some people sex is as basic and necessary as going to the toilet,’ you say.
Louder and more bombastic than you have ever been.
‘I hope the woman who did this drowns in her own excrement,’ I reply too quickly, realising almost immediately how childish this sounds. How feral and unpleasant.
You respond, stiffening, as if I have electrocuted you.
Carly.
That is when I first smelt you on him, and him on you.
I am back home from my rendezvous with Jenni. I ring the front doorbell to warn my mother I am home, turning my key in the lock at the same time to increase my speed of entry. I meet her rushing towards the door across the hallway, looking tired.
‘How’s Jenni?’ she asks, as she slows down.
‘Unhinged,’ I reply.
‘Wouldn’t you be?’
I don’t reply.
I follow my mother through the hallway of our detached thirties house towards our kitchen/breakfast room, past a table on which Rob and I have been incarcerated in a silver frame, smiling benignly on our tenth wedding anniversary. We felt so proud of ourselves, so celebratory, downing a whole bottle of champagne and having sex in our bedroom before dinner. My mother opens the door and my children unfold before me. They are sat eating chicken nuggets and chips, basking in the late October sunshine that rises across our garden towards me, bouncing off a carpet of twisted golden leaves, which need clearing. Another chore for my list. The children, wide-eyed with greed, continue shovelling fried food and too much ketchup down their throats as if they haven’t seen me. They don’t even look up.
‘Can I get you anything, dear?’ my mother asks.
‘No, thanks. I’ve had tapas.’
When they have all finished guzzling, my mother clears the children’s plates and presides over the serving of jelly and ice cream.
‘Jelly on a plate. Jelly on the table. Wibble wobble. Wibble wobble. Jelly on a plate,’ she says repeatedly, and everyone laughs.
Hilarious, obviously.
Food and hilarity over, faces wiped and dishes cleared, the children disappear upstairs to Matt’s bedroom where my mother has helped them set up the Scalextric set this morning. Its buzzing fly drone drills into my temples, threatening to give me a headache.
‘Poor Jenny Wren,’ my mother says.
My headache begins.
‘Jenny Wren?’ I ask, not trying very hard to keep the edge out of my voice. Her affectionate nickname for Jenni irritates me.
‘She always seems so vulnerable.’
‘Not as vulnerable as she is right now.’
‘I think I’ll pop and see her this evening – see if there is anything I can do to help.’
Mother. Always fussing over Jenni. They formed a bond over childcare when I went back to work in the surgery. Visiting play parks together. Taking the children swimming. Healthy country walks collecting leaves and berries. Today the closeness of their nature-table relationship is really pissing me off.
‘You might bump into Rob. He said he might go round too,’ I say. The edge in my voice is definitely not fading.
‘He’s only trying to be helpful, Carly. Surely you know that?’
‘Yes. Yes. I do. Course I do,’ I reply a little too quickly.
My mother sits looking at me across the pine dining table.
‘You have a perfect relationship,’ she says. ‘Don’t spoil it.’
‘No one has a perfect relationship,’ I snap.
There is a silence between us. I look away from her, then back. ‘Look, Mother, please could you just stay a bit longer and keep an eye on the children? Perhaps I’ll feel better if I have a shower. Freshen myself up.’
‘Of course. My pleasure. I promised Matt one last race.’
‘Thanks.’ I reach across the table and touch her hand. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘You’d be fine, Carly.’ There is a pause. ‘You’ll always be fine.’
‘I don’t feel fine at the moment.’
‘Gwandma. Gwandma. Your turn,’ Matt yells down the stairs.
The sound of his voice is an automatic trigger for my mother to rise and do her duty. With Rob and my mother it is always the same – the children are above everything in their pecking order. I drag myself upstairs, heavy with too much lunchtime alcohol, heavy with the weight of my own insignificance, to douse myself in the power shower. Perhaps the shower will energise me, make me feel ready to cope with the rest of the day. I undress and put on my new shorty bathrobe, pottering around our bedroom, tidying up a little, before I freshen up. I hear car tyres scratch across gravel, a key scraping into the front door lock, and Rob is home, earlier than usual, after his monthly turn at Saturday surgery. I hear a fragment of conversation with my mother. Laughter. Feet padding up the staircase. Then he is here, opening the door to our bedroom, putting his doctor’s bag in its special place in the corner and smiling at me benignly, as benignly as in the photograph in the hallway. A smile without mischief. A smile reserved for difficult patients. And for me.
His first question.
‘How’s Jenni?’
I stiffen.
Jenni. Jenni. Jenni.
‘Much as to be expected,’ I snap.
He sits next to me on the bed and silence falls heavily between us. I look out of the bedroom window and see the ungainly lines of the row of houses across the road. Our house is not what you’d call a gem of British architecture, but we’ve done our best with it. Oak floors, toffee leather sofas, pale green paintwork. Very John Lewis. Very Dorset Cereal. Despite its ample size we have cluttered it with plastic toys and paperwork. Cluttered it with the debris of our lives. I look over the road at a mirror image of our house and ask myself if I lived there, in another life, would it be any better? Probably not. But it would be fun to try.
Rob’s voice cuts across the weight of our silence.
‘Even if she is just as to be expected, perhaps you could describe it for me?’
‘Ranting and unpleasant. Wanting to bury Craig’s lover in excrement.’
‘Well. Can you blame her?’
‘Her vocalisation was rather visceral.’
‘At
