Alex tried his best to focus on the three empty beer bottles on the coffee table.
His brain struggled to reconcile all the new sensory data confronting him. The bottles were in focus, the TV wasn’t, the images were a blur. The sunlight streamed through the window, his eyes struggled to adjust. A loud persistent buzzing nagged him. Momentarily he lay on the couch in a state of total confusion. He feared he'd died. The words ‘Don’t go into the light’ imposed themselves. The flashing display of his phone took his attention. Now it all made sense, three beers downed, he'd been ripped from his sleep by the sound of his mobile phone. With hindsight he should have switched the damn thing off. It moved across the surface of the table as it vibrated. The name Dyson gleamed on the display. Although he'd decided not to answer, his finger had already pressed the green button.

“Yes, Helen, what’s up? Where’s the fire?” he grunted.
           
“Fire? What fire? Have I caught you at a bad time? Were you asleep?”
           
“Not anymore but I should be. I was dreaming, there was this naked woman with huge titties and we ...”
           
“Alex Goldstone! You are gutter filth!” snapped his sister-in-law.
           
"Nah, you're just upset coz the naked woman in my dream wasn't you." She knew his statement was designed to disparage her. Helen hated his innuendo and smut.
           
“We need to talk, I need your advice,” Helen asked rather sheepishly.
           
“No problem my love. I can make time for you later if it's that important. You can come over for a drink, wine, coffee, whatever.”
           
“Actually, I’m outside now.” Helen had him cornered. Alex's heart sank, he didn't need this. Nevertheless he pressed the button on the intercom to let her into the building. Helen was his sister-in-law, family was family, and family was supposedly important. The fragmentation of previous generations had caused the two brothers to make a conscious effort to look after each other, reverse the previous trend. Strauss' situation was now somehow Alex's cross to bear. That’s the new way it worked in the Goldstone family.

On his way to the bathroom Alex opened the front door to his apartment, he could hear the lift on its way up. His impromptu visitor would arrive well before he'd finished emptying his bladder.
           
“Yoohoo! Alex, where are you?” she called from his hallway.
           
“Using your skill and judgement, you tell me!” Alex shouted over the splashing sounds.
           
“Oh, I get it. Peeing is important, right. You could at least have shut the door.”
           
“You’re damn right peeing is important. I can go without sex for two or three days, but peeing, it just has to be done.” The click click sound of heels on a wooden floor accompanied Helen from the hall into the kitchen. A squeak was followed by a chink, and finally the thud of her closing the door to the refrigerator.
           
“Why don’t you just help yourself to a beer? Make yourself at home. My home is your home!” Alex shouted sarcastically. By the time he'd completed his task, Helen had made herself comfortable on his sofa. Alex sat opposite in silence. The brother in-law had decided he was definitely still under the influence, but he wasn't actually drunk. He needed to negotiate this encounter carefully. It would be easy to say something his brother would regret.
           
“Little miss Dyson, tell me what’s up?” He kick started conversation.
           
“Have you seen or spoken to Strauss?” Helen began. Alex rolled his eyes, sighing heavily.
           
“Of course I’ve seen him. Yes, I’ve spoken to him.”
           
“How is he? Is he okay?” she bowed her head when asking the questions.
           
“Helen, I really don’t want to talk about this. Actually Helen, I’m not going to talk about this. It’s you two’s problem, not mine.” He folded his arms and sunk back into the sofa. “I’m not into passing messages and information and stuff, no. You got a phone, call him.”
           
“Strauss doesn’t answer his phone to me anymore. I rang him at work. They told me he was unavailable and would not be available for the foreseeable future.”
           
“Unavailable for the foreseeable future. Doesn’t that in itself answer all of your questions?”
           
“I just want to know he’s doing okay,” she persisted.
           
“Why wouldn’t he be? Personally, I’ve never been married, but I guess it can hurt like a bitch when your wife leaves you.” Alex switched the TV off with the remote.
           
“Let’s cut to the chase. You’ve come to me, seeking advice but really in search of my sympathy. You’ve hurt my brother. You’ll find no sympathy here.” Helen really didn’t get it, but that’d always been the problem. Helen never got it. Alex liked Helen, but intellectually she just didn’t have it. She never quite made the grade, not for him and not for Strauss. Nevertheless, she was his brother’s choice, that in itself meant that she had to be respected. Alex refocused.
           
“So, what would you have me do?” she asked. Alex shook his head. Why was he even having this conversation?
           
“Ah, my dear girl.” He smiled falsely. “You want me to tell you, you’ve done the right thing, and assure you we’ll be friends forever, whatever. No, I don’t think so.”
           
“You’re saying, you won’t help me?” Helen seemed lost.
           
“Helen! Even if I could help!” he exploded. “What exactly would you like me to do?”
           
