I paused. Just thinking about her egg-white cervical mucus gives me the horn, said no man ever.
‘I’m ready.’
‘Sloane, that’s great. I mean, I’m dead excited. You know I want kids. But there’s no rush, is there? Sometimes these things take time, anyway.’
‘Of course,’ I lied. ‘There’s no rush at all. We’ve all the time in the world.’
He paid the bill and we walked hand in hand through the balmy darkness back to his hotel. We climbed a narrow stone staircase to the room, which, finally, had been spruced up for the night, the sheets turned down and chocolate truffles placed carefully in the centre of the pillows.
I delved into my suitcase and found my washbag, then ducked into the bathroom and showered at warp speed. But when I was done, Myles was already in bed, the duvet pulled up to his chin, gently snoring. I slid in next to him and wrapped my arm round his waist, pressing my body against the familiar curve of his back, hoping to rouse him as my hand caressed the familiar hard planes and dips of his ribcage and thigh.
But he didn’t respond. Not a twitch, not a moan, not a sigh. Nothing. It was like getting into bed with a man-sized stuffed toy, only not as cuddly.
Maybe that should have given me a clue. Maybe dozens of other tiny things – little dropped stitches and snags in the fabric of our marriage – should have done. Everyone says, Trust your gut. When something’s up, you know. Don’t ignore those spidey senses.
But I had nothing to ignore. I had no inkling that anything was wrong. No idea at all.
Two
Nine months later
‘It’s just the most amazing space,’ Bianca said, looking around the dust-filled, scaffolding-ribbed shell of our house. ‘You totally made the right decision to stay and extend, rather than selling.’
‘To be fair, selling just wasn’t an option right now.’ Myles raked his hand through his hair. ‘We were on the market for months, and we only got four low-ball offers. The market’s just dead right now.’
‘And so we decided to make the most of what we had.’ I tried my hardest not to sound bitter, but I couldn’t help feeling that way – our house had been amazing, a comfortable home filled with all the things we’d built up over our life together. The antique armoire I’d found in a thrift store in Queens and lovingly restored over several weekends at a cabinet-making workshop (which, admittedly, I’d only signed up for because it had seemed like a great way to meet single men). The squashy dove-grey couch we’d chosen when we moved in and immediately christened by making love on it. The round pine table that just about fitted into our tiny kitchen, where we’d had so many candlelit dinners.
The kitchen wasn’t going to be tiny any more, that was for sure. Walls had been bashed down and replaced with steel girders. The roof had been ripped off to make way for a loft extension. What had been our garden was now a builders’ yard. Boards blocked the windows, and it was stifling in the summer heat.
It would be a ‘showpiece’, Myles said. A bricks-and-mortar advertisement for the fact that Taylor + Associates, his architecture firm, could create domestic spaces as well as commercial ones. It would feature in interiors magazines, he’d promised – and to that end, he’d enlisted Bianca’s help.
She’d do the interior design on mates’ rates, she’d promised, because we were among her closest friends.
Which was news to me, because sometimes Bianca didn’t feel like much of a friend. She’d been Myles’s acquaintance first, a contact he’d made through work, and then she’d befriended me too, first inviting us round for dinner – so, of course, we’d had to reciprocate – and later persuading me to join her for Pilates classes and shopping trips.
And now it looked like I was going to find myself living in her dream home.
‘This front area can become an intimate snug,’ she said. ‘With Farrow & Ball Vardo on the walls – so on trend right now, that deep teal shade – and touches of pale rose in the soft furnishings. Mixed metals are so in right now – I’m thinking glowing brass with accents of copper and iron. And a reclaimed parquet floor.’
‘And steel interior windows opening through to the main entertaining space,’ Myles went on. ‘The roof light will really open this up, so we could opt for a dark shade on the walls here too.’
‘Absolutely,’ gushed Bianca. ‘Brinjal, perhaps, and a statement artwork on the chimney breast. I’ll add some suggestions to the mood board.’
