I slide an arm across his chest. Frank is lying, rigid, on his back. I don’t mean rigid in anexcitingway. I mean his entire body is as rigid as a door, arms clamped at his sides.
I try kissing him ever so gently again, wondering why he’s still not responding. Is he dead? He still feels warm, and I think there’s a pulse. As I snuggle closer, resting my head against his chest, I can feel his heart beating.
Thud-thud-thudit goes. So yes, there is life. But perhaps he used up all his libido in Paris? Can it wear out like a fan belt on an ancient car?
Undeterred, I gently tease the soft hair on his broad chest and kiss him there. He smells so delicious. I’ve always loved the natural scent of him. Daringly, I start to slide a leg over his, interpreting the fact that he doesn’t flinch as encouragement. I edge the leg further. Then a bit further still, my body following the leg – as if the leg is the advance party making sure it’s okay to proceed. While he’s still not responding, I’m encouraged by the fact that he hasn’t wrestled me off him or called the police. So I lower my hand from his chest, moving gently over the fuzzy warmth of his belly. Then lower still, down between his legs and around his—
‘What’re you doing?’ he barks.
My hand and leg fly off him. ‘I was just, I thought—’
‘Pulling it, like it’s an emergency cord—’
I sit bolt upright in bed. ‘I didnotpull it! I just touched you. Am I not allowed to do that anymore?’
‘Sorry,’ he mutters, exhaling forcefully. ‘Made me jump, that’s all.’
‘So I gathered,’ I snap.And actually, it was an emergency just then! I needed you to make me feel loved and wanted, and that you still fancy me. Because you might not realise it but we haven’t had sex since Paris!
‘It’s your dad,’ Frank mutters, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t do it with your dad here.’
I blink at him in the darkened room. ‘He’s not righthere, is he? Not watching—’
‘You know what I’m talking about—’
‘—He’s not looming over us with a clipboard, taking notes—’
‘Fucking hell, Carly. Thanks for putting that in my brain.’
Huffily, I edge away from him so no parts of our bodies are touching. ‘He wouldn’t hear anything,’ I murmur. ‘You know he refuses to wear those new hearing aids. The Bluetooth ones. Says the batteries only last a day, which I find hard to believe—’
‘Talking about hearing aids is hardly doing it for me,’ Frank announces. Then he rolls over abruptly so his broad back is facing me. And within seconds he seems to be sleeping, apparently unbothered by the fact that I might feel rejected or upset. There’s certainly been no kiss or cuddle or even a touch, just to reassure me that everything’s okay.
I lie there, watching our gauzy curtains moving slightly in the draught from our creaky old window. Somewhere in the distance, a boat sounds a horn and slowly, I start to feel my blood bubbling up to a rolling boil.
There’s no way I can sleep now as Frank snores softly – blissfully! – beside me. So I swivel out of bed, tug on my dressing gown and pad through to the bathroom. Here I inspect my face in the mirror, to check whether I’m actually hideous and that’s why Frank won’t have sex with me.
My light brown hair is fading, like the board games displayed for years, and now sun-bleached in our local newsagent’s window. My cheekbones have vanished along with my favourite pink china cup. On top of that, something I can only describe as jowliness seems to be happening around my jawline and chin. My eyes – my best feature, Frank always said – have dulled from greento a dirty puddle hue. I didn’t even know eye colour could change! How is this possible? And as I peer closely, I can see that, while my left eye is normal-sized, the right one is now smaller, like a little raisin peering back at me. Midlife Shrinking Eye Syndrome, I think you’d call it. When didthathappen?
Oh, I’m not hideous, I do realise that. As one of our library regulars announced to me last week: ‘Good to see you, Carly. I love seeing your homely face.’ Not ravishing like Cate Blanchett – but homely like a slab of pie. I caught Jamie laughing hysterically in the cookbook section.
‘Well, youarenearly fifty,’ I tell myself out loud. ‘What d’you expect?’
Actually, thirty minutes ago I was expecting Frank to throw me up against the headboard but never mind! I creep quietly downstairs and put the kettle on, opening a cupboard to extract a packet of biscuits from among the selection of party goodies I’ve bought for Dad’s birthday.
He’ll be eighty-five on Saturday, and although I know he won’t want any fuss, I’m planning to force a tiny celebration on him. Ana is arriving on Friday evening and the next day we’ll have a little party. Which reminds me, Eddie never replied to my message asking him to send his Granddad a card.He’s an adult man,I remind myself,soon to be a dad. He doesn’t need you reminding him to send birthday cards!
Now my gaze is pulled by the assortment of photos pinned haphazardly to the corkboard by the cooker. There’s Eddie, aged seven, delighted with his dad’s childhood train set that we’d brought back on one of our Portuguese trips. He’d played with it obsessively until everything fellapart. There are also pictures of me and Frank, in our twenties, thirties and early forties, in my pre-jowly times. And here’s Bella about to set off Interrailing, all tousled dark hair with a huge rucksack on her back. And here’s Ana standing proudly next to a portrait she’d painted, as part of her portfolio for her art school application. Then Bella again, laughingly cutting up an L-plate with garden shears, on the day she passed her driving test. I hate to compare them but I look back at Eddie, who’s heading for nappies and night feeds and car seats – he can’t even drive! We funnelled enormous amounts of cash into lessons until his instructor, grumpy old Tony Devlin, declared that he ‘didn’t have the aptitude’. Couldn’t he have told us this before we’d paid him eight million pounds?
‘Hey,’ comes the sudden voice.
‘Frank!’ With a jolt, I swing around to face him. ‘Didn’t hear you coming down.’
He is standing in the doorway in his dressing gown, rubbing at an eye. ‘Just wondered where you were,’ he says.
‘I couldn’t sleep. Want some tea?’
‘Not for me.’ A pause hovers. ‘Carly, I don’t mind your dad being here. You know that, don’t you?’
