Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

Jessica

After selfish time we have a last lunch of fancy salads and talk about the last rule, ‘always leave the party together’. There’s no official activity for this one, because they’re all kind of leaving a party together, but we’ve got cars to drive them all home to their front doors, so that they can properly leave together. The idea being that they’ll chat about their time here, have a bit of a gossip about the other guests – whatever they want, really – and focus on being a unit rather than running for a train or having a row over the satnav. But before we can go home, it’s just the final photoshoot.

The stylist has outdone herself in terms of wardrobe. I’ve always been nervous about asking to borrow things or letting brands send me freebies, so when Clay said they’d send someone to style the shoot, I was massively relieved. Plus, if I’m really honest, I don’t hate playing dress-up in expensive clothes. There’s a hanging rail in our bedroom, filled with the most beautiful dresses, tops and trousers I’ve ever seen. I pull a silk blouse off a hanger and hold it up against me.

‘What do you think?’ I ask Jack. ‘I love it. But if I wear this, I’ll have to wear the trousers.’ I gesture to a pair of cream cashmere trousers with a wide leg. Then I think better of it. Cream trousers probably aren’t a great idea, because about an hour ago I went to the bathroom and, with the same familiar, disappointing, miserable feeling it always brings, I saw a faint trace of pale pink blood. Sometimes I like to allow myself a fantasy, to pretend that it’s just an implantation bleed, that I am actually pregnant, because sometimes bleeding can actually indicate a pregnancy; you’re not out until it’s a full-flow period. But today I didn’t have enough energy for the pretence. I just shoved in a tampon. I didn’t even have it in me to cry this time. Maybe this is how it goes. You just stop letting yourself feel all those huge feelings, resign yourself to the fact that it’s not happening, you’re not having it, it’s not for you, and get over it. Sometimes I read articles from women who never had the family they wanted and I wonder if maybe they used up all their allotted pain for that specific issue, and that’s how they found their peace.

‘Are you going to get dressed?’ I ask Jack, who is sprawled out on the bed, reading. There’s an entire row of beautiful men’s clothes. Merino wool jumpers, buttery soft jeans, suits if he wants to look formal. I asked them to include some tweedy, corduroy options so he didn’t feel like he was being made over, and maybe something 1950s vintage, in case he wants to channel any of his literary heroes. But he still doesn’t look interested at all. ‘Please?’ I say, trying to get his attention. He’s miles away.

‘Sure,’ he says, getting up. He pulls the closest garments off the rack and puts them on without looking at them. He looks great, he always looks great, and these are thousands of pounds of designer clothes so they make him look even more handsome. But I wish he could find the fun in it like I do.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘I’m going down to hair and make-up.’

‘Okay,’ he replies.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask, waiting in the doorway.

‘Yeah. Just a bit sad.’

Instinctively I go to hug him. ‘I know. I am too. It’s been a really intense weekend, it’s bound to bring some stuff up for you. But I think we’ve made real progress. I feel like we’re doing so much better.’ I look at him, praying he’s going to agree, that he thinks we’re doing better too.

He smiles. ‘I’ll see you down there,’ he says.

‘Sure? I can stay up here if you want to talk about anything?’

‘No, no, it’s fine. I think I’m just tired, it’s been a long few days.’

I kiss him gently, pressing my lips to his. ‘Okay. Home straight now. And then we can go home, I’ll roast a chicken and if you’re really nice to me, we can watch University Challenge .’

I love photoshoots. I know that sounds spoiled and vain and shallow, but I do. We have a team of hair and make-up artists at the house to make everyone look beautiful. It’s optional – they set up downstairs and anyone who wants to be made over can, anyone who’d prefer not to is welcome to sit it out. Predictably all of the women opt in, and I like watching them enjoy it just as much as I do; the space has been transformed with rolls of brushes and pots and jars, styling tools, big mirrors, and lights. At the far end they’ve put up a sort of set, a pink backdrop for people to pose in front of. The room smells like hairspray and hot hair, the lighting is bright and warm, and we’re all chatting gently as they put our rollers in.

‘I feel so famous,’ Chloe says, as someone hands her a cup of coffee to drink while her hair is being straightened.

‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I know it’s bad, but this is one of my favourite parts of the job.’

‘Why is that bad?’ Stuart asks. ‘It’s fun.’

