Babyville by Jane Green

the trick, and finally her suitcase is packed and she collapses on the sofa.
    And the key turns in the lock.
    Julia turns to look at the clock. It is six-fifteen in the morning. She doesn't say anything as Mark walks into the room, sits on the sofa facing her, unable to meet her eye.
    He looks terrible. He looks as though he is either very very drunk, or very very hung over, and Julia assumes he is hung over. His suit is crumpled, tie crooked, and his hair all over the place.
    Once upon a time Julia would have demanded to know where he had been, who he had been with, but it has been a long night, and she is too relieved to see him back to put him through an interrogation.
    “Are you going?” he whispers finally, and Julia melts, for he has seen the suitcase in the hall and has clearly presumed she is leaving him.
     
     “No,”
she says, “not exactly. Although sort of.” Mark looks up, confused. “I'm sorry for what I said earlier. I'm sorry for everything. I know we haven't been happy recently and I know I haven't been fun, and I really do appreciate how hard this has been for you, this bad luck, and not getting pregnant, and getting obsessed.
    “But at this moment in time the only thing I'm absolutely sure of is that I need some space, and I imagine, given your disappearance until”—she checks her watch—“a quarter past six in the morning, you do too. I'm not leaving as in leaving you, but I've decided to go to New York with Bella for a break. I need some time on my own, to think about my life, our life together, and I need to try and, I don't know . . . God, it sounds so stupid to say I need to find myself again, but that's how I feel.”
    “Are you really that unhappy?” he asks, and Julia thinks for a moment about what to say. She could lie, say that really she was fine, and that it wasn't so bad, and that it was something that would just blow over, but she's fed up with lying.
    “Yes,” she says. “And you are too. I'm not sure anymore whether that's because of not having a baby, or because of us. Because of what's happened to the relationship, or because of me, but I do know that neither of us is ever going to find out if I just stay here and we carry on in the same old routine.”
    “I take it you're leaving soon?”
    Julia nods.
    “Why don't I make some coffee?” she says, and he stands up just as she brushes past him on her way to the kitchen, and in that split second they look at one another, and both reach out and put their arms around one another. Mark squeezes Julia, who squeezes him in return, both clinging on as if for dear life, both shocked at this intensity, both trying to suppress the knowledge that hugs like this mean only one thing.
    Good-bye.
     
    Mark
insists on driving her to Heathrow, and even though she was planning on taking a cab to Bella's hotel and driving up with her, she knows that they are both fragile, and somehow being together, even after the night they have had, even though this isn't a breakup, it's just a holiday, somehow this semblance of normality is comforting.
    There isn't much to say on the way to the airport, clearly not helped by the fact that the lack of sleep all night has now rendered Julia almost incoherent with exhaustion.
     
     “I used
to do this all the time,” she yawns. “Why do I feel like I've been hit with a sledgehammer now?”
    “That's what happens when you reach thirty-three,” Mark says, who doesn't feel quite as bad, but thankfully still hasn't had to explain his absence.
    “I remember going clubbing,” Julia reminisces. “We wouldn't leave the house until midnight, and we wouldn't come back home until at least ten the next morning, and more often than not I wouldn't even bother going to bed that day. I used to be fine.”
    “And you managed to stay awake all night dancing without the help of any, er, illegal substances?”
    “Ah yes.” She smiles at her selective memory. “I suppose that might have helped.”
    Mark turns the