Make-Over Marriage

And it was no earthly good telling him to cut back on his hours, either, even though he had earned enough to keep them all for several lifetimes. Because the work ethic was deeply ingrained in Todd’s nature, the habit of a lifetime hard to break. Todd worked hard because he was a driven man, and like so many driven men he needed to work hard. Circumstances in his youth had seen to that.

‘Surely we could come to some sort of compromise?’ she suggested, before adding rather irritably, ‘And for goodness’ sake can’t you get up and put some clothes on, Todd? The girls will be back any minute now.’

He grinned as he slid off the side of the bed and pulled on a pair of jeans, and Anna found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He was like a sumptuous feast she couldn’t get enough of, and her fingers were just itching to caress the broad, tanned satin of his bare skin once again.

He looked up from buttoning up his shirt and gave her a tender smile. ‘You want us to climb straight back into that bed over there, don’t you, Anna Travers?’

Anna coloured. ‘No, I don’t.’

He came over to stand in front of her, and gently lifted her chin with his finger. ‘Don’t be shy, sweetheart. You certainly weren’t being shy a little while back! I wondered what had got into you, until I realised that I had!’

‘Todd!’ Anna bit her lip as she remembered how ruthlessly he had dealt with her clothes, stripping them from her body like a man on fire.

‘There’s nothing wrong with admitting that we still want and need each other, you know,’ he continued softly. ‘I hope that our mutual desire might even escalate as the years go by! And that’s another reason for wanting to move. We may have space here, but we don’t have many rooms. And rooms equal privacy.’

‘Don’t we have enough privacy?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘Heck, Anna,’ he continued, with the fluency of someone who had thought an argument right through. ‘The girls are right next door to us as it is—so what do you suppose is going to happen as they become teenagers and realise why Mummy is moaning such a lot?’

‘Todd!’ She blushed hotly.

‘Quite apart from having to keep quiet—’ he frowned ‘—I should think our chances of making spontaneous love will continue to be infinitesimally small—that is, unless we decide to do something positive about it!

Anna finished pulling on her leggings and turned on him. ‘And what’s got into you all of a sudden, Todd Travers?’ she demanded. ‘Do you suppose that other men would attempt to uproot their wives and families just so that they could get more sex?’

He had been as tolerant and as understanding as he knew how, but now Todd went pale with anger at her insult. ‘So you think that’s what this is all about?’ he asked, in a voice which was dangerously quiet. ‘Sex?’

‘I don’t know,’ she answered wearily. ‘You tell me. What else could it be? A mid-life crisis? In which case, at thirty-three aren’t you a little young to be experiencing that?’

‘Damned right I am!’ he agreed heatedly. ‘But maybe you’re right. Maybe it is some kind of crisis, only you just haven’t had the time or the inclination to notice it before—’

‘Todd—’ she cut in, as shocked at the brutal look of anger on his face as by the fact that they seemed to be having a pretty significant row. ‘You don’t mean that!’

‘Don’t I?’ he demanded, as fiercely as she’d ever heard him speak. ‘How do you know what I mean? You never listen if it doesn’t happen to correspond with what you want, do you? And it’s about time you heard me out, Anna Travers!’

‘Go on, then,’ she responded, in a shocked, low voice.

He drew in a great breath of air. ‘Don’t you ever feel that we’re in some kind of rut?’

‘A rut?’ she echoed in disbelief.

‘Sure.’ He saw the bewildered look on her face and his mouth softened as he put a hand out to touch her, but she pushed him away.

‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ she said coldly.

He nodded. She was right. Sex had already distracted them from the subject once. ‘Anna, you grew up in this flat,’ he sighed. ‘We’ve spent all our married life here. We brought up our three babies here and now we’re running out of space. I think we’ve outgrown it.’

His words had a chilling finality about them, as though that area of their life was now over, and Anna felt a shiver of apprehension ice its way down the entire length of her spine. She swallowed down the fear which had risen thickly in her throat like bile.

‘I hear what you’re saying, Todd,’ she told him quietly.

‘Well, that’s good,’ came his cautious reply.

Tears threatened to spring up behind her eyes. ‘And you’re admitting to me for the first time ever what we’ve both always known—that I trapped you into marriage by getting pregnant! If you’d never met me, you would never have found yourself in this supposedly terrible situation—and you could have gone ahead and married your beloved Elisabeta!’

His grey eyes narrowed into splinters of slate. ‘Please don’t say things in the heat of the moment that you might later regret, Anna!’

But she noticed he didn’t deny her words. ‘In that case, I’d better not say anything else at all,’ she told him flatly.

He opened his mouth to reply, but the loud ringing on the front doorbell heralded the arrival of the triplets and he decided to let the subject drop. For the moment.

As Anna prepared to walk past her husband he made a conciliatory attempt to catch her in his arms, but she stood clear of his embrace, still wounded by the implications of what he had said to her.

‘Just think about everything I’ve said, Anna,’ he urged her as the ringing increased in volume and in frequency. ‘That’s all I ask. Just consider it. Will you do that for me?’

Put that way, how could she refuse?

Anna risked a quick glance in the mirror as she followed Todd out of the bedroom. She looked absolutely frightful! Her hair was mussed and her cheeks were a giveaway red, and she became acutely aware that she had put her navy blue knickers on back to front! Still, none of the girls was about to notice that! She grabbed an elastic band, then scraped her hair back in its habitual ponytail.

Todd opened the front door and there was a whirl of green uniforms and flying blonde curls as three young girls entered the flat like dervishes and began speaking excitedly at the same time, as they had been doing ever since they’d first learned to talk.

‘Mummy, Hannah Phipps who writes those horse books is visiting our school after Christmas, and I’m to present her with a bouquet of flowers!’

‘Mummy, they’ve given me the part of the wicked witch in the summer play and I’m supposed to give you a list of what I need for costumes—but I’ve lost it!’

‘Mummy, I sat an extra Latin paper, just for fun, only I got the whole thing right, and Mrs McFadden is seriously pleased with me!’

‘That’s sad!’

‘It is not sad—Mrs McFadden says I’ll probably get a Headmaster’s Accommodation!’

‘Sadder still!’

Anna’s mouth softened into a wide smile of loving pride as she surveyed her triplet daughters—identical to look at, but so very different in character. They had inherited their pale, freckle-dusted skin, their cobalt eyes and golden hair directly from her, but whereas her hair was straight, theirs was a mass of uncontrollable curls. They were tall for their age, and their rangy, athletic build came straight from Todd. ‘Hello, darlings!’ she beamed as she hugged each one fiercely in turn. ‘What clever girls you all are!’

Natalia, Natasha and Valentina were known affectionately as Tally, Tasha and Tina. Tally and Tasha had been born late on February 13th, but their sister hadn’t joined them until two minutes after midnight on St Valentine’s day. So she never did get christened Nerissa, which had been her parents’ original intention, but everyone who knew her decided that ‘Tina’ suited her loving and slightly scatty personality far better than Nerissa would have done!

‘Daddy, why are you home from work so early?’ asked Tasha curiously, her intelligent eyes flicking from her mother to her father with interest.

‘I...sort of...took the afternoon off,’ explained Todd lamely, and Anna had to try very hard not to smile, their angry spat temporarily forgotten. Rarely, if ever, had she seen her husband look quite so much at a loss for words!

‘Oh. I see. And why is your shirt on inside out?’ Tasha added innocently.

‘Er...juice and biscuits for three hardworking and worn out girls, is it?” enquired Todd hurriedly.

‘Oh, yes, please, Daddy!’ trilled the three in unison.

‘And for you, darling?’ Todd looked directly at Anna.