My nausea had passed now and I was feeling furious. Fabian told me she understood my fury, but she was also hopeful. We did not have to lead the way men before us had led, she said. She saw a new era dawning, in which society was able to appreciate different leaders had different strengths. Our corporate workforce currently favoured IQ over EQ, but there was a growing understanding that when corporations cared about their employees it had positive benefits not just for their culture, but also for their bottom line. I hoped she was right because, all of a sudden, I was looking down the barrel of needing to support a family and, to be honest, it all felt a bit hard. I still had absolutely no idea what that was going to look like.
I guess it was around this time I decided that I was going to learn everything I could about running a small business, because who had time to wait around for corporate culture to grow a heart? I wanted to make up my own rules—rules that were flexible and fair, and would make sense to our soon-to-be family.
In my early pregnancy, I’d often have flashes of boldness like this, and then, when the morning sickness returned, they’d just evaporate into impossibility. Yet with Fabian’s encouragement (and her insistence that I be a guest at every one of her training courses as part of my own ‘professional development’), I was able to keep returning there again and again, to this boldness. This story of possibility.
Marty arrived at 5 pm and we went straight to the Moroccan Soup Bar. Hana, the owner, found us a table quickly. After going through the menu, she asked if we had any food allergies or intolerances. When I said, ‘No soft cheese,’ she looked at me knowingly.
Marty and I and all our friends had been eating here since Hana opened the joint a couple of years back. It was a narrow space with terracotta-painted walls, jars of preserved lemons and a bookcase filled with pottery, and the food was, and is to this day, just brilliant. It was always full and always loud. Really loud. I’d never noticed how loud until that night.
The most famous dish—the chickpea bake—was also its most mysterious. Somewhere in the layers of yoghurt and butter and roasted almonds and pita bread there was another ingredient that none of us could quite work out.
When the dish was put on our table that night I took one whiff and knew immediately what at least one of those secret ingredients was—garlic. Motherfucking garlic. The scent made me feel so incredibly ill that all I could do was close my eyes and pray that I did not throw up. Was I really going to be denied the pleasure of this beautiful meal—one that had brought me so much joy? A rip had appeared in the fabric of life. I tried not to cry, but it was a fairly toothless attempt. Soon, big tears were dripping onto my plate.
Marty froze. ‘Are you okay?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘What do you need?’
I said, ‘I need fresh air.’
Immediately Marty stood up, went to the counter, and explained to Hana that I was not feeling well and we would have to leave. He tried to pay for our meal but she wouldn’t let him, just told him we should come back another day. ‘Go,’ she said, so we did.
The most awful feeling of fear and dread was rippling through me as Marty and I walked across the road to Edinburgh Gardens. It was dark outside, winter was coming. Marty linked his arm through my mine, and in stepped Frank with the thought: Do you even know this guy? I mean, yes, of course, I knew he was kind, and talented and that he loved me, but what the hell were we doing? And, also, that leather—I could not stand the smell of that leather jacket. I’d barely had time to grieve my break-up with Henry, and now I was having a baby with Marty?
As we walked, I started praying. Please, please, please, someone, something, give me a sign. I am absolutely terrified. Please let me know we’re doing the right thing.
We walked onto the cricket pitch. All around us stood dozens of tall, glorious trees, blowing in the wind. For some reason, the first line of my song ‘On This Side’ started rolling through my mind:
We were living in a tree house,
In the middle of the ’burbs …
I gazed at the trees all around us. Which one would I be most likely to build my house in? I wondered. There were tall ones and small ones, but the tree I chose was somewhere in between. It was the one I considered to be the most majestic. Without thinking, I said to Marty, ‘Of all the trees in this park, which one would you be most likely to build your house in?’ It was a silly question, really. I don’t know why I chose this as a test, but I did.
If Marty was aware it was a test, he didn’t let on. He just looked at the trees, sizing them up, considering. Then he pointed. ‘That one.’
Of all the trees in the park, he’d chosen the same tree I had. That was all I needed to know.
But if we were going to make this work, I knew then that I needed to start telling Marty the truth. I was going to have to run the risk of offending him. I could not be in a relationship where we were scared to tell each other hard and uncomfortable
