The Secrets of Married Women Read Free Page A

‘Oh, because some wasted three-year-old made eyes at me instead of her.’ I inch my legs over to the side of the bed that he’s warmed and tell him the story, lapping up the feeling of his thumb stroking my damp hair.
    ‘She’s bonkers,’ is his verdict. Rob’s deep like that.
    Leigh does have issues. But could you blame her, given her upbringing? As she’ll often say, ‘You know my mam never once gave me a cuddle or told me I was beautiful.’ And I think that’s so sad. Because my mother was the opposite. My mother did that every day.
    ‘So were the flies out again?’ he asks. This is Rob’s little joke about men finding his wife attractive. ‘You’re like dung,’ he’ll say. ‘You attract all the flies.’
    ‘Oh, the odd bluebottle was buzzing around, you know…’ I think of that note for a moment, and realise it’s still in my bag. ‘So, did our very untrained puppy do another pile in the house?’ Rob bought me Kiefer, a Hound/Collie cross, for my birthday. Don’t ask me why. I’ve never expressed any desire for a dog, probably because I’ve never had any desire for a dog. So Kiefer’s spent the last three months teaching me how to love him—by crapping all over the house, shredding my nerve-ends with his bark, chewing his way through my every last shoe and piece of furniture, and stubbornly foisting himself in the middle of Rob and me whenever I try to steal a bit of affection.
    ‘Nah. Just that mound under your pillow.’
    ‘Very funny.’ I kiss the smooth cleft of his chin, smell toothpaste on his breath, sneak a hand under his T-shirt, and feel the easy familiarity of my marriage cloak me. Over the years Rob’s middle has turned a bit like a lukewarm hot water bottle, but since he’s rather mysteriously lost some weight recently, he’s got a pretty nice body on him again. He clutches my sore foot between both of his.
    ‘I missed you, you know.’ He plants a tender little kiss on my eyelid. ‘I always do when I come to bed and you’re not with me. I might fall asleep but I’ve always got one eye awake, waiting for you to come home.’
    ‘How do you keep an eye awake?’ I prop myself on an elbow and gaze at him. ‘Do you pin its lids back and squirt it with cold water? Or slap it around, or shout at it every two minutes? Shock its socks off?’
    He pulls my head back down on his chest again. ‘Very droll, funny clogs.’
    Strange, Rob’s been so mushy with me lately. Normally he’s not good with telling me he loves me. Instead, he’ll make up silly little songs, and, in his abysmally off-key voice, sing them to some familiar tune: My wife. I love her. She is beau-t-i-ful. I think of her all day. She makes me smile. All the while… she has cute little toes, and a turned up nose.
    ‘Argh, Rob,’ I plant a kiss in the centre of his chest. His skin smells newly-washed, of soap. It strikes me that I can’t remember the last time we had a spontaneous bout of clothes-ripping passion. Something that wasn’t part of a routine, or timed between two good shows on TV. I sometimes wonder if we escaped the seven-year itch only to fall into the ten-year ditch. I push these thoughts away, kiss a trail up his body, up his throat, run my lips along his stubbly jaw, wondering if some affection of the other sort might be in order. But Rob lies very still –a clear case of not-tonight-Josephine. So I stop, noncommittally, as though kissing his jaw was as far as I was going with the mission anyway. I try not to feel flattened, slighted, unfeminine.
    ‘What you want to do tomorrow then?’ I prod him. Since our marriage seems to have withered on the vine lately, for reasons I’m not quite clear on, I made Rob make a pact with me. I said, let’s make Saturdays our ‘date’ days. Let’s pretend we’re courting again. To try to bring something back that I’m worrying we’ve lost.
    Rob considers my question. ‘Anything you want to do, treasure.’ Rob will always leave everything up