The Horse Whisperer

It was an emergency caesarean section. After twelve hours of labor they had given A

Robert had always imagined caesareans were peaceful affairs. No panting, shoving and screaming, just a simple cut along a plotted line and the baby lifted effortlessly out. Nothing then had prepared him for the wrestling match that followed. It was already under way when they let him in and stood him wide-eyed in a corner. A

He fancied himself as a comic too, this man, and said casually over his shoulder to Robert: 'Better luck next time. It's a girl.' Robert could have killed him. But after they had quickly wiped her clean and checked that she had the right number of fingers and toes, they handed her to him, wrapped in a white blanket and he forgot his anger and held her in his arms. Then he laid her on A

Better luck next time. There had never been a next time. Both of them had wanted another child but A

It was at precisely this time that A

Their joint failure to produce another child was a sorrow he and A

It had been there, unspoken, this afternoon when A

Robert had always felt that he loved his wife more than she would ever love him. That she did love him he had no doubt. Their marriage, compared with many he had observed, was good. Both mentally and physically they still seemed able to give each other pleasure. But barely a day had gone by in all these years when Robert hadn't counted himself lucky to have held on to her. Why someone so vibrant should want to be with a man like him, he never ceased to wonder.

Not that Robert underestimated himself. Objectively (and objectivity he considered, objectively, to be one of his strengths) he was one of the most gifted lawyers he knew. He was also a good father, a good friend to those few close friends he had and, despite all those lawyer gags you heard nowadays, he was a genuinely moral man. But though he would never have thought himself dull, he knew he lacked A

He was six years older than she was but it had often felt much more. And what with all the glamorous, powerful people she met, Robert thought it nothing less than a minor miracle that she should be content with him. More than that, he was sure - or as sure as a thinking man could be about such matters - that she had never been unfaithful to him.

Since the spring however, when A

Robert now felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see his wife standing beside him, as though summoned by his thoughts. There were dark rings under her eyes. He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek.

'Did you sleep?' he asked.

'Like a baby. You were going to wake me.'

'I fell asleep too.'

She smiled and looked down at Grace. 'No change.'

He shook his head. They had spoken softly as if for fear of waking the girl. For a while they both watched her, A

'I thought I'd go home and get some of her things,' she said. 'You know, so when she wakes up, they'll be there.'

'I'll go. You don't want to drive now.'

'No, I want to. Really. Can I have your keys?'

He found them and gave them to her.

'I'll pack a bag for us too. Is there anything special you need?'

'Just clothes, a razor maybe.'

She bent and kissed him on the forehead.

'Be careful,' he said.

'I will. I won't be long.'

He watched her go. She stopped at the door and looked back at him and he could tell there was something she wanted to say.

'What?' he said. But she just smiled and shook her head. Then she turned and was gone.

The roads were clear and at this hour, apart from a lonely sand-truck or two, quite deserted. A

There had been no thaw and the car's headlights lit the low walls of soiled snow along the roadside. Robert had fitted the snow tires and they made a low roar on the gritted blacktop. There was a phone-in on the radio, a woman saying how worried she was about her teenage son. She'd recently bought a new car, a Nissan, and the boy seemed to have fallen in love with it. He spent hours sitting in it, stroking it and today she'd walked into the garage and caught him making love to its tailpipe.

'Kinda what you'd call a fixation, huh?' said the show's host, whose name was Melvin. All phone-ins seemed to have these ruthless wiseguy hosts nowadays and A