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There was something about today that felt different.
It was 4 years, to the date, since Max Christie and Caitlin Whyte got married they were stood in their en suite bathroom, waiting for the egg timer they had moved from the kitchen to give them permission to turn over the pregnancy test that sat on the counter. The couple had been through this process more times than they cared to think about over the past few years but had never yet been given good news.
“I know I say this every time,” Max broke the silence “but this is the longest 3 minutes of my life.”
Caitlin couldn’t respond, too afraid that if she spoke she would start crying. Despite warnings from multiple doctors, and Max’s own knowledge from his medical training, neither of them were ready to admit that they might not be able to get pregnant.
Eventually, the ringing of the egg timer broke Max and Caitlin out of their individual thoughts, prompting them to face each other and make eye contact for the first time since Caitlin took the test and laid it on the bathroom counter. A few years ago, Caitlin would have asked her husband to read the results of the test, too afraid to do so herself, but now muscle memory kicked in and she reached out to turn over the test.
Today was different. There were two pink lines.
For a moment Max’s emotional and logical sides came to a stalemate, leaving him unable to react whilst Caitlin was convinced that desperation and sleep deprivation were combining and causing her to see things.
“It’s positive.” Caitlin whispered, worried that voicing the results would cause the second line to fade.
“We’re having a baby!” Max responded, his volume louder and infinitely more excited than his partners. This was all the permission they needed to embrace each other, suddenly both squealing with delight as though they were young children on Christmas morning.
“Can you take this seriously, please Max?” Caitlin laughed, nudging her partner with her elbow. “She’s due in a week and we haven’t picked out a name yet.”
“Well, you keep laughing at all my suggestions. I don’t see anything wrong with Christie Cristie.” Max couldn’t keep the cheeky grin off his face as he joked.
“Max, we cannot call her Christie, or Maud, or Cat woman, or The Doctor.”
So far they had agreed on some names but felt that none of them where quite right. Jessica, Georgia, and Sarah were some that they both liked, but none of them seemed to be the right fit for their unborn daughter.
“Okay, I know this is random, but what about Jodie?” Max asked, trying out the name for the first time. “It’s cute but not too cute to suit her as an adult.”
“Oh, I don’t know Max, Jodie Christie doesn’t seem quite right.” Caitlin responded, her stomach grumbling as she thought. “Right, I need to eat.”
Max laughed at his wife, “you always need to eat.”
“Not me, the baby!” Caitlin responded. “I vote you go to the chippie and buy me a nice, big dinner.” She smirked as Max got up off the sofa to grab his coat and wallet, rolling his eyes as he did so.
Baby girl Christie, still with no official name, had been born about an hour ago and was feeding from her mother for seemingly the tenth time already.
Max was elated at the fact that he was officially a father and that the birth had gone well. He could not imagine having or needing anything more than his wife and daughter.
Caitlin, on the other hand, was still terrified that she was inexperienced and felt more anxious at being a parent now that her daughter was born than she ever had before. She thought that holding her daughter would make her feel prepared or make her feel like everything had slid into place and everything else would work its way out but now felt as though she was drifting out into space, alone.
“She suits Sarah, don’t you think?” Max asked, breaking his wife out of her thoughts. “Or Jessica.”
Caitlin didn’t speak, she just shook her head, her eyes locked onto her daughter as if worried that looking away would cause the infant to vanish.
“We don’t have to figure it out just yet.” Max whispered, taking a seat on the side of the hospital bed to be closer to his partner and baby girl.
It was another week before Max and Caitlin agreed to name their baby Jodie.
At 8 weeks old Jodie was a handful and her parents spent almost every night getting a couple of hours of broken sleep.
Max had returned to work a week previously and Caitlin struggled more and more each day that he wasn’t at home. Sometimes she just needed to hand the baby to someone else so she could cook, clean, or shower but her mother had to work, and her friends only wanted to buy stuff for Jodie and cuddle her, but shied away from hard work like changing nappies, making bottles, or doing the washing up for Caitlin.
Before Jodie was born Max had told Caitlin that he would not need to work late unless there was an emergency and she had believed him, but he’d come home at least 2 hours late for the past 3 days and hadn’t been scheduled to work today but had taken a call in the afternoon and claimed he needed to go in for a few hours.
As evening drew in, Caitlin heard a knock on the front door and answered it quickly before the person had a chance to knock again and wake Jodie from her nap.
“Hey, love, I brought dinner.” It was Annie, a friend of Caitlin’s who had been the most loyal and helpful throughout the pregnancy and since Jodie had been born. The visit was unannounced and unexpected, but Caitlin welcomed her guest and was glad that she didn’t have to think about cooking for herself.
Once the pair was sat down Caitlin went to start eating but could tell immediately that something was bothering her friend. “Okay, you clearly need to talk about something. What is it?” Caitlin asked.
“I think Max might be cheating on you.” The words hung in the silence like a dark cloud. For a minute, neither knew what to say next. Caitlin began to shake her head and Annie continued by telling her what her husband, Jack, had told her after his shift at the hospital that afternoon. “You said he’d been working late this week, but Jack said he left on time almost every day. And where is he today?”
“Working.” Caitlin mumbled, not sure if she believed herself in the moment.
“He’s not working today, babe.”
Caitlin tried to explain his actions, or discredit what Jack had reported. Maybe Max started after Jack left today, and maybe he’d got his timings wrong this week or hadn’t realised Max staying late. There was no way that Max was out with another woman at that moment, not when Jodie wasn’t sleeping, and Caitlin needed all the support she could get from him. When Annie kept trying to talk, Caitlin only got angry and practically shoved her friend out of the door, dinner still uneaten on the dining room table.
Max had left for work as usual that morning but had left Caitlin the car as she said she’d needed to go food shopping. It wasn’t a lie, really, but Caitlin also planned to – hopefully – disprove her friends suspicions that Max was sleeping with another woman.
It was half an hour before the end of Max’s shift and Caitlin was sat in the car outside the Emergency Department to follow him home. Of course, he would come home straight away and she would unload the shopping with him and curl up on the sofa together.
At exactly 8:30pm Caitlin watched Max walk out of the doors to the hospital and watched him walk to the car park. Worried she would be spotted, she internally rehearsed how she would explain that she had come to pick him up and had called the department to get the message to him. All of this, however, was in vain as Max got halfway across the car park and glanced around for a second before getting into a car with a blonde woman, slightly younger than himself, and kissing her on the cheek.
“I’m not letting you in so you may as well bugger off.” Caitlin called to the other side of the door of their flat. She rocked Jodie as she spoke, trying to get the infant to sleep despite the stressed, tense atmosphere that had filled the flat since Caitlin caught Max cheating.
This was the third night in a row that Max had returned to the flat straight from work and begged his wife to let him inside. His neighbours has watched him with suspicion or pity or disgust as they walked past but he barely noticed. Max hadn’t slept the previous two nights as he sat outside the door, but he knew that wasn’t sustainable any longer.
On the other side of the door, Caitlin paced the hallway of the flat with Jodie in her arms, unable to settle her daughter enough to get her to go to sleep. She desperately wanted to let Max in to relieve her of the crying baby, even for just a minute but she was too determined to stand her ground.
A week later, when Max had stopped sitting outside the flat and had moved his clothes out to stay with the blonde woman, Caitlin knew it was over.