I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  About I Give my Marriage a Year

  Lou and Josh have been together for 14 years. They share two kids, a mortgage, careers and plenty of history. Now, after a particularly fraught Christmas, Lou is ready to ask herself: is this marriage worth hanging on to?

  Every month for a year, Lou sets a different test for their relationship – from daily sex to brutal honesty – to help her decide if she should stay or go. Secrets are exposed, old wounds reopened and a true-to-life suburban love story unfolds.

  I Give my Marriage a Year paints a sharply accurate, often hilarious picture of a modern Australian marriage. Lou and Josh are a couple on the edge, and their efforts to bring their relationship back from the brink will resonate with anyone who has ever asked themselves: is this enough?

  Whose side will you take? Who deserves a second chance? And will Josh and Lou stay together or split for good?

  For my extraordinary friend, Penny.

  This is not your story. That one’s still being written.

  Contents

  Cover

  About I Give my Marriage a Year

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Copyright page

  Lou

  The New Year, 2019

  I give my marriage a year.

  Bold. Underlined.

  I give my marriage a year.

  Exhale.

  Lou’s hand didn’t shake as she put her phone down on the bedside table.

  She closed her eyes. It wasn’t light yet, but she knew it was a matter of minutes, not hours, because the birds were beginning to jabber in the tree outside. The tree Josh wanted to cut right back, away from the house. The tree Lou used to love looking at as she lay here with him. Her head resting back on his shoulder. The smell of his skin. His arm tight around her.

  She used to say it was her happy place. Here, in their bed, in their home. Safe. Loved. Spent.

  How long ago was that? Lou opened her eyes. Stared into the lightening gloom for a moment. Rolled over. Listened for the steady breathing next to her. Rolled back, picked up the phone again.

  Why don’t I feel anything? she typed.

  After all, this was a big decision. Twelve months to decide on fourteen years.

  For at least ten of those fourteen years, Lou had told everyone who’d listen that Josh was the love of her life. Her person. He was the man she’d built her life around.

  Deep breath. He was a good man, mostly. A great father, mostly, to their girls. Their crazy beautiful girls.

  Now she was feeling something.

  I’m going to try everything to save it, Lou tapped into her phone.

  What did people do, when they’d made a decision like this? The cursor blinked yellow at her.

  Most days, Lou couldn’t decide what to have for lunch. Lately, her brain felt sludgy, like months and years of too many choices – both tiny and life-changing – were all still swimming around in there and she had to fight her way through them to any clear space where things could be sorted into ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘do’ or ‘don’t’.

  But the clear space was where this sentence sat. I give my marriage a year.

  Twelve months to decide whether to stay, or go.

  Ballsy, Lou thought, and laughed softly to herself. I’ve decided to decide.

  The people she knew, who’d been here, how did they decide?

  She didn’t know anyone who’d been here.

  Oh, she knew plenty of people whose relationships hadn’t worked. She and Josh had often talked about their divorcing friends and family with a confident kind of distance.

  They’d nod and hug and provide the heartbroken with wine and shoulders to snot on. And then, when they were alone again, on the way to the car, or to bed, they’d find themselves holding hands. And one or the other of them would say, ‘Thank God that’s not us.’

  What smug bastards we were, Lou thought.

  Actually, now she considered it, they hadn’t done that for ages. When Anika, Josh’s sister, had turned up on their doorstep last year, sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak, they hadn’t done the holding-hands thing.

  ‘Ed’s leaving,’ she’d said, and Lou had been incredulous. How do you decide to leave this whole life you’ve built, this family you’ve made, this home you’ve created? The secrets you’ve told, the fears you’ve shared . . . These children you’ve made. How do you decide to just leave?

  Ed, you spineless quitter, Lou had thought. And said. What a despicable, scaredy-cat quitter.

  But that night, when she and Josh had gone to bed, they hadn’t even talked about it. Josh was angry, bristling. ‘That fucking prick.’

  ‘It’s too awful,’ Lou replied. And they’d gone to bed and she’d pretended to read and he’d fallen asleep, and all Lou could see was Anika lying alone in a bed on the other side of the city, still breathless.

  I’m going to try everything to save it.

  Bold. Underlined.

  I’m going to try everything to save it.

  I don’t want to be a quitter.

  Josh deserves better than that. So do I.

  So do our girls.

  Stella and Rita couldn’t know. There was no need to upset them until it looked like it might be real. They were too little, and too happy. Too much in love with their daddy.

  What would she say, if they did get to that moment? Lou let the thought squeeze in. The truth, she supposed. All those online experts would definitely say she should tell the truth.

  ‘Mummy and Daddy don’t make each other happy anymore.’

