The Abortion
Jessica
In films, when someone takes a pregnancy test, they turn it over and wait for three minutes until they can see a result. I assume this is a narrative device designed either to build tension or to let the characters talk about what might be, because when you take a pregnancy test in real life, it shows both lines almost instantly. I know this because I’m currently sitting on the loo with my jeans around my ankles, watching my pee soak down the stick, bringing up two vividly pink lines, crossed over each other in the middle.
I am pregnant.
This is not good news.
We could not be less ready to have a baby. I’m twenty-five. If I break a glass I still wait for an adult to come and tell me that I need to put some shoes on while they clear it up. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be a mother. I don’t want to get through it and learn to love it. I want more of my life. I want more time to be selfish, to believe that my career is going to take off. I want more time to be me.
We have absolutely no money and we live in a one-bedroom flat, the entirety of which would fit comfortably inside my childhood bedroom. I am working in a job that I hate, that I’m not very good at, for almost no money. Jack and I drink too much. We smoke too much. And clearly we weren’t responsible enough to use contraception properly. God, isn’t it ironic that being irresponsible results in the biggest responsibility a person could have?
I look at my phone. Jack’s at his work Christmas party. He caught my eye in the mirror this morning, while he was getting dressed, and beamed. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to the BBC Christmas party,’ he’d said. I’d laughed at him, pointing out that he does work there so it would be a bit weird not to be invited. He just laughed, and despite the disparity in our career satisfaction, I can’t help being delighted for him. They’re paying him about six pounds a week, he works the worst hours imaginable, and he’s the happiest person I know. Tonight he’s at some pub near Great Portland Street, mixing with all the people he wants to be when he grows up. It’s the best things have ever been for him. My finger hovers over his name. I could call him. I know I could. I would have every right to tell him that I need him, that I’m not okay and that he needs to come home. But I don’t want to. Ruining his evening isn’t going to change this.
Instead, I search for the Marie Stopes phone number. I think I knew when I saw the lines that I was going to do this. I just wanted to pretend that it was a hard choice – that I searched inside myself and really tried before I gave up. It’s not like I’m a teenager anymore. You don’t tell people that you had an abortion at twenty-five, in a long-term relationship, and expect them to feel bad for you.
Jack comes home a little after midnight. He’s pissed but full of joy. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he says, tumbling in the front door. Our flat is so tiny that I can feel the cold air from our bed. ‘I missed you.’
‘I’m pregnant,’ I say, abandoning all my good intentions about breaking it to him gently.
I’ve heard people say before that they sobered up instantly thanks to a shock, and I’ve always assumed that it’s bollocks. But the warm boozy glow around Jack is instantly gone.
‘Are you sure?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you ... okay?’
He is desperate to say the right thing. He’s wearing the expression that he always gets when he is frightened that he’s about to fuck up and say something which will haunt us for the rest of our lives. He wants to ask what I want to do. Whether I want to keep it. But he’s worried that the way he asks the question will bely a preference about the answer.
‘I’ve been better,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to do it.’
He nods, and says the only sensible thing a man can say in this situation. ‘It’s your choice. Whatever you want to do, I’ve got you.’
Five days later I have an appointment at a clinic in Warren Street. We ignore a busker playing a Christmas song outside the Tube, and push our way past a couple of religious nutters on the way in. I am relieved that the waiting room isn’t full of weeping teenagers. It’s mostly couples, some a little younger than us, some a little older. I’m given pills. We get a taxi home, which we absolutely cannot afford, and then we wait. Jack makes me chicken nuggets and spaghetti hoops, which makes me cry. We watch The Secret Garden .
There is more blood than I was expecting. It’s so early that I thought it would just be like a period, but it isn’t. Not at all. For a while I lie on the floor of the bathroom, curled up because it’s not big enough to extend my legs. The cold of the tiled floor feels good underneath me, easing the nausea. Jack stands in the doorway watching me and saying nothing, which is preferable because I don’t want to talk about it. I read online that I’d know when it was over, and it turns out that’s true. Eventually it is, so we go to bed. He holds me and I wake up awash with relief, knowing I have made the right choice.
