‘Yes, I know you do. But just answer me this – is he giving up everything for you? Would he be giving up his dreams, and his career, for you?’
Every question was like a body blow. Tara was struggling to keep a lid on her emotions. ‘Look, all of this will change both our lives, not just mine. It’s just happening sooner than we had thought . . .’
It wasn’t an answer. She knew it. Holly knew it.
‘Oh, so you’d discussed starting a family, then?’
‘Well, no, not yet, but—’
‘But . . .?’
Tara swallowed. ‘It was . . . understood.’
Holly’s eyes narrowed. ‘Understood. Right.’
Tara looked down, feeling the first tear fall. It made her furious to be crying, as though this was the first sign of her disintegration into someone lesser – evidence of her changing hormones and new life path. ‘Life doesn’t always run to a timetable, Hols.’
Holly sighed as a sob escaped her; she could never bear to see anyone upset. She stepped in and roughly gave Tara a hug. ‘No, I know it doesn’t.’ They embraced in the morning chill, but it was awkward and stiff, neither one of them finding resolution in the rapprochement. ‘But – oh shit! That anatomy module does – and . . .’ She pulled back sharply and double-checked the time on her phone. ‘I’m going to be late. I’ve gotta run.’
‘Oh God!’ Tara automatically went to jog beside her too, but Holly stopped her with an outstretched arm.
‘No, don’t run, you should take it easy. I’ll tell them you got delayed en route.’
‘But—’
‘You mustn’t exert yourself now. And anyway, you’ll only be a few minutes behind me. I’ll save you a seat.’ She gave a shrug as she sped off, but Tara knew what that shrug meant: what did it matter now, how late she was? She was never going to be a doctor. Anything done after this point was just lip service to a dream she had tossed aside. She was going to be Mrs Alex Carter instead. Wife and mother.
Chapter Three
The front door closed with a slam, followed a second later by the thud of a bulging leather satchel hitting the encaustic-tiled hall floor.
‘God, that smells good!’ Alex came through and planted a kiss in the curve of her neck and shoulder. His nook, he called it. She turned her face towards him and he kissed her on the mouth. ‘I missed you.’
‘I missed you too,’ she murmured, and she felt him hesitate, knowing that to kiss her again would inevitably lead . . .
He pulled back, indecision in his eyes, the vestiges of his working day still clinging to him like sticky buds. ‘Man, what a day.’ He tossed his jacket over the back of the chair and walked across the small kitchen. It was a perfect square, with eighties orange pine cabinets and white ceramic knobs. The splashback tiles were decorated with hens – incongruous for a kitchen in Kensington – and four rushback chairs were set round a small painted table that had once been turquoise but was now white, with just flecks of the old colour peeping through in places. Even stressed, Alex looked horizontally relaxed in his rumpled shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows and jeans that hung low on his hips.
‘Busy one?’ she asked as he pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge. The cork had been replaced at a jaunty angle after he’d opened it at dinner last night. It released again with a soft pop.
He sighed. ‘No, just . . . frustrating. MacLennan’s paper got picked up by Proceedings so he’s been strutting about all day like the cock he is—’
Proceedings was the Royal Society’s flagship publication and was to him what The Lancet was to her.
‘He reckons it’ll get the attention of that donor he’s been chasing and finally some—’ He rubbed his fingers together, meaning money. Funding.
‘Ah.’ There was no love lost between her boyfriend – fiancé! she corrected herself – and James MacLennan, the other PhD student in their department. Though Alex was brilliant – gifted, passionate and instinctive about his work – his rise through academia had been unorthodox. His love of biology had started in the fields of the farms and communes they lived on as his family travelled through the Golden State and he’d been entirely home-schooled, with no formal qualifications whatsoever. He had been seventeen when a botanist visiting the farm they were living on at the time offered Alex the chance to assist him on a research trip to Honduras in Central America. Six weeks had turned into five years as his carefree childhood quickly found a focus in the field. From Honduras, he went on to Nicaragua, Brazil and Costa Rica, at one point studying only twenty miles from where Tara and her family had holidayed every year since she was a little girl. Along the way he became an expert on tropical forest habitats, and particularly on the effect of species decline on biodiversity. He had made a chance comment – on the abundance and range of butterflies in a given area as a marker of biodiversity health – to a professor, Robert Hamlyn, whom he’d met while changing a flat tyre on a jungle road on the way back to San José. Hamlyn was on his way home from an expedition for Imperial College London and, intrigued by Alex’s observation, had eventually invited him to study for a doctorate there, without even a bachelor’s degree to his name. Hamlyn had even offered to oversee his research.
It was the unorthodox nature of Alex’s induction into the world of academia that rankled with James MacLennan and made him such a thorn in Alex’s side. As James saw it, he had grafted and gained access to Hamlyn’s inner sanctum the hard way – picking up degrees first at Edinburgh and then Cambridge – whilst the ‘American hipster’ had simply curried favour to get there.
‘Here.’ Alex held out a glass of wine for her.
‘Oh. I’ve already got a drink.’ She reached for her glass of Purdey’s. ‘Sorry.’
‘So you don’t want
