Rule One #2
‘See?’ Jack says, when I eventually come to bed. ‘It looks fine.’
‘It does not,’ I grind through my teeth. It looks frizzy and hideous, and it will look even worse tomorrow morning. His hair, on the other hand, looks better than ever.
‘Could you turn the bathroom light off?’ I ask. He doesn’t look pleased about it, but gets up without objecting. While he’s gone, I lean over to his side of the bed and, without pausing to think about what I’m doing, I pull his bookmark out and move it forward about ten pages. He gets back into bed and we turn the light off, half a mile of Egyptian cotton between our bodies, lying on a mattress which must have seen a thousand fucks. I smile into the dark at my own tiny, malicious little triumph and try not to wonder what it means that moving his bookmark has given me more satisfaction than the mature, sensible discussion I attempted earlier.
Jack
Jessica’s fancy alarm clock allegedly senses when she’s in the lightest part of her sleep cycle and then gently wakes her up with the sound of birds and waves. My alarm clock is on my phone. It doesn’t sense anything, but when it reaches the time I’ve set, it makes a loud beeping noise to ensure that I wake up. So, while I’m up ten minutes before we need to leave, she is not.
This is, apparently, my fault.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ she shouts as she runs around the room throwing things into her suitcase. ‘How can this have happened? Why didn’t you wake me?’
I sense that my opinion on her choice of alarm clock will not be well-received, nor will my observation that she didn’t have to unpack as if on a two-week holiday for a nine-hour hotel stay. So I say nothing. Instead, I try to be helpful and pick up a pair of shoes. ‘Shall I pack these?’
‘No, I’m going to wear those.’
‘Okay.’ I pick up another pair. ‘These?’
‘I might wear those.’
‘You’re going to wear four shoes?’ I ask, attempting to add some levity to the situation.
‘Just let me do it!’ she shouts. So, I do. I get my book out and settle in one of the many armchairs scattered around this comically large room.
‘The cab’s downstairs!’ I shout at the closed bathroom door. I know hurrying her up will anger her further, but my phone now has three texts from Addison Lee.
‘I’m nearly ready!’ she shouts back.
‘I think the driver gets a fine or something if we’re late,’ I try to reason. ‘Can’t you do some of this in the car?’
She pulls the door open, looking absolutely fine – beautiful, actually, because she always looks beautiful – but she seems to be on the brink of tears. ‘No. I can’t. And I’m sorry about that. I’ll get his number and I’ll pay him. But I can’t go to a meet-and-greet looking like shit, otherwise people will take pictures and put them online and then discuss why I look so shit.’
‘I look rough as a badger’s arse,’ I say, because if I make enough jokes, or half jokes, then eventually one of them has got to land. ‘The event’s about the book, not about what we look like.’
She gives me a look, which says ‘are you fucking thick?’ without having to say anything. I take her point. We might have written the book (and unlike most ‘influencers’, we did actually write our own book) but we’re not exactly going to a literary enclave. The people who buy our books will very much care what we look like, which is presumably why Jessica never stops working out and mostly eats tenderstem broccoli these days. I try a different tact.
‘Maybe they’ll think that we were up all night shagging?’
‘Well, then they’d be wrong, wouldn’t they?’ She sighs, and closes the door between us. I am more hurt than I have any right to be, given that her comment is completely true.
When the publishers first mooted the idea of a book tour, we were delighted. We’d never spent more than a week together on holiday, because we’d always spent most of our annual leave on other people’s weddings and hen dos. The idea of two weeks going from hotel to hotel, just the two of us, sounded like a dream. Stupid as it sounds – especially from two people who are allegedly experts in this stuff – I don’t think it occurred to either of us that we might start to find each other annoying.
Eventually we emerge from the warm yellow glow of the hotel lobby on to the freezing, dark street. Cold air goes straight down every gap in my jacket and I wince. The driver jumps out of the huge black van he’s been waiting in patiently for half an hour and takes our bags, shivering in his suit. We slide into the warmth of the car and I feel myself relax. For everything I said to Clay last night, I’m pleased that I don’t have to drive.
‘It’ll be about four hours,’ the driver tells us.
I take a jumper from my bag and scrunch it up, putting it into the gap between my head and the car door, ready for another four hours of kip before we arrive. We’re on the home straight now, almost done being show ponies. I’ve just got to do a decent job on this, and the breakfast TV show slot tomorrow, and then we’re done.
‘I think we need to go over some talking points,’ Jessica says.
‘We can do that,’ I say, without opening my eyes. ‘But I promise I will not remember anything you say to me before a cup of coffee.’
If she replies I don’t hear it, as my head sinks into its makeshift pillow.