  How long had it been since Lou had felt happy, in this bed, watching the sky lighten behind the branch of that old ash? How long since she’d felt lucky, the way she once had, before a million dramas big and small had white-anted the solid base of the life she and Josh had built together?

  Yes, this bed and Josh’s shoulder had once been her happy place. But now, sometimes, Lou would just lie here next to her husband and cry. As the sun came up, it always crossed his side of the bed first, bathing him
in that buttery yellow light that had made them buy the house in the first place.

  Josh always slept like the dead. Like a man with a clean conscience.

  Sometimes, he would roll over and throw an arm over her while she lay there, quietly sniffling. As if his instincts, even in the deepest sleep, were to comfort his miserable wife.

  Humans are so weird, Lou thought. For years, she was physically obsessed with Josh, with inhaling him and touching him. And now just a comforting arm could make her flinch.

  She used to play with his long, strong, blunt fingers. When they were out in public in the early days, they had a running joke that Lou would pick up Josh’s hand and place it where she wanted it. On her thigh. On her chest. On her belly. It was a joke that would invariably lead to an urgent need for them to excuse themselves and go home. Even as that memory made her smile now, it felt like something other people used to do.

  Now, those same fingers only had to brush against that same body for Lou to recoil. And even she knew that there were only so many times you could throw a ‘Don’t touch me’ at your husband before he took you at your word.

  How did desire turn to disgust? Was that just what happened after your body shifted from belonging to you to belonging to your children? Or was it what happened under a pile-up of disappointments, sleepless nights and towels left on the floor? If Lou was completely honest with herself, she knew there was a turning point, a moment when that changed. Could it be changed back?

  I’m going to try everything I can to save my marriage, Lou wrote into her phone.

  And if it doesn’t work I’m going to let it go. Exhale.

  But what did that mean? Lou, a teacher to her bones, knew it meant she needed a plan.

  And they were going to start right there, with the bodies, she decided. And the hands. And that fucking extinguished fire.

  1. We’re going to start having sex again, she wrote. Smiled at the memory of some blog she’d once read and dismissed as lame, and added, Every day for a month.

  There was a place to start.

  Next to her, the steady breath broke. There was a stirring. A grunt.

  Lou quickly put her phone back on the bedside table, face down, next to a necklace she would never wear.

  And she looked out of the window at the tree branch one more time before she rolled over to the body next to her in their bed. She ran a finger down the smooth, dark spine and she leaned across and breathed in deeply. Then she pushed her hand flat into his muscular back.

  ‘You’d better wake up,’ she said. ‘My husband’s coming back today with the girls.’

  Josh

  The New Year, 2019

  She looked like she’d been crying again.

  Josh hadn’t known what kind of welcome to expect from Lou as he fell through the kitchen door, arms full of bags – how much shit did two kids need for one night away? – but he hadn’t expected her to ambush him with a bear hug.

  He dropped the bags on the floor to return it, holding his wife tightly to him, smelling her freshly washed hair, feeling her breasts push against his chest. But when she pulled away and looked up at him, Josh could see that despite the grin, her face was pale and puffy.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked, still surprised by her enthusiastic greeting as the girls tumbled in behind him.

  ‘Mumma!’ Rita shrieked, wrapping herself tightly around her mother’s legs, making her wobble. Lou stood there swaying, giggling, holding her daughter.

  That was a good noise, that giggle.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Stella tried to slink past them, but Lou reached out an arm and pulled her older daughter to her, holding her tightly and kissing the top of her head.

  ‘Oh, hello, hello, my beautifuls,’ Lou said. ‘You have a good time at Grandma’s? On a scale of one to ten, how much did you miss me?’

  ‘One hundred!’ yelled Rita.

  ‘Six and a half,’ mumbled Stella from under Lou’s arm.

  Josh went back to the bags, and was surprised again when Lou lifted her eyes from the girls and asked, ‘What about you? What’s your number?’

  ‘Number of what?’

  Oh. Why was he such a dick? He knew what she was asking. ‘TEN, obviously.’ He smiled and winked, hoping that would make up for the cue he’d missed.

  ‘Did you hear that, girls?’ Lou said brightly. ‘TEN! It’s going to be a good year.’

  Josh doubted that, if the last few had been anything to go by. But hey, if Lou was in a good mood, things were off to a better start.

  ‘I’ll just take the girls’ shit up and come fill you in,’ he said, heading towards the stairs.

  The house was spotless. It often was if he left Lou alone for a day or so. She would say that was because he and the girls weren’t there to trash it, but he also knew that spending a couple of days putting everything in its place made her feel calmer, helped her head. She’d probably spent the whole of New Year’s Day cleaning up after the Christmas they’d had. Spent a wild night scrubbing the bathroom, most likely.

