Chapter 18 #2
“I did,” Chloe said guiltily. “And I’m sorry for being angry with you before.”
“Don’t worry, hon. It’s a lot to get your head around. So, tell me, have you slept with him yet?” Wendy asked, her voice full of delight.
“No. I wanted to ask you something. How do you deal with Patrick not having a past, a life? Do you talk about it?”
“Not really. We mainly talk about me,” Wendy said with a tinkling laugh.
“No, seriously, Patrick does have a life—a life with me. We have so many shared memories now, and they are all real. At the start, he’d tell me about his ‘family’ or his childhood, but I didn’t need that level of role-play to feel connected.
” Wendy paused. “Think of the best relationship you’ve been in.
You loved their company in the present, right?
Their appeal wasn’t a past that you weren’t a part of.
You just need to recalibrate your expectations, hon. ”
“I got a bill,” Chloe said quietly, “for all the things he’s been buying me.”
“Oh, I would have warned you about that if I’d known you were going back, they sneak it into the Ts and Cs.
Patrick bought me a Gucci bag on our second date; I’m still paying it off.
” She cackled. “Honestly, it’s not a big deal.
Now I’m set up, he works four hours a day for an online fraud detection company, so he’s contributing financially.
” She paused. “Look, if it’s not for you, it’s not for you, but if it is, you can make it work.
You’re in control, that’s the beauty of it. ”
“What if you want children? Theoretically speaking,” Chloe asked. “How would that even work?”
Wendy didn’t miss a beat. “Easy. You find a donor, then you get your partner’s programming upgraded to the Perfect Father package.
PP can arrange it all. It’s expensive, but probably no more than a full-time nanny.
I know someone who’s done it. The Perfect Father does every night feed, reads all the literature, can rock a baby for hours without complaining.
She’s the only mum I know who doesn’t look like crap,” Wendy laughed.
Chloe tried to laugh too, but the sound caught in her throat as the Rubik’s cube twisted again.
Was this dystopian horror or a perfect emancipation from the patriarchy?
She didn’t know. What she did know was that she couldn’t laugh about it like Wendy could.
As she walked back into Lincoln, she decided she would talk to Rob about his expenses, tell him to stop spending her money on buying her presents. But when she opened the door to their room, she found a scene she wasn’t expecting.
Classical music was playing. Rob had moved the desk to the middle of the room. On it was her favorite iced latte and a square package, perfectly wrapped in lilac tissue paper, tied with a dark purple bow.
“What’s all this?” she asked, looking from the desk back to Rob.
“Open it,” he said, rubbing his palms together, eyes bright with anticipation, eager for her to see whatever it was.
She walked across to the desk and picked up the parcel, carefully unwrapping the bow, then ripping open the tissue paper.
Inside was a leather-bound notebook, the kind that felt too beautiful to write in.
The cover was a deep matte purple, smooth under the fingers, with just enough texture to catch the light.
Along the spine, delicate gold foiling traced an elegant border, like the gilded edge of an old spell book.
When she opened it, she found thick cream pages, lined in the subtlest gray.
The edges of the paper were gilded too, catching in the sunlight that shone through the window.
It smelled of bookshops and new leather.
“What’s this for?” she asked, unable to hide her delight.
“One more thing,” Rob said, taking a silver fountain pen from his pocket. Then he moved to pull out the chair for her. “I thought you could write something.”
She blinked up at him. “Write what?”
“Anything. It doesn’t matter. You keep saying you haven’t written anything in three years, so let’s write something now, then that won’t be true anymore.” He paused. “Do you like the notebook? They had pink and red too, but I thought purple for you. I can run and exchange it if—”
“I love it, thank you,” she said, genuinely touched.
Rob looked so hopeful, and the notebook was probably the nicest notebook she’d ever owned. She couldn’t exactly bring up his spending now.
Rob leaned over, kissed her neck, opened the first page, then put the pen in her hand.
“ ‘Once upon a time…,’ ” he said, eyes warm with encouragement. She looked up at him, affection softening her expression. “ ‘Act one, scene one’?”
“You’re very sweet, but it’s not quite as easy as that.”
“Okay, not a story, just an idea then, a character, a place,” he said, laying his hand on her back.
She closed her eyes briefly. Lovely as the sentiment was, she knew a new notebook wasn’t going to solve her writer’s block.
But then as she looked down at the blank page, an idea started to flicker in the dark.
A boy in Ireland, waiting to see a painting…
All the things he did while he was waiting.
Maybe he never even got to see it. It would be like Waiting for Godot but with heart, about all the things that happen while you’re waiting for something to happen.
Then she felt it, that little spark of electricity, the glitter of a new idea, full of possibility. Because there is nothing quite as perfect as a story you haven’t written yet.