Chapter 8
Olivia spends the rest of the weekend in bed, emerging only to go to the non-suite to throw up, and, once she has sobered up, to apologize profusely to her family.
She’s still feeling weirdly liberated for letting rip, when it is usually the last thing she would do, but she also knows that she needs to toe the line between being an arsehole and speaking-her-truth, and flinging her son’s Man City Crocs into the air is probably crossing it.
‘I think Mummy has had a bit of a bug or something,’ she says to Jack, slumping next to him on the sofa on Sunday morning.
‘I’m really sorry that I was so rude to you all.
And if I frightened you by drinking wine in my dressing gown.
I really love you and you didn’t deserve to have me take all my frustrations out on you. ’
‘It’s OK, Mum,’ says Jack, who is playing Football Manager. ‘Dad says that all kids should expect to see their mothers drinking wine in their dressing gowns at least once in their childhood.’
‘Does he now,’ winces Olivia, whose husband is upstairs having a long bath, after spending two hours at CrossFit that morning. ‘Have you noticed how fit he’s got doing all this gym stuff? I mean, fit as in PHWOAAAAAAAARR? He’s definitely getting at least a two-pack, I’d say.’
‘Mum, do you mind? I’m trying to revise and I need to practise this section to stay on track for an A. Plus, you sound a bit pervy,’ huffs Saskia from across the room.
‘He’s my husband, babes!’ Olivia gets up and goes to sit next to Saskia.
‘It’s good for you to see me model a healthy romantic relationship where I fancy the pants off your dad, as opposed to one where I barely tolerate him.
’ She throws her arms around her daughter, who cringes, as is her teenage right.
Olivia might have taken this personally a day or so ago, but today she’s just grateful to be here, alone with her kids, in their own cosy space, with no sports clubs to ferry them to.
She holds on to Saskia a few moments longer and feels her soften just a little.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ Saskia looks up from her homework with barely concealed contempt. ‘You do know that I’m your teenage daughter and I really don’t want to hear you talking about fancying my father? It’s completely gross.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get the message. Right, well, I’m still feeling a bit ropy.
’ Olivia gets to her feet, very slowly, groaning slightly, and makes her way towards the door.
‘Your father will be manning the fort this evening. If there are any problems, please don’t let me know, because I’m going to be too busy lying in the dark, trying to get over a two-day hangover. ’
‘Mum!’ Saskia laughs in shock. Jack shakes his head, his gaze never once diverting from the screen.
Upstairs, Olivia slumps into bed and stares at the ceiling in a sort of wide-eyed wonder, not quite believing how easy it has been to ask for what she wants from her husband.
It hasn’t felt too terrifying, and he hasn’t (yet) asked for a divorce.
It certainly beats seething in silent resentment about the apparent stalemate in their marriage.
She gets under the duvet and reaches for her phone to see if Stephen has replied to her message.
She keeps wondering whether she should send an apologetic email to try and mitigate her first response, but try as she might, she can’t do it.
It’s as if there’s a sort of force field preventing her from cleaning up the mess she has made since she went on that Friday-night bender.
Normally, she’d be the first person to apologize for even the slightest misstep – and quite often, for simply existing – but today, she just can’t find it in herself to give a damn, at least not when it comes to people who don’t give a damn about her.
She has been running around, trying to pander to everybody else’s needs, for years.
Perhaps it’s time she stopped? Isn’t it a good thing for Nick to know that she needs more foreplay?
And what’s so wrong about putting a boundary down with her boss, especially when he’s just screwed her over so royally?
She thinks Rose would be impressed with her, if only she could track Rose down.
But Olivia has spent two hours checking out every Rose, Rosemary, Rosie and Rosalie that exists on The Morning’s email database, and not a single one of them checks out as the person she met on Friday night.
Maybe pink-suited Rose is so new that she doesn’t yet have an email.
Tomorrow, Olivia is going back to the office so she can track down this new assistant and ask what the hell it was she gave her the other night. An edible, or a lobotomy?
Because ever since she came to yesterday morning, Olivia has found herself saying absolutely everything that comes into her head.
Every sarcastic thought, every unkind opinion, every unwarranted judgement …
they’ve all come tumbling out of her mouth, and Olivia has been powerless to stop them.
