The Seven Year Itch

by Emlyn Rees

  I wave at Amy, but she doesn’t seem to notice me. Or if she does, she chooses not to wave back.

  If I were a weatherman and Amy was a weather front, my forecast would be: frosty to begin with, with a high possibility of gale-force winds and electrical storms to follow . . .

  In other words, I’m prepared for the very worst.

  I’m fully expecting, for example, to be confronted with what I’ve privately come to think of as Amy’s ‘Munch Face’, on account of the fact that it bears a striking similarity to the renowned Norwegian artist’s most famous painting, ‘The Scream’.

  Amy’s version is a microsecond-long look of horror and revulsion that I’ve noticed greeting me several times in the last few days, before her face has had the chance to revert to its more customary mask of general indifference.

  But what I actually get as she sees me now is something far more ambivalent. It’s less Edvard Munch, and more Leonardo da Vinci. Much more ‘Mona Lisa’, than ‘The Scream’.

  Hope bursts inside me. Could that really be the trace of a smile playing at the corners of Amy’s mouth? Are we really about to dump all our discontent behind us and move on?

  And then, suddenly, Amy does smile, and it’s not a shy smile either. It’s the kind of smile a donkey would be proud of.

  Or, more kindly, one that might feature in a TV toothpaste advertisement for whiter, brighter, healthier teeth.

  I should smile back, of course. And I do try. But I can’t.

  My problem is that, as with the smiles in the TV ads, I can’t help thinking that there’s something fake about Amy’s. It’s all teeth, you see. Not eyes. The eyes have an altogether darker look to them – one that, if I didn’t know Amy better, I might almost mistake for fear . . .

  They’re certainly not the eyes of someone who’s about to apologise, or back down in any way.

  ‘My Daddy, my Daddy, my Daddy!’

  Ben charges at me like a pigmy rhino, and it’s such a treat, seeing him at this time of day, that, for a moment, I forget all about Amy as I sweep him up into the air.

  ‘Hello, my Ben,’ I laugh, as he stretches out his arms and legs like a freefalling skydiver.

  ‘I flying, Daddy! Look, Mummy! Looka me fly!’

  ‘Daddy’s going to be flying soon, as well,’ Amy says.

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’ I ask defensively, because it sounds like a threat.

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘No. I think you should sit down first.’

  Those hairs on the back of my neck prickle again, springing to attention like a football crowd that’s just witnessed a shot on goal.

  Which is hardly surprising, considering that I think you should sit down first is an even more ominous phrase than There’s something I need to talk to you about and Face to face. In fact, you’d have a tough job finding a more ominous phrase in the whole English language (barring Today is a good day to die and Hey you, boy, my redneck buddy, Bubba, here thinks you look mighty puhrty in them thar jeans – neither of which, thankfully, you encounter every day).

  In fact, the only reason someone ever asks you to sit down before they break news to you is because they think that the news might make you faint.

  I lower Ben to the ground and hold his tiny hand in mine as I follow Amy to a nearby cast-iron bench and sit beside her.

  She hands Ben a box of Sunmaid raisins and then turns to me and says, ‘I’ve got some exciting news.’

  The smile is back, I note, and, if anything, it’s grown in intensity. There’s a maniacal edge to it now, like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining, when he breaks down the bathroom door with an axe.

  I suddenly feel like I’ve just swallowed a rock.

  ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ I ask.

  And I really think I will faint if she answers, Yes. Because – and I hate myself for thinking it – her being knocked up really is the worst thing that could happen right now. We’re skint and we’re not getting on. And our flat’s not big enough, and a baby won’t solve a thing, and –

  I’m just about to blurt all of this out, and more, when Amy laughs.

  And the second she does, I do too, because it’s only then that it strikes me how ridiculous my question actually is. Because not only is Amy on the pill, but our sex life is now such that, if it were being monitored on a cardiogram, with its increasingly sporadic peaks, any watching consultant would predict that it was only a matter of time before a complete flatline occurred.

  ‘No,’ she confirms.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’ve won a competition.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A competition. For a shopping trip to New York.’

  My face screws up in a frown. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘On the back of a chocolate wrapper.’

  I feel like a boxer being pummelled by a succession of body blows. ‘But I didn’t think anyone actually ever won those things.’

  ‘Well, they do, and I have, and so have you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a trip for two.’

  ‘But you said it was a shopping trip . . .’

  That toothpaste-ad smile shines out once more. ‘Men can shop, Jack. I mean, I know you don’t, but you could learn.’

  This is all coming at me too quickly. I stutter, confused. ‘But don’t you want to . . . I don’t know . . . take someone else?’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like H.’

  ‘No, I want to take you.’ Suddenly, the smile vanishes. ‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Don’t you want to come?’

  I realise, I should, of course, be jumping up and down with excitement, or even whooping for joy, like Charlie Bucket after he won his golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

  After all, a gargantuan piece of luck like this doesn’t come along every day.

  And, of course, I do feel a buzz, as Amy’s news slowly begins to sink in, but I can’t, I won’t, quite allow myself to go whoopee.

