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“Yeah,” Catie says. “We’ve just been going through Juliette’s dates.” She looks at Saxon. “Can I go through them with you?”
He obviously picks up their tenseness and frowns. “Why, what’s up?”
“Nothing bad… I just want to double check something. Can we sit up at the table?”
Leaving the twins to play with their toys, the four of us go up to the table. I sit next to Juliette and opposite Saxon, with Catie next to him. Juliette still won’t look at me. My heart rate picks up. What’s this about?
Catie is holding a printout, and she puts it on the table. “This is from the new pregnancy app I’ve been working on,” she explains to me. She turns it to show me and Saxon. The page shows the calendar months of December and January, one above the other. The days of the month are in blue, and then there’s a scattering of other highlighted days and numbers in different colors.
“Okay,” Catie says, “so we start here. This is the first day of Juliette’s last period.” She taps the fourth of December, which has a big red number one next to it. Then she follows the days forward. “An average cycle is twenty-eight days,” she says. “But Juliette’s is thirty-two. This means her next period should have been due on the fourth of January. To work out when she ovulated, we count back fourteen days from that day.” She counts back with her pen, and lands on day eighteen of the cycle, highlighted in yellow.
“And this is the fertile window,” I say, gesturing at the five days before, all highlighted in yellow. I know about this from when Shaz used to calculate ovulation.
Catie nods. “Because sperm can survive five days in the womb, right?”
“Yeah.” I glance at her, then at Juliette, who’s staring at the piece of paper. “So what’s the problem?”
Catie taps the page. “The problem is… I’m sorry to mention it, Henry, but the last day that Juliette had sex with Cam was the tenth of December.” She taps on the day. It’s day seven of her cycle.
I look at Juliette. “Your birthday.”
She nods. On the trivia night, she told me that was when they had last had sex, and they argued because he came inside her without a condom.
Catie’s waiting for the penny to drop. She looks at me, then at Saxon. “She slept with Henry here,” she says, and taps the twenty-first of December. Day eighteen of Juliette’s cycle. The day she would have ovulated.
Saxon stares at the calendar, then leans back.
I frown at him. “I don’t get it.”
“The chance of getting pregnant if you have sex six or more days before you ovulate is virtually zero,” he says softly.
I look at Juliette. “I didn’t realize,” she says. She looks bemused. “I assumed a woman ovulated fourteen days after her period, not fourteen days before her next one. I didn’t know my longer cycle would screw up the dates.”
I look back at Saxon. “So what’s the problem?”
“They had sex three days before her fertile window started,” he says.
“So?”
He just looks at me.
“Saxon,” I say carefully, “I can’t be the father. I’m infertile.”
He tips his head to the side. “I don’t like the word infertile. Men with low sperm counts can still father children. What was your sperm count?”
I stare at him. “Uh… fifteen million per milliliter, I think.”
“Okay, twenty to forty million is average, so that’s below, but not severe.”
“No,” I say, “I tried for two years to get pregnant with Shaz. It didn’t happen, not even once.”
He doesn’t reply, but he continues to study me thoughtfully.
“Henry’s right,” Juliette says. “It’s a lovely thought, but it can’t be the case. We used a condom.”
“Well, I know from personal experience that doesn’t matter,” Catie says sarcastically, and Saxon gives her an ‘eek’ look.
“Condoms are only eighty-seven percent effective,” he says.
