Page 3 of Fling

‘Yeah, which is a seventy-five per cent chance of failure, Colin,’ Tara sighed.

Maths was never Tara’s strong suit but Colin knew correcting her would only strengthen the point she was trying to make against him. ‘Whatever the odds are, I know we can beat them,’ he said.

‘My uterus isn’t a slot machine, Colin. Every time we gamble ten grand on this pipe dream, we always lose and the house always wins,’ Tara said, putting her foot down.

‘There are still so many options of improving our chances. Like if you were open to finding an egg donor—’ Colin said.

‘I told you from day one that I wanted to be the biological mother of my child,’ Tara interrupted.

‘You’d be giving birth to the baby. That basically makes it yours. Who cares if it’s not your egg?’

‘Well, for the record, your swimmers aren’t exactly winning any Olympic medals either. I’ll agree to an egg donor if you agree to a sperm donor,’ Tara said, knowing full well Colin would rule out the idea.

‘You must be joking. Then I wouldn’t be the father!’ Colin snapped.

‘OK then, we’ll mix your sperm with two other donors. Then twenty years later, we’ll invite the three of you to the child’s wedding in Greece and figure out who the father is,’ Tara explained.

‘I’m not stupid, Tara. I know that’s basically the plot of Mamma Mia! You’ve made me watch it enough feckin’ times,’ Colin said, annoyed. ‘I don’t know how you can talk about this in such a joking tone.’

‘Because all my tears have been used up, Colin. I want to laugh again. I’m done with failure. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. That’s the literal definition of insanity. I’m almost thirty-seven for God’s sake,’ she sighed.

‘Oh, don’t give me that excuse. Your mother had you at thirty-eight.’

‘That’s because it was her destiny. But it’s clearly not mine. The universe obviously has other plans for me. Maybe I’m supposed to get my master’s degree or start my own business or travel the world or—’

‘You’re supposed to be a mother,’ Colin said, interrupting her.

Tara saw red. It wasn’t so much what he said, but rather the way he said it. She was trying to reassure herself that she had a million different options for what to do with her life and now Colin was implying that she had some kind of womanly duty to give him a child. Whenever Colin made a comment like that, even by mistake, a switch flipped within her.

‘Oh, because that’s all women are supposed to do, is it? My only possible destiny is to bear my husband a child, is it?’ she said, with fury in her eyes.

‘I didn’t mean it like that. Jesus, there you go again, turning into a completely different person.’

‘I’m a Gemini, Colin. You knew you were getting a two-for-one deal when you married me,’ Tara said.

‘You can’t keep using star signs to justify everything, Tara,’ Colin sighed.

‘That’s such a Taurus thing to say,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

‘Why can’t we just discuss other—’

‘Colin, I know you want to keep talking about this,’ Tara interrupted. ‘But I’ve made my decision and I won’t be discussing it again,’ Tara said without emotion.

It was in that precise moment that Tara felt an invisible rift opened up between herself and Colin. They had been slowly growing apart for a long time, but now, without the shared goal of starting a family, she feared something had changed within the deeper workings of their marriage.

Silence returned to the car.

As Colin drove home, he found himself deeply troubled by Tara’s point of view. He couldn’t understand why she had decided so quickly on both their behalf to stop trying for a child. He felt as if his right to have an opinion on the matter had been stripped from him, and yet her decision affected the rest of his life. Most of his savings had gone into IVF, and if they gave up now, it would all have been a complete waste. But as expensive as it was, it was a small price to pay for their dream. He couldn’t just stand idly by and let her give up on their shared goal based on some excuse about destiny.

Colin didn’t share Tara’s mysticism. He often joked that he was a ‘born-again atheist’, and that humans were just tiny specs of dust living on a rock floating through space. Many found his perspective quite cynical, but Colin actually found it quite inspiring. If life was meaningless, he figured the meaning of life was to give your life meaning. If there was any law that the universe followed, it was Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. There would always be obstacles to overcome, but that made winning all the more rewarding. Achieving your dreams meant nothing without some adversity.

That was what life was all about.

But starting a family was a team effort and his teammate had seemingly walked off the pitch just because they missed three shots. Life wasn’t about the goals you missed, it was about the ones you scored. And there was still plenty of time left in the match. Where was Tara’s fighting spirit, the one that he had fallen in love with?

Colin and Tara had always fought like cat and dog, that was nothing new. In fact, the running joke in their marriage was that Tara believed in love at first sight but Colin believed in love at first fight. After she had poured him that Guinness in O’Malley’s eighteen years ago, he immediately began arguing that the Guinness was much better in Dublin than it was in Galway. As she went on a long-winded rant about how much of a chancer he was, he was becoming enchanted by the fiery, emerald-eyed redhead. It was the first in a long history of fights over the stupidest things. But they were always tongue-in-cheek, always playful. For years, arguing was practically part of their foreplay. Colin sometimes found himself initiating a lovers’ quarrel over something silly just for the mind-blowing sex to which it would eventually lead.

But that sense of playfulness had slowly evaporated over the years. Sex had become a chore, a purely functional means to an end. It lacked any kind of emotion or spontaneity. Tara had her ovulation dates marked in her calendar and it made lovemaking so mechanical. The entire sexual experience had somehow become desexualized. It felt more like two mammals mating than two people making love. It was like they forgot to have sex during sex.

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