7 Years Bad Sex (30 page)

After that, the four of them had lurched into an uneasy but workable routine of keeping the band going despite the gaping hole that was Alex and Casey’s failed relationship. Casey was thankful that, as lead singer, she was at the front of the stage. Alex constantly had to stare at her back, and she did her best to make her rear view as alluring as possible in tight-fitting, show-off jeans. She was still hoping that this whole nightmare would go away, that Alex would wake up and realise that he still loved her.

And now this:

 

It’s over. Let’s talk divorce. Meet ASAP. Alex.

 

Divorce. The D-word. Casey grew hot and cold when she remembered that time she had flung this word into the world carelessly, almost defiantly, as if facing the worst would mean it wouldn’t happen. Sasha didn’t know about this, of course, and Liza had never told anyone, but Casey remembered.

Yet she didn’t want a divorce. She wanted her husband back.

‘He can’t divorce you,’ Sasha repeated. She placed a mug of steaming tea in front of Casey and sat down next to her. Casey leaned toward her friend gratefully, but Sasha’s presence didn’t ease the trauma.

‘He can, and he will. You know what he’s like when he’s got an idea in his head.’

Sasha shook her head. ‘Listen to me. He can’t divorce you. You cannot legally get divorced in the UK within the first year of marriage.’

‘You can’t?’ Casey echoed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. It’s my job. Well, not my job exactly now, but I know all about divorce.’

‘How silly of me. Of course you do.’ Casey wiped her eyes and gulped down a mouthful of tea—hot, sweet, and milky, like the doctor ordered. It was ridiculous how soothing it was. She gathered her thoughts. ‘So he’s barking up the wrong tree?’

‘Entirely. You cannot get divorced.’

‘But if he wants to separate…?’

‘He can ask to separate until your anniversary and then file for divorce. But he can’t make it legal. Unless…’

‘Unless what?’ Casey’s heart nearly stopped. It was bad news if Sasha knew of an ‘unless’.

‘Hm.’ Sasha scratched her head. ‘The only way to get out of a marriage before the one-year anniversary is an annulment.’

‘Annulment?’ Casey repeated flatly. ‘I’ve heard of that. Isn’t that when you’ve not…’ Her eyes widened. ‘Oh my gosh!’

Sasha nodded. ‘Exactly. You can annul a marriage if it hasn’t been consummated.’

‘Consummated.’ Casey shook her head. ‘What exactly does that mean?’

Sasha waggled her head. ‘It can be a contentious issue. Obviously, if you haven’t had any physical relations at all, then you haven’t consummated. But if you’ve had intercourse, it gets tricky.’

‘But we haven’t!’ Casey shouted in fear. ‘Well, not properly. Only two or three times, but it didn’t—you know—end on a high note. And twice with chemical assistance, but those were… well, horrible.’

‘The law is a bit fuzzy here. If Alex wanted to go for annulment, he’d probably have to distort the facts. Or lie, in other words. If he confesses that you guys had intercourse with’—Sasha coughed but ploughed on—‘erection and penetration, then he wouldn’t get his annulment.’

‘It sounds so horrible and sordid when you put it like that.’

‘I know.’ Sasha pulled a face. ‘These things are never pretty. Let’s hope he doesn’t hit on the annulment idea. Meanwhile, ignore his text. Let him go to a solicitor and find out for himself.’

‘But what about—you know? We haven’t—we couldn’t even make babies the way we’ve “consummated” so far. Surely that doesn’t count?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Sasha lifted her shoulders. ‘Orgasm is optional as far as consummation is concerned.’

‘Orgasm is
optional?
’ Suddenly Casey bellowed with laughter. ‘Really? That’s hysterical! Who came up with that ruling?’

‘I’d have to look it up.’ Sasha’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m sure it’s documented somewhere.’

‘That’s nuts.’ Casey sipped at her tea again, serious once more. ‘But Sasha, what if he’s right? What if we do need to end this relationship?’

