Chapter 19
Sabri woke in the night with a feeling of deep sadness.
It had been a long time since she’d seen her family so animated, so caught up in an idea, so together as they’d been earlier.
And Darren’s comment about medical school had touched her to the heart.
She could never admit to the children how disappointed she was with her life, how she fought every day with a sense of wasted potential.
And yes, downright jealousy of those who had what should have been hers.
A chance encounter, a momentary failure of judgement, and the bright, shining path ahead of her had turned into a dead end. She’d have been a great doctor. A consultant by now. Their lives would have been so different.
A familiar voice at the back of Sabri’s head reminded her that, had she finished medical school, she probably wouldn’t have met and married Jason.
The kids, in the form they existed now, would never have been born.
As usual, Sabri told herself that she wouldn’t change a thing.
That nothing was worth giving up the children she had now, the family she and Jason had created.
She never asked herself whether, deep down, she truly believed it.
There was a faint, artificial glow in the room and Jason’s side of the bed was cold. Rousing herself, Sabri saw her husband at the dressing table, the laptop open in front of him.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
He started, shutting down the screen, but not before she’d spotted the website he’d been looking at. Watches of Switzerland.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’ Jason closed the laptop and got up.
In the dim light from the street she watched him cross the room in his boxers.
He’d been so taut when she’d met him, so full and defined and solid, as though he carried more blood around than most. Such a big, raw, physical presence.
In the beginning, she’d told herself it didn’t matter that he wasn’t her intellectual equal, that good principles, a strong moral core and innate kindness counted for so much more.
Plus, he’d been gorgeous in the early days, way out of her league.
Now, when he moved, his flesh danced around his frame. ‘Are you going to contact those solicitors tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘I’ll try. If you promise not to spend any money we don’t have.’
‘Yet.’
He pulled down his boxers before he slipped back into bed and she felt her heart sinking. But they had sex so rarely now and he always took it personally if she turned him down. How can I not take it personally? he’d protested once. I can’t think of anything more personal.
He moved close, pressing his body against hers. He was cool from the night air and she felt her skin goose-pimpling. He nuzzled the side of her face, breathing into her ear. ‘What shall we do now?’
‘If you order a Swiss watch I’ll cut your cock off,’ she replied, as she felt it press into her.