When Jessica first mentioned this event, I will admit, I was sceptical. I worked as a news producer for over ten years, so half the people I know have written a book, and they all say the same thing: book tours don’t happen anymore. Big, famous authors do talks. Normal people don’t. It’s the classic lament that they give at dinner parties so that they don’t sound up themselves while talking about work – ‘Oh, I did a reading and three people came’ – ‘Oh, I went on a book tour and it was empty shop after empty shop’. Privately I’ve always thought that talking to a small group of people about a novel you’ve written sounded like the best thing imaginable, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, when Jessica told me we were doing this, I nodded and said yes without objection, even though it was miles away and the day after the launch party, because I assumed it would be cancelled closer to the time due to lack of interest. But apparently the people who follow us (mainly her) actually want to spend their morning at a bookshop in the centre of Leeds so that they can talk to us. We’ve already done four of these in different places and every time I’ve been shocked by the attendance. Today is no different. As I nurse a cup of coffee like it’s a dying lover, I’m feeling rather ill-equipped for this crowd. There was an email detailing everything about it, but it’s on our shared email account, which I don’t have on my phone, because I told Jessica I did, but I didn’t, then I didn’t really want to admit that I didn’t, so I couldn’t ask her for the password. I could have asked her, obviously. But for the majority of our relationship, I’ve been the sorted one, the one who prints out the tickets, returns her clothes to the post office so she gets a refund, fills out the RSVPs to weddings. But when it comes to Seven Rules, that’s her role. I miss being the competent one, and I don’t like disappointing her. But somehow lately all of my efforts not to disappoint her seem to directly result in me disappointing her.
The hangover I had when I woke up at the hotel was apparently only the John the Baptist of hangovers. The three-and-a-half hours of sleep I enjoyed in the car were supposed to leave me refreshed and ready to work, but very unfairly they have instead left me with a blinding headache and the feeling that my brain is a liquid, easily slopped around if I move my head too much.
‘You understand what you’re doing, right?’ asks Suze, who is holding a clipboard and a Starbucks the length of her forearm. It occurs to me that she must either have driven up last night when the party ended, or got a monstrously early train, when she could easily have got in the car with us. My best guess is that now we’re being treated like celebrities, they don’t expect us to share our car with ‘the staff’. I make a mental note to make sure she can get a lift home with us afterwards if she wants one.
‘Yes,’ I lie. I have got no idea, and I can’t remember whether or not Jessica told me. Presumably it’ll be the same drill as ever – people asking us questions I’d rather not answer. ‘But let’s just go over it one more time,’ I say, because I’ve worked in radio long enough to know that only an idiot turns down a briefing on offer.
I can see Jessica rolling her eyes from the other side of the room. She knows I don’t know what we’re doing here. God, I hope it’s a Q don’t let them tell you their whole life stories, otherwise the queue will get too long. Don’t sign anything other than your own book, otherwise people won’t buy them. Got it? There are just over three hundred for the talk and then you’ll have about a hundred for the signing.’
The first piece of terrible news is that I’m supposed to be making a speech, which I definitely haven’t prepared. The second is that I know without a shadow of a doubt that Jessica will have told me this, probably three or four times in the last month, and I will have told her that I’m listening and that I’ve got it sorted, all the while planning to write it in the car on the way up. I swallow some more coffee and feel the reassuring swell of anxiety which means the caffeine is kicking in.
They’ve filled the bottom level of this very large bookshop with chairs. Every single one is taken and there are more people standing at the back. I’m honestly not sure how this is going to go, but one look at Jessica, in a black polo neck and skirt, her legs endless in sort of see-through black tights and ankle boots with spikes on them, tells me I have to pull myself together because it’s happening. We step out on to the stage to raucous applause. And I allow myself a moment of amazement at what Jessica has created. All of these people are here because of her. I still sometimes find myself shocked that I’m allowed to sleep next to her with my arm between her and her pillow or slip my hand down the back of her jeans while I kiss her neck. That I’m the one who gets to hold her hair back when she’s sick or refill her wine glass over dinner. She’s magic. I know that. But it still takes me by surprise that her magic has become ... a revenue stream.
I tried to compliment her on it, a few months ago. The fact that she has such a head for this business. But it came out wrong, and somehow it turned into a weird, uncomfortable conversation about her monetising our marriage. Neither of us has mentioned it since. Anyway. Once the press tour is over, we can enjoy the money and hopefully I can gently fade back into semi-obscurity.
‘I can’t believe how many of you are here!’ Jessica says, standing at the podium, her weight more on one foot than the other. I know she’s nervous – that’s definitely one of her tells – but no one else would realise. I catch her eye and shoot her an asinine thumbs up. ‘Thank you all so much for being here. Jack and I could never have dreamed that starting an Instagram account could have changed our lives like this, and we really do owe all of that to you.’
