Natasha and Ben

Sometimes I asked Alex about Natasha. He had told me a few times, “I swore I’d never live a loveless life”. Natasha was a career woman; the best-known and most successful publicist in Melbourne according to Alex. She also had a short temper and had thrown a bottle at Alex in his sleep once - he had sent a complimentary text message to a young female student of his as she was an unattractive girl and very down on herself.
Natasha would talk over Alex.
“She’s one of those people who always has to talk over the top of you. There’s nothing I hate more than people who talk over the top of other people. Don’t you hate that? When people talk over the top of you?”
I wanted to know why Alex had stayed with her for so long.
“I can remember years ago, lying in bed and thinking, ‘I’ll just give her Christmas. I’ll stay until Christmas’ and then next thing you know, Natasha was pregnant with Ben.”
Every time Alex talked about Ben his eyes would light up. He would tell me what it was like “having your own little person”, about how cute or “hot” Ben was, and about the way Ben would crawl into Alex's bed downstairs in the morning and wriggle up next to him and ask, innocent as anything, “Go to Bonkers?”