by Lisa Jewell
‘Well, enjoy is not quite the word, no. But it pays well, I live on the beach in the coolest place in the world. And I have my band.’
‘Your band?’
‘Yeah, I do vocals with a band.’
‘What kind of band?’
‘Rock. Well, kind of rock-cum-pop, I guess. With a hint of emo, except I’m way too old to say I play in an emo band.’
‘They sound like the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack,’ added Smith drily.
‘Fuck you,’ said Rosey, thumping Smith affectionately on the arm. ‘Smith’s just jealous because he has no creative outlet in his life.’
‘Pah!’ countered Smith. ‘Creative schreative. I’ve got plenty of outlets. I’ve got spiritual. I’ve got emotional. I’ve got sexual …’ He counted them off on his fingers.
Ralph looked at him askance. ‘Spiritual?’ he said. ‘Emotional? Er?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Rosey, leaning her head into the crook of Smith’s shoulder, ‘just because he is skilled in the ancient art of reiki massage, Smith seems to think he’s got all his spiritual bases covered.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m happy. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Isn’t that the bottom line? Who cares about whether or not anyone’s written a book about it, called it something? Whatever. I wake up every morning and I feel good. End of story.’
He folded his arms across his chest and then smiled, before leaning in towards his beer and lifting it. ‘To happiness, without all the bollocks.’
Ralph picked up his orange juice and lifted it to Smith’s beer. ‘Indeed,’ he said, thinking actually, he would go for happiness any way it came, with or without the bollocks. All he wanted was someone to show him where to find it.
‘Hey!’ said Rosey, suddenly alert. ‘Ralph could come to see me play, Tuesday!’
Smith gave her a questioning look.
‘Yeah. Why not? You’re busy on Tuesday. Ralph could come and see us play. What do you say, Ralph? Fancy a night out? It’s a nice venue, a community hall. Free entry. Beer. You’ll be in bed before midnight. I’m driving, I’ll get you home. Eh?’
Ralph nodded, slowly, numbly. ‘That sounds great,’ he said, ‘I’d love to. Thank you.’
Chapter 5
Jem awoke the next morning and stared into the dark blinking eyes of her infant son. He had shared the bed with her all night and had awoken not hungry, as he had fed on demand like a grazing cow all night long, but fully rested and ready for the day to begin. Jem, on the other hand, was drained, her sleep having been disturbed at horribly regular intervals by not just her greedy baby but also her overactive imagination.
She had spent wakeful hours in the night mentally wording her text message to Joel.
Hi, it’s Scarlett’s mum, how are you fixed for Wednesday?
Hi, Joel, this is Jem, Scarlett’s mum. Still up for a play-date this week?
Hello! Which afternoon would you like to kill off this week? I’m free most days.
She’d also spent wakeful hours in the night mentally playing out the detail of the as yet unplanned meeting. Whose house? What to wear? Would she drop Scarlett and run? Would she stay and roll a glass of wine between her hands whilst making gentle and revealing conversation with Joel?
She’d then spent wakeful hours in the night wondering why any of this was happening in the first place. Why had this pale, unassuming man about whom she knew absolutely nothing suddenly jumped into three dimensions and taken over part of her brain? Why was she seeing his smile in her dreams? Why was she courting intimacy with him?
She had only just had a baby. When she had started trying to conceive that baby she had thought of it as the next step in the evolution of her life with Ralph. Blake hadn’t been created on a whim, by mistake; he’d been deliberately and specifically manufactured in order to complete their family. Now he was here, in her bed, staring at her, smiling at her, delighted to see her. He was real and becoming more real by the day. They were four. Ralph, the love of her life, Scarlett, the daughter she’d always dreamed of, Blake, this curious boy in her bed, and her. Wasn’t this the point at which one drew a line underneath one’s existence? Wasn’t this the point at which one could say, well done me, I have come in on schedule, I have one of each, I have a house, I have a good man, now I can sit and revel in all the work and the wonder and the growing yet to come, I am home?
This surely wasn’t the point at which one started making glad eyes at single dads and fantasising about stolen moments on play-dates.