It’s a very good question, actually. I always tell myself off for liking this part. But maybe that’s the mean voice in my head talking, the one which is always disparaging about anything light and feminine and sweet. The one which often takes on Jack’s mum’s voice, even though she’s actually mostly very nice to me.

Verity is the only one who doesn’t seem to be having a good time. She’s sitting on the chair next to mine while foundation is dabbed on to her perfect skin. All morning she’s been quiet, much quieter than she was all weekend, and withdrawn.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

‘Me? Oh. Yeah, fine.’

‘You seem a bit ... down.’

‘Yeah. I guess I just don’t really want to go home,’ she says, surprising me.

I put my hand on her forearm and then wonder whether that might be a bit overfamiliar. ‘I get that. We’ll stay in touch, though, and the weekend doesn’t end here.’

‘Jessica, they’re ready for you and Jack for interview questions,’ Suze says, standing in the doorway. ‘Are you done?’

The make-up artist gives me a nod, I check myself in the mirror and then follow Suze down the corridor.

‘I don’t think Verity is very happy,’ I say to Suze’s back.

‘Has she made a complaint?’

‘No, no, she just seems off.’

Suze looks at me like she has no idea why I’m telling her any of this.

‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ I say. ‘But will you make sure they’ve all got our direct details for afterwards? So we can stay in touch?’ I ask.

‘Is that a good idea? You don’t really want to set a precedent for that.’

‘I think we need to – we’ve had a really intense weekend together, we owe them all some aftercare.’

The journalist who has come to interview us – Kayla – looks like she’s in her late twenties. She’s wearing a black top, black trousers, and black glasses, and she’s not very smiley. Usually we’re interviewed by good-natured showbiz journalists, but when I googled Kayla, it turned out that she’s spent more time in war zones than interviewing ITV actors. I sense that coming to Yorkshire to do a puff piece about our brand and our book probably wasn’t what she dreamed of when she decided to get into journalism. This isn’t going to get her nominated for a Pulitzer. But obviously as soon as I sense that she doesn’t really like me, I become absolutely obsessed with trying to change her mind.

‘So,’ she says. ‘Is there really such thing as a “perfect” marriage?’

Jack laughs, and I try to too, even though I think she’s signalling that this isn’t going to be the easy interview Suze thought she’d lined up.

‘Sort of,’ I say. ‘There’s no objectively perfect marriage, and if you’re taking perfect to mean faultless and blissfully happy at all times, then maybe not. But there are lots of perfect marriages in the sense that they suit the people in them perfectly.’

‘Ours isn’t perfect by anyone else’s metrics,’ Jack adds, slipping his arm around my shoulders. ‘But it’s perfect for us.’

‘So is it a bit misleading to suggest that if a couple just follows Seven Rules, they’ll be happy?’ she goes on. Suze straightens in her seat. We’re not famous enough that she can provide a list of questions that we are and are not willing to answer, but she’s not above giving a journalist a dirty look or, if she’s feeling really pissed off, asking, ‘Is that relevant?’

‘People seem to find that our method really helps,’ Jack answers before I get a chance to. He’s doing an incredible job handling this. I shouldn’t be surprised. He spent years asking people difficult questions for work, and he’s learned from politicians, celebrities and world leaders how to answer cleverly. Weirdly, I wish his parents could see him like this, how sharp and brilliant their least praised youngest son is. ‘We hear from hundreds of couples a month who’ve been struggling long-term, and who’ve found that buying the book and working through the rules has been a lifeline for them. I don’t think anyone buys it thinking it can fix every problem they’ve got, but the fact that they’re trying at all is half the battle, right?’

‘The book’s only been out for a week and you’ve heard from hundreds of couples?’

Jack smiles. I think he might actually be enjoying this. ‘We’ve been developing our method on social media, and have offered free online activities and worksheets for almost two years now.’

Kayla looks mollified by this and moves on to questions about how we grew our social media account, whether we worry about influencers being a short-term trend, and how we see ourselves progressing going forward. Her eyes glaze over a bit when I’m talking about my degree, and I can hardly blame her, I’d find it boring if I wasn’t me.

‘Have we got everything?’ Suze jumps in, which is the universal PR language for ‘your time is up’.

‘I think so.’ Kayla nods. ‘So I’m going to have a quick chat with the couples who’ve been on the retreat, get some background, and then that’s it.’

‘Perfect.’ Suze gives her approval.

