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night, before we slept, we promised each other that if we still felt trapped when the twins were eighteen and independent we’d give each other the freedom to pursue the life we would have led if we had not been so heedless.
    I wonder if Jake ever remembers that hurt-filled night. I doubt it. Each row is a fresh one to him, unencumbered by the past whereas mine are weighted with history and etched on my memory cells. This is a female trait, he believes, rather like premenstrual tension or the ability to carry hot objects to the table without scalding my hands.
    We left our twins at the airport last month. They never looked back. No last, lingering glances, their eyes eloquent with gratitude for eighteen years of nurturing and unconditional love. Instead, they looked ahead to their futures, unaware that their departure would snap the last fragile link holding their parent’s marriage together. I’ve poked at this truth, worried it like a dentist prodding a tooth nerve. I’ve waited for a reaction, the jerk of reality that signals pain. Nothing. Our marriage has a serene surface, a veneer that has taken us to the point where Jake seeks solitude in his music room rather than opening my door to say goodnight to me.
    Ed Jaworski’s brutal decision has proved that a contract is not worth the paper it’s written on. Vows can be broken and the sky does not fall down. What I feel for Jake is affection and gratitude for the years we’ve shared. I remember what it was like in the beginning but that flame has cooled into ash. Only an odd spark reminds us of what we’ve lost… and how it all began.

    I danced with Jenny , handbags at our feet, short skirts swirling over leggings, stonewashed denim jackets. We were seventeen years of age and dizzy with the wonder of it. The mirror ball spun a kaleidoscope of colour across our upturned faces. Moonflowers exploded, strobes pulsated, and I danced harder, my eyes swallowing the sight of him. His black hair streaked with blond, skin-tight jeans, leather vest — rangy and sexy and ready. Two years since we’d met in Monsheelagh but all that was behind me and I was living in the thrilling, exhilarating now of a new beginning.
    Alone at last, away from the sweat and the noise and the crush of heaving bodies, he unhooked my bra. My body glowed with a hot, shivery excitement, as dangerous as it was demanding. His tongue caressed my nipples, strummed my pleasure, darts of fire low in my stomach. He’d borrowed his mother’s car for the night. We laughed over the First Affiliation posters in the back seat. Something about a Divorce Referendum. Eleanor’s smiling mouth and watchful eyes staring at us. We shoved the posters to the floor and came together again. My legs trembled, opened under the pressure of his hand, his slow deliberate journey between my thighs, delicately stroking upwards and he, sensing my nervousness, waited until I relaxed and the smear of desire glistened his fingers.
    Fate was waiting in the wings, sly smiling, as I pulled down his jeans, touched him, held him, guided him in. We were meant to be together, one flesh, one beat. Our future was shaping but the present was all that mattered as we lay there, pressed limb to limb, mouth to mouth, ready to be engulfed, engorged, ravished. How was it that such a moment would so easily be forgotten in the dread that followed?
    My mother was the first to guess. Dismay in Sara’s eyes as she stood outside the bathroom door listening to the retching sounds from within. Morning sickness in all its misery consumed me for the first three months. I emerged eventually, goose pimples on my skin, eyes streaming, and stood facing her in my school uniform, unable any longer to hide the truth.
    I met Jake’s mother for the first time and was terrified by this impeccably groomed woman, who summed me up in a glance as ‘trouble’ then set about resolving the problem as swiftly as possible. Her contacts were excellent in the mother and