Page 3 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

‘Okay, fine, I’ll have a shower,’ he says.

I roll my eyes at his back as he retreats into the bathroom. I realise that I am relieved to hear the door lock and the shower run. It means five minutes where we don’t have to talk to each other, look at each other, be together, after a two-week prepublication press tour where we’ve spent literally every second of our time together. It would be weird if we weren’t sick of each other, I tell myself. I wrap myself in the enormous towelling robe they’ve left on the bed and then lie in blissful peace, watching videos on my phone with the volume turned up. Eventually, while I’m watching a French chef make an éclair which looks like a sausage dog, he surfaces from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, and then pulls on a T-shirt and pair of boxers. I turn the volume off on my phone and we nod at each other like colleagues who’ve bumped into each other on the train platform, and then I go into the bathroom, taking my clothes off behind the closed door. I can’t work out how to make the huge complicated shower, clad in marble and brass, work. I could go and ask Jack how he did it. But I won’t.

I pull at various knobs and levers, patience wearing thin, and somehow I make the thing turn on. The warm water feels glorious, washing off the layers of make-up appliedearlier this evening by a professional make-up artist whose fingers smelled comfortingly of cigarettes – a pleasant memory of when I used to be fun. There’s something sort of pleasing about rubbing it all away with cleanser after an evening spent not touching my own face lest I smudge her work. I reach for the shampoo on autopilot and tip it into my hands. Nothing comes out. I inspect the small brown bottle, holding it up to the light and looking closer to see that it’s empty. How is that possible? I decanted my shampoo and conditioner into these little bottles, exactly enough for one hair wash. After years of fighting with my hair, which really wants to have a sort of wire-wool consistency, I have finally found something that works, and I never travel anywhere without it. I smack the bottom of the bottle with the palm of my hand, as if I can magic more shampoo out of it, but obviously I can’t. It is completely empty.

Jack looks surprised to see me standing, wrapped in a towel, hair soaking, mascara under my eyes.

‘What?’ he asks as I stand there, brandishing the bottle.

‘You finished my shampoo,’ I accuse him, like I’m trichology Poirot.

‘I don’t think I did.’

‘I see. So, someone else broke in here, used my shampoo and left everything else untouched?’ I ask. ‘A shampoo-focused hotel thief?’

‘Are we really about to have a row over shampoo?’ The way he says ‘shampoo’ drips with disdain, like I’m being utterly mad.

‘Yes, we are, because you used all of mine and I’ve got to look half decent tomorrow morning.’

Jack gets to his feet wearily. He walks to the bathroom with the gait of a sullen teenager and picks up the bottles of hotel shampoo. ‘There’s loads of shampoo in here.’

‘I can’t use that.’

He looks at me like I’m deranged. ‘Obviously you can use it,’ he says.

‘My hair will look like shit if I use that.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not being ridiculous.’

He looks at me and, for a moment, I wonder if I might hate him.

‘Oh come on, this is like Coke and Pepsi; if I took the labels off there’s no way you’d know the difference.’

‘I would,’ I say, restraining from stamping my foot, or pointing out that I could totally tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. ‘Jack, I grew up with curly ginger hair, I know almost everything there is to know about shampoo.’

I lean forward and sniff at his damp hair. It smells unmistakably of my £54-a-bottle shampoo.

‘You did use it!’ I say, my anger taking root.

‘Sorry.’ He shrugs. ‘I thought it was the free stuff that came with the room.’

I take a deep breath. Not really because I want to, but because our book tells people to and I’ve learned that if I ignore our advice, then I feel like a hypocrite and that makes me even more annoyed. What I’d really like to do is tell him that he’s a selfish arsehole and he’s spoiling what was supposed to be a treat to celebrate the genuinely massive achievement of our first book launching straight on to the bestseller charts.

Instead I hear myself saying, ‘I understand that it wasn’t your intention to upset me by finishing the shampoo, but it has frustrated me. I don’t feel that you respect how important this issue is to me in this moment.’

Jack glances at the ceiling and then – and I can tell it’s taking superhuman effort – he replies, ‘I apologise for using your shampoo. I didn’t understand how important it was to you. I will endeavour not to use your shampoo again.’

He picks up his book and retreats into his own world. I don’t feel any better and I would bet every penny our followers have spent on pre-orders for the book that he doesn’t either. I miss the catharsis of snapping at him. But the rules work for everyone else, so they tell me constantly in our DMs. The issue here, clearly, is me.

As I retreat into the bathroom, I try not to curse Jack while washing my hair with the crap shampoo the hotel has provided, wondering why, even in really fancy places, the toiletries are always so useless. Then I blow-dry my hair, unpacking the very complicated science kit of a hairdryer, clipping my hair up into sections, smoothing each of those sections with a cool blast of air to ‘seal’ it. As I work, I think about what it must be like for Jack to wake up literally every day looking perfectly rumpled and actively more attractive for having made no effort. The unfairness of it burns so hot that I almost burn a section of hair.

It takes almost an hour to finish, and by the end, my arms feel like they’re about to fall off. I lean forward to admire my handiwork in the mirror, but realise that this entire thing has been a waste of time – my hair looks like it was drawn on by a small child.

‘See?’ Jack says, when I eventually come to bed. ‘It looks fine.’

‘It does not,’ I grind through my teeth. It looks frizzy and hideous, and it will look even worse tomorrow morning. His hair, on the other hand, looks better than ever.

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