Chapter 3
Astrid
So it turns out the 7-year-itch most definitely wasn’t a myth.
If you’d have told me 3 years ago that a long-term relationship would start to decline after the seventh year, I would have probably laughed in your face. At the time, twenty-one-year-old Astrid was so hopelessly, blindly, cant-eat-can’t-sleep in love, that I guess she didn’t realise her better judgement was clouded by rose tinted lenses. It was her and Theo forever . That version of themselves could never decline, could never fall out of love, what do you mean, we wouldn’t sit and watch weird-ass films and gush over one another until we were old and Grey?
“Maybe it’s because your frontal lobe is starting to develop!” My friend Yaz would always insist, any time I mentioned my relationship struggles.
She assured me that it was rooted in science, that your frontal lobe doesn’t fully develop until the ripe age of twenty-five, where you’d wake up on your birthday and be graced with magical foresight and wisdom about the world and what you want from it, as if you’d just swallowed an encyclopedia of the knowledge of life. Personally, I thought that was bullshit. I didn’t need my frontal lobe fully developed to know that Theo and I were a sinking ship, a lost cause that could no longer be saved. After all, we spent more days arguing now than anything else. I honestly don’t know what happened to the man I knew, the man who oozed with wit and charm, made me laugh until my stomach ached, and challenged me in all the best possible ways. But now? Now it was as if he was biologically hardwired to make my life a living hell. The amount of relationship subreddits I scoured, desperately seeking answers to our problems was sickening, and quite frankly, embarrassing. I guess it was good for one thing though, I realised that it wasn’t just me. Initially, I had begun to question whether maybe I was the problem and simply couldn’t see it, maybe I was the instigator in all of our fights, maybe I was the asshole. However, after enough research, I quickly washed down any self-guilt that I once had. The subreddits, ‘Help! I’m living with a man-child!’ and ‘Help! I didn’t realise I had to be a mother to my partner before I even had a kid’ were extensive, and made me feel very much seen.
I mean, it wasn’t just the bog-standard kind, we had a plethora of issues under our belts that we could just never seem to resolve without getting the pitchforks out. Admittedly, cooking and cleaning was a major issue. We both worked full-time, with me often staying on a few hours later every night to complete the mountain of marking and lesson preparation. But Theo, never understood that, often spitting the notorious phrase that would make any teacher shudder, “I don’t get why you have to stay on later though, all you do is play with kids all day.” It made me want to kick him where it hurt every time.
I’d come home absolutely exhausted and defeated, trudge through the hallway, only to find a mass of dirty washing, empty crisp packets and biscuit crumbs plastered all over the floor, the stack of drying up that had still not been put away, (despite me doing the washing up before work every morning without fail), and then the cherry on the cake, the light on the oven would be beaming a Neon Red, indicating that it had been switched on, but no food had actually been put in it. Meanwhile, my life-partner, the man I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with, the man who had definitely been home for at least 2 hours prior, was splayed out on the sofa in his underwear, scrolling through his phone and laughing at some video, that guttural laugh that once used to make my chest constrict and my stomach flutter, but now made me want to rip my own hair out.
The biggest problem of all was that he didn’t see a problem with it. Like I was just some maid who cleaned up after him, and who he could then fuck in his spare time. A win-win situation for a man. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind doing my share of housework. I knew going into it that we’d have to step up, but his animosity and laziness was getting insufferable. I knew it was never going to be a 50/50 effort, that would be unrealistic, but relationships were about making compromises, about give and take and it was safe to say, all Theo had done for the past few years, was take. I often looked at him now and questioned whether he’d been abducted by aliens and replaced with a clone. A really, really, bad one, and that the real version of him was entrapped in a spaceship somewhere being probed, desperate to be freed. It was pathetic how extreme of lengths I went to to try and prove how this Theo couldn’t possibly be mine.
◆◆◆
“My darling!” The overexaggerated, nasal voice chirped from downstairs.
Oh joy, they were here.
If we’re talking about someone turning into an entirely different person, I think Theo’s mother, Margaret, would win the national prize. The once bubbly woman, with flaming red curls, matching glasses and a heart of gold, was now a far-cry away from the woman who used to feed us ample supplies of popcorn on freaky Friday’s and who immediately took me under her wing as soon as Theo and I got together. I remember how much I adored her, how much I loved roasting Theo with her, being let in on all the gossip at her work, (she’s a hairdresser, so the supply was never ending), how much I loved having girly-days out, where we’d go shopping and head to a bar afterwards. It genuinely felt like she was my second mum, and I couldn’t wait for her to one day be my mother in law, and to marry into Theo’s wonderful family.
But like mother, like son. As soon as Theo and I moved in together, the script completely flipped. I’d never have her down as a jealous or particularly overprotective person, but as soon as we got the keys, it was as if she had an epiphany and suddenly realised all the reasons she didn’t like me. She’d ring, every day , checking in to see whether I was feeding her ‘little pumpkin,’ (even though he was literally a twenty-one-year-old man at the time, not two), whether we were happy, and whether I was keeping the house ‘clean enough’ for him. It felt like I wasn’t even my own person in her eyes, I was simply a vessel, born and bred to serve him. Any time she came to visit, she’d grace me with snarky comment after snarky comment, whether they be about the state of our house, or even my appearance. Not going to lie, it used to really upset me at first. I couldn’t understand what I’d done wrong, except for being in love and moving on with my life with her son. But as the years went on, and mine and Theo’s relationship started to deteriorate, she really had it in for me then, like a radar signal heading straight for my jugular, and I decided I no longer gave two shits what she thought about me anymore.
