I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  He nodded, and let himself be led.

  ‘It’s supposed to change everything, Josh,’ his mum said to him, putting her arm around his waist as they walked through the pub door. ‘If you’re doing it right.’

  Lou

  ‘I give my marriage nine months,’ Lou told Gretchen. ‘We’ve tried sex and we’re trying therapy. Josh has tried rock’n’roll. So far, I’m no closer to clarity.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re naive enough to think that therapy works after two sessions,’ Gretchen said. ‘Can you pass me that hair tie?’

  JoJo, Gretchen’s stepdaughter of sorts, was staying for the weekend, and that evening she was going to a schoolmate’s party that had a nineties theme. While Gretchen and Lou sectioned and twisted her hair into a ‘Scary Spice’ confection of many different little buns, JoJo kept her headphones on and her eyes on her screens of choice – an iPad and an iPhone, interchangeably – letting herself be gently yanked from side to side, in a world of her own.

  ‘There’s another problem.’ Lou didn’t look up as she said it. ‘You know . . . him?’

  ‘Him?’ Gretchen kept twisting, and then paused, ‘Oh, him?’

  ‘Yes. Well, things – things have . . .’ Lou searched for the word. She was rarely lost for words, but she just didn’t know if there was one for what was happening here. ‘Resurfaced.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Gretchen let go of JoJo’s mini bun, leaving the hair to unravel from its knot and the twelve-year-old to look up in irritation. ‘When?’

  ‘Back at the beginning of the year,’ Lou said, in a whisper now. She looked up at her friend, who was staring at her, wide-eyed. ‘Don’t be mad with me. You’re not allowed to lose it.’

  Gretchen and Lou had been each other’s safety net for almost two decades.

  Lou had collected other friends, of course, colleagues, parents from the girls’ school, people from her old running club. But none of them would know the things she and Gretch knew about each other, from the intricate tangle of insecurities their very different families had left them with, to their romantic (or otherwise) relationship histories. They’d seen each other through health crises and meltdowns, heartbreak and grief. To anyone else in her orbit, Gretchen appeared to bounce through life landing on her toes, constantly changing course but always sure of every step. But Lou knew what went into that façade. And how scary it was for Gretch every time she felt a sure-thing fall away.

  There was very little she didn’t tell Gretch. But sometimes, the timing was key.

  ‘I am not losing it, Lou,’ Gretchen said in a voice Lou knew meant she disapproved, just a little. ‘But holy fuck, you haven’t been telling me the full story on you and Josh if that’s back in the mix.’

  JoJo’s hair was done.

  ‘Gretchen, can I go and look in your wardrobe for the rest of my outfit?’ JoJo asked, as Gretch stared at Lou. ‘I bet I find something nineties in there.’

  ‘You rude little bugger,’ Gretchen said, but she was laughing. ‘Go! But don’t look in any of my drawers, please! And no TikTok-ing my clothes for LOLs.’

  ‘Wow.’ Lou rolled her eyes at Gretch as JoJo and her screens scrambled out of the room and down the corridor. ‘You speak Young Person now.’

  ‘I still am a young person,’ Gretchen said. ‘Sit down. We need to talk. Wine or tea?’

  Lou looked at the time on her phone. ‘Still tea.’

  It was a Saturday afternoon, and Josh was at home with the kids. Things had been tense between them since the last counselling session, when he had all but told Sara the therapist that Lou was a cheater.

  ‘I want to hear about what’s really going on,’ Gretchen said, heading to the big open-plan kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘I can’t believe I tell you everything and you’ve been banging on about this whole “I give my marriage a year” experiment without including a very important data point.’

  ‘I guess I don’t want to you to think one of those things has anything to do with the other,’ Lou said, sitting down at the kitchen bench and drawing a finger across the white marble top. ‘What’s a data point, anyway?’

  ‘Something important to note that affects all that comes after,’ Gretch said. ‘Like fucking someone else before you start questioning your fourteen-year relationship.’

  ‘Shush!’

  ‘Oh, JoJo’s not listening. She’ll be filming herself in my thigh-high boots right about now.’