“If I tell you everything that’s happened, will you explain things to Strauss?” Helen’s gaze remained trained onto the floor.
           
“Some things you should keep to yourself.” He strode through into his kitchen, rubbing his face with his hands. Alex pushed the red button on his kettle. He felt that he knew exactly where this conversation was going and he would rather not partake in it. It was however in his professional nature to push on and get to the bottom of things, driven by a potentially hazardous desire for truth. Helen sat rocking with her head in her hands like some seasoned, sectioned mental-health patient. Alex decided it was probably best to play ignorant and let the truth come out, even if he didn't want to hear it.
           
“So do you think it was a mistake to move back to your mother’s house?” The first question in a new direction of cross-examination. Helen removed her hands, her face was red, her eyes bloodshot.
           
“I had to, I’d nowhere else to go!” she snapped at him. The waterworks started, he hated that.
           
“I don’t understand. Why in heaven’s name did you need to go anywhere?”
           
“How could I lay next to him in our bed? How could I look him in the eye?”
           
“I don’t understand. What happened? What changed?”
           
“You don’t understand! I was alone!” Helen was almost screaming. Alex closed his eyes, convinced her sinful confession was about to come and he was not sure how he was going to deal with it. It was becoming quite apparent that his brother’s wife had committed a crime of infidelity. On the one hand, he didn’t want to hear it but on the other Helen needed to tell somebody, else he feared she might do something inherently stupid. She was undoubtedly a woman on the edge.
           
“Helen, I can try to understand, calm down.”
           
“No!” she screamed. “Everything was perfect. Then I was sick. It wasn’t my fault!” Helen was immediately the recipient of Alex’s one hundred percent undivided attention. Sick? This was not in the script. This wasn’t what she was supposed to be saying; suddenly he’d no idea where this was leading.
           
“Helen, what caused you to be sick? When was this exactly?” Alex spoke slowly and earnestly.
           
“At the beginning, I don’t know when. Maybe it was the food, maybe the water, but probably the drink. There was lots of drink. Way too much drink!” She laughed hysterically. Alex continued questioning her, his manner slow and deliberate.
           
“Where exactly were you? Where did this all take place? All the drinking and partying.”
           
“I never said partying! No, no partying! Don’t put words in my mouth. Alanya, on our five-year wedding anniversary.” Taking his beer bottle from the table, she drained it, went to the fridge, got another bottle and began to gulp it down rapidly. Alex’s brain was fully engaged, he remembered their Turkey trip.
           
“I’ve ruined his life. It’s true, things can never be same,” she sobbed.
           
“But how have you ruined his life?” Alex was still trying to second guess the outcome. Helen’s moist red eyes previously emitting the occasional tear quickly changed to the source of a stream of tears continually running down her face. “Tell me,” he continued. “You’re gonna have to tell somebody.” Alex looked over at the clock, making a conscious decision not to speak until the minute hand reached the six. Helen looked upward seeking some sort of divine inspiration or salvation. There was none forthcoming.
           
“We’d been married five years. Strauss said he was gonna make it just like our honeymoon. We’d been having a few problems. The first three days, Jesus I was just so sick, I couldn’t eat anything. I tried but I couldn’t keep it down. Strauss was great; he stayed in our room with me most of the time. I knew he was bored. I think it was the Sunday, I felt better, he asked if I was well enough to come downstairs and try something light to eat. I said no, because I didn't want the public embarrassment if it repeated on me. I really did feel okay though, you know, better.” Alex could see in Helen eyes that in her mind she was actually there, reliving events. Still, he was clueless as to what had happened. He sat back on the sofa, listening intently.
           
“Strauss said he was going downstairs to eat, and would be half-an-hour. He came back really quickly, maybe. I think he did. I’m not too sure, I dozed off, I think. He brought me some soup, chicken soup. He always said chicken soup could remedy eighty-two percent of the world’s problems.” She laughed and wiped some tears from her face. “The bowl of soup was on a tray with a rose. He’d got a portable CD player with him. I think he borrowed it from the chef. It was really romantic, he put on some music and spoon fed me. The next thing we were making love and after, after he fell to sleep.” Again she laughed. A smile burst through as she wiped more tears from her face with her sleeve. “I used to hate it when he fell to sleep straight after. He told me he always fell asleep because he was obliged to put his best efforts and all his energy into the experience, for my total satisfaction. If he still had one iota of energy left at the end, he’d be disrespecting me. It was total crap of course, but that’s why I love him.” Without any prompting from Alex, she returned to her mental excursion. “I felt really great. I just felt so good. I’d never felt this good in my entire life.” Alex said nothing as he studied her face. Helen was pretty, in a girlish kind of a way. Her face wet from the tears, she smiled as she recalled events. Very quickly, her smile vanished and the tears gushed once again, she was back in the present.
           
