’

Jeff had let out a loud laugh.

‘Act like one? What does that mean?’

Sophy became exasperated. ‘I mean, I just mean, we have a kid, I live here, why can’t we make it official? Put my name on the house’

‘All right, calm down, Soph,’ Jeff said. ‘You don’t need to whine about it like that.’

‘But, Jeff, you’re infuriating!’

‘You’re infuriating yourself.’

Sophy took a deep breath and tried to replay in her head where exactly she had gone wrong and allowed Jeff to steer the conversation in this direction. Again. She waited a few minutes until she could see that Jeff had almost finished his food before continuing.

‘I am simply asking that we make the commitment to being a family.’

‘My name’s on his birth certificate, isn’t it?’

Sophy had paused. Her mind played a trick on her and for a nanosecond she wondered, was it?

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘So, what are you talking about then? Marriage and stuff?’ Jeff had asked her.

‘Marriage and stuff?’

‘Yeah, like you never talk about marriage.’ Jeff finished his food and put his knife and fork in a straight line in the middle of the plate.

Sophy had thought for a second. He was right. She had obviously thought about marriage, but it was never something she had pushed Jeff on. Perhaps, she thought it was because she didn’t want to be married to Jeff. But she needed some security, and it was only fair as she was earning as well that they were both legally on the deeds to the house. Jeff might earn more but Sophy did pay her way too.

‘Well, you don’t talk about marriage either,’ she’d said after a few seconds.

‘Well, blokes don’t, do they?’

‘Er, they do. Would you not like me to become Mrs Haddon some day?’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it that much, to be honest. I thought we were happy as we were.’

Sophy thought again about her lack of desire to be married to Jeff. ‘Well, we are, except for the tiny matter that I live in a house that belongs to you and I’m your son’s mother.’ Sophy heard the wordsson’s motherand how detached they sounded. Shouldn’t she be sayingfiancéeorloverorlong-term girlfriend? Something that meant more to her and Jeff rather than basic DNA.

‘You want the name on a bit of paper? I get it, if it makes you feel better. But it had better not be so you can try and screw me for every penny I have. I built that business up over years and years of hard slog. It didn’t come easy to me – I flunked at school, I was rubbish at maths and English. Only thing I have ever known is how to flog a house.’

Sophy’s face softened for a moment and she tried to cast her mind back to the days when she and Jeff had first met and how she had been so impressed with his business, how proud she had felt of him.

‘I get that, Jeff, I really do. But I work too, and I contribute to bills and food. See that sausage?’ Sophy pointed to the last portion of toad-in-the-hole in the pan that was crispy and burnt at the edges. ‘I paid for that sausage and you ate that sausage.’

‘Are you comparing a six-hundred-thousand-pound house to a sausage?’ Jeff asked her with real sincerity.

Sophy could have cracked a smile, but she was tired, and this conversation had gone on much longer than she had wanted it to.

She took one final deep breath and began very slowly and clearly so that Jeff could understand. ‘I. Just. Want. To—’

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