Page 23 of Fling

When Tara arrived home later that evening, she was greeted by the same old familiar emptiness. Although she had been living in the house for years, it had never truly felt like a home to her. It wasn’t a mystery to her why she felt like this. She and Colin had bought the house to start a family but, ten years later, it was still just the two of them, haunted by the hallow halls. She owned the house of her dreams yet felt like she was living in the ruins of her life.

She missed their college days in the tiny studio apartment they used to share. Looking back, life seemed so easy then. They would have silly rows about whether Trinity or UCD was the better college. Although Tara always fought her corner well, at the end of the day, she always ended up wearing Colin’s UCD hoody, even though it represented a kind of victory for him. She used to like when he won. She used to feel so safe in that hoody. Every day felt like a Sunday morning back then, and they would talk about all the things they would do one day.

But now, it seemed as if her marriage would never get out of this rut it was in. It felt deeper than a rut. It was a chasm. She used to feel so comfortable sitting in silence with him but recently, it was as if someone had increased the volume of the background noise, the sounds that lie beneath the threshold of life. She could hear the mechanical sounds underlying everything, like an unchecked engine, screaming to be repaired. Little things like his incessant snoring, his astronomical sneezes and his pronunciation of the word ‘quinoa’ as ‘quinn-oh-ah’. All these small things became piercingly loud, like nails on a chalkboard. And then there was the unbearable small talk. Their attempts to fill the silence only amplified it. The cure was worse than the disease. The longer things were left unsaid, the more one thing became clear.

It was only a matter of time before the simmering silence came to a boil.

Tara was famished so she headed straight to the kitchen to get started on dinner. She opened the fridge to see what her options were but then she remembered the two rib-eye steaks Colin had taken out to defrost. She knew he had taken them out for her to cook. She did the cooking, after all. But Tara knew whether she would cook her husband a steak or not depended on one very important thing.

She opened the dishwasher.

Still not emptied.

Not a single plate or cup moved to the cupboard. Even though he had told her he would do it after she went to work. And this was no isolated incident. This was the new normal.

It hadn’t always been like this. Before their rift, everything had always been 50/50. She cooked dinner, he did the weekly grocery shopping. She did the laundry, he took out the bins. She hoovered the house, he mowed the lawn. She loaded up the dishwasher, he emptied it the next morning. But now, he made no effort whatsoever.

Was there anything more irritating than a man who just couldn’t be bothered?

She couldn’t cook the steak. Even on principle alone, she refused to go above and beyond when all offered to her in return was the bare minimum. Marriage was a team sport, was it not? If her teammate was going to let her down, it shouldn’t be her responsibility to pick up the slack.

Why, after all, should she be bothered?

Tara rooted around the fridge, finding a microwaveable chicken pasta bake. The dish served two and was going to expire the next day. Perfect. She would have half and Colin could have the other half if he wanted. And if he didn’t want it, he could cook the damn steak himself.

She popped the meal into the microwave.

Microwaveable meals weren’t her favourite thing in the world but she could never muster up the energy to cook these days. In fact, she found herself cooking less and less since her rift with Colin began. If he could just give her some kind of gesture that he still cared, that would be enough. She asked him every month to help her organize their garden shed but she might as well have been talking to a wall. Unless Colin gave her some indication that he appreciated her, it would be microwaveable meals for the foreseeable future.

There was a middle ground she could live with, however. A miracle had occurred in the culinary world with the surge in popularity of the air fryer. Everyone Tara knew had one and they loved to brag about the many different meals they could whip up with ease. But Colin, of course, had decided that an air fryer was just a fancy word for an oven and that they didn’t need one. It drove her mental how frugal he could be.

Tara believed the trick to getting through life was to always have a holiday booked and a package on the way. But Colin never wanted to go abroad any more, and she had a secret agreement with their postman to only deliver her parcels when Colin’s car wasn’t in the driveway. He didn’t have the power to stop her shopping, of course, but he took the fun out of it. And his refusal to go on holidays was because IVF was the only thing worth spending savings on, apparently. But what is life without something to look forward to?

For now, at least, Tara would have to rely on her trusty microwave while the air fryer remained a fantasy. Life is funny, she thought to herself. One minute you’re dancing on a bar after one too many tequilas and the next you’re daydreaming about air fryers.

While the food was heating up, she opened a new bottle of pinot grigio and sat down at the table. She filled her glass and suddenly realized that she had poured half the bottle in already. She used to be able to get four glasses of wine out of any bottle, but Tara’s definition of one measure had gradually become bigger and bigger. She wasn’t allowed to drink during IVF cycles, and Colin had recently taken to making passive-aggressive digs that she was ‘making up for lost wine’.

She wondered what her glass would look like in another few years. Would she be one of those women who buy a comically large novelty wine glass as a joke and says things like ‘Don’t worry, I’ll only have one glass’ as they pour the entire bottle in? It didn’t help that two months’ worth of empty wine bottles were currently sitting in the utility room, waiting for Colin to take them to a bottle bank. ‘I’ll take them next week,’ he said, every week. If anyone were to see them, they would undoubtedly think Tara had a problem. Perhaps she did need to lay off a bit.

The microwave beeped and snapped her out of her daze. She decided that she couldn’t possibly give up wine because it was actually good for the heart once a person reaches a certain age. In a way, drinking fine wine would ensure that she too would age like a fine wine. She had a knack of being able to convince herself of anything. She took a sip and began to dish out her pasta bake.

Colin arrived home not too long after Tara. He had spent the rest of his workday thinking about Claire from Fling. Although they had got a perfect match, she had yet to respond to his message. He had opened the app every hour to check for a reply and hadn’t once seen the little green light showing she was online.

But despite Claire’s lack of reply, Colin had a new-found confidence as a result of his 100 per cent match. He had a certain swagger about him. His ego had been deflated for so long that he had forgotten what confidence even felt like. It took Colin very little to feel good about himself and he was determined to ride this high for as long as possible. He knew it was silly, needy even, but he didn’t care. He felt like a king and was ready to feast like one.

He hung up his coat in the hall and walked into the kitchen just as Tara was sitting down to her meal.

‘Oh, good timing,’ she said, looking up from her pasta bake.

‘What are you having?’ he asked, squinting at her plate.

‘Chicken pasta bake. It’s really good, yours is cooling on the counter,’ Tara replied, taking a large gulp of her wine to prevent Colin from seeing how much she had initially poured into the glass.

‘I was defrosting steaks for today.’

‘I know, but I wasn’t really in the mood to cook. Mental day at work.’

Colin was more than just disappointed. He had purposely had a small lunch to build up an appetite for dinner. It wasn’t that he hadn’t got what he had wanted, it was more the fact that, as usual, she had made the call. He didn’t even mind microwaveable meals, but they had eaten them exclusively for the past few months. It was more about convenience than enjoying the meal and it wasn’t ever as hot as he wanted it to be. It was always just lukewarm.

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