A Question of Love by Isabel Wolff

She’s the most cherished thing in my life—she means everything to me, Laura, she really does—she’s the best thing, she really is…she’s just…the best, best thing…’ I was shocked to see his mouth quiver; his eyes were shimmering with sudden tears.
    ‘Luke,’ I whispered. I put my hand on his. He looked away, ashamed, then lowered his head.
    ‘Sorry,’ he croaked. ‘I get upset because Jess doesn’t live with me any more and I miss her. I miss her lovely little presence. I miss hearing her talk and sing, and play. I can’t bear seeing her empty room. Sometimes I just sit on her bed and cry.’
    ‘But you see her?’
    He nodded. ‘Every Saturday. And I often collect her from school.’
    ‘So it’s not too bad then.’
    He shrugged. ‘It could be worse—but I wanted to live with my child. Magda and I weren’t happy, but I would never have left her, because of Jessica.’
    ‘So why did you split up?’
    He heaved a weary sigh. ‘Because having been charmingly eccentric to begin with she began behaving in a seriously bizarre way…’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘Picking fights the whole time. Hiding my things, or even destroying them. I once took the car when she wanted it, and I’d just started the engine, when she threw a pair of crystal decanters that had belonged to my grandmother out of the window.’ He shuddered. ‘I can still remember the sound as they hit the path. She flushed her engagement ring down the loo. She was outrageously rude to my friends.’ He winced. ‘She’d walk out of dinner parties mid-course if someone said something she didn’t like.’
    ‘How embarrassing.’
    ‘It was. She even did it when we were at my boss’s house once—I was worried it could affect my career. She’d make these… awful scenes. I took her to the Dorchester for her birthday and she asked me to order for her while she went to the loo. So I ordered chicken, which I knew she liked, but when she saw it she started crying, really loudly—everyone was staring. So I whispered, “What’s the matter, Magda?” and she shouted, “But I wanted duck !!!”‘
    ‘Wow. Erm…why do you think she did things like that?’
    ‘She loved the drama—and the attention, of course. And she seemed to find normal married life boring, so she’d engineer these break-ups so that we could have wonderful makeups. But I just found it wearing.’
    ‘And didn’t you want more children?’
    ‘I did; she didn’t—perhaps because she’s an only child herself—but in any case by then it wasn’t looking good. I felt that she was trying to provoke a separation, which I didn’t want, because of Jess, so I did my best to keep calm. But then—and this is what really drove us apart—she began keeping goats.’
    ‘ Goats ? ‘ He nodded. Ah.
    ‘Pygmy goats. Her grandmother had kept them, apparently, in the Carpathians and they brought back happy memories. Anyway, I came home one day, and there was this tiny goat in the garden happily chomping on my dahlias. “Meet Heidi,” Magda said, with an air of triumph. So I thought to myself, fine, I can cope with a miniature goat—and I thought it might have a calming influence on Magda. But then, without telling me, she had Heidi mated, and she had twins—Sweetie and Ophelia. Then, a few months later, Heidi had two more—Phoebe and Yogi. And when I said I found it unreasonable to have so many, she laughed and said I’d wanted more kids, and now I’d got them. So there we were in fashionable Notting Hill with livestock in the back garden. Everyone was sniggering.’
    ‘So that’s why you laughed when I asked what “caprine” meant.’
    He nodded. ‘There’s not much I don’t know about them. They were sweet actually. I was rather fond of them.’
    ‘Don’t they smell?’
    ‘Not the females and the castrated males. But of course they’d get out, and I’d have to go and look for them, or they’d wander into the house and I’d find them on top of the wardrobe;