‘Tell me about it,’ said George. ‘I’m a drummer. Repeating patterns. Same songs, same boat, same journey.’

‘Why do you continue?’ I asked.

‘Now there’s a good question,’ said George. ‘When I got this apartment, I had an idea I’d move here, find somewhere that’d give me a solo gig once a week. I play a bit of guitar. Get back to writing my own stuff. Every year I promise myself I’ll do it, and every year I get back on the bloody boat.’

He put his beer glass down. ‘You gents want to switch to wine? I bought a case of Chianti.’

George fetched a bottle of Sassicaia 2000, which is not technically Chianti, but from the same region.

‘Jesus,’ said Gene. ‘A bit good for pizza.’

‘World’s best pizza,’ I said, to clarify, and everyone laughed. It was a minor but notably good moment, and I was sorry Rosie was not sharing it with me.

George was looking for a corkscrew without success. There was a simple solution.

‘I’ll get mine.’ My cork extractor, selected after a significant research project, would be equal or superior to any George might own.

I went downstairs and opened the door to the apartment, expecting to find it full of medical students. The living room was empty. Rosie was in the bedroom, asleep. The light was on and a novel was open on the bed. On the floor was a single, small pizza box. The receipt was stuck to the top: $14.50. Meatlovers’ Special.

19

‘Is there some problem?’ I asked Rosie the next morning.

‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ she said. ‘You were in the bathroom for over an hour.’

Copying the sonogram picture of Bud onto Tile 13 had been more difficult than reproducing a line diagram from the internet. But it seemed sensible to use the actual picture. Rosie was right: it would have been interesting to watch the moving scan.

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Maintaining the wall tiles.’

I had also been analysing the Meat Pizza Incident. I saw five possibilities:

1. Rosie’s study group had eaten the pizza. That did not explain the box being in the bedroom.

2. Rosie was having an affair with a carnivore. That would explain the location of the box, but surely they would have hidden the evidence.

3. The box was mislabelled and actually contained a vegetarian pizza.

4. A meat pizza had been delivered in error. Rosie had discarded the meat and eaten the remaining pizza. The theory was plausible, but there was no sign of meat in the bin.

5. Rosie had violated her practice of sustainable pescatarianism. This seemed highly unlikely, although there was a recent precedent in her eating a small quantity of Gene’s and my steak meal.

Incredibly, the highly unlikely option was the correct one. There had been no study group meeting. Rosie had ‘just needed a bit of space’. She had lied to me rather than make a straightforward request. And she had ordered a meat pizza.

I could not blame her for dishonesty. I was guilty of a far greater ongoing deception about the Lydia situation for much the same reasons: to protect Rosie from distress and both Bud and her from the harmful effects of excess cortisol. Rosie had not wanted to hurt me by saying she didn’t want me in the apartment with her. There were numerous alternative solutions I could have presented—and would have. Perhaps she had chosen to lie rather than listen to them.

It seemed that Gene was right. Dishonesty was part of the price of being a social animal, and of marriage in particular. I wondered if Rosie was withholding any other information.

The vegetarian violation was more interesting.

‘I just felt like meat. I got them to hold the salami,’ she said.

‘I suspect a protein or iron deficiency.’

‘It wasn’t a craving. I just decided to do it. I’m so over being told what to do. You know why I’m a pescatarian?’

Sustainable pescatarianism had been one of the initial conditions of the Rosie Package, known to me from the day we met. I had accepted that package in its entirety, in direct contrast to the philosophy of the Wife Project, which had focused on aggregating individual components.

‘I assume health reasons.’

‘If I was that worried about my health, I wouldn’t have been a smoker. I’d go to the swimming pool. And sustainability wouldn’t matter.’

‘You don’t eat meat for ethical reasons?’

‘I try to do the right thing by the planet. I don’t impose my views on other people. I watch you and Gene scoff down half a cow and I don’t say anything. I’ve at least got the excuse of eating for a second person.’

‘Perfectly reasonable. Protein—’

‘Fuck protein. Fuck people telling me what to eat and when to exercise and how to study and to go to yoga, which I’m doing with Judy anyway. And no, it’s not Bikram yoga, it’s the right sort of yoga for pregnancy. I can work that out for myself.’

I suspected that ‘people’ was an incorrect use of the plural form. But it was better than Rosie saying, ‘Fuck you,’ which was obviously what she meant.

I offered an explanation. ‘I’m attempting to assist with the baby production process. You didn’t appear to have time to do the necessary research, due to your thesis and the unplanned nature of the pregnancy.’ I could have added that I had been told to do this by Lydia and Sonia, a professional and a fellow pregnant woman, and would not have done it without such direction, but that would have involved disclosing my deception. Deception had got me into trouble. It was hardly a surprise.