Everything and Nothing by Araminta Hall

twenty-four mattresses; it was one of Christian’s least favourite stories. He peeked in on Hal, who was sucking silently in his dream. He found that he loved his children so much more when they were asleep. He would gaze on their little faces, so earnest and content, and feel the emotions coursing through his body. Christian had believed this to be the most profound type of love, when you loved someone even at the moment they needed nothing from you. But as he stood over his son’s cot he wondered if he had got it the wrong way round.
    He went into their bedroom to get changed and saw the towel he had used that morning lying damply on his side of the bed. His side of the bed had felt soggy for weeks and he wondered if Ruth was trying to tell him something. But before he could properly articulate the thought Ruth was standing in the doorway saying she felt too tired to go out.
    He looked over at her and saw the black circles gouged under her eyes, her hair awry on her head, her pale and gaunt face, her bedraggled clothes. She made him feel momentarily worried. She was starting to look like she had at the end of that first year with Betty. Ruth was so complicated, she made his head spin. Part of her wonderfulness, he knew, lay in that complexity, but it interfered so constantly with everyday life, he also hated her for it. He wondered how she could be bothered with all the worry and anxiety which seemed to accompany her every waking moment.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’ll do you good. We can just go to Lemonas.’
    She sat on the side of the bed and he saw she was going to cry. There was no doubting where Betty got her trembling bottom lip. ‘I think I’ve fucked everything up.’
    Christian sat next to her. ‘What do you mean “everything”?’ Although he knew.
    Now the tears came. ‘The kids, mainly. How do we have a child who doesn’t eat? We’re like some terrible BBC Three documentary.’
    ‘Don’t be silly. We’ll look back on all of this in a few years and wonder why we got so worked up.’
    ‘But do you think it’s all my fault?’ Ruth looked up at him and the desperation in her eyes made him want to protect her for ever, to stop the bad thoughts and take the pain away. He considered telling her that he feared it was his fault, but he didn’t want to bring Sarah into her head.
    ‘Of course it isn’t. Why would it be?’
    ‘Because I work.’
    ‘Because you work? What are you talking about? Where did that come from? Millions of women work.’
    Ruth ran her hands through her hair. ‘God, I don’t know. The bloody nutritionist, for a start.’
    Christian stood up. ‘Come on. Let’s go to the restaurant and talk about it there. I’m hungry.’
    He was amazed that Ruth stood up and opened her closet door.
    The restaurant didn’t look anything special from the outside and Ruth and Christian had nearly walked past it when they’d first moved in. Now they went there as often as they could and it felt like a little home from home. There was so much comfort to be found in the wonky wooden tables, the tea lights in old jam jars, the standard issue metal knives and forks, even the strings of plastic lemons criss-crossing the ceiling. The food was like the best sort of picnic: warm pittas, freshly made hummus and taramasalata, feta that was neither too sharp nor too salty, olives so juicy that you couldn’t stop the oil running down your chin.
    On the way there Ruth told him that Aggie had suggested taking Betty into bed with them to try to make her sleep. He heard the desperation in his wife’s voice and felt surprised with himself for not thinking of this solution himself, it was so obvious. But it had always been such a contentious subject; it had taken him so long to persuade Ruth to move Betty out of their bed in the first place. A whole year without sex, it sounded like something you might read in an advice column. Now, though, it seemed less important and, as Ruth pointed out, Betty didn’t