  In fact, it’s sitting about as well with me as a bloody rump steak in a vegan’s gut, because forget where Amy and I might be going, thanks to this competition. What about where we are right now? We’re in Desolation Drive, Miseryville, that’s where. In a condemned property, with the bulldozers revving up outside . . .

  So, instead of shouting, ‘Of course!’ and bursting into a spontaneous rendition of ‘Congratulations’, whilst simultaneously waltzing Amy across the freshly mown lawns of St James’s Park, what I say instead is:

  ‘But –’

  And that one word, interrupted as it duly and inevitably is, is enough to resurrect Amy’s ‘Munch Face’, just for a second, making me think that it never actually went away at all.

  ‘What do you mean, but?’ she demands. ‘There are no buts.’

  ‘But what about Ben?’

  ‘I’ve already sorted it. Mum says she’ll look after him.’

  The words fait and accompli spring to mind. As do the words How come Amy told her mother before me? Is it because she thinks my opinion counts for shit?

  ‘For three days?’ I check.

  ‘Yes.’

  I don’t even bother getting into the risks inherent in leaving ‘The Precious’ with Jan for that long. (Although, automatically, I’m thinking that Manchurian Candidate levels of brainwashing, affection manipulation and loyalty reprogramming are highly likely to occur.)

  I’m too busy thinking of how being away from Ben for that long will affect us.

  ‘But won’t you miss him?’ I ask. I know I will. The longest I’ve ever spent away from him is a night, when I went on Ug’s stag do to Swansea. And even then, when I woke up at seven in the morning and stared in dismay at the unfamiliar Artexed ceiling of the pub dormitory we were staying in, I found myself pining for my son like a dog that had j
ust given up its pups.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jack. It’s a holiday. A free holiday.’ I watch as the excitement fades from her face. ‘Or maybe it’s not the holiday that’s bothering you,’ she suggests, ‘or spending three days away from Ben. Maybe it’s just that you don’t want to spend three days with me.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘No, but you’re not denying it, either.’

  Before I get the chance to right myself over this Freudian slip that Amy’s spotted, Ben asks, ‘Whabe you going, Daddy?’

  ‘Daddy’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re just going to turn this amazing opportunity down,’ Amy snaps. ‘That you want us to stay here and stew in the flat, and watch fucking TV with your sister, when we could be in New York instead.’

  I wait for the shock waves of this mini-explosion to subside.

  ‘Actually,’ I then say, keeping my voice calculatedly calm. ‘I was telling Ben I wasn’t going anywhere at this exact minute. Because I’m guessing, on account of the fact that he’s too young to have any concept of time, or international travel, that that’s what he was asking me. But thanks a bunch,’ I conclude, ‘for letting me know how you feel about our life in London all the same.’

  She stares at the ground. ‘I’m sorry,’ she then says.

  She looks like she’s going to cry, and suddenly I feel all churned up as well.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ I admit.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not getting more excited about this . . . It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘I don’t want us to go there and find that things are exactly the same as here . . .’

  ‘You mean between us?’

  ‘Exactly.’ I feel sick, sick at saying this, sick that we’ve reached a point where I feel I have to say it.

  ‘And how are things between us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It’s my turn to stare at the ground. ‘Flat.’

  ‘Flat?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ I say. And a nicer way than crap, which is how I actually feel.

  ‘So we’ll make them not flat,’ she says.

  She sounds – and looks, I now see, as I glance across at her – like she really means it.

  My heart skips a beat. ‘You think we can?’ I ask, because I’ve got my doubts. Love’s not like a Sodastream. You can’t just switch the fizz on and off at will.

  ‘We can try,’ Amy says. ‘We can make an effort. And I will.’

  ‘Then so will I.’

  Part of me thinks it’s ridiculous, this verbal brokering of peace between us, this edging towards an agreement. It’s so formal and so far removed from the way we used to be. Our relationship was once self-governing, and not something that had to be monitored and adjusted and planned. Whereas now a part of me is almost tempted to shake her hand.

  I make myself smile instead. And Amy smiles back. And this time it doesn’t look like a toothpaste ad at all. It looks genuine. And lovely. And real.

  ‘OK, then,’ I say, ‘so let’s do it. Let’s go to New York.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s go there and have fun. I’ll even let you teach me how to shop. Come on,’ I say, taking her hand and pulling her up. ‘Let’s go for some food and talk dates.’

  We get a table outside the café and buy some sandwiches and drinks. Ben feeds crisps to the squirrels.

  And, finally, we start to work things out.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ she says half an hour later.

  The agency organising the New York trip has given Amy a choice of dates. We’re taking the first one available, as that’s the one that suits her mum for babysitting. It’s next weekend.

  I settle Ben in his buggy. He’s half-asleep, weary from the heat and all the running around he’s been doing.

  I ask Amy, ‘How are you getting back home?’

  ‘Tube.’

  ‘I’ll walk you there.’

  ‘OK.’

  We set off up the path, away from the café, and back towards the Mall.

  ‘So how have the internet dates been going?’ I ask.

  Amy half-trips over a stone. She stops. ‘What?’

  ‘The internet dates . . .’

  She freezes and stares at me like I’ve just told her there’s a spider in her hair.

