Tales From a Hen Weekend (7 page)

We manage a few more turns of Truth or Dare before everyone gets too drunk to be bothered. It’s interesting stuff. Karen refuses to answer a question about whether she’s ever snogged someone else’s boyfriend, so she has to stand up and sing ‘
Like A Virgin’
as a dare. She can’t remember the words and her singing is so awful we let her off after the first three lines. And then Helen, of all people, admits to having gone to work once wearing no knickers, but she won’t tell me whether it was before she worked for Greg, or since, which only serves to convince me it must have been recently.

‘Because you forgot to put them on? Or on
purpose
?’

‘That’s not part of the question.’

‘But I want to
know
!’

‘Sorry!’ She smiles calmly. ‘Not telling!’

Well, it couldn’t have been for Greg’s benefit so she must have been meeting some guy after work. Or in her lunch-break. Unbelievable! I look at her with a new respect. I know she doesn’t
like
men but she doesn’t seem to have a problem with having sex with them.

‘Fair play to you!’ mutters Jude, with her face in her wine glass.

‘Go, girl!’ agrees Suze, who sounds too tired to say it with very much enthusiasm.

The tiredness is catching. Before we know it, we’re all yawning.

‘I hope no-one’s expecting me to get up early in the morning!’ says Lisa with a groan. ‘I’m looking forward to a good lie-in. I never get the chance at home, what with Richard being so fucking
righteous
about getting up early, every fucking day, even at weekends.’

I look at her in total shock. She’s slagging off Perfect Rick? This is unheard-of! I realise she’s drunk, but let’s not go for complete personality changes here – that’s just too freaky.

‘You mentioned your husband,’ says Emily sleepily. ‘Forfeit…’

‘Can’t be arsed,’ says Lisa. ‘It’s too late. Game’s over.’

‘Anyway…’ I can’t let this go, or I won’t be able to sleep tonight. ‘Anyway, Lise – it’s great, isn’t it, Richard getting up early, bringing you tea in bed, doing the kids’ breakfast, all that stuff. You’re so lucky, aren’t you! You know you are!’

‘Am I?’ she retorts. ‘Huh. That’s all you know. That’s all you know, ’cos that’s all I tell everyone. You want the truth, now you’re getting married, little sister? Now I’m pissed enough to tell you? Do you?’

I’ve got a horrible feeling I’m going to hear it, whether I want to or not.

I know what everyone thinks. They’re all looking at me now with those kind of smiles people give you when you’re very drunk and talking rubbish, but they’re going to pretend to go along with you rather than let you get upset, flip out of control and spoil the party. It’s true I’m a bit drunk – but only a bit. I’m not used to it any more, that’s the thing; not like Katie and her friends, still going out to pubs and clubs at the weekend. I’m married with two kids, don’t forget. How could I ever possibly forget?

My marriage, actually, is shit.

There. You weren’t expecting that, were you?

Katie thinks I’ve got a wonderful, perfect marriage, and to be honest I don’t bother to disillusion her. It’s all part of the pretence. I’m a good actress. I don’t admit the truth to anyone – not to Mum, not to my sister or any of my friends.

It started off good. I suppose it always does – otherwise why would we bother? All the time I was a teenager, I wanted to get married and have kids. It isn’t fashionable these days to admit to that. We’re supposed to have fabulous careers or at the very least go and travel the world, if not both, and to not even consider settling down until the tick of our biological clocks becomes so deafening we can’t hear ourselves think. I was actually twenty-seven before I got married, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying. I’d had serious relationships with two other guys before I met Richard, and I was considering marrying both of them. One of them turned out to be already married so that was a bit of a non-starter, and the other one cooled off when I started buying
Brides
magazine and window-shopping in Mothercare. In fact he emigrated to New Zealand. I considered following him but perhaps it would have been taking desperation one step too far.

