Rule Two You are your partner’s greatest cheerleader, act like it
The Account
Jessica
It’s summer, and we’re in our early thirties, so obviously the only thing we do with our weekends is go to weddings. It’s become our second job and our third most expensive activity after bills and rent.
In theory I love weddings. I cry when the bride comes down the aisle, even if it’s someone marrying someone Jack works with and I’ve never met her before. I love the canapés and the small talk and the champagne (even when it’s Prosecco). I love the getting ready, the gossiping with people I haven’t seen for ages, the roast dinner they always serve even when it’s thirty degrees outside. I even love the speeches. But sometime around the fifth wedding we went to last year, my appetite started to wane.
‘Are you okay?’ Jack asks, as he indicates at a roundabout and then cautiously changes lanes.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Why?’
‘You’re quiet.’
‘I am quiet sometimes.’
‘You’ve let me pick the music all the way from London and made literally no comments about how bad my taste is.’
I can’t stop myself smiling at that. ‘I can see how that might worry you.’
He glances across at me. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m just slightly dreading this.’
Even in profile I can see that Jack looks surprised. ‘I thought you were looking forward to it? Gemma’s dad is loaded, it’ll be an open bar all night.’
He makes a fair point.
‘Yeah,’ I say, not sure how to carry on.
‘But you’re not excited?’
I shake my head, looking at the road ahead of us. Jack takes a slip road, sweeping us off the busy road and on to a lane surrounded by enormous fields. ‘I just feel a bit ... lumpy.’
He tries not to laugh. ‘Lumpy?’
‘Like I keep going to these weddings in a dress I’ve bought from Primark, and then I sit next to all these high-flying genius people earning mega salaries, and when they ask me about my job, I’m like, yes, I make spreadsheets in a Portakabin on an industrial estate, it’s amazing, how about you? And we see all these people I haven’t seen since last year’s weddings and I’ve got no progress to brag about. We haven’t bought a house, we’re not trying for a baby, I haven’t been promoted—’
‘What about the online thing?’ Jack interrupts me. ‘That’s amazing, you can brag about that.’
‘It’s not the same though, is it? Last time I sat next to Jaz and he told me that they’re buying a ski chalet. As in, they have a house, and they’re going to buy another one.’
Jack laughs. ‘Yeah, well, I don’t even like skiing. And I think having two houses is wasteful.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘And you’d always end up having things you needed for one house at the other one.’
He nods, accelerating. ‘And it’s bad for locals, and destroys communities.’
‘And all that flying is bad for the environment,’ I add, enjoying this now. ‘And it’s tacky.’
‘Exactly,’ Jack agrees enthusiastically. ‘So even when we win the EuroMillions, we’re only having one house.’
‘Yes. We should actually start playing the EuroMillions.’
We arrive at the wedding and park by the church, and I enjoy being carried through the day, hugging people we only ever see on the wedding circuit. I’m still very aware of my ￡16.99 dress next to everyone else wearing real silk, but it’s a nice do. Jack is absolutely right that Gemma’s mega rich dad has thrown the chequebook at it and there’s non-stop champagne for hours and hours. We get gently pissed while other people get yanked in for various different combinations of photos. It goes on so long that I’m kind of expecting him to ask for everyone with a winter birthday to join for a line-up, or everyone who did History GCSE.
Eventually we make it from the drinks reception to the dinner, filing into an enormous room filled with flowers and candles. Jack steers me to our table, where we’ve been placed with Tom and Grace and various other uni friends. We all fuss around pulling out the fake bamboo chairs and trying to find space for our clutch bags around the glasses, flowers, name cards and wedding favours we’ll inevitably forget to take with us and then feel guilty about.
‘Hello!’ Patrick says, sitting next to me. He was on Jack’s corridor in the first year, so I only got to know him after uni. He’s a tall skinny guy with a wide smile and a slightly patchy beard. ‘How’ve you been?’
I ask him about life and he explains that his wife isn’t there because she’s literally about to give birth and watching other people getting pissed while she’s sober is her idea of a nightmare. I sympathise. He says they’ve just moved out of London to a village near Bedford and that they’re doing up a house. He sold his first business so now he’s ‘taking a beat’ to work out what he wants to do next, but it’ll probably be consultancy.
‘How about you?’ he asks. ‘I’ve been going on and on about us. What’s new with you and Jack?’