The weeks pass, the bleeding stops, and we go back to our normal lives. I fill Tupperware with leftovers and we take the Tube to work. He stacks the dishwasher, I empty it. We finally start watching Game of Thrones , which everyone has raved about; we go to the pub and hang out at Tom and Grace’s house and just sort of get on with it. With one pretty major difference. We can barely bring ourselves to touch each other. I get into bed each night wearing pyjamas which cover me from ankle to wrist. I put a pillow between us. When, half asleep, I roll over and run my hand along his torso, under his T-shirt, he flinches. We are terrified of what our bodies did. Terrified it will happen again, despite the fact that I had an implant put in my arm to remove any risk of forgetting to take the pill ever again.
Eventually Valentine’s Day rolls around. We try to ignore it. The date pisses me off every time I see it because it reminds me how much time has passed. I want to shout, ‘Yes, I know, it’s the middle of February and I haven’t had sex since before Christmas, I fucking GET IT.’ I buy Jack a card because I always have done, but it takes me ages to choose one which feels even close to right. Our messages to each other are half-hearted. On the morning of the fourteenth, I get a surge of determination and I put a bottle of champagne on my credit card, then when Jack gets home we drink it and watch more Game of Thrones . During a particularly violent beheading, I feel briefly better, but it’s all too brief and before I know it it’s a sex scene. A really long, really naked sex scene. And the atmosphere is like I’m watching it with my dad. I want to go and make a cup of tea.
‘Right,’ I say, as the woman on the screen orgasms, and the atmosphere between us becomes unbearable. ‘This is mad.’
Jack turns his body to face mine. ‘I know. I know! I was just sitting there thinking that I’d actually rather be watching this with my parents.’
‘Me too!’ I say. ‘Thank fuck for that.’
I refill both our glasses with the champagne, which isn’t properly cold anymore.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ he replies, dropping his eyes. ‘Well. I mean. I do sort of know.’
‘Is it the abortion thing?’ I ask.
Jack looks guilty. ‘I’m just so scared of it happening again. I know it’s not going to. But I am. And, I don’t know. It’s pathetic, but it was so horrible for you. And it was my fault.’
‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’
He looks unconvinced.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Then it was both of our faults.’
Mollified, he puts his hand on my thigh. ‘The more we didn’t have sex, the more I felt like we shouldn’t have sex, and then I sort of thought that we should, but the last thing I wanted was to pressure you.’
‘I get it,’ I say. ‘I felt the same.’
We both look across the tiny flat, to the door of our bedroom which opens directly into the living room. It’s like it’s goading us.
‘This isn’t going to be very sexy,’ I say, ‘but I’m going to make a suggestion.’
‘Hit me.’
‘I think we go to our room, and we make out like teenagers for five minutes. And if we don’t feel like shagging once we’ve done that, we call it a night, and try again another time.’
He smiles, stands up and offers me his hand. I feel consumed with disappointment that he’s agreed to my suggestion because I don’t want to take my clothes off. I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to repeat the stupid act which got me into this shitty miserable place. But I’ve said it now. So I follow him to the bedroom, and we lie down. He runs his hand under my top, along my spine, kisses my neck and twists his hand in my hair, just firmly enough that it’s sharp but not enough to hurt me. I gently bite into his lip. He smells right, he feels right, he knows exactly what to do, how to trace the skin at the side of my breasts to make me whimper. We’re good at this. We like this. This is not a bad idea.
Five minutes later the timer goes off on his phone, sharp and loud. I reach over and silence it, one thigh either side of his torso, our clothes twisted on the floor. We don’t call it a night.
Jack
My smugness from winning at Mr and Mrs (Suze had to tell us four times that there were no winners) is short-lived, because it’s almost time for the ‘intimacy workshop’.
If there was one part of this weekend which I have been actively dreading, it’s this.
The intimacy rule, where we moot that you have to make space for sex and intimacy even when it doesn’t feel wholly natural.
I didn’t really want to talk about sex in the book at all.
Maybe I read too much John le Carré as a teenager, but I’ve always taken the view that sex rarely comes over well in writing, so it’s best avoided.
Obviously the publishers didn’t like that view, and once Clay got into Jessica’s head and convinced her that the book needed a chapter on sex, I left it to her to write.
Jessica begins the chapter by talking about going to the gym – you often think you’re not in the mood, but once you’ve got your trainers on and you’re pounding the treadmill, you’re glad to be there.