  ‘Still, shush. It sounds awful when you say it like that.’

  ‘It’s not the way I say it that makes it awful. It’s the fact that it happened. Again.’

  ‘Jesus, Gretch.’ Lou put her head in her hands. ‘That’s not very supportive.’

  ‘I would support you if you decided to cut Josh’s head off,’ Gretchen said, pouring hot water into two cups. ‘But it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t tell you it was murder.’

  ‘Stop it with the trademark brutality, okay? I get it. You don’t approve.’

  ‘It’s muddying your thinking.’ Gretchen brought the cups to the bench and perched next to Lou on a high stool. ‘It nearly destroyed your relationship last time. If Josh knew . . .’

  ‘I think maybe he does.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘At the therapist’s, he made a big deal of saying how important monogamy is to him.’

  ‘Well,’ Gretch blew on her tea, ‘not my thing, but hardly a controversial thing to say in couples counselling.’

  ‘And also . . . at the concert . . . he was there.’ Lou turned her cup. Her English nana had always told her to turn her tea three times; she had no idea why, but she always did it.

  ‘Why was he there?’

  ‘To see me.’

  ‘Whoa. That sounds like risk-taking behaviour, Lou. He’s trying to force your hand.’

  It was true, Lou knew. Turning up that night had been an escalation she hadn’t seen coming, and it had been keeping her awake.

  JoJo strutted back into the kitchen. Gretchen was right; the girl was wearing her old thigh-high boots, a silver crop top and a pair of what were probably hot pants but on twelve-year-old JoJo looked like rugby shorts.

  ‘How do I look?’ asked JoJo, holding up her phone to film their reaction.

  ‘Like a hot mess,’ said Gretchen.

  Lou said nothing, only shook her head.

  ‘So can I wear it to the party?’

  Lou said no and Gretchen said yes at the same time.

  *

  Josh had started writing songs again, these last few weeks. Lou had heard him, through the spare room door, as she padded past and back again with the washing and the sheets and the uniforms after the girls were in bed. She’d heard him playing the same section of a tune over and over, and murmured words snaked out from the gap under the door. She couldn’t make them out, even though she had paused there, straining.

  ‘Are you writing?’ she asked him, in what she hoped was a casual tone, downstairs in the kitchen the Monday morning after Gretchen’s while they grabbed toast and cereal for the kids. ‘I thought I heard . . .’

  ‘Just messing around,’ Josh said, too quickly.

  He had started coming to bed later and later, when she was already asleep. She felt like they were exchanging about a hundred words a day.

  ‘I think it’s great if you are,’ she said, bending down to the dishwasher. ‘I really do.’

  Josh hadn’t said anything, just taken his in my head I’m playing guitar mug to the table.

  Lou changed the subject. ‘Camping’s next week, you know.’

  School holidays were coming up, and they were going away. They always did at Easter. Sometimes with other families, sometimes just them. It was a standing arrangement, an annual booking at a beachy, bushy campsite on the south coast.

  This year it was just them. And the idea of that seemed improbable. She and Josh sitting up when the girls had gone to bed, like they had in years past, drinking red wine and playing Cards Against Humanity?

  ‘Shoul
d we . . . cancel?’ Lou asked, looking at Josh, who was looking at his coffee.

  ‘Why would we do that?’ Josh asked.

  Because you can barely look at me, thought Lou. ‘I just . . .’

  He kept his eyes on his mug. ‘What? We can’t cancel. The girls love it.’

  That was true. The highlight was setting their little suburban girls free in the bush for a couple of days. Rita was just getting old enough to have some more independence to roam around the campsite with the other kids, and city parents got to feel smug at seeing their children with dirt on their faces and sticks rather than iPads in their hands, if only during daylight hours.

  ‘Okay.’ Lou turned back to the sink. Maybe it will be cleansing, she thought, and looked around for her phone.

  4. Quality time, in nature, she would type. We’ll get away from all the daily grind bullshit and see what’s there.

  There was a moment, and then Josh said, ‘Dana and her lot are at that same campsite next weekend.’