‘Nothing, really,’ I say, my chest flushing. I don’t know why I’m embarrassed about this. There’s nothing new with us because we really like how things are. We’re living together, married, he loves his job, mine mostly doesn’t make me want to jump off a roof, and the evenings and weekends with each other are blissful. We haven’t changed anything because right now we don’t want to.
‘Oh come on, it’s been a year, you must have done something.’
Jack looks up from the other side of the table. He stops talking to Pippa, who I usually avoid because she insists on calling me Jessie and touching my hair.
‘Tell him about the social media thing,’ he says.
‘Social media thing,’ I laugh. ‘You sound like such an old man.’
‘Tell him!’ Jack repeats, almost stern. He’s not going to let this drop.
‘I started posting about relationships,’ I say, ‘and it’s picked up some traction.’
Everyone’s listening now, and Jack takes full advantage of that. ‘How much traction, Jess?’
I look down at my half-finished plate of paté. ‘A few hundred thousand followers.’
‘What?!’ Grace almost drops her wine glass. ‘I’m sorry, how do I not know this?’
This isn’t going to go down well. ‘I was really embarrassed,’ I admit. ‘So I blocked everyone I know in real life.’
They all laugh, apart from Grace who is outraged. ‘You’ve blocked me?’
‘I thought you’d take the piss,’ I counter. If I were being harsh, I’d point out that she didn’t even notice me disappearing from her timeline because she’s so busy posting hundreds of pictures of her toddler, Raffy, and her newborn, Ada.
‘Yeah, obviously I would have taken the piss,’ she laughs, refilling everyone’s wine glasses with the fancy white wine Gemma’s dad so generously provided. ‘Okay, but how did this happen?’ she asks.
I take a deep breath, and then a very large gulp of wine. ‘Jack was working a late shift on our anniversary, so I made him dinner at like, one in the morning when he got back. And then someone tagged the restaurant I recreated the menu from, and people commented a lot saying it was sweet and they wanted more date night ideas. So then I posted more about dates, and then I started posting about dating, and long-term relationships, and I don’t know. It just kept growing. And then some, like, semi-famous people reposted me and it got big really fast. But it’s the internet, it’s not like a real job or anything.’
Which is true. It’s not a job. But – and obviously I can’t tell them this because it would tip over into full-on bragging – it has started to earn me money. The first time a brand offered me cash to do a post for them I assumed it was a scam, but I went along with it just in case and to my absolute shock, a month later they paid me ￡500. As in, what I make in a week of work, for one post. And since then it’s happened enough times that we’ve actually got a meeting lined up with a real-life manager. Obviously it’s a side hustle (an expression that Jack truly hates) for now, but there are people who are making real, proper money from this. And I guess it’s not totally impossible that I might do the same one day.
Everyone looks faintly impressed and I feel myself beaming.
The music starts and after Gemma and her new husband have taken a few steps around the dance floor, they gesture for us to join them. Jack winds his arms around my waist and we sway in a very safe version of dancing together. ‘Thank you for that,’ I say. ‘It was very embarrassing and very sweet.’
‘You’re more than welcome,’ he says. ‘I told you that you had something to show off about.’
I rest my head on his shoulder.
‘It’ll probably dry up within six months,’ I say. ‘I’m going to run out of ideas eventually.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ he replies. ‘And if you get really desperate, I can always help you come up with something.’
‘True,’ I say. ‘You’re the writer, after all.’
He drops a kiss on my forehead. ‘I heard a rumour that Patrick has cigarettes.’
I laugh. ‘Let’s go mug him for one.’
Jessica
It’s the first Saturday morning since the book came out where we haven’t had publicity for the book, or work to do on it, or something book-related to fill our time. We wake up and neither of us totally knows what to do with ourselves. I sort of assumed that once the book press was over, we’d fall back into the routine we’d been comfortable with before. But I can’t quite work out what we’d have been doing right now, in before times. I find myself thinking how much easier it would be if we had children, if their dictatorial ways decided our weekend plans. I know my friends’ routines intimately via social media. I watch their early morning cuddles in bed with sleepy toddlers and tiny prune-like babies. Their trips to ballet or football classes followed by coffee in the park, rushed lunches at Pizza Express. And I know it’s much harder work than it looks because I used to go along for the ride sometimes, marvelling at how many things you have to do in a day when you’re keeping a toddler entertained, at how quickly time seems to evaporate for them. But there’s a different kind of hard in waking up in the morning and realising there’s a vast stretch of unfilled time in front of you. Time and time again, my friends who are mothers tell me how lucky I am to have the luxury of empty time, that I can have a wee without an audience, but I wish I could make them understand what it’s like to crave sleep deprivation and total dependency from a tiny person. How I hear them talk about their boring, stressful lives and simultaneously understand and envy them.
