The Fall-Out

Chapter 1

ONE

The first time I saw Patrick naked, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A few minutes later, I couldn’t believe my luck.

I can remember telling my friends about it, once I was sure it was okay to tell them anything at all. ‘I mean, my God. Seriously. I thought it was only, like, marble statues made by ancient Greeks with massive hard-ons over some twenty-three-year-old discus thrower that looked like that. But no, he genuinely does. It’s ridiculous.’

‘Has he got – what are they called again? – semen gutters?’ Rowan asked.

‘Stop!’ Kate put her hands over her eyes. ‘We’re friends with the man. We don’t want to think about his semen. Never mind it trickling down his— Ugh. Just no.’

‘It must be like dating a fitness guru,’ Abbie suggested.

‘Yes, only without the wanky posing in front of the mirror,’ I said.

‘And the grunting,’ said Kate. ‘Although of course, that might happen later. Go on, Naomi, share it with the group.’

‘Share wha—’ I began, then I was overcome with reticence. ‘I’m not going to. Suffice to say, if there is any grunting, it happens at the appropriate time and place.’

‘I bet it does.’ Rowan giggled. ‘Zara always said?—’

And then it was her turn to shut up, and the conversation moved on, thankfully, to other things.

Now, though, too many years to think about had passed, and whole days – weeks even – went by without me giving Patch’s ripped physique a second glance.

His snoring, not so much.

It was a Friday in January, a day I’d been dreading for as long as I’d known it was going to happen. Appropriately, the weather was foul – the app on my phone had warned me what to expect, and the glimpses of dark sky showing through the gap in the curtains, the swish of rain on the street outside and the occasional blustery whistle of wind confirmed that it had known what it was on about.

It was five in the morning and I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep for another hour and put off the inevitable awfulness of what lay ahead. But, with what sounded like a pneumatic drill going at full volume on the pillow next to mine, the chances of that were growing more remote with every minute that passed.

‘Patch.’ I dug an elbow into the ridge of muscle that ran down his side, none too gently. ‘You’re snoring. Turn over.’

‘What?’ he muttered, rolling over away from me. ‘Sleeping. Leave me alone.’

‘Jesus. I know you’re sleeping. At least one of us is.’

I was fully awake now, the jangling, unrested wakefulness of a disturbed night. I should be used to it by now – I literally couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept uninterrupted for eight hours. There must have many nights like that, back when Patch and I first got together, when we’d go out, have a few drinks, come home and shag ourselves senseless before sleeping and sleeping, waking up to have sex again and sleeping some more, on and on into the morning, until eventually we got up because we were so hungry from all the sex we couldn’t stay in bed any longer.

But those days were all kinds of gone.

I closed my eyes, turning over and fitting my body into the curve of his. At least if I stayed there, it would make it harder for him to flip over on to his back, and hopefully keep the snoring at bay for a bit. I rested my hand on his arm, feeling the definition of the muscles there, just as clear as they’d been the first time I’d touched him. Once, feeling them would have ignited a flame of desire deep inside me, but now the only thing I desired was sleep.

How long has it been? I thought fretfully. Three months? Four? The last time would have been on Christmas Eve. Which was pretty grim, now I thought about it. Tree given a top-up of water, check. Sprouts prepped for the morning, check. Presents wrapped, check. Now a bit of sex for him indoors and Santa’s little helper’s work is done.

Ee-eww.

And the time before that? On Patch’s birthday, obviously. In June.

Shit. It’s not good enough, is it?

I turned over again, resisting the urge to open my eyes, and listened to the rain. Today was going to be bad enough if I was rested and refreshed, but the chances of that were diminishing by the second. The thought of our dwindling sex life had added a spark to the pile of worries that seemed to permanently inhabit my brain, and – like a fire starting in a hoarder’s home – there was plenty of fuel for it to feed on.

Was I going to be able to fit into my purple dress? Did I have a pair of tights that weren’t laddered or bobbled? Was I going to be able to get everyone up, breakfasted and out of the house on time?

Why was life so fragile, cruel and short, yet each day simultaneously so damn long?

Was my husband going to stop loving me?

Had he already stopped loving me?

Damn it. It was no good. I raised my wrist to my eyes and the clock on my fitness tracker told me it was five to six. When I connected to its app, it would tell me what I already knew: that I’d had about three and a half hours of restless sleep.

There was no point trying for more – I knew from experience that now, if I managed to fall asleep again, I’d only be jerked awake from a dream that I’d struggle to shake, and spend the day feeling groggy, anxious and even more tearful than I was bound to feel anyway.

I turned back to Patch’s warm body and wrapped my arm round him, pulling him close. He grunted sleepily and I kissed the back of his neck, inhaling the smell of him, trying to recapture the way that smell used to make me feel.

But I didn’t feel anything – just a deep weight of sadness that I feared would never go away. Having sex with my husband on his birthday and at Christmas was one thing, but I wasn’t going to be able to get myself in the mood on the morning of a funeral, pecs or no pecs.

At any rate, the closeness of my body had roused him into a lighter sleep, and the snoring had stopped for now. Looking at his back in the blueish early-morning light, his shoulders relaxed in sleep, his hair mussed where it had pressed against the pillow, I felt overwhelmed with tenderness. It was like when we’d been on a date, years ago, to see an afternoon showing of E.T. at the cinema, and at the moment when the boys soared into the sky on their BMX bikes, I’d glanced sideways at him and seen that he was crying.

I was already in love with him then, but that moment – seeing him so moved, so vulnerable, like a little boy himself – had made me think, I’m going to spend my life loving this man.

And here we were. Still together, married, the parents of two children. Still in love – mostly. I hoped.

I turned over on to my back, reaching for my phone and releasing it from the charging cable one-handed. As soon as the book-end of my body left Patch’s back, he turned over too and the snoring began again, even louder than before.

Soft thoughts of love forgotten, I dug my elbow into his ribs – more than a shove but not quite a blow.

‘Whatcha doing?’ he mumbled.

‘You’re snoring. Stop it.’

‘You hit me.’

‘No, I didn’t. Turn over.’

‘I’m sleeping.’

‘No, you’re not.’

But as if to prove me wrong, he let out another thunderous snore.

I rolled my eyes – pointless, given his were closed – and shuffled my pillows higher to sit up, flicking my phone to life. My notifications screen told me nothing I didn’t already know – I had no new emails, one event that day, and the weather was awful. Oh, apart from the FTSE 100 being up and the Nasdaq down, which I hadn’t known but didn’t need to.

I tapped the WhatsApp icon, as I did almost first thing every morning. There had been no new messages on the Girlfriends’ Club chat since we’d all wished each other good night, like we were girls whispering in the dark in a boarding school dormitory.

Now, it was time for the process to happen in reverse.

Naomi:

Good morning

Then my thumbs paused over the keypad. There was so much to say, yet also nothing at all. How are we all feeling? Scared, sad, still disbelieving. How did everyone sleep? Not much. Is it really happening? Yes.

Then, as I watched, three new messages flashed up on my screen, just the same.

Kate:

Good morning

Rowan:

Good morning

Abbie:

Good morning

I imagined them all thinking, just as I had, that there was nothing else to say – not yet, anyway.

Then I heard the thud of footsteps outside the bedroom, the rattle of the latch and the thump as the opening door rebounded off the wall.

‘Daddy, Toby says he needs a poo.’ My daughter’s voice pierced through the half-light.

‘Why’s Daddy making that noise?’ her brother demanded. Next to me, Patch muttered in his sleep and pulled a pillow over his head.

‘Come on then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to the bathroom.’