  ‘Really?’ Lou pushed her hands into the warm soapy water where the pan from warming milk for Rita’s Weet-Bix and Josh’s very particular coffee was soaking. ‘That’s weird.’

  ‘Well, not really.’ As Josh said this, Rita chased Stella into the kitchen. Stella was in her school uniform, but Rita was only in her pants, screaming at her sister. ‘Half the school’s down there for Easter weekend.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Lou caught Rita on her second run past and grabbed her hand. ‘Let’s go get your uniform on, Reet,’ she said, and led her out of the kitchen and to the stairs.

  Up in the girls’ room, she pulled a polo shirt onto her squirming daughter. So far, Rita was loving her first year of school. Lou felt such a mingling of teacherly and parental pride seeing her marching away towards the school gate with her giant backpack on. Well, she did on the days she could be there to see it. She was on playground duty today and was due at her own school in half an hour.

  ‘Go brush your teeth, Reet,’ she said, and the little girl, still protesting about something Stella had done, headed to the bathroom.

  Lou went to the window and looked at the tree. Its leaves were turning, their dark green beginning to fade, and the yellow flowers of summer were all gone. One of the big branches on the other side to the house had snapped, she saw, and it was hanging tenuously by a strip of bark. Josh was all talk, Lou thought. She didn’t want the tree cut back but, still, he’d been insisting how dangerous it was, how urgently it needed to be trimmed, yet nothing had happened, and now one of the branches was going to fall on someone’s head.

  Irritated, she heard Rita calling her to the bathroom, because of course a nearly five-year-old can’t brush their teeth without company. ‘Coming!’ she shouted back, and turned to go.

  But as she passed the guitar room’s open door, she stopped and looked in. Why did Lou feel like it was trespassing to walk into this room? It wasn’t actually Josh’s space – it was the third bedroom, the reason that they’d bought this house in the first place. It was meant to be for Stella.

  But the room had such Josh energy about it now, it would be hard to imagine a girl’s single bed in there. There were three guitars – two propped up on stands and one lying on the floor. They were all old, bought and inherited over more than a decade. IKEA bookcases were filled with vinyl records, old books and tapes. There was his stereo and fancy speakers – the most expensive thing he owned. And on the walls, gig posters that he’d framed himself: some of them from shows they’d been to together (the Scissor Sisters at the Opera House); some from his youth (Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Big Day Out); some from his fantasies (Nirvana at Selena’s).

  ‘Muuuuummm!’

  Lou saw Josh’s phone lying on the couch and she instinctively grabbed it to take downstairs to him.

  There was a piece of paper underneath it, a note in Josh’s handwritten scrawl. The words were written one under the other as if it were a list. But it wasn’t a list.

  Dana – Campsite – cancellation – Two nights – site 17 – confirm.

  What the fuck? Lou felt her face getting hot. Hadn’t Josh told her that ‘Dana’s lot’ just happened to be coming?

  ‘Muuuuum!’

  This was different. This was new.

  She heard Sara’s voice in her head – ‘Have there been any infidelities?’ – and her stomach clenched in the same way it had in the therapist’s office. And she recalled the look Josh had shot her in that moment – accusing, angry, hurt.

  With Josh’s phone still in her hand, she walked to the bathroom and found Rita with toothpaste dripping down her wrist. She wrestled the messy toothbrush from her. ‘You’re getting it all over your school uniform, silly,’ she said. Putting the phone down next to the sink, she touched the home button to see if it was locked. It was.

  *

  Later that afternoon, when the playground had emptied, Lou was standing outside the deputy head’s office, some files under one arm, a hand on the door, taking deep breaths.

  Come on, she urged herself silently. Come on.

  ‘Hi, Lou. You okay?’ said a voice behind her. It was Diane, 1G’s teacher.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Lou turned to look at her, found a smile. ‘Just, you know, end of term.’

  ‘You here to see Theo?’ Diane asked.

  Lou shook her head, but immediately regretted it, because Diane looked appropriately confused.

  ‘Thought I needed to,’ Lou said. ‘But just remembered I’m meant to be somewhere else.’

  ‘Sure you’re okay?’ Diane asked. ‘There’s a lot going on, isn’t there?’

