Emma and Dexter try to have a child

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew’s attempt to have a child transforms a private wish into a recurring practical and emotional pressure on their marriage. Their effort begins with making use of Emma’s fertile days, but two years without success bring them to consider testing both partners and paying for private care; the evidence records a decision to investigate, not a diagnosis or a resolution.

Timing intimacy

On a working holiday, Emma and Dexter plan to spend the day together and for Emma to work at night. The trip instead coincides with the most fertile days of Emma’s cycle, so they feel obliged to take advantage of the opportunity. After Emma wins a game, they walk back to the cottage in the evening light, woozy and affectionate from drinking beer on an empty stomach. She kisses Dexter after closing the door; his response, asking whether they are doing it again, gives their effort its lightly comic, bodily immediacy. He jokes that he feels like he is on a stud farm. The joke registers the difference between sex as spontaneous pleasure and sex pursued according to a schedule, without cancelling the affection between them.

That contrast reappears when Dexter, looking sheepish, says he would like to play Scrabble. The request is small, but it interrupts the expectation that their time together must be organized around trying to conceive. In these scenes, a game and a kiss sit alongside fertility timing: ordinary companionship remains present, even as the attempt to have a child changes the meaning of their shared time.

The strain of waiting

Later, Dexter sits hunched on the edge of the mattress, covers his face with his hands, and exhales through his fingers. He says they have only been trying for eighteen months; Emma corrects him: two years. The discrepancy makes the duration tangible and shows that they are not experiencing the wait in quite the same way. Dexter then admits that he hates the look Emma gives him. The conversation thus brings the pressure into their relationship itself: the passage of time has become something they count, and a look can carry more accusation or apprehension than either wants to voice directly.

Their exchange does not establish that either partner is responsible for the lack of a pregnancy. Instead, it shows them struggling with uncertainty and with how that uncertainty feels between them. They apologize: Emma for taking her frustration out on Dexter, and Dexter without being able to specify what he is sorry for. Their difficulty is not only the absence of a result, but also the risk that trying and waiting will turn into mutual blame.

Deciding to seek tests

Emma answers the impasse with a proposal: they should both get checked at a fertility clinic. She lifts Dexter’s hand and presses its back to her lips before suggesting it, a gesture of tenderness within a practical conversation. She frames testing as a way to confirm that nothing is wrong, not as proof that something is wrong. Dexter initially insists that there is nothing wrong with them, exposing the reassurance they have been relying on as well as his reluctance to move from hope to medical investigation.

The decision becomes harder to defer when Dexter says he will turn forty in two weeks. He imagines test tubes, depressing cubicles, nurses putting on rubber gloves, and magazines; the prospect arrives for him as an unpleasant clinical setting rather than an abstract appointment. Even so, he agrees that they will have tests, then immediately asks about the waiting list. Emma thinks they may have to go private. Her surprise at her own suggestion is shared by Dexter, who says he never thought she would say it. Neither had expected to contemplate that option, but the wait has changed what they are willing to consider.

Significance and limits

The attempt moves through distinct forms of pressure: fertile timing makes sex feel obligatory, the duration of trying becomes a point of disagreement, and uncertainty prompts the couple to seek professional assessment. Yet its movement is toward investigation rather than certainty. They agree to tests and discuss private care, but no result is disclosed here. The episode therefore holds affection and anxiety together without resolving the central question of whether Emma and Dexter will have a child.