She talks a little while longer about marriage, about relationships, about wanting things to last. On the face of it, she says nothing new. There’s probably very little in there you couldn’t get from other self-help books. But she’s charming and she means what she says. You can really feel how much she means it, and her earnest cheerfulness is contagious. I can see every face in the room trained towards her, absorbing her energy, radiating it back at her. When she’s finished, the audience eagerly applauds. She sits back down and there’s an excited flush along her cheekbones. She is so very, very good at this. Which makes me feel even more like a fraud.
I get to my feet and look out at the crowd. As ever, it’s almost entirely women. After all, this is the gender that puts in the effort to save the marriage rather than looking surprised when someone leaves fifteen years into a ‘happy’ relationship.
‘Hi,’ I say. My voice echoes over the speakers. ‘Thanks for coming. As Jessica says, it means a lot.’
The audience starts shifting in their seats. They can see that I’m not confident in this position, and it’s making them uncomfortable. I sense that I’ve only got a matter of minutes before I lose them entirely. I wish, not for the first time, that I were better at this. The irony is, I used to dream of doing this. Giving a talk in front of a packed audience in a bookshop. Only, in that dream it’s a novel, written by me, and I’m there as a bona fide author. Not an accessory.
If that sounds self-pitying, it’s not supposed to. I’m very aware of how lucky we are. I’m just also aware of my own limitations. Jessica does the legwork on Instagram. She does the videos and the ‘ask me anything’ stories. I smile in photos and write one weekly caption. I’m not the reason they’re here. She is. I’m the Charles to her Diana. Though, hopefully not in any more meaningful sense than that people are more excited to see her than me. This is not a helpful train of thought. They’re all looking at me, waiting for me to speak, to say anything.
To my enormous relief, I think of something I can say, something I still know off by heart. ‘The first time I met Jessica, we were queuing up to take our last exam at university. We’d both been there for three years, and we’d never crossed paths before. She was standing behind me, she tapped me on the shoulder and she asked if she could borrow a pen. And the first thing I thought was, how have you come to an exam without a pen, you absolute psycho.’
Everyone laughs. Thank Christ.
‘But the second thing I thought was, how weird that the most beautiful person on the face of the planet is in the same exam hall as me. I chased her out into the street after the exam, asked for her email address, and to my absolute shock, actually got it. And from then on, it was easy. But I think it was easy because we kept choosing each other over and over again. And that’s the thing about marriage.’ I pause for a moment in an attempt to try and sound profound, giving my words more gravitas. ‘It’s not just a choice you make when you propose, or when you walk down the aisle. But a choice that you make every single day. When I wake up in the morning, the first choice I make is to try to make Jessica happy. And she does the same. Everything we do is aimed at being better, kinder, funnier, sexier, just generally an improved version of ourselves, for each other. And that’s easy for Jessica. You all follow her – you know. She’s the perfect woman. I don’t think she even really has to try to be that beautiful, that funny, that kind. But me, I’m not perfect. I’m grumpy. My hair grows in four different directions. I don’t like sharing the crossword in case someone solves a clue I can’t get. And that’s why I need Jessica. She’s the reason I don’t lean into all my bad behaviours, all my worst choices. I want to be the kind of person who deserves to be in a relationship with her. And I spend my life trying to make that happen. Even if I did miss out on getting a first, because I spent the whole of that exam staring at her, wondering if I’d ever get to talk to her again.’
I pause and look around. They’re smiling. I look to Jessica, hoping for a thumbs up or a nod, but she’s looking at Beatrix, gauging her reaction.
‘I can’t believe that any of this has happened to me – that we have a book, that you’re all here to speak to me. But I can believe that it happened to Jessica. She’s just too special a person for it not to turn out this way. And that’s why I plan to keep choosing her, keep choosing to make her happy for as long as she’ll have me.’
I sit back down and try not to feel pleased that their applause for me is as loud as it was for Jessica.
We spend the next couple of hours sitting behind a long table with stacks and stacks of books between us.
‘I loved your speech,’ says a middle-aged woman. ‘Your account saved my marriage.’
‘I’m sure you saved it,’ I reply, signing the book and passing it to Jessica. ‘You did the hard work.’
‘Where do you find one this lovely?’ another woman asks Jessica, gesturing towards me as she hands over her book to be signed.
‘I got very, very lucky.’ Jessica smiles back. ‘And we work hard at it. Sometimes we work really hard!’
A pretty blonde woman with a baby comes to the front of the line. ‘Your advice works,’ she says conspiratorially as I sign her book.
‘Oh?’ I ask.
‘When I found your account, my marriage was on dialysis. But we followed the advice and, well ...’ She holds the baby up, like a rubber stamp of approval that she and her partner have worked it out.
I laugh. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Did you name the baby after either of us?’