  ‘There really is.’ Lou smiled again and began to walk away. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  As she moved quickly down the corridor towards her own classroom, she pulled her phone out and dialled Gretchen.

  ‘Think I’m losing it,’ she said, when her friend picked up.

  ‘Me too,’ said Gretchen. ‘Kim has posted that we’re Insta official. I was not ready for that.’

  Lou rolled her eyes inwardly. Gretchen was currently dating a younger woman who worked as a ‘lifestyle influencer’. Lou had met her once, only to find herself appearing on Kim’s Instagram Stories with the caption Finally met Bae’s Bestie with a heart-shaped eyes emoji, which had made Lou feel smug and old at the same time.

  ‘Gretch, if I ask you for a really big favour, will you do it?’

  Gretchen sighed. ‘What a stupid question. How am I supposed to answer that question?’

  ‘You say yes,’ said Lou.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘You just do.’ Lou was at the door of her classroom now. It was strewn with paper Easter eggs, scissors and glue. She would usually have packed all this up the minute the kids were gone – in fact, way before – but the end-of-day bell had caught her by surprise.

  ‘Go on, ask,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘Will you come camping with us next weekend?’

  ‘Are you fucking high?’ Gretchen asked. ‘I don’t go camping.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘And I’m busy.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Kim wants me to go to Byron with her. It’s an Easter autumnal harvest thing, something to do with Bluesfest. Gratitude something.’

  ‘Well, then. It’s sorted. You don’t want to go to that.’

  ‘And the alternative is camping? With children?’

  ‘With your best friend who’s having a breakdown.’

  ‘Sounding even more enticing.’

  ‘And the woman I think Josh might be sleeping with.’

  There was a pause. Gretchen exhaled.

  ‘Please,’ Lou repeated. ‘I can’t go without you.’

  ‘Well, that sounds a little bit more interesting, although I’m sure you’re wrong.’

  ‘Then why did he invite her?’

  Pause.

  ‘Please?’ Lou jammed the phone between her ear and her shoulder and began to sweep paper scraps into the bin, probably losing a few lovingly made eggs on the
way.

  ‘Is the man you’ve been sleeping with coming too?’

  ‘Gretch, please.’ And Lou knocked over a pot of craft glue whose lid was loose, spilling the white sticky muck onto the table and her shoes.

  ‘You do sound pretty shocking.’

  Lou exhaled. ‘Thank you.’

  Josh

  Easter Sunday morning and it was raining. Josh was lying on the blow-up mattress with his arse on the floor. Overnight, every bit of air had slowly hissed out of it. Not that Josh had noticed.

  He was alone in the tent, he realised. Lou wasn’t beside him and the other mattress, shared by the girls, was sagging under a pile of blankets in the far corner.

  Josh watched the rainwater forming a dark line in the seam above him. He knew it was only a matter of time before it began to drip. There was no way he had pegged the fly out tight enough to stop it.

  Last night. Oh.

  The texture of his tongue and the acrid taste at the back of his throat stirred a feeling of toxic unease he hadn’t felt since New Year’s Day.

  A close-up view of Dana’s mouth flashed into his head. Lips, tongue.

  Where was Lou? He couldn’t hear anyone outside the tent and it was Easter. By now he should have been roused by children jumping on him and yelling about an egg hunt.

  Shit.

  Josh rolled sideways and off the mattress and felt some relief to see he’d been wearing boxer shorts under the unzipped sleeping bag.

  He pushed his head out of the tent flap. There was no-one around, despite the steady drizzle. There was evidence that breakfast had happened here under the tarp – plastic plates still on the table, a half-loaf of bread still out with a butter knife balancing on it. But no Lou, no kids, no Gretchen, no Dana. No Marco.

  He turned his head. No cars, either.

  Ah. They’d gone somewhere to escape the weather.

  Josh pulled a slightly damp pair of jeans from the floor of the tent and dragged them on. Everything on the tent floor was a little bit wet now, and likely to stay that way.

  He was outside in the rain, pulling out the guide ropes and hammering in the pegs to try to keep the tent dry, when another image came back to him.