‘Oh, last question,’ Kayla adds, once Jack and I are on our feet. ‘Some of the forums online have a lot of speculation about your not having kids, some people saying there’s trouble in paradise. Any truth to those rumours?’

I freeze.

Jack looks appalled. ‘Sorry? Are you asking if our marriage is on the rocks?’

Kayla holds his gaze. ‘You used to be a journalist, right? You know I’d be mad not to ask.’

Jack gives her a wide, sweet smile. ‘Of course. But no, there’s no truth to the anonymous comments made in an online forum which deliberately facilitates conspiracy theories and fantasies. And I think it’s a bit problematic to conflate not having children with being unhappily married, don’t you? I think you’d risk alienating a lot of readers there.’

And with that, we leave the room. I take his hand and squeeze it tightly. ‘That was incredible,’ I say. ‘You were brilliant.’

‘I was not.’

‘You were!’

In the hallway, I step closer to him and wind my arms around him. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper.

‘You don’t need to thank me,’ he replies.

Back in the makeshift photography studio, we find Sue and Ken posing for the camera, laughing their heads off as they do James Bond poses. Grant and Stuart are holding hands. Chloe is sitting, leaning into Ben. Verity and Noah are on the same sofa. We’ve done well, I realise. We really have done well.

Like the circus coming to town and then leaving, the make-up artists and photographer and assistants tidy their things away, and they and Kayla disappear into their cars as quickly as they arrived. The house is eerily silent in their wake. And then it’s finally time for goodbyes.

Will and Cait, who seem to appear from nowhere and who, I’ve just realised, seem to move in complete silence, bring us all into the library. Everyone settles down for the last time, and we ask everyone to tell us what leaving the party together means to us. I find myself, yet again this weekend, with a tear running down my cheek when Ken and Sue kiss after telling us that they can’t wait to start having adventures together again.

‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ I say, when it comes to my turn. ‘Jack and I weren’t supposed to join in this weekend. The idea originally was that we’d just be around, helping out. But I’m so glad that we did. I feel like we really needed to recommit to each other and refocus on what really matters. So, for me, leaving the party together means that we’re going home more together than we were when we got here. More unified. More connected.’ I look over to catch Jack’s eye, expecting us to share a conspiratorial smile. But he’s looking out of the window.

‘Right,’ says Suze. ‘We’ve only got the house until five so we’d better start moving.’

I thank Will and Cait for their incredible work behind the scenes all weekend. ‘It’s been amazing,’ says Cait, her face still completely impassive. ‘I found the parts I observed really moving.’

‘So did I,’ adds Will, again totally monotone. I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to this because it seems staggeringly unlikely that they were even listening, so I give them a weird bow/curtsey.

Then there’s lots of hugging and swapping of phone numbers and more hugs. Suitcases dragged downstairs, people remembering that they’ve left their phone chargers plugged in, and finally, they get into their cars. Jack and I stand in the doorway of the beautiful glass house, waving as each of the cars slips away into the afternoon. It’s a little warmer out here than I’d expected it to be. Like spring is coming.

‘Well done, both,’ Suze says. ‘Brilliant work. Honestly. You should be very proud of yourselves. And joining in with the activities was a master stroke,’ she continues. ‘I’d have said no if you’d pitched it – risk management and all that. But clearly, it’s gone down a storm. Well done.’

‘How did the interviews go, with the couples?’ I ask, because that’s the stamp of approval we really need. ‘Did they seem like they’d had a good time?’

‘Perfect. Lots of nice colour, they said some great things about you and the method, and it all felt pretty genuine.’

‘Good,’ says Jack. ‘I mean, I assume it was genuine?’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Suze reassures us. ‘You know what I mean. Right, we need to be out of here by five, and you’ll be home at midnight unless you get going.’

We arrive home at 10.30 p.m., and mercifully there’s a parking space right outside our house. We drag the bags in.

‘Weird, there’s no post,’ I say, pushing the door open.

‘We’ve only been gone since Friday morning.’

I suppose he’s right. That’s actually really not very long. It feels like much longer. So much longer that I’m sort of surprised when everything is where I left it, my book on the kitchen table, the spare phone charger I’d meant to pack curled into a snake on the stairs. It’s strange to think that the version of me who left it there didn’t know about the US deal, or Jack being a virgin the first time we slept together. She’d never met Chloe and Ben, never laughed at one of Ken’s dad jokes. It feels impossible that I could have changed very much over the course of a few days. And yet, somehow very possible. True, even.