Sasha frowned. ‘What do you mean? I thought you were heartbroken?’

Casey sighed. ‘I
am
. I love Alex, and I don’t want our marriage to end. But I
do
want children. How am I going to conceive if…’

‘… if he doesn’t deliver the swimmers?’

‘Precisely.’

The women digested this conundrum in silence.

‘You know, there are other ways,’ Sasha suddenly giggled. ‘I have one right here, look.’ She went to rummage in a kitchen drawer and retrieved an implement.

‘Eurgh!’ Casey nearly fell off her bar stool. ‘What is
that?
’

‘A turkey baster.’

‘A turkey baster? Seriously?’

Sasha nodded.

‘I am
not
conceiving my child with the help of a turkey baster,’ Casey admonished her.

‘You sure?’ Sasha was overcome by the giggles and made suggestive movements with the makeshift impregnation device. ‘Think of the possibilities! It’s nice and big!’

‘Sasha!’ Casey pretended to be shocked. ‘Have you spiked this tea with something?’ She took another sip. ‘You have, haven’t you? I’m sure I can taste a tang of brandy!’

‘Guilty as charged,’ Sasha chortled. ‘It
is
nine o’clock at night, though. We’re allowed a little drinkie. Plus, it’s purely medicinal.’

Casey tried to hold back the laughter. ‘I think you must have doubled up on your measures. I’ve never seen you suggest action with a turkey baster before.’ She stopped and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do you own one in the first place? You hate turkey!’

‘That, my friend, is for me to know and for you not to find out,’ Sasha teased. ‘I’ll leave that to your dirty and overactive imagination.’ She returned the implement to its rightful resting place and rejoined Casey at the counter.

‘Joking apart, there are other ways, you know.’

‘I know. But that’s not the point, is it?’

‘What
is
the point?’

Casey let out a shuddery breath. ‘I’m beginning to think that I don’t know anymore. But Alex is right in some ways. Something’s got to give, especially if it’s making him so unhappy.’

Sasha narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re playing the old “if you love someone, set them free” card?’

‘Maybe. Maybe we both need to be set free. Honestly, between you and me: I’ve been beginning to dread sex. It’s been so awful. The build-up, the expectation, and the invariable disappointment on one or both sides. It’s corrosive.’

‘But marriage is about more than sex. Or so I’m told. Of course, I wouldn’t know. I’m turning into a thirty-year-old spinster soon.’ Sasha smiled ruefully.

Casey experienced a sharp pang of sympathy for her friend. Here she was, bemoaning the possible end of her—albeit brief—marriage, and there was Sasha, forever on the hunt for Mr Right and probably bleeding with worry inside.

‘Hey, sorry, let’s not go there,’ Sasha quickly added before Casey could say something. ‘I’m all right. Really.’

Casey inclined her head and let the matter go. Instead, she picked up on the conversation from before. ‘Marriage is about more than sex. But a marriage
without
sex… That’s like sushi without the rice.’

‘Wow. That’s profound.’ Sasha giggled and clapped her hand in front her mouth. ‘Sorry, ignore me. That’s my double measure of brandy giggling.’

‘It
is
quite profound, now I come to think of it,’ Casey agreed. ‘I’m quite proud of that, actually.’

They laughed and clinked tea cups.

‘So
would
you consider an annulment if Alex came up with the idea?’

Casey hung her head. ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I never thought I’d end up a divorcee…’

‘Or annulee, as the case may be.’

‘Is that even a word?’

‘Probably not. Sorry. That’s the brandy speaking.’

‘Annulee, divorcee… I never thought that would happen. I thought Alex and I were for life. But after everything that’s happened… Maybe we need to get on with separate lives.’ Tears pricked at Casey’s eyes and eventually brimmed over, rolling down her cheeks one by one.

‘I—I thought about this ages ago,’ she hesitantly confessed. ‘The idea popped into my head, but I banished it. I was horrified at myself. But it’s not like Alex was the first one to come up with it.’

