Chapter 14
In need of a proper clean, Olivia runs the most decadent bath of her life, the type you can only have when you don’t give a damn about using up all the hot water.
She pours in half the contents of a lime-green bottle of Badedas that she finds in the cupboard under the basin – it might well have been there since before they moved in – and lights a dusty old Yankee candle that Nick bought her for a birthday several years ago, a putrid shade of custard that allegedly smells of vanilla cupcakes.
The thought makes her gag, but she’s committed to her Luxury Lifestyle Bath now, and she’s not going to let something like the lack of a Diptyque candle divert her off course.
Plus, there is a soft glow of condensation on the shower screen, the flame flickering on the walls, which is all very handy when it comes to disguising the pubes on the floor, the hair in the plughole, and all the other disgusting bits of the Greenwoods’ bodies that get sloughed off and never properly cleaned up because, despite there being a chore rota, she’s the only one who ever seems to adhere to it.
Olivia drops her clothes on the bathroom floor, instead of putting them in the laundry basket (nobody else does, so why should she?), then climbs into her boiling-hot candlelit Luxury Lifestyle Bath and considers shaving her legs.
Her armpits. Maybe her bikini line? She tries to think of a time she’s had a bath to do anything other than make herself less hairy and more appealing.
They’ve lived in this house for almost ten years, but has she ever once sat in this bath for the purpose of relaxation?
She has sat in it with little children, to wash their hair or pull lice out of it like some sort of mama gorilla.
She has sat in it with god knows how many tonnes of exfoliating salt, scrubbing her skin until it’s softer and smoother.
She has sat in it to remove excess hair, by which she means all hair that isn’t on her head or framing her eyes.
She’s even sat in it fully clothed, with a towel thrown over herself in an attempt at disguise during a game of hide and seek …
But until now, she’s never sat in it just because she can.
She’s never allowed the hot water to keep running over her feet, never cleared the rubber ducky or the tiny green soldiers Jack long ago stopped bathing with, never asked for fifteen minutes to herself to just unwind, as all the Boots adverts suggest she might like to.
She’s usually distracted by the mouldy grouting, wondering if a combination of bleach and baking soda might clean it, or counting all the toilet-roll tubes on top of the cistern that she’s allowed to accumulate as a sort of pathetic protest against slovenliness and mess.
She looks at the mouldy grouting now only to find it is gleaming white; searches for the cardboard tubes only to realize they are no longer there.
And no, it’s not a trick of the candlelight. Someone has cleaned.
Why should she use this precious free time to shave her legs?
She might throw out her razor altogether.
And does she really need to pay to have her most intimate areas agonizingly waxed once every six weeks, all her pubic hair removed because good god, what if she actually had the temerity to look like a grown woman down there?
No. She will no longer submit herself to all the painful procedures that she’s been told make her more of a woman, but actually make her feel like less of one.
‘Love me, love my bush!’ she hollers to nobody in particular, kicking her legs up and splashing a whole load of water on to the floor in the process.
She picks up her phone from the edge of the bath to check she hasn’t accidentally got it too wet, sees a notification of an email from Stephen.
Well, here it is. The termination of her contract.
The suspension of her job pending an investigation.
You can’t behave the way she did today and just get away with it.
The idea of being sacked sends an excited shudder through her.
That’s probably not a good sign, is it, that at the thought of losing her job she feels more relief than anxiety, especially not when they have a mortgage visible from space.
She opens the message and feels a stab of disappointment at its contents.
Loving the energy you brought to conference. You really set the cat amongst the pigeons, stuffed it to those pompous pricks in the room, who actually put in a full day of work as a result. Keep it up – wonderful to see you keeping them all on their toes!
Olivia feels the thrill of validation rush through her, notices how cheap it is, and how quickly it replaces the disappointment.
Then she flings her phone on to her pile of clothing before sinking herself under the water, which is pleasantly, almost painfully hot.
She sees how long she can hold her breath, comes up just as she begins seeing stars behind her eyes, and is hit by a crystal-clear image of herself dancing in a dingy bar surrounded by Rose and a group of cheering young Gen Z-ers, remembers feeling the same starry sensation as she threw her body around with abandon.
She’s snapped out of her reverie by a hard knock on the bathroom door.
Olivia bares her teeth in the general direction of the source of disturbance. ‘Not now!’ she growls.
‘Just checking you haven’t fallen into a carb coma in the bath,’ tuts Nick, entering the room.
‘Your concern is sweet,’ sighs Olivia, realizing her relaxing Luxury Lifestyle Bath has officially come to an end.
‘But not needed. I am alive and well and thriving after imbibing more mozzarella in the last hour than I have in the last twenty years. Also, at seeing how Dad cleaned the bathroom today.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ exclaims Nick, admiring the pristine nature of the non-suite. ‘He even threw away all the empty toilet rolls.’
‘Right! It is incredible, really, given he’s about as keen on cleaning and tidying as Lily.
’ Olivia hears a slosh as she removes the plug and lifts herself out of the bath.
‘You know, she has all this beef with Dad about him not being present, but she’s got way more in common with him than she cares to admit. ’
‘Speaking of Lily, I was wondering if that’s what the last few days have been about?’ Nick throws one of the towels from the door at his wife. ‘Maybe you’re upset because your mum’s throwing Lily a fortieth birthday party? I know you always feel like she gives you a much harder time of it.’
‘I’m not jealous of Lily, if that’s what you’re saying,’ says Olivia, wrapping herself in the towel, blowing out the Yankee candle and plunging them into darkness. ‘Though I don’t know why everyone treats her like a helpless child.’
