The Sex Lives of Married Women

1. Meena

1

Meena

He’s got to want it more than I do. That was the main thought in Meena’s head as she stood in front of Owen, in the silk negligee she’d found at a Bras n Things shop next to the supermarket. The bored teenage salesgirl had barely registered her as she’d entered and grabbed the first sexy, on-trend thing she saw. No push-up bras and fishnet stockings for her – what was this, 2006? The shopping trolley, with her greying, crumpled, reused plastic grocery bags inside, was too big to wheel into the store, so she’d left it outside. That’s how desperate she’d been – leaving her groceries for any old person to walk past and help themselves. Though why anyone would have wanted a part of her very middle-class family shop, with the cheddar cheese and Greek yoghurt sweating in a bag and schnitzel in a plastic tray, was beyond her.

She remained in the living room doorway for a minute longer, letting her hands slide up the side of her hips. Her palms were sweaty and stuck to the negligee, which she now guessed was not silk – not for the price she paid. Most likely polyester, but it was shiny and highlighted her shape. And it was low cut enough to show off a cleavage that, despite her forty years of age and eighteen months of breastfeeding, seemed pretty acceptable to the man who worked at the bank, at least.

And yet, after all the effort she’d made letting her hair out and getting out of her trackies, Owen had barely looked up from his phone when she walked into the room.

She’d made sure Sasha was fast asleep, so deep she’d even registered her daughter’s eyes moving under her eyelids. REM deep. She always slept like a log after a gymnastics day. There’d be no child wandering into the living room when, as she expected (hoped, more like), they would be in the full throes of passion. Full throes of passion. The thought made her laugh. She couldn’t remember the last time they had been.

‘You good?’ Her husband looked up from the couch, phone in hand.

You good? That’s it? Surely she couldn’t have made it more obvious? But she took a deep breath and swallowed.

‘You good?’ she repeated, wanting the question to come out sounding like a purr – like, You, good? Sexy smile, followed by a smoulder. Instead it came out sounding angry and sarcastic. You! Good?

Owen blinked, nonplussed. His gaze slid right back to his phone.

What is more important than me? she wanted to ask. But she didn’t, mostly because she didn’t want to know the answer.

‘What’ve I done now?’ he asked, his eyes still focused on his screen.

‘Done? Why would you say that?’

‘You sound annoyed.’

‘Well, if you looked up at me for more than a second, you’d see I’m not annoyed.’ She smoothed out the impatient tone in her voice and quickly changed tack. ‘I’m, uh, did you notice what I’m wearing?’ Her voice attempted to be smooth as silk. Or at the very least, polyester.

He looked up again. She noticed his eyes were weary, crinkled at the corners. He’d worked back again that night and had just sat down. It was after 9 p.m. All signs pointed to a bad moment to revive their flagging sex life. But sometimes there was no time like the present, or that’s what she remembered the life coach on TikTok saying, anyway.

‘You look nice,’ he said finally. ‘Was it on sale?’

The question deflated her slowly, like the Pokémon helium balloon from Sasha’s last birthday party that was quietly but determinedly leaking air in the corner of her room. Sasha had refused to part with it, but she also neglected the balloon, letting it gather dust, Pikachu’s yellow features shrivelling into a look of despondency.

‘Full price,’ she mustered, with fake cheer.

‘Wow, good one.’ He was saying words but not really paying attention to them. That’s how they talked now. Adults. They spoke words to each other while their attention was somewhere else.

‘Still working?’ she asked him, as his eyes drifted back to the phone.

‘Yeah, Greg’s sent over a report he wants me to look over.’

‘Now?’

‘The London office needs it today so, yeah, now.’

I’m trying, babe, can’t you see, I’m trying. She tried to convey this with her eyes but he wasn’t looking.

She could go over and straddle him. Take his phone and throw it behind the couch and kiss him, really passionately, like the way they did back in their twenties. If only he’d give her even the smallest of hints that he was open to that. She was about to step towards him, but he got up, taking his phone with him.

‘Just need to send a few emails. You go to bed, no need to stay up for me.’ He didn’t turn around as he spoke.

‘Is it me?’ Meena asked, knowing exactly how it sounded. Women blaming themselves for their relationship felt like such a cliché that even she was turned off by her question.

Sophie raised an eyebrow, stirring her coffee with more force than was necessary, splashing a bit onto the saucer. Not a good sign.

