Page 63 of Fling

‘I’m just saying, lower your expectations. Better to be pleasantly surprised than utterly disappointed.’

‘OMG!’ Tara yelled suddenly. ‘I’ve just realized I have a new problem. Colin is no longer sleeping on the couch. And I can’t talk to Jack if Colin is lying in bed beside me! What the hell am I going to do now?’

‘That’s easy, just start a fight with him,’ Emily said.

‘I promised our counsellor that I wouldn’t start any fights. And if I do, Colin will use it against me in therapy. And I don’t want to give him any ammunition,’ Tara said.

‘Then you make him start the fight . . .’ Emily said deviously.

‘I’m listening . . .’

‘You’re going to have to peeve-bomb him.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Peeve-bombing is a strategy I made up to get men to lose interest in me. It’s when you use all of their pet peeves against them at once. For example, if I’m with a guy I don’t like, I won’t dump him directly. Instead, I’ll ask him what exact time he was born at so I can do a full astrological birth-chart reading. Do you catch my drift?’ Emily explained.

‘OK, that’s clever, actually,’ Tara said, intrigued by the idea. ‘What other kind of things should I do?’

‘Try to take over his space in the house as much as possible. Make him feel like the couch is the only place he can have some peace and quiet.’

‘Got it. What else?’

‘Hmm, let’s see . . . I bet he’d hate it if you said you were going vegan.’

‘Oh, that’s a good one,’ Tara said, making a mental note.

‘But the best way to annoy any man is to ask him this one hypothetical question.’

‘What question?’

‘Ask him if he’d still love you if you were a worm,’ Emily said with an evil smirk. ‘Trust me, he’ll lose it.’

Chapter 21

Colin sat at his office desk on Tuesday, unable to perform the most basic of spreadsheet tasks, even on his usual autopilot mode. His mind was adrift in a sea of uncertainty. He had opened Fling a total of thirty-four times that morning to check to see if Claire would appear online. Searching for her green light had become a borderline obsession.

He even had to turn off his phone notifications temporarily. Every time his phone made any kind of noise, he checked it frantically in the hopes it would be Claire. So far, however, his cold-turkey approach wasn’t working. His infatuation with her was like an open wound. He wanted to touch it constantly. But he had to let the wound heal.

Colin knew he needed to focus all his energy into saving his marriage with Tara. The only problem was that he couldn’t imagine a future with her that didn’t involve children. They had spent many a night in their youth having pillow talk about starting a family in the future. Well, now it was the future and it was time to take action. There were still so many options open to them. Surrogacy, adoption, foster children; why wouldn’t Tara even consider these? And there was still a very good chance of IVF working, especially if Tara would swallow her pride and ask Celine to refer them to her fertility specialist friend.

Maybe that was the next move. Tara was too proud to ask Celine. But what if she didn’t have to? Perhaps it was up to him to take initiative. Being too proud to ask for help had always been Tara’s tragic flaw. He had seen her completely burn out on more than one occasion because she thought asking for help implied weakness. Maybe it was his duty as her husband to recognize her inability to ask for help and bite the bullet for her. Perhaps it wasn’t about what Tara wanted, it was about what she needed.

Colin decided to ask Celine himself. He found her number in his contacts and took a deep breath as he hit the call button.

‘Hello?’ Celine answered.

‘Hi Celine, it’s Colin, from across the road,’ he said awkwardly, having never called her before.

‘Oh Colin, what a surprise! Don’t tell me my dogs got onto your lawn again!’

‘No, no, nothing like that. I was calling about something you said a few months back. You mentioned that you were friendly with some IVF doctor?’

‘Oh yes, Dr Guillermo Ferreira-Hernández. He’s the top fertility specialist in the country.’

‘How do you spell that?’ Colin said, reaching for a pen to look him up.

‘Oh goodness, I don’t know off the top of my head. Most people just call him The Brazilian because he makes your lady parts feel brand new. I know a woman who was forty-nine when she went to him and she got pregnant on the first round. Hand to God,’ Celine said.

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