‘Little bit of sibling rivalry causing you to act out over the last few days, maybe?’ Nick opens the door for his wife, moving out the way to let her through.
‘Honestly, Nick, I really object to you dismissing my legitimate discomfort about the codependent dynamics in my birth family as sibling rivalry.’ She storms down the landing towards their bedroom.
‘It’s a bit rich coming from an only child who grew up in a thatched cottage, doted on by his loving, perfectly sane parents. ’
He trails his wife into the bedroom, where she is stunned to see the bed has not just been made but made as if it belongs in a five-star hotel, the linen changed and the duvet flattened into the sides, the pillows puffed expertly as if waiting for a princess.
‘Did you even use fabric conditioner?’ Olivia picks up one of the pillows and sniffs it suspiciously, before flopping down on to the duvet and staring up at the ceiling.
Nick perches on the bed, raises both his hands as if in surrender. ‘Wasn’t me. And I have to say, I thought it was sweet that your dad was really making an effort with the kids today. It was a nice thing to come home to. He is trying.’
‘Totally adorable.’ Olivia rolls her eyes and props herself up on to her elbows.
‘Have I ever told you about the time I caught him drunkenly snogging the magician’s assistant in the cupboard under the stairs at my sixth birthday party?
’ She puffs out her cheeks. ‘He told me he was helping her get well again after she’d been sawn in half. ’
‘I hadn’t heard that one, actually.’ Nick shifts up the bed next to his wife. ‘I feel for your mum, she basically married her own dad.’
‘Oh please, she had agency. Nobody made her do anything.’
‘OK, but it must be hard to square the sad old man downstairs with the lady-killing Casanova you describe from your childhood.’
Olivia turns and looks directly at her husband, feels a softening in her body for the first time in months.
He’s right that her parents’ break-up has had an effect on her – it’s terrified the life out of her, in fact.
She had always thought that they would somehow muddle along, despite all their obvious problems. But seeing her mother snap so suddenly and throw her dad out, long after everyone thought Tina had simply accepted her lot, has shaken the admittedly flimsy foundations of family that exist in her brain.
‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to make my parents’ marriage work, I think.
’ Olivia reaches across and takes Nick’s hand, is relieved when she feels his stubby, hairy fingers close around hers.
‘Isn’t that tragic? Everything I’ve done, from going to work at The Morning to having a family of my own, has been about being the perfect daughter.
If I could be the perfect daughter, then maybe they’d be happy?
I know it sounds absolutely fucking ridiculous, given that I am a grown adult, but hear me out, right? ’
Nick nods.
‘So a few years ago, I had to interview this psychiatrist for a feature about the child mental health crisis. It was all about making your kids happy. And she said that, really, the best way to make a child happy is to work on your own happiness. We think as parents that working on ourselves, doing therapy or whatever, is selfish, that it takes away from time we should be spending with our kids, but actually, it’s the most selfless thing you can do because all our issues are basically inherited from our parents, who inherited them from their parents, and so on and so forth until the dawn of fucking time.
She said that any issue we don’t deal with in ourselves, our kids will have to deal with instead.
We just hand it all down for the next generation.
Most troubled kids are just barometers for issues going on in their own homes. They’re weathervanes, essentially.’
Nick looks as if he is working hard to follow what she is saying, bless him.
‘So anyway, when I was young and I had all my, all my …’ Olivia still finds it hard to say the word.
‘Your anorexia?’ Nick clasps her hand tighter.
‘I was going to say my issues, but I suppose anorexia will do, yeah.’ She shakes away the memories of those long months away from school, the frustration that came off her mother in waves, who had once again had her career interrupted by the need to care for her daughter – her daughter who was, this time, suffering from an illness that only existed in her own head, rather than the appendicitis, which Olivia couldn’t actually be blamed for, no matter how inconvenient it had been at the time.
‘All those difficult times I had when I was a kid, where I felt like I just overreacted to everything, every tiny bit of criticism from a teacher or every apparent snub from a friend, I think I was just a normal kid who happened to feel things strongly, and who had picked up on the fucked-up nature of my mum and dad’s relationship, in lieu of anyone else allowing themselves to.
I took on all the family issues as my own.
But I couldn’t ever have made my parents’ marriage work because it was always fucked, as this divorce in their seventies shows. ’
‘Oh, Olivia.’ Nick puts his arm around his wife. ‘Sometimes I look at you and I find it impossible to see all the pain that I absolutely know is in there. You’re so smiley, so upbeat, so capable.’
‘It’s the compliment I’ve always dreamed of,’ smiles Olivia, nuzzling into her husband’s armpit.
‘You know what I mean. You just get shit done. You want to make people happy. It gives you genuine joy. It’s one of your most glorious qualities but you’re really fucking good at hiding the fact that it often exists at the expense of your own happiness.’
‘Until recently, I’d hidden it so well that even I didn’t know how miserable I was. I just thought it was normal to always be striving for the next thing to validate myself with, be it a house extension or a promotion at work.’
‘There must be some things that make you happy.’ Nick kisses the top of her head, talks into it.
‘There are some,’ says Olivia, shaking him off as she sits up straight in bed and stretches herself out.
‘Oh yes?’ he says, trying not to show he is disappointed that she’s moved out from underneath him.
‘Yeah, I can think of one or two things that make me feel content,’ she purrs, her voice lowering a little. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be accused of giving off sex vibes …’
‘You don’t need to worry about that, my love.’ Nick turns and begins to move towards her on the bed. ‘This new bolshie version of you really is infuriatingly …’
‘Infuriatingly what?’ she says, releasing her towel so that it falls to reveal her bare breasts.
‘Infuriatingly sexy,’ he growls, clambering on top of his wife.