Page 83 of Such a Good Couple
These competing thoughts vied for her attention as they were brought into a windowless room with a bed and various pieces of medical equipment. However, a few minutes later, when the delicate but determined throb of their baby’s heartbeat filled her ears, all conscious thought evaporated. She lay there in quiet awe as tears trickled into the fine hair at her temples.
CHAPTER 20
‘Muma! Muma! Be Sea Donkey! Be Sea Donkey!’
Her youngest’s shrill demands abruptly jerked Clara out of her latest grim terror-spiral (not remotely based in reality) about Ollie hooking up with Mary. Reggie, in water wings and brandishing a pool noodle, was splashing water directly in her face. Delightful.
They were bobbing about in the small, grotty swimming pool outside the cast villa. In the deep end, Tom and Josh were ducking and diving and generally trying to drown each other. The pool at Casa Amore No More was azure blue and bordered by marble. It was also largely ornamental – the cast weren’t allowed in it unless there was a scene of engineered drama involving couples treading water in tiny bathing suits and whispering together while their other halves glared from nearby sun loungers.
The pool she was currently in looked and felt like a large toilet. Still, the boys loved it. They didn’t know the difference. In the three weeks of being there, they’d become incredibly attached to their lives on the sunny Greek island where there were always other kids to play with, lessons on the beach and a swimming pool in their front garden. Home would be a bit of a land when they got back there in a couple of days.
She complied with Reggie’s request and stood obediently while he clambered onto her back and held the straps of her swimming togs like reins.
As she and Ollie and the other couples had become more and more embroiled in the director’s messed-up ‘vision’ for the show, she was increasingly concerned that even if they won and opted for the cash over the divorce, all that money would be funnelled straight into therapy for their kids.
Unfortunately, she was having this attack of panic about a month too late.
At night, wedged under the grotty ceiling of the bedroom, listening to the soft snuffling snores of her boys, the guilt could choke her. Clara was afraid the boys would be plagued by her stupid idea for years to come. Would the kids at school make fun of them? The other kids’ parents were no doubt already saying a thing or two. She shuddered to think of the WhatsApp side chats.
Divorce Islandhad been a bad fucking idea but it was Clara’s bad fucking idea and she had no idea how to begin rowing back from it. Plus in another thirty-six hours it would all be done anyway. Tonight was the last challenge. Then the votes would come in and, in an elaborate ceremony on the beach at dawn, they would learn if it had been remotely worth it. One at a time, each couple would stand on an altar and each partner would be asked if, should they win, they would be taking the money or if they wanted to divorce their spouse. Then the couple chosen by the voting public would be announced. Clara and Ollie had been receiving the highest votes night on night, so it was looking likely that their answers were going to have some real-world ramifications.
Any time she thought about the unknown of Ollie’s answer, she felt an icy shiver of fear down her arms. It was scary that she really had no idea where his head was at.
They’d been having a lot more easy, lighter moments in the previous couple of weeks, moments when they felt like their old selves. But could that really be enough to bring them back fromthe brink? For her part, it kind of had been. Whether it was simply the time together without the strain of their life in Dublin or perhaps the heat of the Greek sun, her resentment towards him had burned off. All she could see now was how childish she’d been and she was haunted by regret. Though she hadn’t yet managed to voice any of this to Ollie with all the cameras around.The cameras I brought into our lives.
‘C’mon Sea Donkey.’ Reggie kicked impatiently and, struggling under the considerable weight of the three-year-old, she began the arduous swim to the other side of the pool. ‘Hurryup!’ he demanded tyrannically, and Clara laughed.
‘God, where did you get such alazySea Donkey, Reggie?’ she exclaimed in mock horror. ‘I wouldn’t put up with it if I were you. You should have me put down and made into glue!’
‘Jesus! Clara! You’re going to traumatise him!’ Clara turned around, to find Ollie on his hunkers at the other side of the pool.
Despite his admonishment, he was laughing, and Clara felt a trace of optimism and also a flutter of nerves. She’d been having them more and more around him. It felt like the early days of their relationship. In a strange way, being on the show had helped her see Ollie as a person again, not just as her husband of nearly twenty years – a husband who had come to feel a bit like an extension of herself, a sentient limb, rather than a person in his own right.
She had realised that he still had the ability to surprise her and make her laugh – their flight from The Dazzling Bob on the high seas had reminded her so much of the hijinks of their twenties, minus the class A’s, of course. She wondered if he was experiencing anything like this with her. She hoped so.
‘We’re their parents, ourjobis to traumatise them,’ she called back playfully.
God! Why’d I have to drag us to Greece and onto a TVshow to make me realise how much I don’t want to lose him?
Maybe she’d needed something dramatic to shock her out of her marriage complacency? MaybeDivorce Islandwouldn’t be the disaster she feared it’d be? Theyweregetting on better – she was surethatwasn’t wishful thinking on her part.
‘We’re parents of the year so.’ Ollie stood and pulled his T-shirt off over his head and kicked off his flip-flops. His hair was mussed up and his smile lopsided as he took a couple of steps back.
Clara, realising what was coming, yelped, ‘Ollie, noooo!’, trying to swim backwards without drowning their son. Too late. Ollie cannon-balled into the pool right in front of her, sending a sheet of water over her head. He surfaced looking thrilled with himself and jauntily expelled an arc of water from his mouth.
‘I was trying to keep my hair dry for tonight’s shoot,’ she lamented. ‘Also, I wouldn’t let that water near my mouth if I were you. I weed in this pool earlier.’
‘Clara!’ Ollie cried, vigorously spitting.
She shrugged. ‘Grow up, Ollie, everyone pees in pools.’
‘No! They don’t!’ He laughed.
‘The rule is: any body of water is fair game,’ Clara said reasonably.
‘The rule is: theseais fair game – it’s the law of the ocean. Pools, on the other hand, are a sacred space.’
Clara laughed, then wondered if she looked like shit.Why do I care? The man has watched me literally shit out three babies.
