Kathleen Tessaro 3-Book Collection: The Flirt, The Debutante, The Perfume Collector. Kathleen Tessaro

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       To the Lighthouse

      If you’ve ever held your own newborn child, you will know exactly what Jonathan Mortimer felt like, holding the tiny little girl, curled, fast asleep, in the crook of his arm. I won’t attempt to describe it, but suffice to say, it’s one of the great moments that life has to offer – a brief reprieve when all is well with the world, when mother and baby are safe, when relief and triumph mingle in a way that occurs all too rarely.

      The curtains were drawn around the bed but they didn’t block out the noise of the other women and babies on the ward or the smell of the curry that the Indian woman’s mother had brought to her exhausted daughter in the bed next to Amy’s.

      Still, Jonathan was oblivious. In fact it wasn’t until he looked up, beaming with ridiculous paternal pride at his ‘achievement’, that he noticed Amy was unusually subdued. She was still in a way that was entirely separate from the Hallmark moment he was experiencing, and it frightened him. So he said what he always said when he didn’t know what to say.

      ‘I love you, darling.’

      ‘Is that so, Johnny?’

      She hardly ever called him Johnny. It was a term of endearment that harked back to another life they’d shared, before the division of domestic labour forced them onto more formal terms.

      He laughed like a bad actor playing the Ghost of Christmas Present. ‘What’s all this? Of course I do! I think someone’s got a touch of the baby blues!’

      She turned away. ‘Maybe.’

      This was not his Amy; resilient, strident, list-making Amy.

      This was another version, but a version he recognized all the same. Again, it echoed back to the young woman he’d wooed and won, who used to lie next to him at night, trying on various future visions of happiness like a child trying on dressing-up clothes.

      The little girl turned fretfully in her sleep, clenching and unclenching her tiny red hand. Jonathan slipped his little finger into her palm and she settled again, holding on with all her might.

      And suddenly Jonathan saw what had been lost on him for many years.

      It was all so fragile.

      Only it wasn’t just the baby that seemed small and delicate. It was Amy and him, their whole life together.

      The thread that bound them was frayed and taut, stretched to the very point of snapping.

      He felt lost.

      He wanted her back; the Amy who knew what to do in every situation, who refused to be bowed by the grinding unrelenting business of everyday life, whose vision of their home and family usually blinded him with the same certain, unswerving power of a lighthouse beam. And it struck him that perhaps he’d been childish in his expectations of her, that maybe he’d taken her strength for granted.

      ‘I love you, darling,’ he said again, because, of course, he didn’t know what else to say.

      But also because, for the first time in a very long time, he actually meant it.