An ego boost. That’s what this was, she’d concluded at some time around 4.30 a.m. She was nearing forty. Her partner had run away from home. She didn’t feel pretty any more. She wanted someone to make her feel pretty. And that man could be anyone. Joel just happened to be the only one she knew who looked like he might want to.
That was it. That was all. It was nothing more. It was just an ego boost. It was just a play-date. On Saturday Ralph would be home and somehow they’d find a way to fix themselves, and when that happened this thing with Joel would diminish into perspective like a rock falling into a chasm.
She gathered the gurgling Blake into her arms and rested him on top of her chest so that they were nose to nose. ‘As if,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘As if I would do anything to make your life anything less than perfect.’
The door opened then and Scarlett stood in the doorway, her polar bear hanging from her hand by the paw, her curls in flaming disarray around her head, her pyjama trousers round her ankles.
‘I just did a bit of wee in my pyjamas,’ she said, her teeth catching her bottom lip as she said it.
Jem pulled herself up to sitting and rested Blake on her lap. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘It just came out,’ she said, ‘when I was trying to take my trousers off.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Jem. ‘Happens to me sometimes. Take ’em off.’
‘Where shall I put them?’
‘Just there,’ she said, ‘leave them. Are you coming into bed with us?’ She lifted the duvet.
Scarlett nodded, kicked off her pyjama bottoms and leaped on to the bed, nearly squashing Blake in the process.
‘Careful!’ cried out Jem.
One of the more unexpected aspects of Blake’s arrival into their family was how utterly gigantic Scarlett immediately appeared to be. Her hands, previously the hands of a small girl, looked like shovels, her fingernails seemed as big as roof tiles. She seemed man-sized, a vast threatening figure, big enough to squash and maim and knock the life from Blake in a single blow.
Scarlett crawled across Jem’s lap and kissed Blake on the lips. Blake looked at her in surprise. ‘Is it time to go to nursery yet?’ she asked, rolling on to Ralph’s half of the bed and pulling the duvet up under her chin.
Jem glanced at the time on the clock radio on Ralph’s bedside table: 6.45 a.m. She groaned inwardly.
‘No,’ she said, ‘not for ages. Shall we just all snuggle for a while?’
‘Yes,’ said Scarlett, ‘let’s all snuggle.’
For a short moment the three of them lay there like that, still figures beneath the duvet, the only noise the slight ruffle of Egyptian cotton as Scarlett adjusted the cover below her chin. Jem smiled. This was good. This felt complete. This felt – it shocked her to realise – absolutely fine without Ralph. She thought of the previous night, the luxury of being able to fuss over Blake without the accompanying tuts and sighs and exaggerated flounces from the other side of the bed. She closed her eyes and imagined that her children might just lie here, might just let her sleep for a few more precious minutes, but a second later Scarlett was out from under the duvet, bouncing up and down, and Blake was fidgeting on top of Jem and trying to climb on to her head, and she gave up.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go and have breakfast. Let’s start the day.’
Chapter 6
Jem took Blake to her sister’s house after dropping Scarlett at the nursery. Jem had two sisters: Isobel, who lived in Rotterdam wi
th her Dutch husband and twin daughters, and Louisa, or Lulu as she was known universally, who lived just round the corner in a massive converted pub with her partner, Walter, a statuesque fifty-three-year-old dermatologist from Ottawa. Lulu was only a year older than Jem and not just her sister but, over the last few years, as they’d both grown into motherhood, her best friend too. Walter earned enough as a consultant dermatologist to mean that Lulu did not have to work, and since the birth of their first son, eight years earlier, she had been a full-time mother.
Jem loved coming to Lulu’s house. It was always warm and it was always on the right side of messy, and her sister always made her tea like their mum made and Jem never had to apologise for her daughter’s behaviour or for her baby’s screaming or for being late or being scruffy or not having anything interesting to talk about. Lulu’s house was her sane place, the place where everything made sense and nothing really mattered as much as she’d thought it had before she got there.