“When we got home, I felt awful again, but I didn’t think. Nothing I ate stayed down. I thought maybe the same bug had returned. I didn’t relate what happened in Turkey to my illness. I’d never been pregnant before.” From the way she said the word pregnant, Alex knew she’d never told anybody this story. It was like the word had been stuck in her throat for an age, plotting its escape. Helen continued. “I was always taking my pills, every day. I guess what went down never stayed down.  How was I supposed to know?” She shrugged her shoulders in resignation.

Alex watched the clock. The minute hand swept passed the five. Emotionally drained, Helen took pause to sip her drink. She had to conclude her story even though the plot had been exposed.
           
“It’s really strange. In retrospect I knew the moment I’d conceived. I knew to the second. At the time I just felt different. I hadn’t a clue why. At first, I came back feeling fantastic. The feeling of well-being didn’t last very long. Within a few weeks I felt yuck. It was like I was dying. Every morning felt like a hangover.

“Oh God! Strauss. His overalls! That smell was horrible, he smelled nasty. The stink of the grease made me nauseas. I took to going for drink after work so he was all washed up before I got home. Funny!” She let out a little laugh. “He thought I was having an affair because I was never home. We argued the whole time. Deep down, I knew it was this thing.” She touched her gut. “It was causing the problems; it was beginning to ruin everything. It was destroying my life. You know, I actually believed it was it or me, a matter of survival. My life wasn’t big enough for the both of us, it had to go.

“Afterwards, I sat at home alone. It was no longer controlling me. I could think properly. It was then I realised exactly what I’d done. Not only had I killed my child. I’d killed my husband’s child; your and my mother’s grandchild, your niece or nephew. Had I gone fucking insane? Don’t you think I knew that Strauss had given up everything for this? To have a family? I just wanted everything to be good again.” Alex, a man, try as he might, he would never fully understand. He could do no more than to shrug his shoulders and note she’d never used the word, baby, only it.
           
“Why didn't you talk to somebody?” Alex temporarily felt some sympathy for her. He observed she’d her hand placed below her stomach during the whole conversation. Periodically she’d rubbed her abdomen as if something inside her needed comforting, or at the very least an apology. Helen sidled over to him. She seemed shattered as she leaned against his shoulder and wept into his chest.
           
“Don’t tell me, I know. If I had just spoken to somebody with experience. But you don’t understand, I went crazy. In my head, it was all out of control.” Alex reluctantly provided comfort by holding her with the one arm. He relaxed, attempting to clear his mind. Somehow he’d have to pick his way through this mess, a solution was in there somewhere.

Helen’s arms moved to around his neck as she sobbed whilst he was deep in deliberation. When she twisted her body around, what little attention he paid satisfied him that she’d cried herself to sleep and was getting comfortable. He’d move her onto the other sofa shortly. The feeling of her kisses on his neck paralysed him. It was not until her lips moved across his cheek in search of his that he reacted.

In his mind, Alex knew that lonely ache. He knew the comfort in the warmth of another human being. In his own search for a cure to loneliness, he kissed her back. She welcomed his embrace, in the moment her clothes slipped from her body. The two of them found comfort from the ache and the pain. There was solace in exploring the fantasy of them making love, early in that evening, on his lounge carpet. He’d find understanding and release inside the woman that was his brother’s wife. Some fantasies should not be explored. And what happens in the mind should stay in the mind. Helen was his brother’s wife, and was not to be used, or even thought of in that way. Alex wasn’t harsh in his rejection. He slowly moved his head out of reach before removing himself from her embrace. She made eye contact with him for a moment before averting her gaze to the floor.
           
“Sorry,” she said almost inaudibly. “I didn’t ...”
           
“Yeah, you’ve been doing a lot of that lately, not thinking.” His annoyance with himself for allowing the little sordid fantasy to play in his mind had drifted into his voice.
           
“I wasn’t ...”
           
“I know.”
           
“I swear I wasn’t coming on to you. I’m just so ...”
           
“I know, confused is a word to cover a multitude of sins.”
           
“Sorry.”
           
“Dyson, if I thought that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s a difficult time.” He rose to his feet. “Helen this is a mess, I can see where you’re coming from, and I can see what you’re doing.”
           
“You can?” She looked up to him towering above her.
           
“Yup, see, you’ve done what you’ve done, that’s history. I’m a man that believes in forgiveness. Sadly there’s no way on God’s green earth my brother is ever going to understand, let alone forgive. I’m glad that you brought this to my attention, and I beg of you don’t ever tell anybody else.” There was a vicious tone in Alex’s last sentence.
           
“You said, well at least, I thought you understood.” She returned her gaze to the floor. Seeking reassurance, she tried to touch Alex’s arm, but he simply withdrew it.