Page 43 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
I say nothing. Silence.
‘What did you talk about with Ro?’ he asks.
‘What do you think?’
He squirms on the bed.
‘I’m just sad you didn’t think you could tell me about the Captain. You didn’t even tell me you did those art classes with her. We tell each other everything.’
Up to that point, our relationship was underpinned by friendship and we never had problems as such – we always managed to laugh them off. I thought I’d seen everything when it came to Danny. When you’re married, you do. You hope that having lived with someone, having been intimate with them and seen them at their lowest ebb – tummy bug saga of 2001, I had to steam clean the mattress – means you know everything. I saw him cry when these daughters of ours were born. He’d seen them emerge from me. I’d cradled him in my arms when he thought his father was dying. When he did the Three Peaks challenge, I helped apply Vaseline to his gooch so he wouldn’t chafe.
‘I was just embarrassed. I just…didn’t know what to think of it myself.’
‘Why did you go to the classes?’
‘To support Rowan. She invited me along as she only had five people sign up. You and the girls were away. It got me out the house.’
It’s comforting to hear that he went to support a friend at least.
‘It snowballed from there. I enjoyed having an actual hobby that’s not childcare, paper or walking the dog.’
‘So it wasn’t because we’re not having enough sex?’ I blurt out a little emotionally. I think back to all that sex talk at Ro’s and how it’s made me preoccupied with the sort and frequency of sex we’ve been having. Danny’s taken aback by my admission and sits up to look at me. That’s the problem with my husband, he always makes great eye contact. He holds your gaze and is never the first person to look away. If they ran a World Cup in it, he’d excel in blinking competitions. It’s a look that made me first fall in love with him because it was so reassuring and safe.
‘Don’t be a silly mare. Not that at all. Just liked drawing it, imagining it. It sparked something. It’s not like I was drawing pussies and wanking over them.’
I can’t tell if he’s lying again. He kisses me on the forehead. We’re never normally up at this time of night unless it’s with a teething child but it feels like these words need to be said – or at least until my painkillers kick in.
‘So how did you know what to draw? I’m assuming you did other sorts of research?’
‘I went online, some sites and apps and stuff.’
‘Like?’
‘There are swinger groups, dating apps, quite a lot going down on Twitter…’ I get a little twitchy at the thought of him actively engaging with people.
‘Oh. I found out Ems is on Tinder.’ I inform him.
Knowing my sister as well as I do, he laughs a little. ‘Geez, times have changed. First, she’s bonking my brother and now picking up men online. Tinder was one of the apps I used, actually.’
My husband went on Tinder? He senses my unease.
‘I set up fake profiles to see how these things worked. I used fake pics, names.’
‘What name did you choose?’
‘Matthew. I was twenty-seven and a personal trainer.’
I may laugh. ‘OK. Did you make jokes about your plank?’
‘Naturally.’
I pause for a moment. ‘Did women engage with you?’
‘A few.’
‘Did they send you pictures of their tits? Did you send them pics of your dick? Did you wank over them?’ I blurt out nervously, shocked that he’s actually engaged with other people.
‘No and no… because that would have been wrong. I usually wank in the shower in the morning if I feel the urge.’