Sasha stood and held Casey close. ‘In that case, my dear, you probably best meet with your husband and figure out a way forward. Don’t you think?’

‘Probably.’ Casey hiccupped. ‘This is totally absurd.’

‘It’s life.’

‘Yeah.’

Sasha went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine. ‘Since we’ve already started on the drinks, how about some vino?’

‘Really? It’s a work night. Don’t you have to be at the office at some insane hour in the morning?’

‘Never mind that.’ Sasha grinned. ‘Let’s work up some Dutch courage for you, and then you can send Alex a text. Or, who knows? Maybe you’ll even call him.’

‘If he’ll answer,’ Casey muttered darkly.

‘Oh, he will. He has an agenda after all. Let’s work on what you’re gonna say.’

‘Okay.’ Casey watched as Sasha uncorked the bottle. ‘Sasha?’

‘Hm?’

‘You’re an angel, do you know that?’

‘And a saint. Sure, I know.’ Sasha grinned. ‘And you’re a lush and a bleeding heart. Together, we make a great team.’

‘We do, don’t we?’

‘We certainly do.’

‘And one day when we’re old and grey, we’ll share a room in an old people’s home, and we’ll laugh about this, won’t we?’

‘This, and a whole load of other things. I’ll drink to that.’ Sasha raised her glass and winked. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

Two hours later, and despite many a drunken practice, Casey couldn’t summon the courage—real, Dutch, or otherwise—to call Alex, so she sent him a text instead:

 

See you at the White Lion at noon tomorrow. C.

Chapter Sixteen:

 

Sometimes You’ve Got to Quit to Get Ahead

 

~Alex~

 

‘This is awkward.’ Alex gulped down a mouthful of beer and swallowed hard to disguise his emotional discomfort. Seeing Casey on her own for the first time in over three weeks had reminded him of how much he really loved her, sexual frustration notwithstanding. ‘I’m sorry, love. I really am. I’ve been treating you bad.’

Casey shrugged and avoided his eyes. She made a show of looking around the busy pub. The White Lion was bedecked with garlands, tinsel, and other gaudy accoutrements, and intermittent Christmas pop songs were playing on the sound system. It was the end of November, and the pub had very much inaugurated the festive season.

Casey was still looking anywhere but at him, and that in itself told Alex how hurt she was. He hadn’t been entirely in his right mind when he had fired off that text about a divorce. He had wanted to provoke a reaction, a new dialogue, and he had been stunned when Casey simply replied with an invitation to meet. Her silent and stoic acceptance of his hasty proposition rattled him more than any recriminations. He was beginning to feel a little panicked.

‘It
is
a bit. Awkward, I mean.’ Casey finally spoke. She picked up a beermat and began shredding it into little pieces. It was a nervous habit she had, and Alex’s heart ached.

‘I was out of my mind. I didn’t mean it,’ he heard himself backtrack.

‘You did mean it,’ Casey challenged him calmly. ‘And all things considered, it’s probably not a bad idea.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Alex couldn’t believe his ears. What a damn fool he had been to send that text.

‘I am.’ Casey stared at the table. ‘I love you so much. But I agree. This’—she made a helpless rolling gesture with her hand—‘this can’t go on. It’ll drive us both nuts. I think you’re right. We should call it a day.’

‘You really want a divorce?’ Alex couldn’t keep a note of hysteria out of his voice. Yes, he had been frustrated, annoyed, angry, supremely disgruntled, and completely at the end of his tether. Yes, he had sent the text with the D-word in it. But he had
never
expected Casey to take him at his word. He had hoped that they would meet, laugh, and dismiss the notion.

‘No.’ Casey shook her head. ‘We can’t get divorced.’

‘We can’t?’ Alex breathed a sigh of relief before the real importance of what Casey had said sunk in. ‘You mean, you’ve looked into this?’

