Dear Thing Read Online Free PDF

laptop and powered it up on the kitchen table. It was better to keep busy, or at least to keep her hands busy.
    That was where she was, squinting at the screen, when Ben came downstairs just after six, rubbing his face. His eyes were puffy, the T-shirt and pyjama bottoms he’d slept in wrinkled. ‘How are you?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m doped up on Ibuprofen.’ She put the cursor in a new cell in the spreadsheet and carefully typed in
chocolate fondant
.
    ‘I’m glad you took some. You have a little bit more colour.’ He put his arms around her from behind as she sat. ‘Shall I make us some breakfast? You didn’t eat anything yesterday after we got back from hospital.’
    ‘Okay.’
    He looked more closely over the top of her head. ‘What are you doing? You’re not marking, are you?’
    ‘I’m not marking.’ She typed
vanilla
, and then checked the calendar, deleted it, and typed
Victoria
instead. She was careful not to look at him, not at his slept-in clothes nor the grief in his face. She couldn’t afford to change her mind.
    ‘What are you doing, then?’
    ‘I’ve made a spreadsheet of cakes,’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Do you know how many cakes I’ve made over the past six years? Take a guess. Don’t look.’ She covered the screen with one hand.
    ‘I’ve no idea.’
    ‘Just a rough estimate. I’ve made a cake for all of our birthdays, for Posie’s, for your dad’s, Christmas cakes. Cakes for bake sales at St Dom’s and for my tutor group. Village fêtes. Then there were all those coffee mornings for the Fertility Support group. And the ones I’ve brought round to dinners and lunches. Guess how many.’
    ‘Sweetheart, I know you need a distraction. But you should be resting.’
    ‘I’ve counted eighty-six cakes. That’s counting a batch of cupcakes as one cake, though I’m not sure that’s precisely accurate. And I’d usually make four lemon drizzles at once and freeze some, because the fertility ladies kept on asking for them. I’ve counted that as one cake too.’
    ‘Okay,’ said Ben. ‘You’ve been very prolific in the cake-baking area. You’re very good at it.’
    ‘Do you know how many I’ve eaten? Not the whole cake, obviously. I mean a slice.’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘None.’ She put her finger on one spreadsheet entry. ‘Remember that coffee-walnut cake with the espresso ganache I made for your birthday? I really would’ve fancied that.’
    ‘You can’t have baked eighty-six cakes and not eaten any of them.’
    ‘I didn’t even lick the spoon.’
    Ben paused at that.
    ‘But,’ said Claire, ‘I don’t have to worry about that now. I’ve decided, Ben. I’m through.’
    ‘Through with what?’ She couldn’t see his face as he stood behind her. But she knew him. She could feel his expression in his hands.
    ‘With this,’ she said. ‘With all of this. The dieting to stay at the optimum BMI for fertility, the hormones, the injections. The down-regulating and the stimulations. Peeing on sticks. Having my eggs taken out of me and fertilized in a test tube and put back into me.’
    ‘You don’t mean that,’ said Ben. ‘You’re upset because it didn’t work this time. But it’ll work the next time, Claire.’
    ‘I do mean it.’ She closed her laptop with a snap.
    Ben took his arms from around her. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her, closely, eye to eye. She gathered her courage and looked him in the face.
    ‘You haven’t had to do what I’ve had to do,’ she said. ‘All you had to do was come in a cup.’
    ‘I’ve been through it too,’ he said quietly.
    ‘You’re not bleeding our child out right now,’ said Claire. Ben flinched.
    ‘That’s not fair,’ he said.
    ‘I’m not feeling very fair. None of this is fair. I was at a baby shower yesterday when I started miscarrying.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not going to any more showers, either. Why should I torture myself?’
    ‘Well, I can understand that. But we mustn’t give up.