“Is Astrid not here?” I hear her whisper to Theo, not ignoring the glint of hope in her voice.
Abruptly bursting her satisfaction like a pin to a balloon, I stick my head over the banister and sing through a wide-eyed beam, “I’m here! Was just finishing cleaning up the mess Theo left in the bathroom, as always.”
Her forehead immediately etches into a deep frown, like I’ve caught her completely off-guard. Good.
Theo’s dad, Graham, an older chap with salt and pepper hair and a beard to match, gives me a sympathetic smile. Graham never caused any problems, he was the silent type, often overpowered and outspoken by his eccentric, overly opinionated partner. I felt sorry for him most of the time.
“Astrid,” Danny, Theo’s older brother, says through an awkward nod. Again, that was a bit of a weird situation. Dan and I used to spar back and forth so often, he was like the annoying older brother I never had, but I always knew he had my back. I can’t drive, and literally, whenever Theo couldn’t pick me up from an appointment, Danny would always step in to help me out. But now, there was this strange sort of silence and sense of unfamiliarity that exuded between us, like he wasn’t so sure of me anymore. I bet for a fact that it was Margaret’s drip-feeding, just like I imagine she did with Theo, constantly adding fuel to the fire.
Deciding to shake off those feelings, I gently run down the stairs, ready to grit my teeth and bare it, like I usually did.
“Want a cuppa mum?” Theo asks, turning to Margaret with a smile.
Oh, so when I ask you for a tea, you act like you’re a Victorian child dying of influenza, but when your mum asks, you cater to her every whim?
“A cup of tea sounds lovely pumpkin!” she chirps, rubbing his arms sickeningly.
“Can we?” Graham gestures to the living room innocently.
I smile warmly, “of course.”
Margaret suddenly points a sharp finger at Graham’s feet, “Take your shoes off Graham! Wouldn’t want to upset Astrid’s ‘no-shoe’ policy.” Her voice is laced with a thick sarcasm that makes me want to knock her out .
He gawkily stumbles about, holding one hand on the wall to steady himself whilst he struggles to take his shoe off.
“Graham honestly, it’s fine,” I assure.
“One rule for one it seems ha!” Margaret chuckles sarcastically.
I swallow down the gigantic lump in my throat and choose to ignore her, heading into the living room.
An excruciating 3 minutes of silence passes as we all wait for Theo to come back with the teas.
“I notice you’ve grown your hair out,” Margaret says, boring her eyes into my head and breaking the silence.
“Uh-yeah. Just fancied a change,” I mumble, not wanting to take the conversation any further.
“Think it’s time for a cut again don’t you think? Those ends are looking a bit ratty now. I’m more than happy to sort it for you.”
I mentally imagine shoving her off the sofa at that moment. I’d used to have super long hair when I first met Theo, reaching all the way down to my butt. But the year we got together, I donated it and had it chopped shoulder-length. I always loved it, and so did he, so I kept it for essentially the whole of our relationship. But in the past year or so, I couldn’t be assed with the maintenance of styling it, so I just let it grow back out, it was now nearing my butt once again. But as always, Margaret, had to inflict her unwarranted opinions on my life.
Thankfully, Theo is back with a tray of teas before she can interrogate further. Wait…a tray of four teas.
He starts handing them out, until he reaches me, empty handed.
“Where’s mine?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“You’re picky with how you like your tea, and I didn’t fancy a bollocking from you for getting it wrong.”
It takes everything in me to stop myself from spiraling right now. I’m digging my nails into the cushions on the sofa for dear life.
“Whatever.” I put my hand up and waft him away from me, like an annoying fly that won’t stop buzzing.
“So.” Margaret says, gazing at Graham and slapping her thighs in excitement. What was happening right now?
“Now that we’ve got you all here together, we have some very exciting news that we wanted to share with you all!”
Please say you’re moving away; please say you’re moving away!
Theo, Dan, and I all exchange mutual glances of confusion at one another as we await our fate.
“WE’RE GETTING MARRIED!” They shout in unison, deafening me in the process.
All of our mouths are gaping in wide ‘O’ shapes. That definitely wasn’t what I was expecting.
“Hang on, I thought you said that marriage was nothing but a business arrangement and that if marriage was anything to do with love, people wouldn’t feel the need to get married?” Danny pipes up from his seat.
Margaret shakes her head, her curls swishing. “That was years ago angel. I thought I was a feminist back then. We feel that we’re ready to take the next step now.”
Theo squints his eyes, as if he were trying to see through her fa?ade. “You’re both nearly sixty, why bother getting married now? Everyone already presumes you’re married anyway.”
“Age is just a number, and we thought, if everyone thinks it, why not make it official?”
He rubs his eye confusingly, “Wait-when even is the wedding?”
“In 2 weeks’ time!” she squeals.
2 weeks?! That’s not even nearly enough time to get blackout-drunk enough so I can get through the day.
“Aren’t you happy for us?” she adds, glancing with a curious eye over me.
“Of course we are Maggie,” I say through a faux-smile, inwardly high-fiving myself as her smile turns into a thin line after using the nickname she despises.
“And do you know what the best part is?” she grins, but eerily only looking at me. “As the best-man and bridesmaid, you and Theo will be working together to help organise and ensure it’s the best day possible.”
Yep, I’m screwed.