‘Do you really want me to answer that without gagging?’ Sophie said drily.

At the table next to them, a group erupted with laughter. Sophie jolted her head in their direction before turning back to face Meena. ‘Guess only boomers can be happy this early in the day,’ she said.

Meena surreptitiously turned to glance at the group. They looked older, sure, but were they boomers? Gen Xers? Or worse, millennials like them? Everyone had grey hair now, whether it was through a seven-hour trip to the hairdresser (she’d seen a young woman do so on Instagram) or just from growing it out in an attempt to give a middle finger to the patriarchy. She was about to say this out loud when Sophie let out a sigh.

‘What’s wrong?’ Meena asked.

Sophie shook her head. ‘No, you see, you can’t ask me that. You’ve already told me something was wrong with you . This means, as your closest and best friend, hashtag BestFriendsForever, I can’t also have my crisis at the same time as you. This goes against the rule of BFFs. Only one crisis at a time, otherwise it’s chaos.’

Meena tried to examine Sophie’s tone. Was she being sarcastic? ‘Well, if it helps, mine isn’t really a crisis, it’s more an ongoing predicament,’ she said slowly. ‘Owen didn’t suddenly become disinterested in sex with me. He’s been like this for a while now.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Sophie muttered as she took a sip of her coffee. This time it was clear. Something was definitely going on.

‘So, since mine isn’t an immediate crisis, you want to tell me what’s wrong?’ Meena broached carefully.

‘It’s okay, you don’t have to be my therapist.’

‘But isn’t that pretty much the main role of a BFF?’ Meena tried to keep her tone light.

Sophie kept her eyes on her coffee. ‘Todd told me last night that he wants to move to be near his parents.’ Her voice wavered as she spoke. In the seven or so years Meena had known Sophie, she’d never once seen her cry. It alarmed Meena more than it should. She felt herself rushing to make Sophie feel better.

‘Oh, but, you know, men say that from time to time. They’re just mama’s boys at heart. I’m sure you can convince him otherwise.’

‘No, he’s serious. He’s already spoken to his boss to see if it’s even a possibility and they said he can work remotely. I can’t move to some backwater, Meena. It’s six hours away from here. Don’t you see?’ She extended her fingers to show off her perfect French manicure. ‘Look at my nails. Women with nails like these don’t live in in the country.’

‘I’m sure there are nail salons—’

‘No! No, don’t you dare start talking as if the move is actually going to happen.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Meena sat back. ‘But ... did he actually speak to his boss before you about the move?’ She could see the colour rising in Sophie’s cheeks.

Sophie shrugged. ‘I guess maybe he was checking to see if the move was possible? Maybe he knew I’d make a big deal about it.’

‘But it is a big deal,’ Meena said. ‘Did he say when he was thinking of moving?’

Sophie didn’t respond. She put the spoon back inside her mug of coffee and started to stir it slowly, losing herself in the swirl of the dark brown liquid.

‘Are you hypnotising yourself like in Get Out ?’ Meena asked, smiling. It was a movie they’d watched recently at Sophie’s while sharing a large greasy pizza and a bottle of red.

‘What?’ Sophie asked, snapping herself out of her thoughts.

‘ Get Out . Remember the Sunken Place? Though technically it should be me who is being hypnotised—’ Meena stopped herself.

Sophie looked down at her coffee and slowly put down her spoon.

‘So, what are you going to do?’ Meena asked gently.

Sophie shrugged. ‘I’ll figure it out.’

‘Let me help?’

‘Honestly, you’ve got way too much on your plate as it is.’

‘What? The Owen and lack of sex thing?’

‘Sasha as well. You’re basically a Dance Mom these days driving her around to her various lessons.’

Meena grimaced. ‘Without so much as a thanks in return.’

‘Well, what more do you expect from a tweenager?’ Sophie said, smiling for the first time. ‘She loves you, even if she doesn’t say it.’

‘Okay, how did we turn this conversation around to talking about me rather than you?’ Meena asked. This was very much like Sophie and their friendship. She would reveal a fragment of how she was feeling, before pulling back and putting an end to any further exploration of her thoughts.

‘Because I hate talking about myself.’

‘No, it’s because you’ve been self-reliant for so long you don’t know what it’s like to let people in.’

