OCTOBER 30TH
CLAIRE
Claire knows what Michelle Obama would tell her: She’s blessed. It’s her nineteenth wedding anniversary and her husband is here, with a gift. For her.
‘What’s this?’ Claire can’t keep the twang of excitement from her voice as she lifts her hands to receive the parcel Mark just gave her, messily enclosed in an Argos shopping bag.
‘Open it and see. No time to wrap. Sorry.’
He sits down beside her at the dining room table. She looks up at him, eyes wide. A smile plays on Mark’s lips. Open. Soft.
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about later, as well,’ he adds.
There’s more? He’s been listening? Have the subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) messages filtered through?
These are important points, because Claire doesn’t want to be all doomster and “I’ve had enough of this” about her marriage. But recently … well …. recently, it’s been a lot.
Today, however, is a new day. Mark came home on time after work.
And he’s brought a present. Maybe this twentieth year of marriage is going to be the transformative one she’s been reading about in the self-help books?
What did Michelle Obama say in that interview?
If you have a 20-year marriage and only 10 years of it are crappy – then that’s good going.
You’ve got to love Michelle and her ‘no shit’ approach to family life.
And Claire is lucky. She is.
Mark is fundamentally a decent man, who loves her in his own way.
She has her own mortgage-free house and a disposable income from rental properties.
She’s healthy. Their son, Aidan, seems to be doing well (if radio silence is anything to go by), and she has a bunch of exceptional friends.
The kind who drop everything and materialise in her garden with a cup of tea forty minutes into a declared crisis.
Claire’s childhood friend, Heather, is a case in point.
Okay, she might be based 350 miles away in Edinburgh, but she’s present in a way that transcends the physical distance between them.
Claire glances at the dining room mantlepiece.
Heather’s postcard (honestly, who writes postcards these days?) with a Highland Cow wearing a tartan beret peeks out from between the leaving cards.
“Loving this road trip. You and Mark must join us sometime. Looking forward to hearing all about the 19th anniversary” was her message.
Tess, too, Claire’s best friend locally, called this morning.
“Maybe he’ll get you that trip to Dubai you’ve been dropping hints about.
” she said, despite knowing Mark would never take a holiday at this stage in his current work project.
Claire rotates the box in her hands. Heavy. Not airline tickets.
Mark leans forward.
‘Go on. Open it,’ he says. ‘It’s something you want.’ This point alone is worthy of celebration. Last year it was a whirligig, the year before, a food mixer
She almost daren’t pull the plastic bag away, but Mark is wringing his fingers in anticipation.
She pulls gently at the plastic handles, hope gripping at her insides. Be a good gift. Be a good gift.
‘Oh.’
Oblivious to the fact she doesn’t look up, he leans over and points to the special features list on the box.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘you can connect it to an app, and it monitors progress. Hydration. Composition. All sorts.’
‘I see.’
She tucks the gift out of sight. In all fairness, she did tell him she wanted to lose weight and smart scales were mooted in the past. But for a nineteenth wedding anniversary present when things are already veering dangerously close to the edge? Perhaps not.
‘You don’t like it.’
‘Mark. It’s not that I don’t like it,’ she says, ‘it’s just that it’s so ….. It’s just so …..’
Alongside the constant need to pee, this is her least endearing menopausal symptom. The inability to finish a -
‘It’s just so insulting.’
There we go. She finds the word.
‘I mean, what woman really, truly wants to know her body fat composition two weeks before her fifty-third birthday?’
The tilt in Mark’s neck says ‘you’, but he clearly recognises the potential for an inadvertent blunder.
‘But it’s something you want.’
How to explain? Mark’s forehead is furrowed in confusion. What might the equivalent gift be in his world?
‘Mark. It would be like me buying you a ….’
A what? What’s the missing word? What might a male engineer secretly want, but would hate their partner to buy for them?
Nose hair trimmers? Perhaps. But not quite.
‘It would be like me buying you a ….’
A what, Claire?
‘A ….,’
Think, Claire. Think!
‘A ….’
Mark is staring at her, his shoulders raised.
Suddenly she gets it.
‘A penis enlarger.’
‘A pe -. What. No!’
‘Yes. It’d be like me buying you a penis enlarger and wondering why you were annoyed. Because you did tell me once – way back when – that you wished it was …’
‘I never …’
This, however, Claire knows for certain.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘When?’
‘Majorca.’
‘Majorca?’
Majorca was well over thirty years ago when a young graduate, Mark, and a pre-university Claire holidayed with their respective best friends’ family for one week.
Claire was Tess’s comrade-in-arms; Mark was Trevor’s.
Having given Mark her virginity that holiday, Claire dissected every minute of that week with Tess and later with Mark’s best friend, Trevor – so she absolutely knows her memory is reliable on this matter.
Mark glances at his groin as if studying the area will allow him to recall his 22-year-old self, musing for a longer, thicker willy. He obviously draws a blank.
‘What’s for dinner?’ he says, instead. ‘I’m starved.’
There’s nothing quite like marital strife to help achieve a perfect mashed potato, chosen for tonight because it is Mark’s favourite.
Claire pounds at the pre-boiled starchy lumps with the power of a she-wolf.
Little flecks of potato jettison onto the magnolia walls.
Magnolia, apparently, is the cheapest, most practical paint colour.
It, therefore, adorns every wall in their home.
Because why would you not opt for practicality?
Claire uses her time in the kitchen to mull things over.
When did things really change between them?
Things have been dicey for the past few years as Mark’s obsession with work and gadgetry grew exponentially.
There seemed to be less space in his life for her and even less appreciation.
But it was only when Claire accepted a redundancy pay-off from Busy Bees Nursery and Aidan left for university that things really took a nosedive.
Claire glances up at the ceiling (magnolia!).
Aidan’s room is directly overhead. A month ago, their home was filled with the sound of his ‘rock band’ penetrating the floorboards.
Now, his room has the stillness of a mausoleum, the bedsheets washed and ironed in case he jumps on a train for a surprise visit.
Journalism at Nottingham. Ninety miles from their home in Bedford.
Claire’s heart contracts at the memory of dropping him off five weeks ago. She’s hardly heard from him since.
It feels as though life, and perhaps also her sense of purpose, has stood still since then.
Seeing Heather embrace her empty nest via a multitude of post cards from Scotland and around the world, really emphasises to Claire that another existence might be possible.
Three questions repeat in her mind as she pummels the potato: Is this her life now?
Is it enough? And - what will they do if it's not?