‘Hi,’ I greet him. ‘How was your day?’
‘Fine.’ Dan gives a shrug. ‘Yours?’
‘Some pencil-pusher is coming to boss us about,’ I say gloomily. ‘Mrs Kendrick’s nephew. He wants to “take an interest”, apparently. Or, you know, shut us down and build condos.’
Dan looks up, alarmed. ‘Did he say that? Jesus.’
‘Well, no,’ I admit. ‘But he said we had to change, or else.’ I try to convey the menace of those two words with my tone of voice, but Dan’s features have already relaxed.
‘He probably meant “or else no Christmas party”,’ he says. ‘You want some?’ He pours me a glass of wine before I can even answer. As he slides it across the table, I eye him, and then the bottle. It’s half-empty. And Dan seems preoccupied.
‘Hey,’ I say cautiously. ‘Are you OK?’
For a few moments, Dan just stares into space. He’s drunk, I suddenly realize. I bet he went to the pub after work. He sometimes does, if I’m going to be out and Karen’s on duty. And then he came home and started on the wine.
‘I sat at work today,’ he says at last. ‘And I thought: Am I really going to do this for another sixty-eight years? Build offices, sell offices, build offices, sell offices, build offices—’
‘I get it.’
‘—sell offices.’ He finally looks at me. ‘Forever.’
‘It’s not forever.’ I laugh, trying to lighten things. ‘And you don’t have to work till your deathbed.’
‘It feels like forever. We’re immortal, that’s what we are, Sylvie.’ He eyes me moodily. ‘And you know what the immortals are?’
‘Heroic?’ I venture.
‘Fucked-up. That’s what.’
He reaches across the table, pulls the wine bottle towards himself and pours a fresh glass.
OK, this is not good.
‘Dan, are you having a midlife crisis?’ I say, before I can stop myself.
‘How can I be having a midlife crisis?’ Dan erupts. ‘I’m nowhere near my midlife! Nowhere near! I’m in the bloody foothills!’
‘But that’s good!’ I say emphatically. ‘We’ve got so much time.’
‘But what are we going to do with it, Sylvie? How are we going to fill the endless, soulless years of mindless drone work? Where’s the joy in our lives?’ He looks around the kitchen with a questing gaze, as though it might be in a jar labelled ‘joy’, next to ‘turmeric’.
‘Like I said this morning! We just need to plan. Take control of our lives. Vincit qui se vincit,’ I add proudly. ‘It means: He conquers who conquers himself.’ (I googled it at work, earlier on, when it was my turn on the computer.)
‘Well, how do we conquer ourselves?’
‘I don’t know!’
I take a slug of wine and it tastes so good that I take another. I get some plates out of the cupboard, ladle chicken stew out of our slow cooker and sprinkle it with coriander while Dan reaches in the drawer for cutlery.
‘Let alone … you know.’ He dumps the cutlery heavily on to the table.
‘What?’
‘You know.’
‘I don’t!’
‘Sex,’ he says, as though it’s obvious.
For God’s sake. Sex again? Really?
Why does it always come back to sex with Dan? I mean, I know sex is important, but there are other things in life too, things he doesn’t even seem to see, or appreciate. Like curtain tie-backs. Or The Great British Bake-Off.
‘What do you mean, “sex”?’ I counter.
‘I mean—’ He breaks off.
‘What?’
‘I mean, sex with the same person forever. And ever. And ever. For a million years.’
There’s silence. I bring our plates over to the table, put them down and then pause, my mind circling uneasily. Is that how he sees it? A million-year marriage? I’m remembering Tilda, too: ‘Isn’t “till death us do part” a bit over-ambitious? Isn’t it a bit of a gamble?’
I eye Dan, this man I’ve gambled on. It seemed like good odds at the time. But now, here he is behaving as though sex with me forever is some sort of punishment, and I feel like the odds are slipping.
‘I suppose we could have a sabbatical or something,’ I say, without even knowing what I quite mean.
Dan lifts his head to look at me. ‘A sabbatical?’
‘A relationship sabbatical. Time apart. Be with other people. That could be one of our decades.’ I shrug, trying to sound cool. ‘I mean, it’s a thought.’
I’m sounding so much braver than I feel. I don’t want Dan to shag other people for a decade. I don’t want him to be with anyone except me. But nor do I want him to feel like he’s in an orange jumpsuit staring down the barrel of a life sentence.