Sex, she tells our readers, is much the same.
Give it five minutes of foreplay and if you’re not in the mood, park it for today and try again tomorrow, or next time you both feel like it.
In fairness to her, it’s very good advice that we’ve benefitted from in the past.
But we were still worried it might come across like we were telling people to force it.
Aside from a very small handful of blue-haired teenagers online, no one took it this way, and it’s the piece of advice which we are most often complimented on by couples who have kids, as it’s helped them make time for each other.
But it was always going to be a difficult rule to bring into the retreat.
I suggested we just give people the night off and put a ‘do not disturb’ sign on their rooms, and a nice bed and time away from their real lives would probably be enough.
Eventually, after a lot of agonising over what an appropriate activity might be, Jessica and the team settled on a massage workshop.
The idea was to focus on the physical-intimacy side of things, rather than sex, reminding people that if their sex life isn’t panning out, then it’s better to get some skin-to-skin contact in place and then worry about the actual shagging later.
I know it’s a good concept, but I was then, and remain now, very unconvinced that all of us taking off our clothes and rubbing each other in the same room is a good idea.
The itinerary for this evening reads: ‘A light vegan or vegetarian meal, with a variety of alcohol-free cocktails, followed by a massage workshop led by a local healer.’
I’m, broadly speaking, pretty liberal.
I go on marches against things like war and poverty.
I like quinoa and avocados.
I live in North London and I worked for the BBC.
But even I have my limits, and it turns out that limit is pretending to be excited about a Sunday evening where I eat a vegan grain bowl served with a cup of kombucha and then have a local hippy tell me how to rub Jessica’s body so that her chakras open.
But I want to fix my marriage and I want to stay married to my amazing wife.
Obviously all my internalised objections are pointless, and I find myself wrapped in a towelling robe and swimming trunks, standing in the ‘spa’ area of the house.
It’s not actually a spa, it’s a sort of conservatory where they hold the drinks reception if they’re having a wedding, but they’ve put a load of massage tables in the room and cranked the heating up to an unbearable level.
There are branded towels on every bed, candles burning, spa music playing and pots of oil all over the place.
‘Welcome, everyone, very happy to be with you today,’ says the woman leading the workshop, in a thick Yorkshire accent. ‘I’m Hibiscus, and I’m going to teach you how to explore each other’s bodies.’
There is no way that woman was named Hibiscus.
‘First of all, I’d like you and your partners to each find a massage bench,’ she says. We all do as instructed. ‘Then I would like one person from each couple to take off their robe and lie on the bed.’
There’s lots of faffing about which makes me feel more awkward. ‘Do you want to go first, or shall I?’ I turn to Jessica.
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Not super helpful,’ I mumble.
She gives me a look, like I’ve just said I want to kick a puppy in the face. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I just, you know me. This really isn’t my thing.’
‘Yeah, I get that,’ she says. ‘And it’s probably not Ken’s thing, or Ben’s thing, or any of the blokes’ thing, but they’re doing it with good grace.’
Her criticism cuts me to my core. She’s probably right, but I don’t honestly care at the moment – I’m in a room full of strangers, expected to take my clothes off and then lie around in swimwear being oiled; I’m allowed to feel a bit stressed. I look around the room and immediately feel worse when I’m confronted with Grant’s madly toned torso, befitting of a man half his age. Noah’s bizarrely well built for a man of God, presumably from doing woodwork or whatever Jesus-esque activity he’s been cracking on with in lieu of spending time with Verity, and obviously Ben, who used to play rugby professionally until he got injured in his twenties, has the kind of muscles they use to sell steroids on the internet. Ken, the only man whose body might make me feel better about myself, has opted to go second and therefore is still wrapped in towelling.
I shrug my robe off and lie down as quickly as possible, hoping no one’s looking at me, noticing that I somehow manage to be both skinny and a bit fat at the same time. Obviously I’ve always felt a bit ashamed of my body – I’m a moderately uncool man who sunburns easily and is one quarter of an inch below six foot. I can’t dance, I wear the clothes Jessica picks, which I think are probably designed to hide the less appealing parts of my physique, and in conclusion, yes, I am pathetic about anything which involves getting my kit off, especially in public and in front of people I don’t know. I lie down on the table and then do an undignified sort of wiggle as I try to cover myself with the towels. I hear Jessica snigger and consider getting up and walking out, but the more reasonable side of my brain says that since we’ve been throwing ourselves into the activities, sniggering aside, we have been getting on better, so I resolve to entertain the idea that, like Jessica said, everyone else is doing it with good grace. Hibiscus dims the lights and turns up the spa music.
