‘All sexed out, are we?’ she asks.
I’m about to reply but I bite my tongue.
‘Oops. Sorry, I forgot we’re not speaking.’
I ignore her and go to make a cup of tea. But then I think about how short life is and instead go into the fridge and pour myself a large glass of white wine.
The pages are smooth beneath my fingertips. I look at my previous entries, still hidden beneath my scribbles. What if . . . what if he works it out? That she’s still here? I turn onto a fresh page and begin to doodle again.
Driving off a cliff Thelma and Louise style?
No. Scrap that.
I wander into the lounge, flick on the TV and turn the volume down low. There is an old episode of Friends and I chuckle to myself as Joey asks, ‘How You Doin’?’. My old maths teacher used to look like him . . . we all had inappropriate crushes on him. That was until he threw up into the wastepaper bin in class, poor bloke. He had flu and had been slurping Lemsips noisily beforehand.
Lemsips!
‘Lemsips?’ Kerry asks.
I ignore her.
That would be an OK way to go. I go into the kitchen for a refill and pull out the Lemsip box, scanning the label. Yep. High dosage of paracetamol. But where would I do it? I wouldn’t want Ed or the kids finding me here . . . I could check into a B&B? I sit back down on the sofa and pull the notebook towards me. I write the word ‘Lemsip’ but then cross it out, just as I have with all of the other ‘ideas’. Hmmm, I’m not sure about this one. I mean, how many do I have to drink before it’s irreversible?
‘What if you started puking it all up? Do you remember that girl at Kira’s party?’
I don’t look at Kerry, but I still grimace at the memory. She’d thrown up after she’d necked a bottle of advocaat. It was like something out of a horror movie; it shot out of her mouth like there was a fire hose in her gob. A great long blast of custard-coloured puke. What if that happened? I picture myself, exorcising Lemsip all over the walls of a hotel room, yellow puke dripping from taps and ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs. No, that won’t do at all.
‘Anyway . . . you said you would stop that, Jen.’
She’s right. I’m being ridiculous.
I turn to the birthday section of my book and begin planning Oscar’s party instead. It needs to be extra special, one that will make him happy when he remembers it in the years to come. How about a clown? I know most people are afraid of them, but Oscar loves them, loves the ridiculousness of the water-squirting flowers, the falling over, the unicycle rider.
‘Jen?’
I blink and turn to Ed, sliding the notepad beneath the cushion as I turn to him.
‘What are you doing? It’s half-two in the morning.’
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I reply. ‘Want to join me?’ I wiggle the wine glass at him.
His eyebrows raise and concern creeps in.
I pass him the glass and he takes a small sip. ‘Want one?’ I ask again.
‘Why not? You only live once.’
We’re on to our second bottle and our second game of strip Uno. This isn’t a game we’ve played before, but I’m enjoying it immensely. ‘Uno,’ I grin as Ed places a red nine onto the pile. I discard my red two with a flourish. ‘Off with them!’ I clap my hands and stand, doing the victory dance in my knickers and vest. Ed swigs the last of his wine and begins humming a striptease song. He struts across the lounge, wiggling his bum cheeks with every ‘da-dum, da-dum’, finally ending by jiggling his legs until his boxers hang from his left foot, which he flicks off, landing them on the light fitting. He bows regally and then demands from his victor.
‘No more sex for you, Mr Jones!’ I laugh, trying to avoid his advances around the table. ‘You’ve got a bad back!’ I can hardly get the words out, I’m laughing so hard. He takes advantage of this and almost manages to grab me around the waist, but I manage to escape and make for the stairs. But his hand takes hold of the back of my vest as my feet try to climb. I turn to him, leaning back on the uncomfortable stairs, shushing him, pointing to where above us the kids are sleeping.
‘I’ll be quiet.’ There is so much love in his eyes, so much laughter, that once again I know I’m doing the right thing. His kiss is deep and serious, in contrast to the humour a few moments before. I close my eyes, ignoring Kerry telling me we should get a room as she opens the front door that is locked and walks out of it, slamming it without a sound.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Ed
Jen is still sleeping as I head downstairs. The kids will be up soon and it looks like we’ve had a house party. My back is killing me. Sex on the stairs after a bottle of wine is not as good an idea the next morning as it was the night before. I’m not complaining this time though. Nope. I’m definitely not complaining about the sex thing this time because the sex thing now is . . . good. Apart from my bad back. And the friction marks on Jen’s.
I smirk as I wash up the glasses, put the wine bottle in the recycling and make a strong cup of coffee. Even with the bad back and a thumping headache, this is the best I have felt for months. I reach for the first-aid box but we’re out of painkillers. I turn to the kettle and notice a packet of Lemsips; they’ll have to do. I tear open a sachet and make one for Jen too. I open the lounge curtains while I wait for the kettle to boil, and return the cushions to the sofas. Beneath a cushion is one of Jen’s notepads. It’s open on a page that says ‘Oscar’s birthday’. It’s hard to explain how this can mean so much. To see her neat handwriting listing things that she needs to buy, things she needs to do: ‘Book a clown’.
A clown? We normally just do a bog-standard soft play ball-pit-type place. A tug at the pit of my stomach reminds me how hard she is trying, how hard it must be for her to get back to how things used to be. I close the notebook and put it into the kitchen drawer, then head upstairs and wake her with a trail of kisses along her shoulder blade.
‘Ugh,’ she replies.
‘I’ve made you a Lemsip.’
‘Lemsip?’ she questions groggily, then laughs.
‘What’s so funny?’ I question.
‘It’s . . . nothing. I think I’m still a bit drunk.’
‘We’re out of painkillers,’ I say by way of explanation.
She starts laughing again and sighs in a ‘you had to be there’ way. ‘Can I have coffee first?’
‘Dadddddyyyyy!’ Hailey’s voice shrieks up the stairs, making us both flinch. ‘Why are your pants hanging from the light?’
Jen throws her arm over her eyes and chuckles.
‘I’ll go.’ I kiss her and run downstairs where Oscar is jumping up and down on the sofa, singing to the tune of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’: ‘Daddy’s pants, Daddy’s pants, why I wonder why-they’re-on-the-light.’
‘That doesn’t even rhyme.’ Hailey’s glasses are removed and cleaned seriously; she returns her gaze to the pants in question.
‘There was a spider.’ My explanation is lame, agreed, but it’s the best I can do after a few hours’ sleep, a bad back and a hangover.
‘So why didn’t you use a towel or something?’ Hailey’s eyebrows meet as she stares at my boxers.