2
A voice from somewhere in the studio starts a countdown, and Graham and Lily’s phones disappear into their laps, replaced by glowing expressions, warm smiles towards the people at home. ‘Good morning, good morning to all of you out there. What a show we’ve got for you today. Later, we’ll be meeting a puppy who was born with two tails, and just after nine a.m., we’ll be joined in the studio by a choir of single dads who are also drag queens.’
Lily leans forward. She’s still nervous, clearly. I don’t blame her. One of the broadsheets called her Pinocchio the other day, suggesting that she’s unacceptably wooden. ‘And in a moment we’ve got the UK’s happiest married couple here with us. It’s the authors of new book Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage , Jack and Jessica Rhodes. They’ve been together for fifteen years, they’re still head over heels for each other, and they’re going to be answering your questions and helping you fix any little niggles in your relationship.’
Jack is leaning against the wall, staring up at the cavernous studio ceiling and looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
‘Are you okay?’ I hiss.
‘Just tired.’
‘Please try to look a bit happier,’ I whisper.
‘I’ll smile when we’re on.’
‘It’s not just about acting happy when we get on set. Everyone is watching us. All the fucking time.’ I smile through gritted teeth as I say it, brushing my hand against his arm. I hate myself for doing it, for putting on a show like this. It’s completely mad. I know that. It probably doesn’t really matter if the runner who gets our coffee sees us bickering. But we’ve got a suffocating mortgage and a pretty empty pension fund, and the publishers have poured staggering amounts of money into advertising and marketing. If we can make at least some of it back for them, then they might want to publish more books with us. It would just take one credible comment about our marriage being under strain and the whole premise of our brand falls apart. Surely one more morning of pretending to be cheerful isn’t that much to ask in exchange for financial security?
‘Touch-ups?’ The make-up artist dashes back on set, her kit packed into a plastic bag around her waist. ‘Jack, love, can I pop a bit of powder on you?’
‘Yes, please,’ he says agreeably. ‘As much as possible, I want to look as beautiful as my wife.’
My shoulders relax by about half a millimetre. I try to catch his eye, to silently thank him. But his gaze is straight ahead, at the set.
‘Time to go!’ announces the runner. ‘You’ll be amazing!’
The lights on the set are always brighter than is entirely comfortable. I settle on to the sofa, trying to look relaxed while sitting up straight so that I don’t look bigger than I actually am. The whole thing about the camera adding ten pounds is more than true for me. Even as my body has shrunk over the last months, from the various (probably not very scientific) fertility-enhancing diets I’ve read about online, I always wince when I look at the screenshots afterwards, painfully aware of the softness of my upper arms. Jack always seems to look exactly the same as he does in real life, handsome and lean and perfect.
He slides his arm around my waist, and my heart rate steadies. I feel a little wave of gratitude towards him. He’s always so warm. I can feel the heat radiating through his jumper, through my dress, to my skin.
‘Thanks for joining us.’ Graham beams before introducing us. ‘With us in the studio now, we have Jessica and Jack, relationship influencers and marriage experts. They’ve taken the internet by storm, with over a million followers on social media, and now they’ve got a new book to share the secrets to making a relationship work.’
‘It’s called Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage ,’ Lily reads, slightly stilted. ‘Wow, a perfect marriage, that sounds pretty amazing! Is it actually perfect?’ She laughs. The cameras all move around and I can see myself on the screens. I try very hard not to look. Jack and I both do a sort of half laugh.
‘We do our best,’ I say.
‘Well, I think a lot of us could do with some tips!’ Graham smiles. ‘Shall we get started with some questions?’
‘Yes, please.’ I nod.
Lily stares at her cue cards. ‘First up, we’ve got Sandra from Barry in Wales. Hi Sandra!’
Sandra’s voice is piped in over the speakers.
‘Hi Jack and Jessica,’ the voice crackles. ‘I love your posts and I can’t wait to read your book. But my question is: how do you avoid arguing?’
Jack laughs. ‘We’re not superhuman, Sandra!’
She says she loves our account but I’m pretty sure that she hasn’t read any of my posts because we’ve got an entire highlights section about positive arguments – a very good theory which I realise, as I consider my answer, we’ve been ignoring ourselves lately. Shit. That’s probably not good.
‘We absolutely don’t avoid arguments,’ I add, leaning into Jack’s body a little. ‘No one does! Show me a couple who say they never disagree and I’ll show you two people who aren’t telling the truth – or who are repressing their feelings a lot of the time.’
‘Research shows that it’s actually far healthier for a couple to express their frustrations with each other than to bottle it up,’ Jack adds.
‘The important thing,’ I say, ‘is to make sure that you’re arguing in a positive, proactive way. See the problem as the enemy, and you both as a team. It’s not you versus your partner, it’s you versus the issue at hand. And remember – one of our Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage – go to bed on an argument. Our first rule is actually that you should never stay up arguing – get some sleep and come back to the issue fresh in the morning.’ Someone in the gallery cuts Sandra off before she can ask any follow-up questions, leaving viewers to assume that she was satisfied with our answer. I hope she was. I wonder if we can make sure that everyone who called in gets a follow-up. Or at least a signed copy of the book?
‘Well, I have to say, I’m relieved to hear that a bit of marital argy-bargy is normal!’ Graham chuckles. Everyone knows that he’s a complete shit. He keeps his wife at their country pile so that he can entertain a series of twenty-something mistresses at his enormous London house. A few months ago Jack and I went to his Christmas party, with five hundred of his closest friends. It was our first big showbiz invitation and I was more shocked than I wanted to admit that we’d been asked (in fact, I made Clay check it wasn’t an accident). Jack kept telling people that my best Christmas present was seeing celebrities getting drunk and doing coke off every single shiny surface, and he was 100 per cent right.