‘We’re so lucky to have your support on this,’ Myles said. ‘A real unifying vision. And of course taking care of the practicalities, while Sloane’s so tied up with work.’
It was true, of course – I was tied up with work. Two weeks before, Megan, my business partner at Ripple Effect, the talent agency she founded and I’d joined when I moved to London, had gone off on maternity leave. I was delighted for her, even though I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy that she’d found herself effortlessly pregnant when she and her husband Matt had only been trying for about five minutes.
‘It’s crazy, right?’ she’d said. ‘I mean, one minute you’re just a couple and then suddenly – wham – you’re going to be a family. I swear pregnancy takes so long to give us a chance to get used to the idea.’
I’d wished, privately, that Mother Nature wasn’t giving me quite so much time when it came to my own attempts at pregnancy, and would get her ass in gear. But of course I wasn’t going to say that to Megs.
‘The timing’s awful,’ she’d said, ‘because Matt accepted that three-month secondment to the Beijing office and I don’t even know whether he’ll be able to be there for the birth, never mind be hands-on afterwards. But Mum will be around. I’ll manage, won’t I?’
‘Of course you will,’ I assured her.
And now I was having to step up and manage Ripple Effect on my own, and the prospect of choosing everything from kitchen cabinets to scatter cushions for the house was daunting to say the least. So I should have been grateful for Bianca’s help – but the idea of everything being chosen by someone else felt all kinds of wrong.
Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in a showpiece filled with ‘pieces’ sourced from the interiors boutique Bianca ran. I wanted to live in a home, a home that would one day contain a family. Where in this ‘design-led space’ would the oceans of plastic that I knew children accumulated fit? Where in the ‘low-maintenance, Tuscan-themed walled garden’ would anyone be able to kick a football or play hide-and-seek? How would the expanse of polished concrete on the floor of the ‘entertaining space’ work when a toddler was taking their first steps and falling over all the time?
‘I’m just concerned that it won’t be very homely,’ I ventured.
Bianca looked at me like I was speaking ancient Greek. ‘Of course it will be homely. It’ll be your home.’
‘Yes, but, once we have a family – what about all the stuff?’
‘We’ve planned for integral storage,’ Myles said impatiently. ‘Just because there’s stuff, doesn’t mean there has to be clutter. Honestly, sweetheart, it was all in the initial designs. I wish you’d pay more attention.’
He was right – I’d found the whole design process so confusing that I’d agreed to pretty much everything he’d suggested. The next thing I knew I was packing all our stuff away in boxes to be shipped to a storage unit, creating a makeshift temporary kitchen in what had been our spare bedroom (and which I hoped would one day be a nursery) and coming home every day to look in horror at the expanse of rubble, ladders and scaffolding.
And the dust. Oh my God, don’t get me started on the dust. It was everywhere. No matter how much I tried to clean, it seemed to get into every corner, every single item I owned. Even my stockings, when I took them out of the drawer in the morning, rained white powder down onto the carpet of our bedroom.
We were three months into what Myles said would be a ten-month project, and I’d never been so fed up with anything in all my life. And I found that every time I got a call at work from a car
penter needing to know what height to position the ceiling joists at, or from the project manager wanting to know when he’d receive his next payment, or from Bianca wittering on about some wallpaper samples – because, mysteriously, Myles never seemed to be available when these crucial bits of information needed to be imparted – I resented it more and more.
My dream – our dream – of having a baby was looking more distant than ever, because we were too tired, the house was too much of a mess and my mood was on too much of a hair-trigger for me to feel even the tiniest bit erotic.
I mean, you try feeling sexy when your knickers are full of plaster dust. Go on, I dare you.
‘Did you have a moment to look at the Pinterest board I set up of possible fireplace surrounds, Sloane?’ Bianca cut into my gloomy introspection.
‘Not yet.’ I forced a smile. ‘Why don’t you make a list of the decisions we need to make over the next week, and Myles and I will be sure to focus on everything, together?’
