The Atlas of Us. Tracy Buchanan

pulling at me sometimes, the desire to just let everything go and fly with the wind.’ She paused. She’d not admitted that to herself properly, like the nights she’d feel the urge to just throw open the window and breathe in the wind, Ben protesting it was too cold as she imagined climbing out and leaving.

      ‘What about your husband?’ Milo said, his eyes flicking to her wedding ring. ‘Is he a writer too?’

      She froze. She’d purposefully not mentioned Ben to Milo, aware of her growing attraction to Milo and what a betrayal it might be to her husband to utter his name in front of him. ‘No, he’s an engineer.’ Her voice cracked and she turned away, feeling tears start to well up.

      ‘Are you okay?’ Milo asked softly.

      ‘I’m fine.’ She smiled to show she was okay but it just made her feel even more upset, her smile turning into a grimace.

      ‘Claire, what’s wrong?’ Milo asked, leaning towards her and trying to look in her eyes. He hesitated a moment then sighed. ‘I saw you crying before I shot the stag.’

      She looked up at him. ‘You saw that?’

      He nodded, his brown eyes full of emotion. ‘I know we hardly know each other but sometimes it helps to talk to people who aren’t so close to the situation.’

      ‘It’s more complicated than you know.’

      ‘Try me.’

      She looked into his eyes. They were open, curious, full of feeling. Maybe he was right?

      ‘My husband and I are having problems,’ she said. ‘He suggested we take a break.’

      Milo took in a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

      ‘I don’t want you to think my marriage is a shambles,’ she said quickly. ‘It was good at first, really good. We met at uni, and though we’re completely different – I was studying English, my husband was studying engineering – we clicked right away.’

      Claire thought about the first time she’d met Ben. It was just a few months into her first year at university and she was starting to regret her choice. It all felt too restricting and regimental, lectures at particular times, meetings with professors, special clubs and different cliques. One night, when it all got too much, she got horribly drunk on snowball cocktails at a party and had to make her way back to her room in the dark. That’s when Ben turned up, driving alongside her in his Renault Clio and offering her a lift. Anyone else and she might have steered well clear. But there was something about Ben: an honesty in his soft green eyes, the neat turn of the collar on his shirt, the polite way he talked in his Home Counties voice. When he helped her into his car, she felt instantly safe and on the car journey to her room she unburdened herself, telling him how stifled she felt at university, even confessing she wanted to quit, something she hadn’t even admitted to herself. The next day, he talked her out of packing in her course over lunch then asked her out for dinner. And that was that.

      ‘What went wrong?’ Milo asked, pulling Claire from the memory.

      ‘We started struggling to conceive.’

      She paused, checking Milo’s expression. But he looked the same, willing her to continue with his eyes.

      ‘My fault,’ she said. ‘My insides are a bit of a mess, blocked tubes and dodgy eggs.’

      She didn’t tell Milo her blocked tubes were caused by swelling from the chlamydia she’d caught from a man she’d met in Paris while searching for her father. She’d been devastated when her GP had told her: yet more proof that travelling off the edge of the map was the wrong thing to do. She’d had an op to unblock her tubes but, when she still hadn’t fallen pregnant a year later, more tests revealed she had low quality eggs. IVF was her only chance of ever becoming pregnant.

      ‘We tried IVF,’ she said to Milo. ‘Three rounds, each one a dud. The last one was two months ago.’

      ‘Claire, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard IVF can be very difficult.’

      ‘The physical stuff I could deal with,’ she said, fiddling with her glass. ‘Sure, having your flesh pierced with needles each night isn’t exactly a ball. Being poked around by doctors, I guess you grow used to that over the years when you’ve been through what we’ve been through. And the effects of the hormones, the headaches and the nausea and the crazy outbursts … it was bloody hard, don’t get me wrong. But the worst part was how it affected me emotionally.’

      She could hear the tremor in her voice but ignored it. She needed to get this off her chest. She’d turned down the counselling that had been offered to her, thinking she could cope. And she’d always put on a brave face with family and friends. As for her and Ben, they couldn’t talk about it, not properly, because then they’d need to admit how difficult and painful it all was. This was her chance to vent and she was grabbing it with both hands.

      ‘The idea of never being a mother,’ she said, ‘never holding a baby in my arms and leaning my nose in to smell its sweet head, never feeling the tickle of its soft hair on my cheek.’ She shook her head, eyes filling with tears. ‘It’s unbearable. I’ve never been one of those girls whose whole life revolves around the idea of being a mother. But I’ve always wanted children. And the more you fight for it, the more you want it, you know?’

      Milo nodded, his face very sombre. Claire looked out towards the stretch of beach below, the hill they’d walked along earlier spreading out to its right. Two children splashed into the shallow water in their wellies, a little dog jumping up and down, yelping in excitement as their parents watched from nearby.

      ‘Seeing other people’s kids grow older,’ she said, ‘that’s been hard too, especially kids who are the same age my child would be if I’d fallen pregnant straight away.’

      ‘I can imagine.’

      ‘And then there are the looks of sympathy you get when you turn up to yet another wedding, still childless. That’s all bad enough but then add society’s expectations to it all: if you’re not a mother, a parent, you’re nothing.’

      Milo shook his head. ‘That’s rubbish. It’s an important role, yes, but you don’t need kids to have a fulfilling life.’

      ‘I guess I know that. But the message you do is in everything I see.’ She sighed. ‘And now I know all hope’s gone—’

      ‘You do?’

      She nodded sadly. ‘We paid for our first three rounds because the NHS waiting times were ridiculous. Now we’re finally at the top of the list and the NHS won’t fund us because my hormone levels are too hopeless.’ Claire stabbed her fork into her fish. ‘It’s definitely not going to happen now.’

      That consultation had been a month ago. Claire was used to these post-round consultations. With each one, more and more hope drained away, the doctors’ once jovial and optimistic demeanours replaced by frowns and serious tones. She’d known something was particularly wrong with this last one because the doctor they saw could hardly look Claire in the eye. When he’d broken the news that her last blood test had shown her hormone levels had climbed, suggesting her egg quality had plummeted, it felt like the swivel chair she was sitting on was spinning her around and around, sending her into freefall. She’d held on tight enough to her emotions to ask all the perfunctory questions, even cracking the odd joke or two. But when she stepped outside, she had broken down, mumbling into Ben’s shoulder, ‘It’s chaos, it’s all chaos.’ Because how could so many millions of people, some of whom didn’t even want to be parents, get pregnant and she couldn’t?

      Ben had just stared into the distance, trying to control his emotions, jaw tight, the same expression he’d had on his face ever since.

      Milo was silent so Claire looked up at him, heart thumping painfully against her chest. ‘This is the bit where you’re supposed to offer useless advice.’

      ‘What, like relax and it will happen?’

      ‘I