‘Thank you again for today,’ I say. ‘For the whole weekend, really.’

‘That’s all right,’ Jack replies, kissing me.

‘No, really, you were great. With Kayla, with everyone. You did an amazing job.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’ He drops another kiss on the top of my head.

‘I’m tired. I might go and have a bath,’ I say. ‘Get all the make-up off from the photoshoot. Then get an early night. God, I can’t wait to be back in our own bed.’

‘Okay,’ Jack says, sounding like it’s not okay.

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing, nothing. I just wanted to talk to you about something.’

I assume he’s noticed the Tampax packet in the bathroom back at the house, and doesn’t know how to talk about it. We’ve been so bad at this bit lately but I’m determined to keep moving in the right direction.

‘I got my period this morning,’ I tell him, looking at the floor. Obviously I’m not squeamish about periods around Jack; he’s bought me tampons dozens of times. Occasionally when we were younger and shagging all the time, I’d pull my tampon out before we got down to it. No big deal. It’s not the bleeding. It’s the shame of not being pregnant, yet again.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Did you think . .?’

‘No, no, not really. I just. You know. As soon as it’s half an hour late, I’m picking out nursery paint colours.’ I laugh as I say it but that only makes me sound sadder. I am sad. Properly, grippingly, miserably sad. I knew I wasn’t pregnant – we’d made one perfunctory, obligatory attempt during the middle of my fertile window. I think I knew even then that it wasn’t going to happen. So this isn’t a logical kind of sadness, it’s the kind of confused and obsessive sadness which not being pregnant drives you into and which is so difficult to comprehend for someone whose body doesn’t crave pregnancy.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jack says lamely.

‘Yeah.’

He wraps his arms around me, and I hate that after this many years he doesn’t know what to say, but I’m not sure I actually know what I need to hear in this moment either. I think perhaps I just want some reassurance that he is as sad as I am. Or that he’s not disappointed in me for failing us once again. That’s the problem with infertility, it makes you irrational. I want him to pull me back, sit me down on the sofa and pour me the glass of wine I couldn’t have had if I were pregnant. Even though I think there’s every chance that if he offered it, I’d be angry with him for thinking that a glass of wine was any kind of compensation. I want him to tell me that we can actually do something about this, something proper and medical, with tests and chats, but if he suggests it, I’ll think he’s telling me that I’ve failed, and I’ll be terrified to find out if there’s something wrong with me. This entire thing – all the supplements and sex positions and online forums – they’ve turned me a little bit mad.

‘What are you thinking?’ Jack asks, interrupting my train of thought.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just that I need to put the recycling out.’

‘Leave the bins,’ he says. ‘Just go and enjoy your bath. I’ll do it before I come to bed.’

That’s love. Doing the bins. Trying to cheer me up, even when he knows that anything he says will be wrong. Giving me space to process alone, then coming to hold me when I’m ready.

‘Jess?’ Jack turns back.

‘Mm?’

‘I’m sad too. It’s just—’ He pauses. ‘Sometimes I don’t want to say that. In case it sounds like I’m making it about me. Or worse, in case you think I’m somehow blaming you.’

‘Are you actually sad?’

He nods. ‘Desperately. For both of us.’

I step down the three stairs I’ve taken, still standing on the bottom stair, and wrap my arms around his neck. ‘Thank you for telling me that,’ I say. ‘It really helps.’

‘I wish I knew how to do more,’ he replies.

‘That was what you wanted to talk about? Right? You’d clocked that I’d got my period.’

He nods and buries his face into my neck.

Jack

When we first met, I was the early riser and Jessica loved a lie-in. I grew up in a puritan household where cold rooms and plain food were regarded as good, and things that teenagers enjoy, like lie-ins and PlayStation, were regarded as akin to smoking crack. Not that my parents would know what crack was. I would wake up at 9 a.m. and be drenched with guilt about having wasted half the day, despite the fact that obviously half the day hadn’t actually elapsed.