  ‘You know,’ I remind her, ‘all those guys H had lined up. Don’t tell me she didn’t fill you in on what’s been happening with them.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ She nods her head, understanding at last. ‘Yeah, she did.’

  We start to walk again. ‘And?’

  ‘It’s like I said: it might as well be another planet.’

  ‘So where did you and she end up last night?’

  ‘Oh, a restaurant.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Zuma.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, Matt was on about that the other day. How was it?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Just fine? What did you eat?’

  ‘A Pad Thai thingy . . .’

  ‘But I thought it was Japanese?’

  ‘It is but –’

  I laugh. ‘So what are they doing serving Thai food?’

  She turns on me. ‘What is this?’ she snaps. ‘Twenty fucking questions?’

  The sudden aggression hits me like a gunshot. I stop dead in my tracks. I can’t look at her for a moment. On the back of getting along with her just now, I feel more hurt than I otherwise would. It’s like the moment I drop my guard, smack, in comes the killer punch. Anger surges through me. I fight the desire to flare up right back at her. I count to five. I will it all away.

  And I’m right to wait.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she says, briefly pressing her hand on mine. ‘I’m just tired, OK?’

  ‘It’s all right.’ I carry on pushing the pram. I don’t look at her, in case I don’t like what I see. In case I see that nothing’s really changed at all. ‘Let’s just forget it. We’re both making an effort, remember?’

  ‘OK.’

  As we reach the Mall, I turn left, towards Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Amy asks.

  ‘Charing Cross station.’

  ‘I was going to go up to Piccadilly.’

  ‘Charing Cross is closer and it’s on my way back to work.’

  In spite of the common sense underlying my suggestion, an awkward silence reasserts itself between us, as once more she falls into step beside me. We walk beneath Admiralty Arch and cross the road on to Trafalgar Square.

  It’s only then that I glance at her. She’s gazing at the ground, like a prisoner on the march. I feel my heart sink.

  I hope she is just tired.

  I hope we both really are going to make an effort to get through this.

  I hope.

  ‘I love it here,’ I hazard, as we walk past Nelson’s column. ‘Shall we get an ice cream and just chill out for five minutes?’

  She doesn’t break her stride. ‘No.’

  Not even a thank you.

  We cross the road and walk up the Strand to Charing Cross station.

  And that’s when I notice it again, the thing I’ve dreaded the most: the disinterest. I briefly kiss her lips as we come to say goodbye, and I see it’s returned to her eyes like a veil.

  She’s looking through me, not at me, again.

  I watch her walk with Ben into the station, and I wait for her to wave, or blow me a kiss, like she always used to. But she does neither. She doesn’t look back. She disappears into the crowd.

  And what I’m left with is a feeling of great fragility. A feeling that, any second now, Amy and I might once again snap.

  The Beginning Of The End

  Amy’s out and Kate’s still at work, and I’m back at the flat with Ben, and loving every second of it.

  I’ve converted the kitchen into a giant den, by draping blankets and bed sheets over the kitchen table and chairs. Ben’s scrab
bling around beneath the table, while I’m pretending to be a monster, stomping up and down outside, listening to him squeal with fear and delight.

  His favourite album, No!, by They Might Be Giants, is cranked up on the sound system, and there’s melted chocolate ice cream all over the worktop, from where we made Häagen-Dazs milkshakes earlier on, to go with the biscuits and crisps he had for tea.

  Amy told me to give Ben some of the vegetable casserole that’s in the fridge before five thirty, but Ben said he ‘hungry now’ at five and that he ‘no like gevetchtable carole’ and that he ‘want eat crips instead’. So I caved in. Which was just as well, because judging by how quickly he wolfed down all the chipsticks and Jammy Dodgers I gave him, the poor mite must have been half-starving.

  And it looks like there’s no damage done, either, because now, at just gone six, he’s certainly full of energy. And wide awake. Whereas, normally, when I get back from work, more often than not he’s half-asleep.

  If you ask me, there’s too much fuss made about kids’ sugar intake. I mean, their baby teeth fall out anyway, right? So who cares if they’ve got a bit of plaque on them when they do?

  Still, I don’t suppose I’d better let on to Amy what I’ve been up to. Parenting is, after all, meant to be her area of expertise – and, despite our uneasy truce in St James’s Park, things still aren’t exactly great between us. The last thing I want to do right now is rock the boat.

  ‘Home alone by any chance?’

  I jump like I’m being stalked by a monster myself, and Ben screams even louder under the table, thinking it’s all part of the game.

  Kate’s standing in the kitchen doorway, taking off her white suit jacket.

  I survey the carnage around me and smile. ‘Now whatever makes you say that?’ I ask.

  She rolls her eyes and walks over to the sink and fills the kettle.

  ‘Good day at work?’ I ask.

  ‘So so.’

  Ben braves peeping through a gap in the sheets, and clocks that it’s Kate, not a flesh-eating monster, that’s joined us.

  ‘Kay-kate!’ he yelps, scrabbling out and running over to give her a hug.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ she says, kissing him on the top of the head.

  ‘Tweenies?’ Ben then asks, looking over at me and nodding managerially, before ramming another Jammy Dodger into his mouth.