‘Yes, she certainly seems better,’ Jake says. ‘Her cheeks are pinker.’
‘What?’
He glances at her.
‘I just meant … on FaceTime.’
‘I didn’t know you were FaceTiming Marisa without me.’
‘No, no,’ he shakes his head. ‘I was FaceTiming with Mum, I mean, and Marisa was there.’
‘Oh.’ Kate removes her hand and lets it rest on her lap. ‘Annabelle knows how to FaceTime? That’s … unexpected.’
She has lost count of the number of times Annabelle has launched into spontaneous disquisitions on the evils of modern technology and the incomprehensibility of ‘new-fangled’ modes of communication.
‘What’s wrong with a good, old-fashioned phone call?’ Annabelle would say, self-righteous. ‘Or a handwritten letter, for that matter,’ and Kate made a mental note always to send a thank-you note after staying there. She thinks again of how on earth she is going to thank Annabelle for this latest intervention, given the magnitude of the favour. A pretty flower-framed notecard won’t cut it.
‘Yeah, I think Marisa showed her how to do it.’
The sauna door opens again, and two giggling women with blonde highlighted hair walk in and splay themselves out in matching black bikinis. The women are tall and angular, flat-chested and narrow-waisted, with the long, lean limbs of fashion models. Kate is self-conscious in their presence and gathers her towel closer around her stomach. But, she wants to say, Marisa is hopeless at that kind of thing. Her phone has needed upgrading ever since they’ve known her. She glances at Jake and his face has closed up again, like a blind coming down over a shop awning. The sauna heat continues to rise.
That night, she sleeps well for the first time in months. The room is quiet and, once they have worked out how to turn off the air conditioning, stays at an ambient temperature. When she turns on her side to face Jake in the morning, he smiles at her.
‘Hello there.’ He rests his hand on her cheek. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Mmm,’ Kate says. ‘Really well.’
‘It’s because we sweated out all our stress.’
‘If that’s actually the reason, then we should totally look into getting a sauna at home.’
He grins.
‘Do a basement extension like everyone else on the street, you mean?’
It had been a source of shared amusement between them how much building work their neighbours engaged in. Kate had joked that having a Portakabin outside your front door was the new status symbol.
‘Great idea. Months of stressful construction work to build a relaxing sauna which can then alleviate the stress we didn’t have in the first place.’
He kisses her, holding her close and letting his hands slide down to her back. They have gentle, quick, uncomplicated sex and then he gets up to fill the kettle from the bathroom tap and puts it on to boil.
‘Herbal tea?’ he asks as she props herself up against the pillows. ‘Or would you prefer a herbal tea?’
‘Um, OK, let me think. I’ll have a herbal tea, please. But only if it’s really weak and doesn’t taste of anything.’
She watches him walk around the room, naked apart from those silly flip-flops he’s put on because his feet feel the cold. She marvels at his lack of self-consciousness. He has a good body: tall and broad with a pronounced rump and the merest hint of a thirty-something paunch, but he appears unaware of his physicality in these moments in a way that a woman never would be. A woman, Kate thinks, would be worried about her flabby belly or her wide thighs or the fact that her breasts are more saggy than she’d like and she would assume she was being monitored by the male eyes in the room. Yet Jake treats his body as his own, inhabiting it with confidence.
Jake’s phone beeps. He picks it up, unhooking it from the sleek black charging device on the bedside table. He becomes instantly absorbed in its screen and doesn’t notice the kettle boiling. Kate wraps her robe around her and finishes making the tea. She hands him a cup, which he takes from her without raising his head.
‘What’s up?’
‘Oh, sorry, thanks,’ he says, drinking the tea. ‘It’s … annoying … it’s a work thing.’
He taps rapidly at the phone screen, typing out text with his thumbs. When he sends it, the phone makes a swooshing sound and he returns to the room and to her.
‘Kate, I’m really sorry but’ – instinctively, she fears the worst. Her stomach plummets – ‘there’s an issue at work. This deal we’ve been doing with the oil company …’
Oh, is that all, she thinks, relieved. She nods as if she knows what he’s talking about. She is sure he must have told her but she never fullylistens when he mentions work because much of the technicality washes over her. It is so removed from her own existence that she doesn’t feel she can understand it or offer anything useful to the conversation. Besides, Jake always has work issues, so there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just more of the same.