I was attracted to Richard for a lot of reasons. One: he was older than me, so probably more likely to be ready to settle down than the men of my own age who I’d been seeing. Two: he was sensible. He had a savings account. He owned more than one suit. He knew how to hang wallpaper, lay crazy paving, buy shares. Three: He earned enough to make it
possible
to buy shares. You can see why I fell in love with him.

I don’t think I ever had a romantic dream, like Katie does. I didn’t long for a tall dark broodingly handsome stranger to sweep me off my feet, flying me off to fantastic destinations, strolling hand-in-hand in the sunset on white coral beaches, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. She gets all that from reading too much romantic fiction, and in my opinion it doesn’t do her any good at all. My dream was far more prosaic. I wanted to live happily-ever-after in a semi-detached house on a nice estate, with a husband in a good job, two well-behaved children and a tidy garden.

A good sex life was kind of taken as a given.

Well, I got the house, the job, the kids and even the garden. Can’t have it all, I suppose.

We lived together for a year before we got married. We rented a flat in the area where we wanted to live, and every Saturday we went out house-hunting. Richard took house-hunting very seriously. He dressed up for it. I think I could trace the very first time I felt irritated with him back to the day I asked him why he was bothering to wear a shirt and tie to go and view someone’s house, and he looked me straight in the eye and said:
If something’s important to me, why would I want to look as if I don’t care?
I can remember having the same urge to tell him to go and fuck himself that I used to get when my French teacher closed her eyes, shook her head and told me to try to make my accent sound as though I
actually thought my thoughts and dreamed my dreams
in French. Of course, I
didn’t
say anything to Richard, any more than I did to the French teacher. I pretended to be impressed. Perhaps that was the very beginning of the acting career that I’ve made of my life.

We found our perfect house, we got our mortgage, bought our furniture, planned our wedding, and all the time I kept thinking that maybe the sex would get better in due course. I wasn’t sure whether I was expecting too much. After all, if Richard was happy with a quick bonk once a week regularly on a Saturday night, it seemed a bit unreasonable to want more. I wasn’t even sure exactly what I wanted more of, though certainly not the same predictable, unsatisfying and rather unfriendly encounters he saved himself for all week. I’d experienced better sex with my previous boyfriends, but how could I admit that, even to myself, when Richard was supposed to be the love of my life? It was all very confusing.

To take my mind off it, I got pregnant. We were both over the moon when Charlie was born, and Richard turned out to be a great dad. He was there at the birth, talking me through the whole thing with a textbook open on his lap, and took his responsibilities very seriously, as with everything else he did. He’d read all the childcare manuals. He knew about stuff like when Charlie should be started on solid food and potty training and learning the alphabet – whereas I would probably have just muddled through and made lots of mistakes along the way, if he hadn’t been so involved. If I sometimes found myself wishing he’d
let
me muddle through and make a few mistakes, I told myself I was being very ungrateful and unfair.

I don’t know why I lied about my marriage. I think it kind of frightened me to admit the truth. Look, all anyone talks about these days is sex – and it’s always good sex, perfect sex, amazing sex. Nobody ever admits to rubbish sex – and certainly not to hardly any sex at all, which is what we were having by the time Charlie was born. Maybe if I’d had the guts to be honest about it from the start it wouldn’t have been so bad. I can’t for the life of me remember how Molly was conceived because it sure as hell must have been a one-off, and it obviously wasn’t memorable. Soon I had my two lovely kids, I had my nice house and my nice life, and a good husband who worked hard for us all. And I was living this huge lie, telling Katie and anyone else who would listen to me, how passionately in love we were and how great everything was. It wasn’t. It was so bloody awful that when we were on our own together, we were hardly even talking, never mind anything else.

I’ve sat for hours looking at myself in the mirror, wondering why Richard didn’t fancy me, wondering what was wrong with me. It could drive you mad; in the end you give up caring.