‘Hello! Hello!’ Lulu greeted her at the front door with a brush of her warm cheek and a snuffle of Blake’s head and a pile of paperwork in her hands. ‘How was your weekend? I can’t believe you didn’t pop over!’
Jem shook her head and unfurled her neck scarf. ‘No, I know. I thought I would but then suddenly it was Sunday night and I’d got through the whole weekend on my own.’
‘So it was cool?’
‘It was cool. It was actually …’
‘… quite fun?’
‘Yes, quite fun.’
‘I know,’ said Lulu. ‘I love it when Walt’s away, when it’s just me and my babies and my own rhythm, but it’s all about the fact that Walt’s coming back, you know, not like I’d actually want to be a single mother or anything, heaven forbid, they should all be awarded something, OBEs or something. Come in.’
The house was empty, Theo and Jared and the older children all at school. Lulu had clearly been in the middle of doing the household accounts. The big oak table in the kitchen was spread thick with bills, letters, Post-its and a calculator. ‘You’ve come just in the nick of time actually, just as I was about to hang myself. Look at this.’ She pointed at the table. ‘How can one small-ish family produce so much paper? I mean, it’s like we’re a small nation or something, a flipping principality. Plus I’ve just worked out that we can’t actually afford to eat any more. I’m afraid,’ she blinked at Jem with pursed lips, ‘I’m going to have to charge you for your tea.’
Jem laughed and began to unpop the straps on the Baby Bjorn. ‘Christ,’ she said, ‘is it that bad?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s that bad. I might have to get a job.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ Jem handed Blake to Lulu while she took off the baby carrier. ‘Walter’s still earning the same, yes?’
‘Yes, but we’re spending more. Simple as that. It’s my fault. I just don’t know when to stop. I keep saying the same things to myself over and over to justify it, you know: well, at least I’m not paying for childcare. Well, at least we’re not paying for school fees. Well, at least we’re not gadding off on expensive holidays. Well, at least we’re not driving an expensive car. But you know me, it’s all the, you know, extras. The posh shampoo. The eBay habit. The not-even-looking-at-the-prices in Waitrose. You know, I picked up a packet of organic blueberries from there the other day and didn’t notice until I got home that they were £3.99. For nineteen blueberries; 21p each.’
‘You worked it out?’
‘Yes, I worked it out. And I also worked out that I will not be buying organic blueberries from Waitrose again. Party Ring?’ She offered her a plastic tub of pastel-coloured biscuits. Jem took two. ‘Anyway, apart from not missing Ralph, how are you?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ Jem sat Blake on her lap and let him suck the edge of one of her Party Rings.
Lulu had the kettle under the tap and turned to glance at Jem curiously. ‘Are you going to tell me?’ she said.
‘What?’ said Jem.
‘What’s going on.’
‘With what?’
‘With you and Ralph.’
‘Nothing.’
She put the lid back on the kettle and put it on its base. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Have you two had sex yet?’
Jem shook her head.
‘How long has it been now?’
‘Six months,’ said Jem, ‘maybe longer.’
‘Right, so it’s been EIGHT MONTHS.’
Jem started to protest, but Lulu talked over her. ‘It’s been eight months and you need to do something about it.’
‘Oh God.’ Jem let her head drop into her chest. ‘Just the thought of it. Just the idea of having to be all … sexy.’
‘You don’t have to be sexy, you just have to open your legs.’
Jem sighed. Talking about this stuff with Lulu was always unedifying because Lulu loved sex. She’d loved it even more when she was pregnant and then been up for it again within mere days of giving birth to both her sons. For Lulu sex was on a par with drinking champagne or eating cake or buying things in nice shops. For Lulu sex was a salve at the end of a stressful day. For Lulu sex was fun. ‘I know,’ sighed Jem. ‘And when I think about it I can just about imagine it. I can just about imagine myself saying yes and going for it. But then the minute he asks, it’s like, it’s like he’s just suggested going rollerblading. Or, skiing. Or even, you know, going for a jog. All things that I quite enjoy but don’t particularly want to do at nine at night when I’ve been looking after children all day.’
‘Well, then, don’t do it at night. Do it during the day.’
