Page 17 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
We do make lovely babies and maybe that’s the saddest thing about this all.
‘Well, brew’s on Dan. We’ve got a lot to catch up on…’
There’s a clang of mugs and the kettle hissing into action. I grab at the kitchen towel to blow my nose. Gill is slightly alarmed by the noise.
‘Danny, you’re not looking after her. Bumped into her in the high street and she were looking like she were going to heave.’
Danny still looks curiously at me. I look back at him. We had a moment like this earlier this morning when we went our separate ways near the school. You can spend twelve years with someone, every day, every hour and it’s still a shock to have that much unspoken between you, to feel like you don’t know someone very well at all. How can just three hours have changed everything so drastically?
‘You’re going to be alright for the party, right? Why don’t you go get some shut eye? I’ll bring you up a cuppa and some cake in a bit, what do you think?’ Gill’s voice is warm and maternal.
Maybe I can sleep, forget, cry into my pillow and reassess. Maybe this is nothing. ‘I think that’s perfect. I’m sorry everyone.’ I salute goodbye to the room.
‘Don’t be sorry, love.’ She hugs me.
‘Meg…’ His voice used to be so familiar, so comforting. I turn to face Danny. He should see how legitimately upset I am, he should piece together what this it about and at least feel apologetic or enquire to look after me. ‘Are you going to spew? You need the sick bucket?’
I look at him. I shake my head and leave.
Four
‘So it’s like pasta but it’s stuffed with, like fish paste? Like a dumpling, almost like what we’ve had down the Chinese?’
‘Tortellini?’
‘That’s the ticket…Go for it, Meg,bloody beautiful they were…’ booms Bob from the other end of the table.
Francesco, the actual Francesco the restaurant is named after, looks down at me as I scan the menu. He is every stereotype you can imagine, there’s the waistcoat with buttons literally set to pop, the dramatic hand gestures, the Super Mario moustache, but what remains most intriguing is the hybrid Northern/Italian accent which always makes him sound slightly drunk.
‘I’ll just have the mozzarella salad, please.’
‘With the garrrrrlic dough sticks?’
‘Why not?’
I am not sure how I made it out tonight. I didn’t go upstairs to sleep. I went to lie down and curl myself around a pillow, eyes wide open as I went through all the alternative universes that existed alongside mine; ones that involved Danny, ones that didn’t. I thought about what would have happened had I not met Danny Morton. I’d still be in the sanctity of the South, in an office writing about contouring and the perfect matte foundations. I’d still have my pre-baby body. I wouldn’t have had my girls.
A strange confusion overwhelmed me, how had it come to this? In just a mere matter of hours, I was being forced to re-evaluate my whole life and I didn’t really know the entire truth. It was a cocktail of emotions that made me feel heavy, ill. So much so that every time someone came in the room with tea and assorted snacks, I’d close my eyes and pretend to sleep. I heard Danny head off to work, I let Gill and Bob do the school run, the assorted squeals of excited girls echoing through the floor as Uncle Stu flung them around the living room and bestowed his airport purchases on them. My head was a mess, shrivelled with worry. I wasn’t really sure what was happening. Was this an affair? Was it more? One day, would he just up and leave me? I was still thinking this at 4 p.m., lost and broken. So I picked up my phone.
‘Megs? And to what do I owe the pleasure? You’ll have to be quick, I’m sewing up a heart in a bit.’
Emma was sister number two. There were three others but Emma was the sensible, maternal one. She didn’t just fix hearts for fun. She was qualified in such matters and doing very well from it too. She had the house in a leafy London suburb with multiple floors, the girls in private school, and was the sort of parent who pre-made dinners. If she weren’t my sister, I would have hated her but I also knew that behind the veneer was normality. Because she had built this life with a fellow surgeon, Simon, who quite frankly, was a sex-crazed dickhead. None of us Callaghan sisters had liked him when she first brought him home and it was always a shock to us that someone so smart and assured could have fallen for such a smarmy pillock. When Ems told us about the first affair, none of us were surprised. By the seventh, we were really starting to wonder if some medical condition was affecting her judgement. It took him sexting at a family Christmas dinner for her to see the light and she has since divorced him, which is why today she felt like the one person who could give me something, anything.
‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’
She went quiet on the other end of the phone. ‘Is everything OK? Are you ill? Has––’
‘No. It’s just…’
‘Spit it out.’
‘I found out that Danny might be cheating on me.’
She went quiet again and I heard her sit down.
‘Oh, Meg…Define “might”. Did you catch him in flagrante?’
‘No…but…’
