Page 5 of Fling

The stone-clad exterior walls looked like jagged little puzzle pieces that amounted to the home of Tara’s dreams. The farmhouse chic interior made it feel like the cottage she grew up in, albeit a lot bigger. It was a behemoth to behold but she knew she would fill it with life, laughter and love, although Colin had forbidden any décor that read ‘Live, Laugh, Love’. He did allow her, however, to get a plaque for above the front door with the Irish proverb ‘Is glas iad na cnoic i bhfad uainn’, which meant ‘Faraway hills are always greener’. It was supposed to remind her to appreciate what she had.

But now, as she opened the front door, the warm shades that lit up the front of the house were replaced by an icy chill of stark, blue reality. The size of the house meant that it was always cold, as if no amount of heat could feed the insatiable beast. She always thought the warmth of children would one day defrost its frozen hearth.

It seemed she had been wrong.

When she got into bed that night, Tara felt an overwhelming emptiness in her chest. At thirty-six years of age, with her dreams of motherhood shattered, she felt as if somewhere along the line, she had made some mistake, some kind of wrong turn that brought her away from her destiny.

Meeting Colin, finding her dream home, all of these things had just happened effortlessly. It was almost as if the more she wanted a child, the more unlikely it became. She felt like she was at a crossroads with no signposts to tell her which road led where and no spiritual compass to help her chose the path intuitively.

She had always believed that manifesting her future would lead her along her path to the life of her dreams. She still believed in destiny but she no longer felt it was on her side. She always felt as if the universe was rooting for her. Now, it felt like destiny had deserted her. Perhaps her fate wasn’t something she would relish but rather something she would simply have to accept. Eventually, she came to a stark realization.

Tara had lost faith in fate.

Fate, however, had not lost faith in Tara.

Chapter 2

SIX MONTHS LATER

On a mid-September morning, Tara awoke to a feeling of emptiness that had become all too familiar. She looked over at Colin who was still fast asleep and snoring with the subtlety of a chainsaw. Her 7 a.m. alarm was ringing in her ear and she considered hitting snooze. There were times recently where she considered jeopardizing her entire career for a few extra minutes in bed.

‘Turn off the alarm,’ Colin groaned, waking up.

Colin didn’t start work until 9.30 a.m., which gave him a thirty-minute lie-in every morning. She would have killed for that. But there was no use in complaining. The day had begun whether she wanted it to or not. She got out of bed and headed for a quick piping-hot shower. She knew her hair was due a wash but she couldn’t bear the thought of blow-drying it, so she opted for a spray of her trusty dry shampoo instead. Although she found herself using more and more of it each time she put off washing her hair. After that, Tara brushed her teeth, applied an invisible amount of make-up and got dressed into a white blouse and a grey pantsuit.

When she walked into the kitchen, she went to make herself a coffee but found there were no cups in the cupboard.

There were never any cups in the cupboard any more.

Tara had the household chore of loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher every night while Colin had the role of emptying the clean dishes out every morning. The problem was that Colin hadn’t emptied it for three mornings in a row now. And when the dishwasher was full, she couldn’t load it up, resulting in an overflow of dirty dishes in the sink. She knew she could empty the dishwasher herself but she refused to do it on principle. This was her life now.

She sighed and took a clean cup out of the machine to brew herself a pick-me-up. Lord knew she needed one.

The previous six months had been draining. By now, she had made peace with the idea of not becoming a mother but Colin refused to let it go. He had tried to bring it up on several occasions but Tara knew there was nothing to discuss. She had made up her mind and she desperately needed him to accept that fact so they could go back to the way things used to be. She wanted the life she had before the IVF failed, striking the heart of her marriage and leaving an agonizing wound. Their relationship needed to heal but Colin kept trying to pick at the scab.

As the days faded into weeks and the weeks into months, the rift between them had become greater and greater until eventually an ocean divided them in bed each night. She understood his pain but she also resented the way he tried to make her feel guilty for something out of her control. It broke Tara’s heart that she couldn’t have a child – but what good was it to continue failing? She wanted to focus on all the things she could do, not the one thing she couldn’t. But Colin saw this decision as selfish. Heaven forbid a woman have a destiny other than bearing a child.

Colin came down the stairs in his morning robe, an item of clothing she had slowly grown to loathe. Without saying anything to her, he began to root around the freezer for something.

‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.

‘I think we have two rib-eye steaks in here somewhere,’ he replied. ‘I’m going to defrost them for dinner.’

‘On the top right shelf.’

‘Ah,’ Colin said, grabbing the steaks and putting them down on the counter. ‘We’ve been eating too many microwave dinners recently. Be nice to have a proper meal.’

Tara knew this was a dig at her. It was true, she had become rather reliant on microwaveable meals but when Colin refused to lift a finger, why should she go above and beyond?

‘Are you going to unload the dishwasher today?’ Tara asked.

‘Sure, I’ll unload it when you go to work,’ Colin said.

‘You can’t just unload it now? It’s been full since Friday.’

‘Do you need a cup?’

‘No, I got one myself.’

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