Chapter 1
There are people walking around the world right now who don’t realize that this is their final night on earth.
Some people don’t realize that within the next day, or hour, or even minute, they will meet tragedy.
Someone in the world is about to lose a leg, or their arm, or their sanity, or the love of their life, and they don’t even know it yet.
Maybe someone else out there is having these exact same thoughts, right this minute.
Different versions of all of us exist in the minds of everyone who knows us.
My mind is in overdrive in all the wrong ways, while my groin seems to be going twenty miles per hour in a cul-de-sac. This is like shagging an Oasis record.
I’ve had my toes licked. I’ve had my fingers sucked. I’ve had my hair pulled. None of which is happening in this marriage.
Last week, we had the following conversation at 10 p.m.
‘Do you fancy an early night?’ goes he.
Me, wanting to do it about as much as I wanted root canal surgery: ‘We could, I guess.’
‘“We could, I guess”?’
‘I mean, if you want to, we can. Absolutely.’
Him, side-eyeing me: ‘You do look a bit tired.’
‘Hey, don’t put this back on me.’
‘I’m not! Maybe tomorrow though.’
‘Definitely tomorrow.’
What happened to the sort of athletic sex where I yelped a bit, tits slapping against each other like clacker toys?
I’ll tell you what happened: basal thermometers and ovulation kits and apps.
But it’s what we do now. Johnny and I go on our weekly date, usually a Tuesday (although tonight he suggests we dust off a bottle of champagne, held over from our four-years-ago wedding and rescued from under the sink, after he trounces me at Scrabble).
Sometimes, the sex feels like a maintenance thing, something to keep our marriage in an uncomplicated and decent place.
It’s also become the point in the week when, handily, I also do most of my life’s thinking.
Tonight, things feel a little more urgent because I am In the Middle of My Cycle.
Nothing makes you want to have sex less than describing your cervical mucus – one of about fifty-four variations, as it turns out – with a nice fertility clinic nurse.
And yet, the flashing smiley face on the ovulation kit has basically told us to crack on, Godspeed, have at it.
Something happens during Middle of My Cycle sex.
Johnny tries not to look too hopeful, or too earnest.
‘Am I gonna get you pregnant now? Huh? Are we gonna make a baby here?’ he says in between thrusts, with a mid-Atlantic accent. I make a mental note to take him to task about whatever pumpkin spice latte porn he’s been watching, or whatever it is that’s inspired this kind of banter.
As he gently flips me over into one of his three preferred (or only) positions – some lazy, sideways action – I start wondering idly about how the hell we even got here.
Johnny was thirty-five when we met, and he had a pleasing abundance of his own hair, no pesky family baggage and a relatively boyish physique, which seemed both surprisingly rare and more than enough for me at the time.
Back then, his eyes would light up with a sort of lovely gratitude at the very mention of sex.
He wasn’t like other guys, whose eyes seemed to darken, get meaner and lose focus right after the first kiss.
But since we married, we have slid into an easy, complacent dynamic.
He is earnest and sweet and a bit hapless and blows his nose an unsettling number of times in a day and loves nothing more than the uncomfortable look on someone else’s face after he emits a classically dreadful dad joke.
I have loved all this about him. But still, I’ve noticed there has been a shift of late.
We are pals whose toes occasionally touch in bed.
The making tea for each other stopped a long time ago.
Johnny is more likely to wonder aloud to me if that thing on his bum is a spot, or maybe closer to a boil.
If familiarity breeds contempt, where exactly does this zit-or-boil banter leave us?
I’m not without sin, granted. I fart with neither ceremony nor apology, and he jokingly yells at me to go see a vet. Sorry now, but I’m not holding it in for another sixty years.
Or however long it might be.
If Johnny were to appear on Mastermind, his five specialist categories would be:
Home counties indie from the years 1992 to 1999
The locations of the areas of the Shipping Forecast and their respective co-ordinates
Craft beer production that happens in other people’s filthy garages
The acquisition of merino wool jumpers that still go bobbly
How to avoid arguments
Every so often during sex, he closes his eyes for a while and turns his face from mine, burying his neck into my armpit. I briefly wonder if he’s thinking about sex with someone else.
Tonight is nice and all, the same way the gym is after you resist going for weeks.
But I am absolutely determined not to fake it.
I don’t want to be the woman who fakes it all the time with her own husband.
I cannot be that woman. Never wanted to be that woman.
But after a few minutes, I realize the only way to finish up in time for Newsnight is to let Johnny think he’s done the proverbial business.
This isn’t about me, this isn’t about our marriage.
Just a few minor issues with the, well …
service provider. I give a few practiced shudders, squalls and sighs, clenching and then releasing theatrically, mindful to not give it the full YouPorn or else he’ll know.
Seconds later, he comes quietly and politely (see?
A gent to the last) looking softly into my eyes as he does so, a man gently pushing a fragile paper boat out on to a pond.
Much as I appreciate the politesse, I do miss a good old-fashioned, noisy slamming.
I thought I would never tire of it, but I guess life can be funny like that sometimes.
Baby-making sex does not equal the Slam.
Headboard driving would not be respectful, given the circumstances.
Johnny withdraws slowly and deliberately, careful not to lose a drop. I hug my knees to my chest, hoping to tip and guide stuff wherever it needs to go.
‘Teamwork makes the dream work,’ Johnny says amid his light panting.
I think of the Brazil nuts he has to eat every day, and the alcohol I have cut way down on to make this happen.
I notice that Johnny has stopped asking afterwards if I think this might be it.
Because it hasn’t been it for a while now.
The question feels like too much to say out loud these days.
You’re as young as you’ll ever be in this moment, I think. The weird thing is that it’s true of every moment in your life.