‘Great plan,’ my husband said, glancing at the vintage Rolex watch I’d saved and saved to buy him for a wedding present, even going without cigarettes for an entire week and taking in peanut butter sandwiches for my lunch. ‘Shit, I must be off. I’ve got a client meeting in half an hour. I’ll leave you ladies to it.’
Never mind that I’d rescheduled three client meetings that morning to fit this in, hoping that, with all three of us there together, we might actually make some decisions.
He kissed Bianca on both cheeks and me on the lips, swung his leather messenger bag over his shoulder and breezed out, apparently oblivious to my simmering annoyance.
‘Now,’ Bianca said cosily, once the front door had closed, ‘how about a nice cup of tea?’
I opened my mouth to point out that the corner of what used to be the kitchen was a no-go zone filled with dirty cups, the floor gritty with rubble and spilled sugar.
But she was way ahead of me.
‘I never visit clients without a flask of my special chai latte,’ she said, rummaging in her linen tote. ‘You never know when you’ll need sustenance on site. And disposable mugs – bamboo, of course, and compostable – and some of my special chia brownies. I’ve trained Charis to make them; even though she’s only seven, that child is a Great British Bake Off winner in the making, I can tell you. Shall we go upstairs?’
Upstairs. I felt a flicker of panic, remembering that, although I’d asked Myles to dispose of the remains of our Chinese takeaway the previous night, he hadn’t, and that it was probably swarming with flies in the makeshift kitchen.
That left our bedroom – the one room that was at least vaguely habitable and serene. I didn’t want Bianca in our bedroom, but I had no choice.
‘Come on then.’
I led her up the stairs, half-listening to her remarks about how stair runners were ever so fashionable now, of course, but they did attract dust and we might want to consider a fitted carpet, which was a much more practical and classic choice. I gestured for her to go ahead into the bedroom and watched as she arranged napkins and cups, poured the latte and carefully unpacked the brownies her daughter had baked, which she’d brought in a white cardboard box.
‘Recyclable, of course,’ she assured me. ‘There’s no plastic waste in our house. There’s a wonderful packaging-free shop just down the road from ours, where I go once a month with the car full of used glass jars, to stock up on dry goods like grains and seeds.’
Thank God I didn’t take her into the spare bedroom, I thought, where she’d have seen the multiple plastic pots that last night’s sweet and sour pork, oyster chicken and egg-fried rice had come in, not to mention the whole box of plastic knives and forks Myles had ordered from Amazon to save us washing up in the bathroom. She’d have decided we were single-handedly responsible for the tonnes of plastic waste polluting the planet’s oceans, and she’d actually have had a point.
I could, of course, have pointed out the hypocrisy of using a car to drive to the packaging-free shop. But she hadn’t suggested this little sit-down to discuss how to be eco-friendly, I was sure.
Cautiously, I bit into a brownie, trying not to wonder whether Charis had washed her hands before going full Junior MasterChef.
‘Delicious,’ I said. ‘Please pass on my compliments to the cook.’
Bianca glowed with pride, as she always did when praise came the way of her precious only child.
‘Now,’ she said, as we sipped our tea. ‘I wanted to have a little catch-up, Sloane, just us girls together. My job involves not only making my clients’ homes the best they can be, but also doing what I can to ease the process – which is not all fun, as I know only too well. Michael and I have renovated five houses and it doesn’t get easier, even when you’re as organised as I am!’
She glanced round, taking in the crumpled, hastily made bed, overflowing washing basket and inevitable film of dust on everything.
‘Our cleaner’s away visiting her family,’ I said defensively. ‘And we thought there wasn’t much point getting someone else in, not while things are like this.’
‘Quite,’ Bianca agreed. ‘Far be it from me to judge! But, as I was saying, I see my role not only as an interior designer, but also as a guide through the process – a bit of a mentor, if you like – and, of course, a friend! And even more so in your case, as we’re friends anyway. Sloane, I just wanted you to know that I’m here to help, if anything at all is troubling you.’