She gives directions on how to massage, starting with legs and arms, then shoulders and back. And I admit, it’s nice. The oils smell sweet and comforting, and it’s nice to have a lie-down. I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths.
‘We have to swap,’ Jessica whispers.
‘What?’ I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes. ‘Huh?’
‘You fell asleep, it’s been twenty minutes. We have to swap.’
Blearily I get up and pull my robe back on. Jessica takes hers off, lying down in her bikini, which is bright pink and made of almost no fabric at all. Her body is utterly beautiful, just as it always was, when we were in our twenties and she’d go out to clubs in black jeans and a cropped black T-shirt with a tiny band of puppy fat above the waistband, cold to the touch when we’d queued for a bar she wanted to go to and I wanted to skip completely. Through those years – when our McDonald’s and box-set habit saw us both put on weight, and her face was a little rounder, then later into our twenties when she fell in love with cooking; when she grew her hair out, when she chopped it off; when she developed little lines around her eyes; when she shrank, grew, dressed provocatively, covered up; in her gym leggings, her linen pyjamas, her bridesmaid dress at dozens of weddings, the Primark bikini on our honeymoon – at every single juncture, she has just been a different kind of perfect. I’ve never, not once, taken for granted that I’m allowed to touch her.
Hibiscus comes around and refills the pots of oil, telling us how to start with the feet and ankles. She keeps up a running commentary. ‘This pressure point is good for releasing any stress in the lower spine; this pressure point helps support immunity.’ Obviously everything she’s saying is total bollocks, there is not some mystery point in your wrist which is connected to your liver function any more than there’s a muscle in your arse which can make you better at playing the guitar.
‘Now,’ instructs Hibiscus, ‘the same as last time, we’re going to use a pressure point for emotional release, under the scapula. This can be done lying down or sitting up, depending on the intensity you would like to experience.’
‘Lying down or sitting up?’ I ask Jessica. ‘I went for lying down, obviously.’
‘You went for being completely unconscious. Actually.’ Her tone is a bit strained. Surely she’s not cross that I had a sleep during a massage? It was supposed to be relaxing?
She turns and sits up, making her decision clear. Hibiscus comes and guides my hand into the right position. ‘When you’re ready, take three deep breaths, and then, Jack, apply firm and direct pressure. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I say, trying not to roll my eyes. ‘Three deep breaths.’
Jessica takes the three deep breaths, really takes them, slowly and deliberately, holding the breath in at the middle point. And then I press. And to my absolute horror, she starts to cry. Jesus. Did I do something? Did I hurt her?
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, panicking. She doesn’t reply, because she’s crying. It’s not one little tear on her cheek, either – it’s crying, the kind of crying you spend your entire life as a man trying to avoid making a woman do, especially in public. Huge, deep, shuddering sobs. I look around to see if anyone else is having this reaction, but of course they’re not and now everyone is looking at us, which is my worst fear when I’m stood half-naked, covered only by a robe which makes my legs look like matchsticks. Jessica is so good at everything that she’s overachieved at having an emotionally manipulative massage. This is fucking awful and I can’t find a way to make it stop.
‘Jess?’ I say, gently trying to put my arm around her. She pulls away, and I’m surprised, and hurt, and honestly pretty confused. But then, fuck me, she must be really hurting to let it all out publicly. ‘Jess, are you okay?’ What the hell has happened and how have I got this so wrong?
She’s still really, really crying and she’s got snot running down her face which she definitely wouldn’t do on purpose.
‘It’s very normal.’ Hibiscus comes over. ‘It’s all part of the process. Jessica, would you like some privacy?’
She manages to nod.
‘I think that’s a good idea. Well done for today, duck, you did so well,’ Hibiscus adds, patting her on the shoulder.
Jess pulls her robe around her and hurriedly makes her way out of the room. I stand, dithering, not sure whether to go make sure she’s okay or just give her some space. Everyone else is standing around like they’re at the site of a road traffic accident, wrapped in their robes with ashen expressions on their faces. I look to Hibiscus, as if she’s going to tell me what to do. Then I notice Suze in the corner of the room giving me a hard stare and looking at me like I’m a complete fucking idiot, which is probably a fair assessment.