The next call comes from a very sweet-sounding older lady. ‘I’m Janice,’ she says, her voice crackling, ‘and I’d like to know what you’d recommend for dating apps for older people, and if you think it’s ever too late?’
Jack and I exchange impressed looks. ‘I have to admit,’ Jack says, ‘Jessica and I met in the bad old days when you had to just approach people in person, so we’re not app experts.’
I simultaneously love how charming he is and want to pinch him for forgetting the media training where Clay told us never to remind people that we’ve been together so long we know nothing about modern dating.
‘Well, first up, great on you,’ I chime in. ‘It’s absolutely never too late, and I think you’ll be inspiring a lot of other older people to take that leap. Maybe we can fix you up with someone who’s watching at home right now – what’s your type?’
‘Channing Tatum,’ she replies, and we all laugh. ‘I’m not fussy,’ she goes on, in her husky smoker’s voice. ‘But I do prefer a man with a bigger—’
Someone in the gallery cuts Janice off in case she’s about to say what we all think she’s about to say on morning television. We all laugh and resettle ourselves while they find someone else to bring in.
‘Our next caller is Willa from West London. Hi Willa!’
‘Hi Lily, hi Graham. My question for Jessica and Jack is this: how do you keep your marriage fresh and exciting when you’ve decided not to have children? My partner and I have decided that we’re going to be child-free, but as all of our friends start their families, we’re feeling a bit left behind.’
I pick up my water glass, trying to unstick my throat, praying that in the seconds of silence, Jack will pick up the question. But he doesn’t. And now he’s silent, and the silence isn’t getting any less silent. Graham leans forward, waiting for one of us to say something. Lily is checking her cue cards again as if there’s going to be any kind of answer on there. Why weren’t we offered the chance to vet these questions? I try to pick the glass up again but my fingers slip and it clatters, wobbling. I grasp for it and set it right. Surely someone was supposed to check? There’s no way Clay and Suze would have allowed them to ask that without at least telling me first. And why the fuck isn’t Jack saying anything? Of all the questions in the world to leave me to answer, how could he possibly leave me to answer this one?
‘That’s a really good question,’ I say, my voice too high as I break the world’s longest silence. ‘In our book, Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage, which came out, uh, last week...’ I move my hair forward over my shoulder, looking at the camera, and wonder if this is one of those moments where only I can tell how badly this is going, or if people at home are cringing for me, noticing the tear in my left eye, the fact that I’m digging my fingernails into the palm of my hand. ‘In our book, we, uh, we talk about the importance of shared hobbies, goals and interests. Perhaps you and your husband could look at trying a new activity together, which might provide a new focus for your life. All marriages go through different stages, whether you’re having children or not, and it’s important to make sure that you’ve got a shared goal throughout.’
I try to fix a smile on my face but I can feel my thighs sweating. And if there weren’t tears in my eyes, and my voice wasn’t so high, that would have been a decent answer. I hope against hope that someone in the gallery will realise that I have nothing else to say on the topic. The woman’s voice starts again, asking something else, but it’s cut off almost straight away. I catch sight of myself in the giant monitor, my own face displayed three times its actual size, as is Jack’s. He’s smiling away. Has he even noticed that I’m having a nervous fucking breakdown next to him?
‘Some really great questions,’ says Graham. ‘We’ll be back shortly, but if you’d like to win ten thousand pounds and a brand-new Ford Fiesta, stay put and listen to this ...’
I can’t tell if our section was supposed to run longer, or we’ve taken the appropriate amount of time, and obviously I can’t ask them. We get up and do hugs and kisses before having our microphones taken off us. Then we’re walked to the exit by an enthusiastic posh boy doing work experience as a runner, and finally, waiting for our car to arrive, Jack and I are alone.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jack says quietly, as we stand in the dark corridor, even darker after the blazing lights of the studio.
‘Sure,’ I say. It would be a lot easier to be forgiving towards him if this was the first time he’d left me to fend for myself when it comes to fertility.
Jack
The show booked us a return car – generally speaking, the ‘talent’ doesn’t like to take the Tube. We’re in stationary traffic, because apparently the ‘talent’ prefers privacy to expediency. Jessica, sitting on the other side of the people carrier, has put her earphones in, wireless ones, which means that she loses them about six times a day, and most of the time when she wants to use them, they haven’t got any charge. I pointed out once that the old headphones we all used to have, the kind with wires, were far harder to lose and couldn’t get a dead battery. She looked at me like I was pissing on her bonfire, which I suppose I was. I feel like I do that a lot these days and I really don’t mean to; it’s the same sarky humour I’ve always been able to charm her with in the past. Apparently it’s not charming anymore.
The headphones are very clearly a ‘do not disturb’ sign. She’s wearing sunglasses, too, so she might as well be on a different continent. But then, even if she were listening, even if she weren’t crushed into the farthest corner of the taxi possible, as if she's trying to put every millimetre of distance between us that she possibly can, it’s not as if I would have anything to say.
My inability to express myself is another thing she always used to find charming.
Or, at least tolerable.
She said it was British and repressed in the sweetest possible way.
When we were first seeing each other, we would lie in bed together, tangled and naked, and she would turn the lights out and ask me questions about my feelings.
She knew I found it easier to talk to her in the dark.
She didn’t seem to mind.
And then, one day, she suddenly stopped finding it endearing.
She told me I was an adult, and I should be able to talk about complicated issues like one.
But I couldn’t.
I still can’t.
All of the things I want to say sort of swarm around my head, but I can’t catch any of them.
I want to make her feel better. And I know that there is a combination of words which would do that. But I’m no closer to knowing which combination it is than I am to guessing the seventieth digit of Pi.
It was beyond shit of me to leave her to answer that caller’s question.
Unforgivable, actually.