Page 66 of The Spare

‘Um, well, I’m worried that you’ll think I’m ungrateful, and…’

Ungrateful? ‘Slinks.’

‘That you’ll decide it’s not worth it. I realise you married me out of the kindness of your heart, and I’m conscious that I need to…’

I wait.

She sighs. ‘… make it worth your while.’ She watches my face intently for a reaction. ‘I’m worried that if I’m really frigid all the time, you’ll get bored and wonder why the fuck you bothered.’

Holy fucking hell. ‘Sweetheart,’ I say. I’m genuinely horrified. ‘What the fuck? You’re not frigid, you’re stressed. You’re—you’re preoccupied. And I’m well aware I married an actual human woman, by the way, not a blow-up doll. You’re allowed to tell me to fuck off in bed and not worry about me throwing my toys. I’m a big boy.’ She makes a sly little face at the innuendo and raises an eyebrow, and I laugh. ‘You know it.’

‘I just think I’m not being a very good wife,’ she protests. ‘It’s not what you signed up for.’

‘I signed up for all of it.’ I throw a leg over hers. ‘All of it. Yeah, it was pretty off the cuff, but I jumped at the chance like a fucking—I don’t know—coked-up kangaroo. You think I was going to miss the opportunity to lock this down?’

I search her face for some proof that this is landing behind those brutal lines of defence she’s erected. She makes a little face, somewhere between embarrassed and hopeful, and I swear, my heart almost rips in two.

I need to bring this home. ‘I’m here for you. We’re building this for life. For better or for worse, remember? And if the worse is that you don’t want to shag me occasionally, I can live with that. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ she whispers.

‘Slinks, you’re the most knockout woman I’ve ever met. Don’t give me that Victorian “good wife” bullshit. I got you as my wife. That’s all I care about. And we’re good together. We really are. I promise, getting to be your husband is worth it for me every single day.’

I hook my leg more tightly around her and wrap an arm around her back for good measure. Maybe, if I hold her closely enough, my body will reach the place inside her that my words can’t penetrate.

CHAPTER 30

Selena

Acouple of evenings after my little meltdown, I’m sitting on the sofa in the den while Ben watches TV. I have my laptop open, my AirPods on noise-cancelling mode, and a rain sounds playlist going full blast. It’s the only way I can drown out Peaky Blinders and actually get my brain to make sense of the enormous spreadsheet the interior designer and I are jointly building for this refurb. It would be easier to focus if I just went upstairs, but Ben and I haven’t seen each other all day, and I want to be with him.

Want to—and feel I should. Both of those are true. We’ve only been married for a few months. Time together is important, even if we’re both doing different things right now.

He taps me on the shoulder. ‘You ready for bed?’ he says, the words faint. I nod and remove my AirPods, saving the spreadsheet before shutting my MacBook.

Ben’s lying in bed by the time I complete my (extensive) skincare routine and brush my teeth. It’s a mild night, but he’s wearing a t-shirt. He wore one last night, too. I suspect he’s doing it to make me feel more comfortable, and the same push-pull that I’ve been feeling for the past forty-eight hours hits me: mortification that I had a total scene and caused a freakout pushing up against frustration that I have to spell everything out for him. It’s not that I resent him for not understanding, more that I hate having to articulate weird, private stuff. I suppose I don’t have to, but the alternative is putting up and shutting up.

Again, I remind myself that this is a seriously unusual situation. We’re getting to know each other while being locked into a marriage. And, no matter how crazy I am about him, the practicalities of our relationship are still very new. Anyone else who’d been dating, sleeping with someone for three and a half months would call that early days, and it is. It’s the fledgling part of any love story, the getting-to-know-each-other part. It’s most definitely not the out-of-the-woods part for most people. It’s the time in a relationship when both of you should be figuring out each other’s foibles and preferences and limits bit by bit, knowing you have all the time in the world.

Most couples don’t work through this stage—and it is work—knowing that failure is not an option. Most don’t do it with a ring on their finger.

I tell myself all this when I get into bed, when really, what I want to say is, ‘Ben, I love you sleeping bare-chested. I love how your skin feels against mine when you hold me. I’m addicted to it. And I want you to cuddle me every night—but that doesn’t mean I necessarily want to have sex every night. But the cues feel the same, because the sex often starts with cuddling.

‘So how am I supposed to relax and enjoy you holding me if I don’t think I’m in the mood to actually come and I don’t know how to signal that to you? How are we supposed to use our bodies to send that message? Or are we actually supposed to say it out loud? If you kiss me and I kiss you back, will you think it’s on? And if I pull away, will you think I’m frigid and useless, no matter what lovely words you said to me the other night, and will you wonder what the hell is wrong with this woman who has you warming her bed and doesn’t want to put out like a porn star every night of the week?’

Obviously, I don’t say any of that.

The truth is, I’m exhausted. I’m expecting my period any day now. My brain is its usual, horrible premenstrual mixture of mushy and restless. I feel like a caged tiger in the week before my period, roaming uselessly round and round whatever room I’m in, feeling like I want to claw the wallpaper off with my fingernails while barely being able to remember my own name. And the worst of it is that I can’t exactly give in to my total and utter personality failure, because I still have a brand-new, very hot husband to convince that his hitching his wagon to mine for the rest of his life isn’t the most catastrophic mistake he’s ever made.

In short, I have to give my best performance, right when my capacity to perform is at rock bottom.

Jesus, I exhaust myself.

And Ben wearing a t-shirt makes me unaccountably sad.

He clears his throat. ‘Hey, sweetheart, I had an idea, but I don’t want you to think I’m putting any pressure on you.’

Okaaaay. I plaster on a pleasant smile. ‘What’s that?’