Back when we were young and stupid and fun and would stay up until three in the morning, I would always envy Jessica’s ability to fester in bed until long past noon and then wake up perky and refreshed, while I’d have forced myself into clothes, gone for a walk, bought a newspaper and spent the entire day pretending that I felt absolutely fine. At some point in our thirties, things shifted. She started getting up early and then, to everyone’s horror, became an I Got Up Early person. She started telling me in great detail how much she loved getting up early, how much she was getting done, how peaceful the world is at 6.30 a.m. and how empty her spin class was. I realised that I used to preach much the same thing to her eye-rolls, I just didn’t know how annoying it was. All of which is to say that when I got out of the shower on Wednesday morning, two days after we got home from the retreat, I wasn’t worried that there was no sign of Jessica. In fact, I wasn’t even worried when I went downstairs and there was no trace of her. I noted that there wasn’t her usual bowl of berries and granola half eaten on the side, because she likes to have half her breakfast when she wakes up for some complicated reason pertaining to insulin. But, it’s Jessica. She’ll probably have read an article about going out for a walk before breakfast improving your nail strength or something. I pottered around, made coffee, and then took my phone off airplane mode.

Usually there’s a little row of notifications – various social media platforms, an email or two, a couple of messages from friends if I’m lucky and they’ve finally replied to me because they’ve had five minutes not chasing their toddler. But today when I pick up my phone, they don’t stop coming. I stand, confused, watching as notification after notification flashes up on my screen.

Are you okay? says a message from my friend Chris, who I worked with at the BBC.

What’s going on? reads the one in our WhatsApp group with Tom and Grace.

I have seven missed calls, one of which is from Clay, and one of which is from my parents’ landline. Four voicemails. I can’t even remember the last time someone left me a voicemail. Social media notifications keep coming and coming and coming, so quickly that I can’t work out which one to press. Something is very wrong.

By reflex, I go to call Jessica. Her phone goes straight to voicemail. I try it again and the same thing happens. I’m not sure what I think is going to happen when I try it a third time, but the panic is really rising now. Why would she have disappeared? And then I start thinking horrible things, about how low she seemed about getting her period, and more dejected than I’ve ever seen her before. I never know what to say when it happens, how to tell her that I’m sorry for once again letting her down and that I really truly believe that we will get there, but that maybe all the workouts and supplements and tracking might be making it harder, that the line we hate about ‘just relaxing’ and ‘enjoying the trying’ might be right. But she was in a state. What if she went out for a walk and something awful happened to her? Is this what would happen if something had happened? Would my parents and Clay know first? I look at the clock on the wall, it’s just after nine. She could have gone out at what, six? Three and a bit hours. A lot of things could have happened to her in three and a bit hours. I call her again, my heart thumping cartoon-like in my chest, my breathing fast. Everything feels tight and terrifying, but as I dial her one more time, the front door opens.

Jessica storms in, carrying a pile of newspapers. She’s on the phone, via her headphones, and she’s still wearing her pyjamas with a coat over them, and sheepskin slippers on her feet. She pulls the sunglasses away from her face and throws a paper down on the kitchen table.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she says. ‘Jack’s up. I’ll call you when we know exactly how bad it’s going to get.’

I go to hug her. ‘Jesus Christ, Jess, the one time you don’t pick up your phone – I was terrified, I thought something really bad had happened to you.’

‘What?’ she snaps, gives me a bemused, angry, icy look, a look I’ve never seen before. It’s pretty jarring for someone you’ve spent your entire adult life with to suddenly have a new facial expression. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asks, as if I’m the one who’s acting strangely.

‘I was calling and calling. I’ve got all these messages, I thought something was wrong.’

‘You haven’t seen it?’

‘What? I haven’t seen what?’ And the panic that I thought had subsided hits me in another wave again.

Grimly, she sits down at the kitchen table and opens the newspaper. Not our usual newspaper, but a lurid tabloid that neither of us would ever buy. I’m a Guardian person, and Jess doesn’t really read anything, but would pick the Times for the aesthetic if she was buying one at the weekend. She opens it, leafing page after page until she stops. And there, on a double-page spread, in big black block letters, is the headline.

SEVEN RULES FOR A PERFECT SHAM-IDGE

‘I’ve already read the online version,’ she says, horribly calm. ‘But it’s longer in print.’

‘What is this?’ I’m staring at the pages but I can’t make them make sense.

‘It’s an article,’ she tells me. There’s still an unnerving tone to her voice. ‘About how our entire marriage – and, by extension, our entire brand – is a sham.’

I have a horrible, terrible, fucking terrifying feeling that I know what’s coming.

‘How? Why?’

Jessica gets up and starts very precisely making a coffee with the several-thousand-pound coffee machine I was sure we didn’t need. ‘Read it.’

