So, really this chapter starts where I have left Aging Well, if that makes sense, I am going back to AW, this is just a digression!

Home – Part 2 - 3 and a half years later.

"So, Nikki. How's your love-life?"

She rolls her eyes. Hates that question. Simply because it connotes gossip, girly-chats and she despises such sexist stereotypes of women that meet up for coffee. And yet here she was, and there they were, asking. She would have perhaps been less surprised had it been Leo. But these two women she has barely seen since she left for South Africa after their degree. Why do they want to know? Is it in the hope that she says "Absolutely shit, truth be told." And they are obliged to comfort her in that cringe inducing way that women do, over a skinny latte and a cake they "Shouldn't be eating."? Or is it because their own aren't worth mentioning?

She's about to disappoint them.

"Fine, thanks."

"Don't give us that!"

"Don't give you what?"

She gives a genuine frown, glancing into the pram and silently wishing Hannah to wake up, or throw up or…something that gives them the excuse to rush away. She shoogles the pram with her foot.

Their gaze is so condescending, and intense, it is as if they want her to have a problem.

"Nikki. You've had four kids. You're not telling me, your marriage is 'fine' in that department."

She thinks over their valid argument and quickly spots a flaw. Surely the fact that she has four children should suggest the complete opposite.

"It's fine! Everything's fine!"

She has to laugh at their faces, resembling how they may have looked had she turned up for lunch with an all-face-consuming tattoo.

"So…you're still getting it?"

She closes her eyes momentarily, in an attempt to breathe through the conversation and perhaps open her eyes on the other side.

"Yes!"

"More importantly, you're still enjoying it?"

"Oh dear god! Is that so bizarre?"

"And what about him, is he enjoying it?"

She's not sure if her smile comes across as a bit too smug or not;

"You'd have to ask him yourselves…"

"Where is Harry?"

For a moment she pauses and thinks. He's not at work. He had the day off. He's not with the kids, they're at school, nursery. In fact, he hadn't really specified.

"I don't know."

"You don't know where he is?!"

They give her a strange look. All raised eyebrows and twisted lips and wide eyes.

"What? He's a grown man, he can go where he likes. He's capable of going out without me and I him!"

They look at each other.

"Does he do that a lot?"

"No…well…recently he's…he's had drinks with people from work, and the other week some old friends from University got in touch, he went out with them…"

"Can you prove it?"

Suddenly she feels a little bit attacked. Like they've cornered her, and questioned her so viciously they are peeling everything back, the wallpaper of her whole existence before hammering at the wall, creating cracks that hadn't actually even existed before…

"I…well…no not really. Why?"

…or perhaps they had.

"Just watch yourself. You both deal with a lot of stress together. Work, four kids, bills. Things tend to go…stale…"

They up and leave, ironically wishing her well with a kiss and prodding Hannah in the face, waking her up. Soon she is left with her own dazed and confused thought process…and a screaming baby. She shakes it off and leaves soon after.

And she doesn't give it another thought until he comes in much later, while she is shifting stuff – that was meant for the spare room they never got round to having – around, attempting to get to the other side of the study. She reaches the other side, and she hears his keys in the lock and she takes a quick look at her phone.

9.45pm.

He pops his head round the door, wincing slightly at the heaps of junk, before smiling oddly at her.

"Where on Earth have you been?"

"Sorry, darling. Got caught up. I lost track of time."

She notes that he doesn't actually tell her where he's been.

Later on, they're sitting on the couch in silence. He's reading some journal or other, with a glass of wine in one hand and she is feeding the baby at the opposite side of the room. She can't help but think about things as they are. It is as if her estranged friends had sown a seed of thought into her subconscious and it had grown, fed by her own insecurities and having too much time on her hands, roots spreading, coiling into her conscious until she can barely think of anything else.

"Everything's fine!"

She's second guessing herself.

"Things tend to go…stale…"