‘Right, just ask the kids to entertain themselves for an hour –’
‘No,’ Lulu interrupted, ‘when Scarlett’s at nursery, when Blake’s sleeping.’
Jem thought back to Ralph’s request a few weeks earlier, just after she’d got back from her meeting in town. What had been her excuse that day? Sore feet. Leaking breasts. Lack of sleep. But beneath all of that just really, really not wanting to have sex. Because Lulu must also have had sore feet, leaking breasts and a lack of sleep when her babies were small but she had also still enjoyed the notion of taking all of her clothes off and bouncing up and down naked on top of her husband. These things were reasons but they were not an explanation.
‘Do you still fancy him?’ Lulu asked bluntly.
‘Fancy him?’
‘Yes. Think he’s handsome. Think he’s gorgeous. Want to touch him. Want to squeeze him.’
She conjured up an image of his face. It was a beautiful face. She thought about his long strong arms, the hardness of them, his elegant legs, his perfectly shaped skull, his angular hands and feet. Ralph was gorgeous by any measure, slightly older, slightly greyer, slightly balder and slightly less defined around his middle, but still undeniably a very attractive man. For years she had found him irresistible, had slept with her body entwined around his, had breathed in the scent of his scalp as if it were the meaning of life. Her physical love for him had been desperate, overwhelming, exhilarating. And then it had just stopped. Not gradually but almost overnight.
‘I still think he’s gorgeous,’ she replied, ‘totally. But I just don’t want to have sex with him. A bit like, you know, I think you’re gorgeous but …’
‘Right, so you fancy him platonically, like he’s your really hot brother or something.’
‘Er, yeah, I guess so.’
‘And while you’re not having sex with him, what do you expect him to be doing about it?’
‘I know,’ Jem hissed. ‘I’m not stupid. I know what I should be doing.’
‘Then do it,’ said Lulu. ‘When he gets back on Saturday, have a bottle of wine …’
‘I can’t! I’m breastfeeding!’
‘OK then, have a small glass of wine, take him to bed, it’s been so long he’ll be over and done with in thirty seconds, you’ll lie there thinking, actually, that was more fun than roller-blading, he’ll lie there thinking, hurrah, my wife let me have sex with her, onwards and upw
ards, your future secure for your children.’
Jem nodded decisively. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right. I know you’re right. I think it’s just – I do everything, and having sex with Ralph just feels like yet one more thing I have to do, just to keep everyone happy, just to stop everyone moaning, and that’s all I do all day, stop people moaning.’
‘So, if Ralph did more about the house you’d be more minded to boff him?’
Jem considered this. Was it that simple? If he emptied the dishwasher more often and got the kids ready to leave the house without asking, would Jem feel a sudden return to carnal longing? It was a very pertinent question and the answer, Jem felt, lay at the root of everything. Was she fed up with Ralph because he was unsupportive and didn’t help around the house or was she fed up with Ralph because, well, because they were nearing their conclusion?
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘maybe.’
‘And you’re clearly not dead from the waist down,’ said Lulu, ‘given that you’ve been having meaningful brushes with strange men on the tube.’
‘What strange men?’ asked Jem, feeling slightly unnerved that her sister had remembered their conversation.
‘You know, the one that was like something out of a novel. The single dad.’
‘Oh, that.’ Jem tried to look insouciant. ‘That wasn’t about sex. That’s just me and my old destiny thing, you know, imagining too much into scenarios, thinking that stuff has to, you know, mean something. And besides, I’ve kind of got talking to him lately and honestly, there’s nothing there.’
‘Nothing there?’
‘No. Nothing. He’s nice. That’s all.’ Jem smiled tightly, unsure as to whether or not her words held the truth.
‘So you don’t want to boff him?’
‘I don’t want to boff him. I don’t want to boff anyone. I just want to be left alone.’
Lulu smiled and passed Jem her tea. ‘Be left alone to have a deep and meaningful love affair with your baby,’ she said.
Jem looked at her baby. She inhaled the smell of his scalp. She ran her finger around the inside of his trouser hem, tracing the silk of his delicious new skin. She brought his fist to her lips and kissed it.