‘I’m going to, uh, just go and check that Jess is okay,’ I say.
I knock, gently, on the bedroom door. ‘Jess? Are you there?’
There’s no response. I wait a couple of minutes, agonising about whether to go straight in, or leave her alone. Eventually I knock again and then gently push the door open.
‘Jessica? Can I come in?’
‘Sure,’ she answers. When I get inside, she’s sitting on the bed wrapped in a towel, clearly having just got out the shower. She looks both much older than usual, and somehow like a teenage girl. Her face is still swollen from crying, her eyes red, beads of tears on her eyelashes.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
She looks confused. ‘It was the pressure point?’
‘Okay. Sure. But what really happened?’
‘What do you mean? Hibiscus said that it might prompt an emotional release, and it did.’
‘Okay. But you don’t really believe that, right?’
‘Why would I not believe that? It happened.’
I’ve got to believe that she’s being deliberately obtuse at this point. ‘Because pressure points are bollocks?’
She gets up, picks up a hairbrush and starts pulling her hair into a severe bun with the parting in the middle. ‘They’re not bollocks, there’s plenty of research around alternative medicine, including massage and acupressure; it’s even offered on the NHS for some illnesses.’
‘I don’t think this is the moment to debate the efficiency of alternative medicine.’
‘You’re only saying that because you’re in the wrong.’
‘I’m not in the wrong, I just don’t want to have you crying for another half an hour.’
That was unkind. I don’t like that I said it. I’m frustrated and I feel like a complete idiot for not knowing how to fix this, which is a really illogical reason to start making things worse.
‘The idea was to cry,’ she reminds me. ‘That was the point of the exercise.’
‘Right, so you were crying because you’d been told you were supposed to.’
‘Or maybe I was crying because I’ve got a lot of shit going on in my life which I don’t have time to deal with on a day-to-day basis, and my body is holding a lot of stress chemicals and hormones, and the massage just happened to release them. I suppose once I started crying, it was an outlet and I cried about everything else which is hurting me and making me miserable.’
‘Why does it have to be the massage? Why can’t it just be all that stuff about your feelings?’
‘Do you realise how insane it is that you just heard me saying that I’m miserable and that I’ve got all these unreleased feelings, and the only part that you picked up on was the bit about the fucking massage ?’
Jesus. She’s right.
She starts getting changed, pulling on a white T-shirt and jeans.
‘You just want to go and pretend everything is fine right now?’ I ask, surprised.
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘Could you perhaps hazard a guess as to why I want to go downstairs and finish the evening properly?’
I want to explain that whatever the reason, pretending that everything is great all the time, to our friends and the internet and our management and every single stranger on the street, is exhausting. But I don’t have the words. So instead, I shrug. ‘For “the brand”.’
She stops in the doorway, framed by the bright light of the hall against the darkness of our room.
‘Do you seriously think that’s why?’ she asks.
‘Sometimes. Yes.’
‘Right. So it couldn’t possibly be that I want to keep our private life private?’
‘Why are you the arbiter of what gets to be private?’ I ask, genuinely stumped by her inconsistency. ‘I don’t understand where the line is. You share our marriage so easily, and then suddenly there’s all this stuff you want to hide. We agree to participate in this retreat, but that’s supposed to mean being open. I don’t get what the rules are. I’m trying to get it right but I’m not clairvoyant.’
She sighs. ‘We’ve got a load of people waiting for us downstairs, and I feel like I’ve been hollowed out. So I’m going to go down, talk to everyone about how they felt that went, drink one glass of wine, and then I’m going to bed so that we can finish this bootcamp, because those people have given up time to come here and try to learn something from us.’
I quickly pull on some jeans and a jumper before following her downstairs. I realise as I put my clothes on that I’m still sodden with the massage oil, which is presumably why Jessica rinsed herself off in the shower. But it’s too late now, so I resign myself to being massively uncomfortable for the rest of the evening.
