Chapter 699 My Sis-cest/Taboo:>>58

• Married life was...good; Max was a loving and attentive husband, and almost without thinking about it I fell into his life fantasy of him and me and baby makes three, because sure enough, I caught one. I was in two minds about the whole thing; did I really want to start a family so young? I mean, I wasn't yet twenty-two, I hadn't really done anything, been anywhere, and suddenly this little thing inside me was where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to be; is that really what I wanted? And yet, when I thought about what I was trying my hardest to see as a little interloper in my life and my body, all I felt was a shockingly fierce protectiveness toward the child inside me.
• As my pregnancy progressed, Max seemed to be pulling away from me. At first it was small, subtle things; he was working longer hours, he was dealing with more, and bigger projects, and it was true, he was; all I heard from his co-workers was what kind of a workload he and his team were taking on, because with his firm the price of being able to dig the best holes was that they got to dig more, and bigger ones.
• Max came home hours after he was supposed to, dog-tired and worn-out after a long day out on the factory floor, making sure his latest baby was coming along to his satisfaction and the way he designed it; all I got from him was a cuddle before he literally dropped off his feet and went out like a light. I left him on the couch most nights, which a throw pulled up over him, because with the best will in the world I couldn't shift his weight and walk him to bed, not in his exhausted state. So I slept alone most nights, after spending the long day alone, day after day and night after night. The only time I really got any attention from him was at the weekends, and even that was broken up by emergency calls from the fabrication teams on the factory floor because they couldn't understand something, or they couldn't make something work, and he'd be off, and I'd be alone again.