‘What did you expect me to do after you asked me for a divorce by text?’

Even though her head was bowed, he could see Casey’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears. Alex reached across the table and clasped her hands.

‘Casey, I was being stupid. I didn’t mean it, honestly. I just—I wanted—I don’t know what I wanted.’ He sighed deeply and cursed his inability to explain himself coherently. ‘I wanted to see you again. To make up,’ he ventured softly.

‘You great big oaf,’ Casey chided him mildly. ‘Talk about biting off your nose to spite your face. You could have said “hello” or—who knows—perhaps even “sorry”. I’d been waiting for that kind of message for three weeks.’

‘I know, I
know
. I was daft. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m so sorry.’ Alex held on more tightly to Casey’s hands, willing her to look at him properly at long last. But her eyes persisted in skittering all over the place.

‘Alex,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe you
think
you only sent that text to—to get me to meet you, but can’t you see? If it wasn’t what you’d really wanted deep down, you’d have picked a more harmless opening gambit.’

‘You’re reading too much into this!’ Real fear resonated in his protest. This conversation wasn’t at all going how he had planned.

‘“It’s over. Let’s talk divorce”,’ Casey quoted quietly. ‘You think I’m reading too much into that?’

‘You
are
. You totally are. I didn’t say, “let’s
get
divorced”.’ Alex rushed his words in a desperate attempt to make her understand. He could see why she could have misinterpreted his meaning, and he needed to fix her misapprehension fast. ‘I said, “let’s
talk
”. I wanted to talk again. That was all.’

Casey smiled ruefully and chewed her bottom lip. ‘Then you could have said so. I don’t think your choice of words was an accident.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Alex demanded. ‘Why are you twisting my words?’

‘Alex.’ Casey sighed deeply. ‘I’m hardly twisting your words. I simply played them back to you. There’s very little room for twisting.’

‘But I didn’t
mean
them.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have typed them!’ Casey was starting to get angry.

Alex flinched. This whole thing was out of control. He was standing at the abyss, and the cliff’s edge was disintegrating beneath his very feet.

‘Look.’ Casey’s voice cut through his despair. ‘I do think you’re right. We can’t go on like this. At some point, I’ll want kids. I don’t want to conceive with the help of a turkey baster.’

Alex’s head jerked up. ‘What?’ He laughed despite himself. ‘I’m having visions of—you know—filling the tube and… eurgh.’

‘Eurgh indeed.’ Casey gave him a watery smile. ‘See? This whole not-having-sex-thing, it’s doing us in. I feel like I’m losing my best friend, and I can’t bear it. I’d much rather go back to what we had
before
we dated than not have you in my life at all.’

Ka-pow. And there it was—the fatal blow. Alex recoiled and let go of Casey’s hands. It was obvious that she had thought this through. Unlike him, she meant what she said.

‘But—but that never works. Being friends after a relationship.’ He was clutching at straws.

‘It does if you were friends first,’ Casey contradicted him. ‘We’ll
make
it work. Blue Heart will see us through this, and we
have
to sort ourselves out for the band. For Liza and Myles.’

Even while she spoke, she finally began to cry. A fat tear escaped her eye, followed by another, and another. She didn’t make any attempt to wipe them away. She simply let them fall. Alex wanted to reach out and dry them, but he held back.

‘So—um—right.’ He scratched his head. ‘Where are you going with this? And why can’t we get divorced?’

Casey inhaled deeply and picked up her beermat again for more shredding. ‘We can’t get divorced because we haven’t been married for a year. But we
can
get our marriage annulled.’

‘Annulled?’

‘Declared void, like it never happened.’

‘Ouch.’ Alex recoiled. ‘That sounds even worse than divorce.’

Casey lifted her shoulders until they practically touched her ears. ‘I know. But those are our choices. We can either wait until next May, or we can file for nullity now and be done with it.’

‘“File for nullity”?’ Alex echoed, nearly speechless. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve researched all this?’