‘Everything’s fine,’ I muttered, annoyed to realise that if she carried on much longer, there was a risk I might cry. ‘Just, you know, it sometimes feels like it’s never going to end. And work’s always full-on, for both of us, and it’s hard not to let it all get on top of you.’
Bianca gave one of her tinkly little laughs, and I felt the surge of annoyance she so easily roused in me. Luckily, that stopped my tears in their tracks.
‘Well, that rather brings me on to what I was going to mention next.’ She leaned in towards me and put an immaculately manicured hand on my knee. ‘As I said, I do know how stressful this whole house renovation malarkey can be. Just a couple of months ago, I heard from a client – a massive project, which turned out far better than I expected, given that their style ran rather to bling – that their house is on the market. Such a shame, as it was decorated entirely to their taste – with a bit of moderation and guidance from my end.’
‘I’m sure it’s lovely,’ I said. ‘What a shame, though, after all your hard work.’
‘The point is, they’re splitting up. Hence the house sale. The strain of it all got too much for them. Lovely couple, been together almost thirty years with barely a cross word. But they simply couldn’t agree on things. It was the bathroom tiles that did it. He wanted beige marble; she’d set her heart on grey ceramic. And of course there’s no middle ground, is there?’
I opened my mouth to suggest that perhaps they could have gone for white, but there was no saying anything to Bianca right then – she was in full flood.
‘It drove a wedge between them. And of course, for a wedge to be driven, there had to be a flaw in the first place. The tiniest chink, maybe you don’t even know it’s there, but when the pressure is on, the chink becomes a crack and then a rift. And then Sharon came home unexpectedly one day to find Derek in bed with the neighbour’s nanny. She’d already done the school run, cleared away the breakfast things and put a wash on, fortunately. But still.’
It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. ‘How awful.’
‘Awful.’ Bianca sighed. ‘They had to sack her, of course, and reliable childcare is so hard to find these days. But I digress.’
The entire conversation had been one long digression as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t say so – I didn’t get the chance, even if I’d wanted to.
‘Even the strongest marriage has its flaws. Michael and I couldn’t be happier, but we still have our disagreements. And when he suggested downlights rather than pendants in the living room in our last house,
it almost turned into an actual spat!’
She paused and gave my knee a tiny squeeze. ‘You and Myles haven’t been having any spats, have you, Sloane?’
Shit. So that’s what this is all about.
‘Spats? Haha. No! We’re fine. Absolutely great. On the same page, even down to the kitchen tiles.’
Which was true, literally – the two possible variations of glazed tiles were on the same page of the website we’d looked at together. Except the one I liked was a distressed, industrial glass look, Myles wanted matte cream, and when we’d tried to discuss it things had got so heated he’d stormed out to the pub and not come back until the next day.
But it was fine – he’d slept in his office; he’d just needed to decompress – and we’d find a solution we were both happy with, when eventually I was brave enough to say the words ‘kitchen tiles’ in his presence again. In the meantime, the subject had joined the growing list of things that simply weren’t worth talking to him about, because they were sure to lead to a conflict that would make the US–China trade war look like a minor difference of opinion.
But I wasn’t about to tell Bianca that. Myles and I were all good – and if we weren’t right now, we would be soon. We just needed to get this nightmare over with, be living in a proper home again, have a baby, and then it would all be just hunky-dory. The prospect of it not being was one I couldn’t even entertain in my own head, never mind confide in Bianca about – especially as I knew that she would immediately share any marital or financial strife around our wider friendship group.
I wasn’t going there. No way.
‘Sure, it’s all a bit stressful,’ I burbled. ‘But we’ll get through it. We’re all good. Shall we take a look at those wallpaper samples?’
‘Of course – they’re just down in the car,’ Bianca said. ‘Would you mind giving me a hand?’
She led the way out, but she wasn’t done with me.
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 2