Page 52 of Midnight in Paris

‘Sophie, I?—’

‘Because youhaveto want to, Tom. Otherwise, you can wait. Maybe start again with… Look, I don’t have a choice. But you… well, you’ve got years and years.’

‘Listen, Soph?—’

‘And I would have told you, if I’d known. Before we’d married. Before a lot of it, really. You have to believe me. I haven’t kept?—’

‘Soph, will you shut the fuck up and actually let me speak?’ The expletive made her look. Not the word itself, but the way it was delivered – with a smile. A little amusement. Had he not understood?

His eyes were on hers. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Yes what?’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s have a family. Now.’

‘But Tom, we’re only… I mean we wanted to be together first, didn’t we? We wanted to explore and live our twenties, have adventures and?—’

He shrugged again. ‘I can’t think of a much greater adventure than creating a human or two, can you?’

‘Well, no…’

‘Besides,’ he reached his hand and grabbed hers, waited until her eyes met his and looked directly at her, seriously. ‘Soph, we have our whole lives ahead of us. So we have a baby early. There are advantages. They’ll be off our hands by the time we’re forty-five. We can live out all our adventures then!’

‘At forty-five? Isn’t that a bit… well, past it?’

‘Forty-five is the new thirty-five,’ he said, with another playful shrug. ‘I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.’

She felt herself begin to smile. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Of course. Do I want to have lots of sex? Hell, yes. And do I want to make you happy? Hell, yes,’ he said, grinning. ‘And do I want to have a family with you?’ He paused. ‘I can’t think of anything that would make me happier.’

She stood then, almost knocking the glass and leant over the table to kiss him. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back slightly, laughing. ‘When I said we could get on with it, I didn’t mean we’d try right here in the restaurant!’ he joked.

A couple seated near them clearly overheard and glanced at her, half amused, half alarmed.

But she was so happy she didn’t care.

‘Thank you, Tom,’ she said, sinking back into her seat and feeling her body let go of the tension it had held for the last fortnight. And feeling something else come over her. An excitement, an urgency, the thrill of imagining a different sort of future – one full of possibilities, hope and life.

‘No, thank YOU,’ he said, taking a sip of his wine. The tension had left his face too; she should have told him from the start instead of putting him through the wringer.

‘What for?’

‘For loving me? For wanting to bear my hundreds of children?—’

‘Steady on!’

‘And,’ he said with a smile, ‘for getting my mum off my back. She’s been giving me grandmother hints for months!’

25

THE SIXTH SUMMER – 2016

She zipped up the canvas pouch and added it to her suitcase. Thermometer, ovulation sticks, a little piece of rose quartz that some magazine had highlighted for its fertility-enhancing properties – she didn’t believe in all that, but there was nothing wrong with being thorough.

She didn’t hear Tom come up behind her, so she jumped when he slipped his arms around her. ‘Finished yet?’ he said.

‘Just packing the baby-making stuff,’ she said. ‘Don’t want to leave anything behind.’

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