When I get downstairs, everyone’s decamped to the snug, mostly in some form of loungewear, though Ken is back in trousers and a shirt, the uniform he’s been wearing for the entire weekend so far. Jessica is sitting, legs underneath her, in an armchair. Her face is back to the perfect alabaster, with the tiny smattering of freckles across her nose and her temples. She’s holding a glass of wine between two hands and looks serene.
‘Jack,’ she says, smiling. ‘Come and sit down.’
I have been a Jessica Richards superfan since the day she asked me if I had a pen outside the exam hall. I think she is the cleverest, most beautiful, most charismatic woman on earth. But there’s something about this, the performance she’s putting on, which makes me feel very, very uneasy.
‘Did you enjoy the workshop?’ Stuart asks cheerfully. ‘I was just telling Jessica, I cried too.’
‘I almost did,’ Ben adds. ‘Mad shit, that.’
Great, we’ve instigated mass hallucination. We might as well call it a cult. ‘How about you, Grant?’ I ask, searching for an ally, and feeling a bit depressed that my best chance at an ally is a man who I overheard in the kitchen yesterday saying that ‘this country is too tough on landlords’.
‘No tears here,’ he says, which is a relief to me.
‘Me neither,’ I agree. ‘I had a nice kip.’
‘Shame, that,’ says Ken. ‘Missed out on something quite special.’
Everyone whips around to look at him. He and Sue are sitting close together on the sofa, hand in hand. ‘Sue and I are talking about taking a proper course when we’re back at home. We’d like to get in touch with our spiritual sides.’
‘Where are Noah and Verity?’ I ask, realising that the group is two people short.
‘They went upstairs.’ Chloe giggles.
‘Well, that was the idea of the task.’ Jessica smiles. ‘Right?’
‘On that note,’ Grant says, smugly offering his hand to Stuart and pulling him up to standing. ‘We’re for the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’
He pats him on the arse and Stuart chuckles, then they head upstairs, at which point I realise that the expression he just used was posh old guy language for ‘going upstairs to bed’.
Obviously it’s nice that they’re reconnecting, especially given that a disparity in sex drive was part of their problem, but I can’t help asking myself: what the fuck is going on in here? Was there Viagra in the massage oil? There’s no way that a massage workshop has genuinely reinvigorated all these people’s sex lives.
And Verity and Noah haven’t touched each other the entire time they’ve been here – surely she isn’t actually upstairs, with Noah? Some cold, On Chesil Beach -style scene where they solemnly undress and make sedate, controlled love? I can see Noah’s serious face set in an expression of restrained enjoyment, and it makes me feel a bit queasy.
Why am I thinking about this? What’s wrong with me?
Jessica gets up too.
‘Thank you all so much for being so open-minded and open-hearted about the workshop.
Hibiscus has provided a QR code so if you want to access the tutorial at home, you can, and there are worksheets on there too.
Otherwise, tomorrow morning is the last session and we’ll tackle rule five, then, to bring the whole thing to an end, we’ll do rule seven and you’ll each “leave the party together”, so to speak.’
She picks up her glass, because she insists on putting everything in the dishwasher despite Suze having told us multiple times that William and Cait will handle it and there’s an army of cleaners coming in after we leave.
Everyone choruses their goodnights and I trot after her, wondering how it’s possible that she could go from sobbing to hostess in such a short period of time.
I used to reassure myself that the Jessica who belongs to the internet wasn’t my wife but just her work personality.
We’ve all got one.
I allegedly supported Brighton and Hove Albion at work, so I could make cheerful chat about the game last night.
I also pretended to want a cup of tea if anyone was making a round so I could be friendly and join in.
But even if that was true once, even if there used to be a pretend Jessica who existed on a server somewhere, I’m worried now that the fake version has started to subsume the real one.
Surely this can’t be good for her? The constant pressure to paint on a happy face and pretend that everything is great? It’s Stepford-wife stuff and I don’t want it for her.
I don’t really want it for me, either.
She does her complicated skincare regime, then lies down with her eye mask and her earplugs, every barrier up.
Has she noticed that before all of this Seven Rules stuff, she used to fall asleep quickly and easily? I take a long, steadying breath.
The retreat is almost over.
I’ve seen so many blissful reminders of the real her, the real us, over the weekend, and this is the last stretch of the Seven Rules tour.
We’re so, so close to getting our normal life back, and thanks to this weekend, I think we’re even ready to enjoy it.