Page 54 of Pretend You Love Me

In the bathroom, I stand in the doorway for a long moment just noticing that it feels larger. Daniel’s razor is gone from the windowsill. His towel is missing from the hook behind the door. The aftershave he’s worn since university, something expensive with a name I could never pronounce, no longer lingers in the air.

I don’t pull it apart or talk myself out of it. Don’t categorize it or analyse it or any of the other careful mechanisms I’ve developed for managing difficult feelings. Just let it stay where it is, small and soft and entirely my own, while the afternoon continues outside, quiet and warm and completely unchanged.

Then, without planning to, I start making small changes.

The stack of books on the living room shelf, my favourites, the ones Daniel always complained were overcrowding the space, moves to the coffee table where I want them. The grey cushions on the couch, chosen because “they’re neutral” and “they go with everything”, get swapped for the mustard ones Daniel called “a bit much” when I first brought them home. I buy a different brand of coffee on my phone, something with actual flavour rather than the bitter type that Daniel insisted was “how real coffee is supposed to taste,” and move the small potted plant from the kitchen windowsill to the bedside table on my side of the bed, which is now just the bed.

None of these things are dramatic. That’s the point.

They’re just small, ordinary decisions, ones that you make when you start actually claiming your space.

And somehow, impossible as it seems, that makes all the difference.

The twins’ first ‘official’ overnight custody visit arrives approximately a week later, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been preparing for it since Daniel walked out the door. By the time Luca arrives to “help with the handover” (translation: make sure I don’t have a complete emotional breakdown in front of the children), I’ve packed what can only be described as enough supplies for a minor natural disaster: too many nappies, too many bottles, three backup outfits each, the infant paracetamol Daniel definitely already has, two teething toys per baby, and what Luca later describes as “enough formula to sustain a small Antarctic research station.”

“Jesus Christ,” he says, stopping in the kitchen doorway with his mouth actually open. “Are they going camping? To war? Have you packed emergency flares? Because I feel like emergency flares should definitely be part of this equation.”

“They’re going to their father’s,” I tell him, already reaching for the next outfit. “Where they’ve never spent the night before. In his new apartment. Where everything will be different. Where the routine won’t be…“

“I know,” Luca says quietly, already reaching for the bag. “I know where they’re going, Els.”

He proceeds to quietly remove six muslin cloths, a duplicate set of teething rings, and a fourth backup outfit for Milo before I notice what he’s doing. Each item is extracted with care, and placed not in the “definitely not going” pile but in the “available if actually needed” section by the door, and by the time he’s finished, the overnight bag looks slightly less like I’m preparing for the apocalypse and slightly more like I’m sending my children for a normal visit with their father.

Which is, objectively, what’s happening.

Daniel arrives at six o’clock, not five-fifty, not six-oh-five, but precisely on time in a way that suggests he’s been sitting in his car around the corner checking his watch for at least fifteen minutes. He’s wearing a casual outfit, blue jumper, dark jeans, and carrying what appears to be a nappy bag that makes my carefully packed disaster supplies look even more ridiculous by comparison.

“They’re ready,” I tell him, already moving toward the living room. “I’ve packed extra bottles because Milo’s been drinking more at night, and there’s infant paracetamol in the side pocket in case Maisie’s gums are bothering her, and the stuffed elephant is in the front because she won’t sleep without it, and…“

“Elsie,” Daniel says quietly, already reaching for the bag. “It’s okay. I’ve got this.”

I nod, accepting this without pushing for more, and then we’re moving through the handover. I buckle Maisie into the car seat myself, checking the straps three times, adjusting the blanket twice, making sure the stuffed elephant is positioned where she can reach it, and pass Milo across. We say all the right things about bedtime routines and bottle temperatures and what to do if either of them wakes up crying. We agree on pick-up time tomorrow morning. We nod at appropriate intervals. We do not, under any circumstances, acknowledge that this is the second time they’ve spent the night away from me since they were born.

Then Daniel is backing toward the door, car seat in one hand, Milo balanced carefully against his chest, the overnight bag slung across his shoulder, and I’m standing in the hallway with my arms crossed over my stomach like I’m physically holding myself together, and we’re saying goodbye without actually saying the word.

“See you tomorrow,” Daniel says, already reaching for the handle.

“Tomorrow,” I agree, the word weighted in a way that seems oppressive.

The door closes with a soft click, and then, suddenly, they’re gone.

I stand perfectly still in the hallway. Not because I miss Daniel. Because the house without the twins’ noise feels physically wrong, like a room with the furniture removed or a photograph with the centre cut out.

Their absence has a presence. Their silence has weight. And for a moment, just a moment, I can’t remember how to move through a world that doesn’t include the noises of their existence: Milo’s dramatic protests, Maisie’s careful observations, the sounds of chaos from when they’re both awake and simultaneously determined to achieve completely opposite goals.

Then I call out for Luca.

Not because I’m falling apart, though God knows that’s happening somewhere in the general vicinity, but because I don’t want to sit alone inside the quiet. Because the thought of moving through an entire evening without the rhythm of twin care feels physically impossible, like asking someone to run a marathon in the middle of a hurricane.

He appears in the kitchen doorway seconds later, still wearing his coat, holding what appears to be a half-eaten biscuit, and immediately starts talking about nothing: a nightmare customer who complained the oat milk “tasted like oat,” Harper’s latest romance manuscript plot twist that Luca has strong feelings about (“the hero definitely should have grovelled more”), Liv apparently threatening a man at a coffee shop for saying “expresso” (“she said it was like watching someone pronounce ‘library’ as ‘lie-berry’).

We continue like this for over an hour, easy, familiar, the comfortable rhythm of friendship that requires no explanation, until my responses get slower and further apart.

“I should let you go,” I say, the words coming out slightly uneven. “It’s late. You have an early…“

“No,” Luca says simply. “Keep talking. Or don’t. I’m not going anywhere.”

I keep talking, or think I’m talking, the type of consciousness that happens when you’re no longer entirely sure whether you’re forming actual sentences, until the words start to blur together and my eyes close without permission and then, somehow, I’m asleep mid-sentence, Luca’s voice a soft, comforting presence in the dark. And I briefly feel a blanket being placed over me, the light press of Luca’s lips on my forehead.