Page 24 of Conviction
“Monday,” they both say together.
“How long till the gig?” I ask.
“It’s next Saturday, so less than two weeks,” Josh replies.
“Fuck!” My palms are actually sweating. I look at my brother, then at my manager. “D’ya think I can do these songs justice?”
“Of course, you can,” Tyler states.
“Fuck yeah,” Josh adds.
“Do you really need to ask?” Lawson asks.
“When can I start rehearsing?” Not sure if it’s Josh or Lawson that’ll know the answer.
“Tomorrow,” they both reply together.
“Fuck!” I say again.
I’ve had the shittiest monthsince shitty months were invented.
I’ve barely seen Marcus. The fraud case that was landed on him last minute has turned out to be a lot more complicated than the company first thought and the court case is still dragging on.
I had though, managed to find a moment to approach him about why he’d needed to see the doctor. He told me he’d popped in to see him about a sore wrist. He was due to play in a golf tournament and wanted to know the best way to strap it up so it didn’t hurt throughout the day. I didn’t believe a word of it and I actually believe that he knew full well that I knew, he was lying. He wasn’t happy that I knew he’d been to the surgery and wanted to know how I knew. I was totally honest, I told him I’d been there to see my doctor and why I had seen her. He seemed fine at first, but then I informed him that she’d suggested he see his own doctor and maybe arrange to get his sperm count checked. That’s when he became pissed off and stormed out of the house to walk the dog, which is something he never did. He’s not a big fan of dogs and has never shown any patience or affection toward Duchess. When he came back, he sat me down and told me that he’d really been to see Dr Jay to get himself the kind of check-up that I’d had with my doctor, and that the results had come back showing everything was fine with him and like he’d thought all along, the problem was with me. Apparently, he hadn’t told me sooner because he knew how upset I’d be.
I was beyond upset, I was devastated. I knew that I had polycystic ovaries, but unlike some women, I had very few symptoms other than irregular periods. I’d gained a serious amount of weight and become anxious and depressed after Conner left me, but I’ve always put that down more to the split than my condition. I’d managed to get my weight back under control with exercise, a reasonably healthy diet and a lot of encouragement from my husband and mother. The period irregularity had been brought under control by going on the pill. My only real concern was that since I’d stopped taking it, almost a year ago now, I’d only had four periods.
After a stressful couple of weeks waiting on my results, all my tests came through from my doctor, and they were actually better than I’d been expecting. My bloods were all good, hormone levels fine and the ultrasound showed that I only had a couple of very small cysts and they were both on the same ovary. My other ovary was perfectly healthy, and as far as she was concerned, there was no reason why I couldn’t conceive naturally. She told me to go away, keep practising and to come back in six months if I still wasn’t pregnant.
I’d researched online and was secretly charting my temperature and worked out that based on the very heavy period I’d had in May, my next most fertile few days would be in the middle of June, so I booked Marcus and I a weekend away in York, just for two nights. We would leave Friday and head back on Sunday so he couldn’t complain about having to take time off from work. I planned on doing nothing but having sex with my husband. I’d booked us into the honeymoon suite of a four-hundred-year-old hotel, inside the city’s walls. Four poster bed, claw-footed slipper bath, the works.
I wasn’t a quitter. I was determined to give my marriage and our attempts at parenthood my all, but I knew as I planned our little getaway, that this was it. If this weekend didn’t ignite some kind of spark, it was probably time to admit defeat, lick my wounds and end my marriage.
The court case Marcus was working on was due to wind up on the Tuesday, with a verdict delivered by Thursday at the latest. I’d booked the Friday as well as the weekend off of work and was really looking forward to it.
Marcus and I had been averaging sex, less than once a week for the best part of a year, sometimes only once a fortnight and right now, it had been eight whole weeks. This wasn’t unusual when he worked on a big case so I wasn’t too worried and I planned on making up for it on our weekend away.
Sophie had just come back from a week in Greece with her brother, who’d arrived back in the country after three months’ work in Australia. Today was her first day back at the salon but she only had two clients booked in so she’d gotten the apprentice to put a conditioning treatment on her hair, then wash and blow dry it into big bouncy curls. Now that was done, she was bored and hanging around the reception area, going through our bookings.
I finished with my client, let the receptionist take her money and waved her goodbye.
“I see you’ve already booked the weekend of the twenty-first off?” she asks with a smile. I raise my eyebrows in surprise. I hadn’t told Sophie about my plans for a dirty weekend away yet as I hadn’t seen her.
“What d’ya mean? Yeah, I’ve booked it off, I’m going away that weekend. I’ve booked the Friday off too.” Her face falls.
“You’re going away? Shit, where you going?”
“I’ve booked a dirty weekend away in York with Marcus.”
Her face screws up. “Ewww. TMI, Neen, TMI.”
“Well, you asked.”
“Yeah, sadly, I did.”
She looks over my face for a few seconds. “How are things?”
I shrug my shoulders. I have no idea, how things are. Lonely and sexless mainly.
