But he’s ignoring me now, sitting down at the kitchen table, scrolling through his phone because he’s bored with the conversation.
Tiredness hits me in a wave and I snap that I’m going to bed.
I often go to bed before Nate, even though he’s up earlier than me, off to do his swimming and his running. He has amazing stamina. But tonight he follows me upstairs, having speedily turned out all the lights and locked the doors. On the stairs I can feel him briefly touch the back of my thighs.
‘So?’ he whispers. He’s tall, so he’s already close to my ear, even if he’s that far behind me. ‘What do you think? End of a long week, a man deserves something...’
He has got to be kidding.
And then I stop myself.
Am I turning into my mother? Irritated with my husband at every moment? Look how well that turned out.
So, Nate thinks differently from me about the trip – he doesn’t understand the danger out there for girls but I’ll make damn sure they both understand it before they get on any plane.
I take a deep breath. I turn around and face him and he grabs me and presses me tight against him and I can feel his erection.
‘This is what a man needs,’ he says.
It is of course exactly at this moment that Rachel sticks her head out of her bedroom door and goes, ‘Ewwee,’ at the sight of us and slams the door shut.
‘You think we have put her off sex for life?’ I say, everything else forgotten.
‘Hopefully,’ says Nate, unconcerned as he leans in to kiss me.
It’s one of the wonderful things about our marriage, how well we fit together sexually, as if just when Nate is ready to explode with wanting, he manages to turn me on so I’m ready too. Equally, when I’m premenstrual and miserable, Nate’s always been amazing. Gets a hot water bottle for my belly, tells me to get more rest. It’s nice.
He might be useless in the kitchen and thinks I worry too much, but he’s amazing at this.
9
Bea
It’s Christie’s birthday and we decide that a party night out is vital, even if we’re all saving for presents for the kids for Christmas. We’ll combine it with our annual December party – the Single Mommas’ Christmas party. There has been no news on the jobs front – Laoise at work says she has heard nothing else about the practice moving and I am praying that it’s just a case of misunderstanding. I cannot let myself worry about it or I will go mad. I need that job: with that, my widow’s pension andJean-Luc’s insurance settlement, we can manage – but only just.
‘We’ll just keep it low key and cheap,’ says Shazz, who is brilliant with money.
All our children go to the same school and each class has a mothers’ party a month before Christmas, an event lovingly detailed in the class WhatsApp we’re all in.
I find the WhatsApp useful but Shazz, who feels that single mothers are treated differently from the smug marrieds, hates it.
We’ve all been to the ordinary mums’ party but, for various reasons, we didn’t feel like part of the gang.
‘They all sat and bitched about their husbands,’ said Shazz, during thepost-mortem of the last one we went to. ‘It’s like they haven’t even considered that us three don’t have a significant other and that it might make us feel a bit left out.’
So, this year, we’re having our own night out.
‘I think we need a gang name,’ says Shazz, as we sit in the taxi on our way into town for our big night out.
‘A gang name,’ says Christie, sitting in the middle because she’s got the shortest legs. ‘Like The Feministas?’
‘Not sure,’ says Shazz. ‘I was thinking something along the lines of the New Normals, something like that.’
‘Really?’ says Christie.
‘Yeah, because we are not like the normals, the women with husbands and partners and fathers for their kids and everything.’
‘You’ve got Zep now,’ I point out, wriggling my feet in myhigh-heeled sandals. I’m already regretting wearing them.