Obviously I can’t say that. We have the luxury of time, of lie-ins and a clean, peaceful house. We’re entitled to a cafetière of overpriced coffee and all of the newspapers spread out over our huge kitchen table. We can have the kind of morning our friends would trade a limb for. I should be grateful for it. But on weekends like this one, the silence of the house squeezes around my head and I find myself climbing the walls by lunchtime.
I could ask Jack if he wants to go to a gallery, or wander the shops, but he’s lying on the sofa reading a book by someone with an unpronounceable French surname.
‘How’s the book?’ I ask him.
It takes him a minute to realise I’m talking to him. ‘Great,’ he says. ‘I’m enjoying it.’
I’ve known Jack for most of my life. I know without a doubt that this is his way of telling me to leave him alone so he can keep reading. So instead, I text Clay.
Busy?
Sleeping off a hangover.
It’s practically midday.
Yes, thank you, Matron.
Fancy a walk?
God, no.
I feel a little wave of disappointment. Apparently no one I ask wants to do anything today. My phone buzzes again. It’s Clay.
But I could be tempted to a bit of shopping.
‘I’m thinking I might go out for a bit,’ I say to Jack. He looks up from his book.
‘Cool. Where?’
‘There’s an antiques market in West London.’
‘Do we need any more antiques?’
‘I don’t think anyone needs antiques to start with.’
There’s a little pause. I wait to see if he might suggest an alternative activity. But he doesn’t. ‘So, I’ll be a couple of hours, and then I’ll be home in good time for Tom and Grace’s dinner thing.’
‘Should be fun,’ he says. To my surprise, because Tom and Grace are our university friends who live in a pristine house with their two pristine children and like to talk about all of the success that they, their children, and basically everyone they’ve ever met, are enjoying at all times. We usually agree that seeing Tom and Grace is objectively not fun anymore.
‘Yeah. Totally,’ I agree, not wanting to be the one with the bad attitude.
‘Dreading it?’ He gives me a smile and my shoulders sag in relief. He gets up to refill his coffee cup and gestures to me, offering me one, and I shake my head, without explaining that it’s about my pregnancy-forum-induced caffeine anxiety.
‘Yep.’
‘How long do you think it’ll take before they start nagging us to have kids?’
‘An hour?’
‘We could just tell them.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say, ‘but I would rather let her patronise me all evening than admit to her that there’s something she can do that I can’t.’
Jack laughs, a proper, hearty laugh. I notice the fine lines around his eyes in the sun from the huge living room window. He’s getting better and better looking as he gets older. I don’t think I’ve told him that.
‘I don’t have to go out,’ I venture. ‘We could just go for a walk round here, or something.’ I want him to say yes. To put down the book and shove his feet into his shoes like he used to when we were younger, when weekends were about having the most fun possible to fill my social battery before another shitty week at my shitty job.
He looks over to his book, to the sofa which is rumpled, all the cushions squashed to fit his body. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah. Sure.’
‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I interrupt, sensing his reluctance. He’s spent the last two weeks doing dozens of radio spots and bookshop talks, and he clearly wants to be alone for a bit. That’s fair. We have a whole rule about taking time to be selfish and doing your own thing. It makes sense that he would want some space. Though I’m not sure why I feel so hurt about it. ‘We can walk over to Grace and Tom’s together later.’
I pause at the front door, wondering whether I should tell him who I’m going out with. But he didn’t ask. So maybe I don’t need to announce it. While I doubt he’d say it in so many words, he would be annoyed that I’m seeing Clay as a friend rather than a manager. So it’s easier and simpler for everyone if I just ... don’t. In a perfect world, we’d have spent this weekend enjoying our post-press-tour freedom together. But things haven’t quite snapped back like I’d expected them to, and the last thing I want is to exacerbate that.
Clay’s already at the market when I arrive, standing outside a coffee shop wearing an impeccably tailored coat.
‘Hello darling,’ he says, beaming. He hands me a cup and kisses me on each cheek.
‘Thank you,’ I say, taking a long sip of coffee. ‘Did they have sugar?’ I ask, craning to see which café he bought it from.