Well, there’s this guy at the gym. Andy. He started chatting to me when we were on the rowing machines next to each other. It’s kind of hard having a conversation when you’re puffing and panting like that, and after a few weeks he asked me to have a coffee with him afterwards, to carry on the conversation. We were having fun. He’s divorced, no kids, teaches at the local sixth form college so he’s at the gym a lot during the daytime in the holidays. I started going there more often when I knew he’d be there. We got into the habit of having coffee afterwards every time. It wasn’t hurting anyone, was it? I felt so much better, looking forward to seeing Andy, having a chat and a laugh with him, feeling like someone was
interested
in me. Then one day he asked me to go out for a drink with him in the evening.

I knew this was a turning point. If I crossed that invisible line, I was making myself available for an affair. And I wanted to – desperately.

That evening, when Richard got home from work, I’d already put the kids to bed early. I put on soft music, turned down the lights, lit all the candles and cooked his favourite dinner. I served it wearing a black negligee with nothing on underneath.

He ate his dinner slowly, watching me carefully, without saying a word. When he’d finished I poured him some more wine and pulled him over to the sofa. I undid the negligee and sat astride his lap, put my arms round him, undid his collar and tie, started kissing his neck and his chest. Still he didn’t say a word. I pushed him onto his back and dangled my boobs in his face.
Hold them. Suck them
, I was saying.
Take me.
For Christ’s sake, Richard, fuck me!
I grabbed his hand, pressed it against me, tried to take hold of
him
, but he wasn’t even hard.
Please, Richard! Please!
I begged, starting to cry.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, tonelessly, as if he wasn’t even remotely interested.

What’s the matter? I need you! I need you to want me! I don’t even care if you can’t do it – if there’s something wrong with you, if you can’t do it any more, it doesn’t matter, but I need you to at least WANT to!

He looked away from me and shrugged. That shrug made me so angry, I nearly hit him. I wanted to tell him:
This was your last chance. If you wanted me, I wouldn’t go to someone else.
Instead, I got up, got dressed, blew out the candles, put on the lights.

‘I’m going out,’ I told him, and went to meet Andy.

He turned on the TV as I went out of the door.

We’ve never discussed it since. Does he know I’m seeing someone else? He surely must have guessed. In a way, I’ve got even less respect for him because of this – although it does at least mean I don’t have to lie to him, as he never asks any questions.

Perhaps I should leave him. Andy wants me to, but I’ve got the kids to think about. They adore Richard, and as I say, he’s a great dad, and a good husband too in lots of ways.

So now you know. To be honest it’s a relief to talk about it.

Perfect Rick? The perfect Prick? Ha! You must be bloody joking.

‘D’you think he’s a closet gay?’ says Emily. ‘You hear about these things, don’t you. They get married because they want a family and respectability, but they don’t really want a woman.’

‘Or perhaps he just doesn’t like sex very much at all,’ says Jude. ‘Poor Lisa. Who’d ever have thought it?’

Emily yawns and looks at the clock. It’s half past two. Apparently Lisa went to sleep as soon as she fell into bed – tired herself out with talking – so Emily came round to our room and we’ve been sitting here talking about it ever since. We’ve used up all the little sachets of tea, coffee and milk in the room and have all completely sobered up.

I still can’t believe my sister’s having an affair.

‘She’s always been such a kind of
shining example
. I thought she was better than me at everything.’

‘How humiliating for her. I could strangle bloody Perfect Prick. How dare he treat her with such… such coldness? Such bloody
contempt?
He could at least have
pretended
.’

‘Would you
want
a man to pretend to fuck you, though?’ points out Emily, and somehow this is so funny we all fall backwards on the beds laughing and yawning simultaneously.

‘Wake me up when it’s time for breakfast,’ I mutter, closing my eyes.

‘Jesus, God, are you not going to undress yourself and take your make-up off, Katie?’ asks Jude in disbelief. She should know me better by now.

‘No, I’m fucking not.’

‘Well, I’d best be going back to my own room,’ says Emily. ‘Night night.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ I start – but I’m asleep before I even finish the
tomorrow
, and fortunately, long before Jude’s finished in the bathroom and put out the light.