Page 22 of The Snag List
Of course the Kindle brought no escape from the bleak thought given she was readingMating in Captivity– a self-help title she’d vowed to finish months ago. She glanced back over at Adam through the open door of the en suite; he now had a glowing Hannibal Lecter-style LED mask on his face. Should she try and instigate something? She sensed Esther Perel would have something to say abouttheirmating. Or lack of. Adam removed the mask and picked up his phone from beside the sink – never more than two inches from his hand.
‘I’m gonna hit my man-den for a while – I’m on level 34 onWarWorldso things are really heating up.’
‘Great,’ she replied vaguely and watched him pad out of the room scrolling on his phone.
Lindy picked up her own out of habit. The newly formed Snag List WhatsApp was already hopping. The girls were detailing their house woes.
ROE: Eddie and I will be paying our monster mortgage for the next 70 years, meanwhile the gaff’s already falling apart! I just blinked too hard and a piece of skirting board fell off the wall.
AILBHE: Tom and I just sexted too hard and a shelf fell down.
ROE: Ailbhe! We have known each other for less than five hours!!!
AILBHE: Well, brace yourselves, this is me at my most reserved. Will we do lunch tomorrow week then? Some medicinal Sunday boozing is always good to round out a weekend?
After they agreed to meet at Ailbhe’s at 2 p.m. the following Sunday, Lindy put the phone on night mode and turned off the light. Ailbhe was mating with her husband even though he was thousands of miles away; meanwhile Lindy’s husband was downstairs and she hadn’t been able to face trying again since their last aborted attempt …
She threw back the blankets. She had to do something. ‘Nothing changes if nothing changes’ had been a mantra of one of the therapists in Heart Mind Solutions.
She padded down the stairs, her footsteps silent on the silvery grey carpet, and quietly opened the door to Adam’s den.
The scene before her unfolded in a series of baffling realisations. Her husband was hunched on the couch with his VR helmet on his head. The room hung with darkness, the only light coming from the flatscreen TV opposite, casting her husband in a vaguely blue glow. More baffling still, Adam was pulling ferociously at his crotch. As her eyes adjusted, she gasped as she realised he was yanking mercilessly on his own penis.Oh my God. She started to back away. There was no need to let him know she’d seen. What the fuck was he looking at inside the helmet?
Well, porn, obviously.
Lindy felt conflicted about porn. It was hard to know where to stand on the matter. She knew you could get ethical porn the way you could get Fairtrade coffee, but Adam probably just stuck ‘threesome’ into the PornHub search bar. The muffled sound of Adam speaking inside the helmet jolted her. For a split second, she thought he’d noticed her, but then a deeply unpleasant realisation hit her: he was talking to the porn.
‘I love it when you shake your tits.’
Lindy strained to hear. More muffled words at a lower volume. Was that a response? What the hell was going on? Knowing he’d no clue that she was there, she moved further into the room and spied his phone on the coffee table. He was casting a video call into the helmet – he’d mentioned trialling a new VR technology they’d be advertising on the channel soon. This was probably not what they’d meant by ‘trialling’. She peered carefully closer, unsure if the video on the phone was going both ways. On screen, an impressive pair of breasts were jigging up and down. Lindy felt sick. It was one thing to know that they weren’t having much sex –No sex: Lindy, stop lying to yourself– but it was quite another to be confronted with the object of her husband’s desire. He was still vigorously masturbating beside her when the owner of the undulating tits leaned down into shot. Lindy’s chest seized at the sight of the fawning woman from earlier – Rachel – pouting into the camera.
‘Uh, show … me … those … uh … tits agaaain. Oh God!’ came from inside the helmet.
Lindy turned and fled before she could be confronted with any more unbearable truths about the state of her marriage.
8
AILBHE FUSSED AROUND TILLY’S PRAM, CHECKING the various gadgetry involved in transporting her tiny daughter anywhere. Sun visor, defrosting breastmilk in a bottle, white noise machine, the weirdo baby vibrator that buzzed Tilly to sleep for every nap. Check, check, check.
‘You sure you don’t mind, Mam?’
Eileen appeared in her finest Lycras. ‘Not at all, pet. I’ve got my podcast. Dying to catch up with the boyos.’ She was devoted toI’m Grand, Mam– a podcast by two young Irish guys living in London. ‘You get all your bits done with the gals and have a few drinks – you deserve it.’
‘I do.’ She grinned, pecked her mum on the cheek and blew a raspberry at Tilly. ‘No bullshit for Granny, Matilda, we need her continued support,’ she warned.
Ailbhe waved them off and then flung the door shut behind them.Freedom. Yesssss. Who’d have ever thought she’d be so excited to just be alone? Not even going out on the tear but just sitting in her gaff with two near-strangers for some bureaucratic builders chat and a few wines. Lindy and Roe had just better be up for it.
Although who even cares if they aren’t? I’m having nineteen wines and they can just deal.Ailbhe spun out of the hall and back towards the kitchen, which they’d still barely unpacked. Neither Eileen nor Ailbhe cooked and the Monteray Valley meal service – ‘meals on wheels for spoiled yuppies’ as Eilers declared it – had kept them in good grub.
‘Alexa, what time is it?’
‘It’s 1.45 p.m. Calendar event “piss up with the Snag List” is scheduled for approximately 15 minutes’ time.’
‘Cheers, hun.’
Ailbhe pulled out the wasabi nuts and fancy crisps she’d ordered for their drinks and balanced a stack of serving bowls carefully under her chin. She made her way out to the front sitting room, identical in position and proportions to the room she’d met Roe and Lindy in a week earlier. Of course, in her version there were no artful displays of eco-sympathetic toys – that was still all ahead of her. Though Tom, possibly still not getting that Tilly couldn’t even roll over, had had a shedload of OTT toys and paraphernalia delivered the week before – it was all stashed in the attic for now.
‘It is totally nonsensical,’ Ailbhe had said laughing to her mother as she heaved a veritable menagerie of stuffed animals up the stairs. ‘We’re leaving in a few weeks. She’s not going to need a ball pit between now and then. And the next time we’re back here, who knows what age she’ll be.’