‘Hot stuff social media duo Jack and Jessica Rhodes present the impression of having a marriage so perfect that they can tell you how to improve yours,’ I read. ‘But the truth below the surface is a bit different. Over the weekend, they hosted a retreat at 1.5-million-pound Winchlowe Hall in North Yorkshire, where four couples came to learn about their secrets for a harmonious marriage. But in a shocking turn of events, one workshop attendee told us that behind closed doors, Jack and Jessica’s own marriage is far from ideal.’

‘Oh Jess,’ I say, pausing. ‘Are you okay?’ I go to hug her but she steps backwards.

‘Keep reading,’ she demands, her gaze fixed in the middle distance.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. We don’t need to read this,’ I tell her. ‘Isn’t that what people always say? Never to read the articles about you?’

‘Yes. We do,’ she shouts.

So I go on. I’d give back every penny of the Seven Rules money not to have to. But I do. ‘Verity Francis, 28, attended the course with her husband, Noah Baker, also 28. “They acted happy when they were in front of us,” Verity says. “But they’re not. Their marriage is on its last legs. He told me that they stay together for the brand, because they know they’ll lose all their deals if they split up.”’

‘I didn’t say that!’ I yelp. Fucking hell, how could she have told them that? After I’d confided in her. She knew the stuff I told her was personal. The stuff she told me was too, and I’d never repeat that to anyone, not even Jessica. How could she have listened to me say all that stuff and then gone straight to the fucking press?

Jessica is sanguine again. Clinical, even. ‘If you said anything even remotely close to it, then you’re an idiot. By the time she went to the press, it was third-hand.’

‘It’s not what I said because it’s not what I think—’

‘It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what she heard. And what they’ve printed. I should have been more across this, I should have spoken to her when she seemed down at the end of the weekend – I should have—’

I shake my head, desperate to tell her that it’s not her fault. ‘It’s not that, it’s nothing that you did. She needed money, she wanted to leave Noah but she couldn’t afford to.’

‘How do you know that?’

When I was producing political radio, I would occasionally be in the gallery, running the sound and video output for a big meaty interview. And occasionally I would be working when a politician would make a massive cock-up, when they’d admit to having known something or done something which was illegal or at the very least going to tank their career. And I’d watch as they realised what they’d said and then tried to backtrack and correct their statement. There was always this same look of panic on their faces, as it dawned on them. That’s what’s happening to me right now.

‘Jack?’ Jessica repeats. ‘How do you know that about Verity?’

‘After Clay turned up, all the stuff about not taking a break ... I’d been planning to talk to you, I was going to say that I wanted to go back to working on my own, I wanted to write my book and go back to the BBC. I had this whole plan worked out about telling you that I’ve been really struggling with it, and I kept telling myself that we just had to finish the retreat, and then I was going to tell you that I wanted to quit. But then Clay turned up and started talking about America and you’d basically bought us a brownstone before he’d finished his sentence and I just felt so trapped ...’

I say nothing. She says nothing. It’s silence. ‘So I went into the kitchen and she was in there, and I ended up talking to her for a while. About us.’

Jessica slams her coffee cup down on the counter. ‘You told her this stuff? It came from you ?’

I nod.

‘You literally had one job,’ she screams at me. ‘All you had to do was participate and smile. And instead, you found the one person there who wanted their own marriage to fail, told them all our dirtiest secrets and then let them tank our entire fucking career. What were you thinking?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say quietly.

‘You need to read what else your “therapist” told them,’ she snaps.

‘I’m not reading any more,’ I say weakly. ‘I don’t want to read any more.’

‘Fine’ she says, snatching the paper from the table. ‘I’ll read it to you then. “I just think it’s wrong,” says Verity, who has been married to her husband for a decade, “that they’re pretending to be so happy. It makes other people feel guilty when their marriages have struggles. Jack told me that he missed the version of Jessica who he fell in love with, when they were younger.”’

‘Oh, this is a good bit,’ she sort of yelps. ‘Verity, who is nearly ten years younger than Jessica, says, “Jack told me that he and Jessica don’t have much sex anymore, and that she’s obsessed with getting pregnant, but that she can’t relax and that he thinks that’s why it’s not happening for them.”’

She puts the paper down and looks at me, her face twisted with hurt. ‘How could you say that to her?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ I say, or shout. ‘I didn’t. Jess. You know I wouldn’t say that.’

‘I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t say,’ she retorts, picking her handbag up. ‘Honestly I don’t think I know you at all.’