This morning, when Nick asked for an apology for the way she had behaved yesterday, she told him to fuck off and stop being so righteous.
This was unlike her, to put it mildly. Then, when he said he was going to CrossFit as her little bender had kept him from attending yesterday, she launched into a twelve-minute diatribe about how she was forced to spend her free time doing laundry instead of exercising, and that she was not exactly thrilled that millennia of human evolution had boiled down to them having the same, tedious argument that their ancestors had probably hashed out in caves.
But other things were coming out too: wants and needs, desires even.
When Nick was putting his Lycra on, she asked if he could perhaps start spending a bit of extra time working on her body as well as his, if he knew what she meant?
(He did not, so she had told him, very loudly, that she wanted him to tweak her nipples and then eat her out before taking her hard from behind.
Bewildered after a period of sexual abstinence that had gone on more or less since her dad moved in six months ago, bringing a general put-upon vibe that seemed to have filled his wife with lethargy and self-loathing, Nick had left for the gym in a horny state of confusion.)
And when the Laura Kuenssberg show had been left on in the living room earlier she had started hurling insults such as ‘tedious windbag’, ‘absolute asshat’ and ‘sanctimonious tossbag’ at the various politicians who made their way on to the screen, until Jack had suggested he commandeer the TV so he could play Football Manager and she could ‘calm down’.
‘If it stops you from talking incessantly about Erling Haaland, then I’m all for it, darling,’ said Olivia, wincing as she spoke. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Or I did, but I meant it lovingly, in a way that you shouldn’t take too personally.’
Why couldn’t she just be nice, like she normally was?
She finds she has no filter, no social graces, no ability to massage reality and tell the little fibs that usually cushion her days like clouds.
All attempts to protect other people’s feelings seem to have been abandoned in a furious race to express hers.
Where was it all coming from? Olivia has always baulked at gobby right-wingers who defend their nastiness with the words ‘I was only saying what everyone was thinking’, but now she gets it.
She texts her sister, to see if she knows of any drugs with side effects that include inducing a state of truth-telling psychosis in the user.
Lily is exactly the kind of person who would know about this stuff – while their mother believes that her youngest daughter likes to travel for reasons of cultural enrichment, ‘sampling global art and cuisine’, as Tina likes to put it, Olivia is aware that, more often than not, the cuisine Lily is sampling is narcotic-based and usually of the psychedelic type.
Lily – went on the lash on Friday and a young person gave me something dodgy. I think I did some of that microdosing, or whatever it’s called??? I need your help, please don’t tell Mum!!!!!!
What did you microdose? Acid? Or Ozempic, like all the other yummy mummies? Are you shitting the bed?
No, I’m TRUTH-TELLING and I just wondered if this was a side effect of some drugs? I need the antidote pronto
You’re going to need to explain to me what the hell it is you took, because you sound utterly mental
It was like a Haribo. But not a Haribo. Shaped like a football, called the Haaland because it’s so damn good at what it is, according to the girl who gave it to me. Haaland as in IAN HARLAND, the thumb with a face
Lol, you took a weed gummy. Calm down, Doris. You’re just experiencing a comedown. Like a hangover, but with drugs. Have a banana and some broccoli and an early night and I’m sure you’ll be fine. See you Tuesday xxx
‘I think I’m experiencing the opposite of a Yes Day,’ she explains to Nick later that night, when he gingerly dares to venture into the bedroom to communicate with this woman who claims to be his wife. ‘Like a No Day, or something. An absolutely No-Fucking-Way Day.’
‘You’re definitely being more … spirited?’ He closes the door behind him, tentative and – yep, she can see it in the way his eyes are crinkling – terrified. ‘Maybe you’re just having an extreme reaction to what happened at work on Friday?’ He nervously sits at the end of the bed.
‘Or maybe I’m having a perfectly normal reaction to everything that’s happened at work for the last twenty or so years that I’ve been there? Maybe tomorrow I will wake up and feel a bit more like myself. But today, I would just like it to be known that Stephen can go fuck himself.’
‘Who are you?’ Nick says, completely stunned. ‘And what the hell have you done with my wife?’
Olivia manages to keep her mouth shut. Neither of them are prepared to consider the possibility that, far from his wife disappearing somewhere, she was only just beginning to come back.