Page 55 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. We don’t need to read this,’ I tell her. ‘Isn’t that what people always say? Never to read the articles about you?’

‘Yes. We do,’ she shouts.

So I go on. I’d give back every penny of the Seven Rules money not to have to. But I do.‘Verity Francis, 28, attended the course with her husband, Noah Baker, also 28. “They actedhappy when they were in front of us,” Verity says. “But they’re not. Their marriage is on its last legs. He told me that they stay together for the brand, because they know they’ll lose all their deals if they split up.”’

‘I didn’t say that!’ I yelp. Fucking hell, how could she have told them that? After I’d confided in her. She knew the stuff I told her was personal. The stuff she told me was too, and I’d never repeat that to anyone, not even Jessica. How could she have listened to me say all that stuff and then gone straight to the fucking press?

Jessica is sanguine again. Clinical, even. ‘If you said anything even remotely close to it, then you’re an idiot. By the time she went to the press, it was third-hand.’

‘It’s not what I said because it’s not what I think—’

‘It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what she heard. And what they’ve printed. I should have been more across this, I should have spoken to her when she seemed down at the end of the weekend – I should have—’

I shake my head, desperate to tell her that it’s not her fault. ‘It’s not that, it’s nothing that you did. She needed money, she wanted to leave Noah but she couldn’t afford to.’

‘How do you know that?’

When I was producing political radio, I would occasionally be in the gallery, running the sound and video output for a big meaty interview. And occasionally I would be working when a politician would make a massive cock-up, when they’d admit to having known something or done something which was illegal or at the very least going to tank their career. And I’d watch as they realised what they’d said and then tried to backtrack and correct their statement. There was always this same look of panic on theirfaces, as it dawned on them. That’s what’s happening to me right now.

‘Jack?’ Jessica repeats. ‘How do you know that about Verity?’

‘After Clay turned up, all the stuff about not taking a break ... I’d been planning to talk to you, I was going to say that I wanted to go back to working on my own, I wanted to write my book and go back to the BBC. I had this whole plan worked out about telling you that I’ve been really struggling with it, and I kept telling myself that we just had to finish the retreat, and then I was going to tell you that I wanted to quit. But then Clay turned up and started talking about America and you’d basically bought us a brownstone before he’d finished his sentence and I just felt so trapped ...’

I say nothing. She says nothing. It’s silence. ‘So I went into the kitchen and she was in there, and I ended up talking to her for a while. About us.’

Jessica slams her coffee cup down on the counter. ‘You told her this stuff? It came fromyou?’

I nod.

‘You literally had one job,’ she screams at me. ‘All you had to do was participate and smile. And instead, you found the one person there who wanted their own marriage to fail, told them all our dirtiest secrets and then let them tank our entire fucking career. What were you thinking?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say quietly.

‘You need to read what else your “therapist” told them,’ she snaps.

‘I’m not reading any more,’ I say weakly. ‘I don’t want to read any more.’

‘Fine’ she says, snatching the paper from the table. ‘I’ll read it to you then.“I just think it’s wrong,” says Verity, who has been married to her husband for a decade, “that they’re pretending to be so happy. It makes other people feel guilty when their marriages have struggles. Jack told me that he missed the version of Jessica who he fell in love with, when they were younger.”’

‘Oh, this is a good bit,’ she sort of yelps.‘Verity, who is nearly ten years younger than Jessica, says, “Jack told me that he and Jessica don’t have much sex anymore, and that she’s obsessed with getting pregnant, but that she can’t relax and that he thinks that’s why it’s not happening for them.”’

She puts the paper down and looks at me, her face twisted with hurt. ‘How could you say that to her?’

‘Ididn’tsay that,’ I say, or shout. ‘I didn’t. Jess. You know I wouldn’t say that.’

‘I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t say,’ she retorts, picking her handbag up. ‘Honestly I don’t think I know you at all.’

Rule Six

Your parents are your family and your responsibility

The Awkward Family Dinner

Jessica

When Jack asked me to marry him, I only had one worry – if we got engaged, we were going to have to put our families in one place at one time, or specifically, his parents, my father and my stepmother, Karen.

My mum has been dead for the better part of a decade so I shouldn’t be a baby about having a stepmother, but there’s a reason all the fairy tales make stepmothers seem like witches. She moved in the week that I moved out and redecorated the entire house, painting the wallpaper over with grey paint and putting thick grey carpets down over the wooden floorboards (‘So much more cosy!’). Since her arrival, there’s been no trace of my mum in the house. I tried to be good about it. I got a therapy app on my phone, read a book about learning to like your stepparents, and then decided to say fuck it and just let myself admit that she’s a bitch. Her twins, Leila and Sammi, moved into the house and they’ve got a whole little life together with Dad. They go on cruises and to Disneyland. I make a big deal about hating mass-produced packaged travel sothat when they don’t invite me we can all pretend that’s why. Obviously the sensible part of me knows that it’s really Dad’s fault. He could take trips with me, come to London to take me to lunch, phone me once a week on a Sunday. He doesn’t do any of that and that has nothing to do with Karen. But it’s easier to blame her than to accept that he’s slipped into being a boring suburban dad who doesn’t bother.

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