‘I haven’t, as such,’ Casey replied evenly. ‘You forget I’m staying with Sasha.’

Sasha. Of course. Sasha was a legal eagle of some description, something rather high-powered if he recalled correctly. She was bound to know about these things.

‘And we can do this on what grounds?’

‘Non-consummation of marriage.’ Casey chewed her lip. ‘Non-consummation makes a marriage voidable. We’re
almost
a poster child for it. Almost.’

‘Only almost?’

‘Yeah. We’ll have to agree to bend the truth here a little.’

‘Why? We haven’t had proper sex since we got married. That’s the whole problem.’ Alex was at a loss. ‘Why would we have to lie about this?’

‘Because
technically
, and I quote, “erection and penetration” define consummation, but orgasm is optional.’

Alex spluttered into his beer. ‘You what?’

Casey laughed—the first proper Casey laugh he had heard for weeks. ‘I had the exact same reaction, but there it is. On account of the two or three times where we achieved’—she made speech marks in the air—‘“erection with penetration”, we’ve technically consummated. So we’ll have to agree to disregard those instances and file for nullity on grounds of permanent and incurable incapacity.’

‘No way!’ Alex almost shouted. ‘You must be kidding. I’m not putting that on any form!’

‘You’ll have to. And I’ll declare the same about myself. It’s only fair. This is definitely a two-way issue.’

Alex shook his head. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.’

‘Me neither.’

They sat in silence while the absurdity of their circumstance hung between them.

Eventually, Alex summoned some words. ‘So, suppose I agree to this. How would it work?’

 

~Casey~

 

‘As long as we get our stories straight,’ Casey explained, ‘this will be really straightforward.’ She rummaged in her bag and retrieved a folder with forms that she had printed out at Sasha’s house earlier that morning.

Alex looked at her with wide eyes. ‘You’ve got forms? Don’t we need to go and see a solicitor?’

‘Nope, not if we agree on everything. Look.’ She pointed to a first piece of paper. ‘One of us fills in this form, the “nullity petition”, and files it with a divorce court. We’ll have to pay a fee, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Right.’ Casey wasn’t going to be distracted by Alex’s sarcastic repartee. ‘So within about eight days, the other one will be asked to respond. The “respondent” has to fill in a form, plus a statement in support of annulment of a voidable marriage.’

Alex seemed dazed. ‘Have you taken up a law degree while I wasn’t looking?’

‘No. But it really can be very simple
if
we both agree. So after the response is filed, the court will deliberate on it and give us an agreement. After that, we file for decree nisi and then for absolute. Piece of pie.’

‘I’m in shock.’ Alex sat back and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

‘Why? Isn’t that what—’

‘Don’t say it’s what I wanted, because it’s not. My head’s swimming. You’re so—so matter-of-fact about this, almost clinical. I can’t quite believe it.’ He rubbed his forehead vigorously.

‘Alex.’ Casey softened her voice. ‘I only looked into all of this because I thought you wanted it. And once I started thinking about it, it made sense. Everything seemed to click into place.’

‘Well, it hasn’t for me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Casey shuffled the papers back together and stuck them in their folder. ‘Maybe it’s a bit much. Maybe I 
am
barking up the wrong tree. Only… I don’t know.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to quit to get ahead.’

She put the folder into her bag to clear the table of unpleasant paperwork. Then she picked up the remains of her shredded beermat and rolled her shoulders. She didn’t know what to say or do next.

Alex sipped at his beer. She had never known him to take so long to consume a pint. He seemed genuinely upset, despondent even, and that broke Casey’s heart. She hadn’t intended to hurt him. She had thought that consenting calmly to his idea of ending their marriage would be the best way forward, but now she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

‘Suppose—suppose we go through with this. Suppose we annul our marriage. What would happen to us? The house? Our relationship?’

‘I don’t know,’ Casey confessed. ‘What would you like to happen to it?’