‘No.’ He smiles.
‘Liar.’
‘It’s coffee, it doesn’t need sugar.’
‘I like it!’
‘Philistine.’
I roll my eyes. ‘What are we looking for?’
This market is apparently one of London’s best-kept secrets. Clay knows about it because an interior designer he had a fling with in the noughties brought him on a date. It lines a long Georgian street in West London, cars and tables overflowing. At first glance it looks like your bog-standard car boot sale. But the people selling here are dressed in moth-eaten cashmere, with scuffed Gucci shoes. ‘It’s where all the aristos come to flog something if they need to raise a bit of cash for school fees or a hole in the stable roof,’ Clay tells me, taking my arm in his.
I can see why no one wants to let the secret about this place out. I pause by a scratched green Volvo, running my hand over a little wooden writing desk. It has turned legs, a leather top and a pretty little key in the lock. ‘This is lovely,’ I say to the man overseeing the stall. Overseeing is probably a strong word. He’s sitting in the car with a door open, reading yesterday’s Telegraph .
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s 1850 or something like that.’
‘You can’t buy something now,’ Clay says, batting my hand away. ‘You’ll inevitably find something you like better in half an hour and then I’ll have to come back and beg for a refund. And anyway, it’s got a chip in it – look.’
We wander further down, stopping to look at various framed family pictures of serious black and white people, a table covered in knives and forks, a huge box of buttons.
‘You’re too thin,’ Clay says, as I reach up to take a hat off a hat stand comically placed in the middle of the pavement.
‘Do you talk to all your clients like this?’
‘You’re more than just a client, you’re a friend. And I’m worried about you.’
He puts the hat back on the hat stand and leads the way towards the far end of the market.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I say.
‘I’m not. When I first met you, you had tits.’
I stop dead. ‘Yes, and I also had back fat. Magic of spin.’
‘Men don’t want to fuck skeletons,’ he comments, trying on a hat himself.
‘You are so rude,’ I reply primly.
‘You know I’m right.’
‘Maybe I don’t care what men think about my body,’ I say. I put the hat back and wander towards a stall selling cushions. Do I feel weird about buying second-hand cushions?
‘Well, as long as you’re not talking about dieting or weight loss online,’ Clay adds. ‘I had a client lose fifteen thousand followers last week.’
‘Who?’
He drops the name of a reality TV star and I am suitably impressed. Clay chuckles. ‘You’re gloriously basic.’
‘What did she post?’
‘She did a story saying she “felt fat” and needed to cut the carbs. Eating disorder charities were crawling all over it. Jameela Jamil did her Shame-ila Shame-il act and the rest was history. No more Celebrity Bake Off , no more Dancing on Ice .’
‘Shit,’ I say, poring over another desk.
‘See,’ he says, ‘far nicer than the other one.’
‘I liked the other one.’
‘To go in your study? You’re mad. This is clearly the choice.’ He flags down the woman the desk currently belongs to. ‘How much?’ he asks.
The woman is French and smoking a cigarette. She gives us a haughty look. ‘Three hundred,’ she says with a thick accent.
‘Two,’ Clay replies before I can answer.
The woman gives a Gallic shrug. ‘Two fifty.’
‘Done.’ Clay smiles. He takes out his wallet and gives her a sheaf of fifties, then starts filling out a form for the delivery.
‘Stop it!’ I say. ‘I’ll pay for it.’
He shakes his head in refusal. ‘Consider it a little rebate on my fifteen per cent.’
We wander back through the market and I spot someone selling jewellery. I find myself surprised by how sad it makes me. All of it probably owned by someone, once upon a time, who’d loved it. I’d like to have a look at it, but I’m worried Clay might try and pay again and the idea of him buying me jewellery feels oddly awful. The only pieces I own, apart from a handful of Claire’s and Oliver Bonas bits, were bought by Jack, or inherited from Mum.
We reach the end of the road and it’s not dark yet, but the streetlamps are prematurely bright.
‘Shall I get you a cab?’ Clay asks.
I say I’m perfectly happy to call myself an Uber and he insists on getting me a black cab anyway. He hands the driver a handful of ￡20 notes and waves goodbye. Sitting in the padded back seat, enjoying the warmth after the crispness of the weather outside, I look at my phone. Thank you for today, I type. I had such a nice time.
Is it bad, I wonder, that I’ve had such a nice time that I didn’t think once about missing my husband?