Dan is just staring at me incredulously. ‘So, what, we talk Italian for a decade, we shag other people for a decade and then – what was the last one? Move to South America?’
‘Well, I don’t know!’ I retort defensively. ‘I’m just trying to be helpful!’
‘Do you want a sabbatical?’ Dan focuses on me more closely. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’
‘No!’ I exclaim in frustration. ‘I just want you to be happy! I thought you were happy. But now you want to leave us—’
‘No I don’t!’ he says hotly. ‘You’re the one who wants me to leave! Would you like me to do that now?’
‘I don’t want you to leave!’ I practically shriek.
How has this conversation gone so wrong? I drain my wine glass and reach for the bottle, rewinding back in my mind. OK, maybe I slightly jumped to conclusions. But maybe he did, too.
We eat silently for a while and I take several more gulps of wine, hoping it might straighten out my mind. As I do so, a warm sensation creeps over me and I gradually start to feel calmer. Although by ‘calmer’ I really mean ‘drunk’. The two Proseccos I had at the talk are catching up with me, but I still drain my wine glass a second time. This is essential. This is remedial.
‘I just want a long and happy marriage,’ I say finally, my voice a little slurred. ‘And for us not to be bored or feel like we’re in a jumpsuit, scratching tallies on the wall. And I don’t want a sabbatical,’ I add defiantly. ‘As for sex, we’ll just have to …’ I shrug hopelessly. ‘I mean, I could always buy some new underwear …’
‘I’m sorry.’ Dan shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean to … Sex with you is really good, you know that.’
Really good?
I would have preferred mind-blowingly awesome, but let’s not pursue that right now.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘We’re inventive, right? We can be happy, right?’
‘Of course we can be happy. Oh God, Sylvie. The truth is, I love you so much, I love the girls so much …’ Dan seems to have sailed straight from belligerent-drunk to sentimental-drunk. (I have a word for that too: wallowish.) ‘The day we had the twins, my life just … it just …’ Dan’s eyes slide around as he searches for a word. ‘It expanded. My heart expanded. I never knew I could love anyone that much. Remember how tiny they were? In their little plastic cots?’
There’s silence and I know we’re both remembering those scary first twenty-four hours when Tessa needed help to breathe. It seems a million years ago now. She’s a robust and healthy girl. But still.
‘I know.’ Drunken tears suddenly well up in my eyes. ‘I know.’
‘You remember those tiny socks they used to wear?’ Dan takes another slug of wine. ‘You want to know a secret? I miss those tiny socks.’
‘I’ve still got them!’ I get up eagerly from the table, half tripping over the chair leg. ‘I was sorting out clothes the other day and I put away a whole bunch of baby clothes, for … I dunno. Maybe the girls will have children one day …’
I head into the hall, open the cupboard under the stairs and drag back a plastic bin bag full of baby clothes. Dan has opened another bottle of wine and pushes a full glass to me as I pull out a bundle of sleepsuits. They smell of Fairy washing powder, and it’s such a babyland smell, it goes straight to my heart. Our entire world was babies and now it’s gone.
‘Oh my God.’ Dan stares at the sleepsuits as though transfixed. ‘They’re so tiny.’
‘I know.’ I take a deep gulp of wine. ‘Look, the one with the duckies.’
This sleepsuit was always my favourite, with its pattern of yellow ducklings. We sometimes used to call the girls our ducklings. We used to say we were putting them away in their nests. It’s funny how things come back to you.
‘Remember that teddy bear mobile with the lullaby?’ Dan waves his wine glass erratically in the air. ‘How did it go again?’
‘La-la-la …’ I try, but I can’t remember the tune. Damn. That tune used to be ingrained in our psyches.
‘It’s on a video.’ Dan opens his laptop, and a moment later opens up a video folder, Girls: First Year. With no warning I’m looking at footage of Dan from five years ago, and I’m so affected, I can’t even speak.
On the screen, Dan’s sitting on our sofa, cradling a week-old Anna on his bare chest. She looks so scrawny with her tiny legs in that froggy newborn position. She looks so vulnerable. They say to you: ‘You’ll forget how small they were,’ and you don’t believe it, but then you do. And Dan looks so tender, so protective. So proud. So fatherly.
I glance over at him, and his face is working with emotion. ‘That’s it,’ he says, his voice all muffled as though he might weep. ‘That’s the meaning of life. Right there.’ He jabs at the screen. ‘Right there.’
‘Right there.’ I wipe at my eyes.