Page 43 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

She stops in the doorway, framed by the bright light of the hall against the darkness of our room.

‘Do you seriously think that’s why?’ she asks.

‘Sometimes. Yes.’

‘Right. So it couldn’t possibly be that I want to keep our private life private?’

‘Why are you the arbiter of what gets to be private?’ I ask, genuinely stumped by her inconsistency. ‘I don’t understand where the line is. You share our marriage so easily, and then suddenly there’s all this stuff you want to hide. We agree to participate in this retreat, but that’s supposed to mean being open. I don’t get what the rules are. I’m trying to get it right but I’m not clairvoyant.’

She sighs. ‘We’ve got a load of people waiting for us downstairs, and I feel like I’ve been hollowed out. So I’m going to go down, talk to everyone about how they felt that went, drink one glass of wine, and then I’m going to bed so that we can finish this bootcamp, because those people have given up time to come here and try to learn something from us.’

I quickly pull on some jeans and a jumper before following her downstairs. I realise as I put my clothes on that I’m still sodden with the massage oil, which is presumably why Jessica rinsed herself off in the shower. But it’s too late now, so I resign myself to being massively uncomfortable for the rest of the evening.

When I get downstairs, everyone’s decamped to the snug, mostly in some form of loungewear, though Ken is back in trousers and a shirt, the uniform he’s been wearing for the entire weekend so far. Jessica is sitting, legs underneath her, in an armchair. Her face is back to the perfect alabaster, with the tiny smattering of freckles across her nose and her temples. She’s holding a glass of wine between two hands and looks serene.

‘Jack,’ she says, smiling. ‘Come and sit down.’

I have been a Jessica Richards superfan since the day she asked me if I had a pen outside the exam hall. I think she is the cleverest, most beautiful, most charismatic woman on earth. But there’s something about this, the performance she’s putting on, which makes me feel very, very uneasy.

‘Did you enjoy the workshop?’ Stuart asks cheerfully. ‘I was just telling Jessica, I cried too.’

‘I almost did,’ Ben adds. ‘Mad shit, that.’

Great, we’ve instigated mass hallucination. We might as well call it a cult. ‘How about you, Grant?’ I ask, searching for an ally, and feeling a bit depressed that my best chance at an ally is a man who I overheard in the kitchen yesterday saying that ‘this country is too tough on landlords’.

‘No tears here,’ he says, which is a relief to me.

‘Me neither,’ I agree. ‘I had a nice kip.’

‘Shame, that,’ says Ken. ‘Missed out on something quite special.’

Everyone whips around to look at him. He and Sue are sitting close together on the sofa, hand in hand. ‘Sue and I are talking about taking a proper course when we’re back at home. We’d like to get in touch with our spiritual sides.’

‘Where are Noah and Verity?’ I ask, realising that the group is two people short.

‘They went upstairs.’ Chloe giggles.

‘Well, that was the idea of the task.’ Jessica smiles. ‘Right?’

‘On that note,’ Grant says, smugly offering his hand to Stuart and pulling him up to standing. ‘We’re for the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’

He pats him on the arse and Stuart chuckles, then they head upstairs, at which point I realise that the expression he just used was posh old guy language for ‘going upstairs to bed’. Obviously it’s nice that they’re reconnecting, especially given that a disparity in sex drive was part of their problem, but I can’t help asking myself: what the fuck is going on in here? Was there Viagra in the massage oil? There’s no way that a massage workshop has genuinely reinvigorated all these people’s sex lives. And Verity and Noah haven’t touched each other the entire time they’ve been here – surely she isn’t actually upstairs, with Noah? Some cold,On Chesil Beach-style scene where they solemnly undress and make sedate, controlled love? I can see Noah’s serious face set in an expression of restrained enjoyment, and it makes me feel a bit queasy. Why am I thinking about this? What’s wrong with me?

Jessica gets up too. ‘Thank you all so much for being so open-minded and open-hearted about the workshop. Hibiscus has provided a QR code so if you want to access the tutorial at home, you can, and there are worksheets on there too. Otherwise, tomorrow morning is the last session and we’ll tackle rule five, then, to bring the whole thing to an end, we’ll do rule seven and you’ll each “leave the party together”, so to speak.’

She picks up her glass, because she insists on putting everything in the dishwasher despite Suze having told us multiple times that William and Cait will handle it and there’s an army of cleaners coming in after we leave. Everyone choruses their goodnights and I trot after her, wondering how it’s possible that she could go from sobbing to hostess in such a short period of time. I used to reassure myself that the Jessica who belongs to the internet wasn’t my wife but just her work personality. We’ve all got one. I allegedly supported Brighton and Hove Albion at work, so I could make cheerful chat about the game last night. I also pretended to want a cup of tea if anyone was making a round so I could be friendly and join in. But even if that was true once, even if there used to be a pretend Jessica who existed on a server somewhere, I’m worried now that the fake version has started to subsume the real one. Surely this can’t be good for her? The constant pressure to paint on a happy face and pretend that everything is great? It’s Stepford-wife stuff and I don’t want it for her. I don’t really want it for me, either.

She does her complicated skincare regime, then lies down with her eye mask and her earplugs, every barrier up. Has she noticed that before all of this Seven Rules stuff, she used to fall asleep quickly and easily? I take a long, steadying breath. The retreat is almost over. I’ve seen so many blissful reminders of the real her, the real us, over the weekend, and this is the last stretch of the Seven Rules tour. We’re so, so close to getting our normal life back, and thanks to this weekend, I think we’re even ready to enjoy it.

Rule Five

Self-care isn’t selfish; make time to make yourself the best possible person

The Big Move

Jack

I’ve lived with other people plenty in my life. My parents spent all the money they had on sending me and my brothers to a cheap boarding school, which is still an insane amount of money to spend on anything. So from thirteen to eighteen, I shared a dormitory with other boys. At university I lived in halls; after university I lived in a houseshare with a load of guys from school who still called me Jacko and talked about the Old Days all the time. I’ve shared space with a lot of people and, generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed it. But I’ve never lived with a romantic partner until now.

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