Free These Days of Ours by Juliet Ashton

younger!’
    ‘Kate,’ said Charlie, ‘is twenty-three.’
    Now it was Julian who Kate didn’t look at. ‘Not exactly past it!’ she laughed toothily.
    ‘There’s plenty of time,’ said Julian.
    ‘No time like the present.’ Becca, known for her tenacity, chose to pursue the point, despite her hosts’ body language.
    ‘We’ve got a lot on our plate,’ said Julian.
    ‘This apartment isn’t what you’d call child friendly,’ said Kate.
    They were still smiling, still entwined.
    Kate went on, wondering as she did so why she had to justify herself. ‘I want to make a mark at work before I have babies.’
    ‘My wife,’ said Julian, ‘is too busy to have babies. Sometimes,’ he laughed, ‘she’s too busy for
me
!’
    Kate wondered had she imagined it, but no, she hadn’t. Julian had infused the joke with meaning, as if sending her a message above the others’ heads. Perhaps he’d taken lessons
from her mother, who was conversant in the Irish dark arts of subtle scolding. She countered by keeping her own tone light. ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t say that.’
    Their sex life was a subject they returned to often.
    Where’s the wild girl I married?
Julian would gripe as they sat up in bed reading, a radio news programme mumbling in the background.
    Having explained once, twice, thirty times, Kate would attempt to explain again.
    I get tired because I work hard. And I bloody love it
.
    She couldn’t find the language to go further without hurting him. To point out that when he got home all he had to do was pull off his tie, pour a drink and gripe about his business deals,
in comparison to Kate’s race around the supermarket, preparation of dinner, serving of dinner, clearing away of dinner, all the while nodding sympathetically at the aforementioned gripes.
    Is it any wonder I don’t feel like performing the Dance of the Seven Veils on demand?
What’s more, Julian liked some added value in the bedroom. At the end of a long day,
suspenders held no allure for Kate, who longed instead for fleecy pyjamas.
    ‘We’ll get around to babies!’ she grinned.
    ‘Excuses excuses!’ Becca was in full schoolmarm mode. She prodded Julian, as she made her points. ‘This little one inside me needs a playmate!’ Prod. ‘What are you
so frightened of?’ Prod. ‘Man up, Julian, and put your lovely wife in the pudding club!’ Prod.
    ‘If you must know,’ Julian said, shaking off her finger more brusquely than he would ever do sober, ‘we’ve been trying since our wedding night.’
    Outside, Chelsea Harbour came alive with the first of Big Ben’s midnight chimes sounding from dozens of full volume television sets.
    ‘No joy. Nada. Not even a scare,’ said Julian bitterly. ‘Happy now, Becca? Never content until you’ve gone too bloody far, are you?’
    The last chime boomed over the silence in the apartment.
    Julian wrenched back the sliding doors as the sky erupted in gunpowder flowers of scarlet and gold.
    ‘Happy New Millennium!’ Kate grabbed Becca and kissed her cheeks. They clung to each other, whispering
Sorry
and
It’s OK
.
    Julian and Charlie slapped each other’s backs in the tentative, jokey manner patented by Englishmen who can’t relate to each other emotionally.
    Gratefully relinquishing Charlie, Julian pulled his wife to him as if rescuing her from terrorists. ‘Happy new everything. I’m an arsehole,’ he said into her hair. ‘2000
will be our year, I promise.’
    The moments when Julian opened up to her like this, like a flower whose centre she could suddenly see, still had the power to stir Kate.
If only you’d let me in more often
. She
suddenly wanted to be the woman he needed, the lover he craved.
    Kate kissed him. Like the wild girl he wanted her to be, her face was wet with tears that she could pass off as New Year sentimentality.
    ‘Don’t cry! You’ll start me off!’ yowled Becca. ‘My hormones are all over the place.’
    ‘Happy New Year, Kate,’ said Charlie, at her