She giggles and Jessica shoots me an appreciative glance from her end of the table. I hadn’t realised she was so worried I wouldn’t make the effort to chat with all the fans who’ve queued up.
My wrist is cramping and my signature starting to look comical by the time we finally finish up. They take photos of us outside the shop and with various local influencers, and then we’re bundled into a waiting Addison Lee. In the car Jessica neatly eats exactly half of the sushi Beatrix brought her and then puts the rest of it away. It’s the only thing I’ve seen her eat all day, whereas I’ve eaten three plates of the free biscuits they provided, and the very large BLT Beatrix got me from Pret. Jessica is on her phone, editing photos from the event and drafting captions. I reach out to touch her hand, but she pulls away.
‘What’s wrong?’ I say, stung. I can’t remember her ever having done that before. ‘I thought that went quite well.’
She doesn’t reply.
‘You didn’t?’ I ask, trying to work out how she could possibly be upset with me when we’ve just put on a storming performance.
‘The only thing I asked you to do for today was to write a speech.’
‘I did write a speech.’
She gives me an icy look. ‘No. You repeated your speech from our wedding.’
‘People seemed to like it,’ I protest.
‘But that was supposed to be special. Private. Not something you trot out at events.’
I can’t hide my look of surprise. For some reason, I couldn’t say why, this irks me. Actually, it does more than irk me. It makes me angry, something that whenever possible I try to repress, lest I give into it and never stop shouting. If I get it wrong even when I get it right, then honestly, what’s the point in trying?
‘You’ve got quite a nerve talking about integrity, let alone lecturing me about trying to keep things private,’ I snap.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’d share our bowel movements if it was going to get us more followers.’
She gives me a look which I think is supposed to convey disappointment. Time was, I would have done anything to make that look disappear, to have her approve of me again. But since we’ve been in full Seven Rules territory, spending every day together writing, editing, rewriting, and then every minute together promoting the thing, it seems like her disappointment has become an increasingly constant companion of mine. We do an event and I answer a question wrong. She asks me to take a picture of her and then groans at the image. I turn the air con up too much at the hotels we stay in or I pack the wrong things to wear. I hum too loudly when I’m getting ready, fall asleep reading and leave the light on, have holes in my socks, still wear a pair of pants with Scottie dogs on them that I bought in 2008, the list goes on. And on. And on. And the volume of the criticism is such that I’m increasingly less inclined to care. She picks her phone back up and returns to editing the picture of us, my arm around her waist, her eyes cast lovingly up at me. We don’t speak for the rest of the journey.
When we get home, Jess puts a sheet mask on her face which makes her look like a burn victim. She spends the evening watching something brain-rotting on the massive TV while I wander around the kitchen looking for something I can meaningfully contribute. But it’s all clean and ordered by the sweet Eastern European woman who comes twice a week. I pick up books and try reading them, I scan the New York Times , and eventually, when the silence and the boredom and the atmosphere in the house is too much for me to tolerate, I retreat to bed on the pretence of wanting an early night.
‘Good idea,’ Jessica says, clearly pleased that I’m going to piss off and stop wandering aimlessly around the house. ‘The car’s coming at five-fifteen tomorrow morning. It’s literally just the breakfast TV show, and then the residential retreat, and then we’re done with publicity for the book and we can go back to our normal life. Okay?’
I pause for a fraction of a second, wondering if this might be the moment to tell her that I’ve been thinking about emailing my old boss and asking about getting my old job back. She notes my hesitation and misreads it. ‘It’s Morning Chat tomorrow,’ she tells me.
‘I know,’ I snap, harsher than intended. I don’t want to snap at her, I’ve just never been tired like this. Back when I worked as a producer, I’d happily work the night shift and then stay into the morning to work on the show for the next day. Maybe it’s getting older, but I’ve never felt drained like this before. Obviously I can’t tell Jess this, because she’ll make some comment about this not exactly being another day down the coal mines.
‘You didn’t know about the bookshop today, so forgive me for assuming—’
‘I’m going to bed, I really don’t feel like doing this,’ I explain.
‘I don’t think just walking out—’
‘Rule one.’ I cut her off, realising that I’ve got a trump card to play. ‘Don’t stay up arguing.’ And before she can mount a calm and reasonable complaint about me pettily citing the rules, I’ve closed the door behind me and I’m standing in the hall, wondering why I spend so much of my time being pretty bloody horrible to someone I love. In a couple of weeks’ time all this book stuff will be over, and we’ll be able to get back on an even keel, and honestly it won’t be a moment too soon. I’ve been living for the moment that this mad good fortune, and the not-insubstantial money it brought with it, can buy us some peace. A morning drinking coffee in bed with Jess, a long walk and a pub lunch at the expensive place with the decent roast, a shared crossword and a bottle of wine. All the stuff which makes us perfect together.