  Personally, the show-home look made Josh itchy. Lou never used to give a shit about this kind of stuff. Neutral cushions in strategic spots and scrubbed-pine floors. The first few places they’d lived together had been full of clutter and colour and chaos. He kind of missed it. In this house, on a day like today, everything looked so much tidier than it was. It felt like bullshit to him. Not that he’d ever say so, of course.

  Josh pushed open the door to the girls’ room and threw the two bags inside. Then he went over to Stella’s bed and lay down, stretching out his long legs so that his feet dangled off the end.

  Twenty-four hours with the girls was knackering, even with his mum around. Lots of his mates said kids were much easier as they got older, but Josh wasn’t sure. Stella and Rita had been impenetrable mysteries to him when they were babies, that was true, and now, at almost eight and almost five, they could tell him what they wanted. But also, now they never stopped telling him what they wanted.

  Sometimes, he was overwhelmed at seeing them grow so full of life and energy and emotion. ‘We made that,’ he’d say to Lou, as he watched Stella cartwheel around the garden, or when Rita was using him as a jungle gym, climbing over his shoulders and dumping wet kisses in his ear. ‘Would you look at this kid? She’s ours.’

  But all that energy and emotion was exhausting. There were endless demands and questions and instructions, and there were so many opportunities to disappoint them. And to disappoint Lou with how he handled them. So many women to let down daily.

  Josh rubbed his temples. Driving up to Mum’s yesterday with that New Year hangover was not one of his better ideas. What an idiot. Thank God he hardly ever drank like that anymore.

  Still, he knew that Lou needed a break. Ever since Christmas Day she’d had this look about her like she might bite him if he came too close. And not in a good way.

  He knew that look. They’d been there before. Best to clear out, if you could, even for one night. Might have worked, too. Despite the puffy eyes, she seemed a bit lighter.

  Josh wiggled his toes, slipped his hands behind his head. How long could he get away with lying here? Five minutes or fifteen? He just needed a bit of peace.

  Even as he thought that, he could hear Lou’s voice in his head, ‘One day with the kids and you’re so tired you need a lie-down? Poor you, I have no idea how you do it.’

  How is my own internal critic now Lou’s voice? Josh found himself smiling at that. Could you know someone so well that not only could you hear their thoughts, but sometimes you got them mixed up with your own?

  Not that Josh felt like he really knew Lou these days. He used to think he knew her better than he’d ever known anyone. But she’d begun to close off to him, bit by bit. Now he looked at her sometimes, the hard look around her eyes, the way her mouth slipped so easily into a tight line of disapproval, and he had no idea who she was, this woman in their house.

  A lot of that’s your fucking fault, mate, he thought. What did you
think was going to happen?

  ‘Daddeee!’ It was Rita, yelling from downstairs. ‘Dad-eeeeeee!’

  So much of this had started after she was born, little Rita. It was ironic that she was such a sunny, smiley kid, when, really, her arrival had brought all kinds of shit with it.

  All kinds of shit he hadn’t handled very well.

  ‘Josh!’ Lou now. ‘Are you coming? The girls say you’ve got to tell me the story about the stingray . . .’

  She still sounded happy, despite the crying face. Maybe things were going to be alright.

  ‘Coming!’ he yelled.

  Josh sat up, rubbed his belly and swung his legs so he was sitting on the edge of Stella’s bed. Time to go back down. Have a coffee to get through the rest of the afternoon. Two more days of holidays until he was back in the relative peace of the workshop.

  He’d been working on being better at home. Working on atonement, and forgiveness, and moving forward without anger. All that stuff he and Lou had talked about. And talked about.

  Last night, after the kids were in bed, Josh and his mum had sat on her verandah, listening to the surf and watching the stars come out. Emma had moved two hours north last year, to a gated village of bland, blond-brick bungalows. It was boring, but pretty as hell.

  ‘I think you’re a bloody saint, Joshy,’ she’d said to him, two glasses of white wine in as he nursed a lukewarm beer. ‘I really do. Just promise me you don’t let her have her way on everything. A man’s got to have his pride.’

  ‘Shut up, Mum,’ he’d said, but he was smiling. He knew where she was coming from. He would do pretty much anything to ensure his kids had a childhood free from the toxic bullshit that had hung over his family homes like smog.

  But his mum didn’t know the half of it, really. She didn’t know how deep it went with Lou, how she was the only woman he could love like this and how he knew, for sure, that she was too good for him. How he’d proved that over and over.

  And his mum didn’t know that if Josh wasn’t such a screw-up, there would have been three little people asleep on the shell-patterned pull-out in her bungalow’s spare room, not two.

  Josh pushed his palms hard against his eyes for a moment, then pulled them away and shook his head from side to side, loosening that thought away.