Sophie sighed. ‘Oh, come on, Meena, you know more about me than most.’

The table of grey-haired people from an indeterminate generation broke into loud laughter again, interrupting them. Meena suddenly felt irritated at the unnaturally happy group.

Sophie took a big swig of her coffee, downing it in one gulp and stood up. ‘You ready to head off?’

Meena looked at her own cup, still full of the soy flat white she’d ordered.

‘I can grab a takeaway cup for you,’ Sophie offered.

‘You go ahead. I’ve got some emails to answer.’

Sophie didn’t question it. She bent down and lightly pecked Meena on the cheek before walking out of the cafe, the waft of her expensive Chanel perfume trailing behind her.

Meena watched Sophie leave before picking up her phone, knowing there were no emails or messages to check. This coffee catch-up was the only thing she’d had in her diary for the day. Her whole week looked empty except for a bake sale she had volunteered for at Sasha’s school. After school was different; she spent that time driving Sasha around to her various activities, dance being just one of them, and in between, trying to sneak in milkshakes and chats with her daughter, who had recently begun to see spending time with her mother as a bit of a chore. Sophie had reminded her that this was typical behaviour from tweens, but that didn’t stop Meena from trying. She’d consulted various parenting websites on how to ask your child about their day. Instead of asking ‘How was your day?’ and getting the stock-standard ‘Good’, Meena now tried, ‘What was something funny that happened today?’, ‘Tell me something you learned today’ or ‘What games are you playing at lunch and with who?’.

So now instead of getting the stock-standard ‘Good’, Meena now got an eye roll and a droll ‘I dunno’.

All Meena wanted to say to her daughter was, ‘You’re my everything. Every day I get out of bed because of you.’ She could guess at her daughter’s reply. ‘Cringe,’ she would say. Lately everything Meena did was cringe.

Ten years ago it had all been so different. Back then Meena ran on coffee and cigarettes and knew the hottest trends and the coolest places to be seen – most definitely the opposite of cringe, she would tell Sasha one day, once she was over this uncommunicative phase. She was the busiest she’d ever been back then, and also the slimmest. It might not be something to be proud of now, what with body positivity and whatnot, but a small part of her couldn’t help feeling nostalgic for getting stared at in the street by men. She’d never been interested, because she was in love with a guy who used to shag her so well she sometimes forgot her name, and it didn’t hurt that Owen always noticed the staring men and his jealousy often resulted in even better sex. She would definitely not tell Sasha about that part, but the romance bit could be nice to share. ‘See how your parents were madly in love,’ she would say. Sasha would probably groan or roll her eyes, maybe while hiding a smile. It was comforting for any child to know their parents cared about each other. But did they still?

Back at the cafe the grey-haired table erupted into laughter once more. For some reason their happiness caused ripples of irritation inside of Meena. Nothing was going right for her, not partners or friends or kids. She pushed back her chair, the half-drunk cup of coffee in her hand. Before she knew it she was up on her feet, her brain commanding her to walk over to their table and dump the remains of her coffee on the nearest cheerfully loud head.

As she approached the group, her hand slightly trembling, coffee cup ready to be tipped, one of the men at the table looked up. His eyes were twinkling and he had a warm, happy face. She stopped, shocked at what she was about to do.

‘Hi,’ she said awkwardly, and he nodded back with a smile. She put down her coffee, grabbed her bag and walked towards the counter. On the way out she asked the waitress for not only her bill but theirs, so she could pay off the guilt for what she had been about to do.

Outside, she stood for a moment, unsure of what to do next. It was only 10 a.m. There were still hours to kill before she had to pick up Sasha. They were running low on milk. She could pop into the supermarket, plus she hadn’t fully worked out what they were having for dinner. And then, what should she eat for lunch? She could finish the leftovers from the previous night, or maybe make a sandwich? She could also get a head start on the laundry; some of it had piled up as she had neglected to run the machine after Sasha’s karate and dance lessons.

Meena stopped. The breeze picked up and buffeted into her, its fingers sweeping through her hair. A tingle ran down her spine, making her shiver. She imagined someone’s actual fingers in her hair, how intimate and nice that would feel. The thought made pins and needles prickle under her skin, the creeping sense of loneliness throttling her.

She shook the feeling away. Imagine being turned on by the wind , she thought, before letting out a snort and marching in a purposeful way towards the supermarket.