Page 58 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

I raise my glass to his and offer a little toast. ‘Okay, it does sound like quite a good deal.’

‘This marriage thing is a piece of piss.’

‘We’re not even married yet, you big show-off.’

We clink glasses, and I look up at the clear blue sky. It’s warm and light and the air smells of pollen. I hope it’s like this two weeks today. But even if it isn’t, it won’t really matter. It’s a little pub-and-registry-office wedding. I’m not doing it for the wedding bit, I’m doing it because I want to be Jack’s wife.

Jessica

I stand on the street, shaking, and realise that I’ve forgotten my sunglasses. It’s bright, cold early spring sunshine, so my eyes start streaming, or maybe I’m crying, I don’t know anymore. There are tears pouring down my face either way. I’m still wearing my pyjamas under my coat, I’ve only got 23 per cent battery on my phone, and my career is over. All because my husband poured his heart out and told a load of massive secrets about me, about us, about our marriage, to a stranger. As I stand in the street, dithering, a man pulls up on a motorbike. He takes off his helmet to reveal a bald head, and then takes a huge long-lens camera out of his bag. He checks the door numbers and then angles himself outside my house. Surely not? They haven’t sent a photographer to get pictures of us? I start walking before he can notice me, thanking my lucky stars that I’m only a tiny bit internet famous, and not any kind of actual celebrity. But the faster I walk, the more apparent it becomes that I don’t know where to go.

When my mum died, one of the things I wished I had an answer to was when I’d stop wishing I had her around.But actually I’m quite glad I didn’t ask anyone, because I think they’d have told me the awful truth. It’s never. You never stop wishing you had your mum. It still hits me at weird moments. When someone at work would get flu and go home to be looked after, when my friends have fights with their mums over lax grandparenting, and now apparently when you have the worst fight of your life with your husband and you don’t know where to go. I could go to Dad’s but I’d rather do almost anything else. I could go to Tom and Grace’s, but they’ll be getting their kids ready for school or nursery and I’d have to face them after they’ve clearly read the article. So the only place I can think of to go is Clay’s flat. My phone is, obviously, blowing up. Producers for shows I’ve been on are asking me if I want to do a slot to tell ‘my side’ of the story. Various brands who work in the divorce space are asking me if I want to discuss branded work. Our account is full of people messaging to ask whether it’s true, to tell me that they don’t believe me, to say that they’re disappointed, they’re not surprised, they are surprised. My friends, who are mostly too cowardly to admit that they’ve seen it, are dropping ‘Hey, how are you?’ messages, some from people I haven’t seen for literally years, who obviously don’t give a shit about my welfare and just want to know what’s really happening.

‘Are you home?’ I ask, when Clay picks up the phone.

‘I will be in ten minutes. See you there,’ he tells me, making it so that I don’t have to ask. When my cab pulls up outside his flat, he’s waiting on the doorstep, at the top of a little flight of stairs. I wanted stairs like that up to myfront door but I decided we shouldn’t buy a house like that because it would be a nightmare with a pram. But we still don’t have a pram and maybe never will, so that was stupid, wasn’t it?

‘Darling girl,’ says Clay, opening his arms. ‘Come here.’

He ushers me inside and then hugs me for a moment. Then he pushes me through to the kitchen where he takes a bottle of vodka from the freezer and pours two little blue shot glasses.

‘It’s the middle of the morning,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘It is.’ We both drink. ‘But what a fucker of a morning you’ve had.’

He refills my glass but not his own. Then he gives me a bottle of very cold water from the fridge and steers me to the sofa, an enormous white marshmallow of a piece of furniture. It’s comfortable but very difficult to maintain a dignified posture on.

‘I would like you to turn your phone off,’ he tells me. I look at my phone. I don’t actually know how you turn this version off, I’ve never felt any need to. Silent in the theatre and airplane on a flight, but never actually off. I google for the instructions and then obediently hold the buttons down until it’s no longer the thing which connects me to the whole of the rest of the world, and instead just a very expensive paperweight.

‘Are you sure that’s okay?’ I ask.

‘Ignoring it is the best thing you can possibly do. I say that as your manager, and your friend. And the publishers or anyone else should go through me anyway, so it’s just one less thing for you to worry about.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘Do you want to talk about next steps?’

I nod. ‘Are there next steps? I sort of assumed I’d need to put the house on the market and update my LinkedIn.’

He half laughs. ‘Not yet. Is it true?’

I’m sort of surprised he has to ask. ‘Of course it’s not true!’

‘You’re not having problems?’

‘Having problems doesn’t mean you want to split up,’ I say, twisting the bracelet around my wrist.

‘Areyou having problems?’

This is a trickier one to answer because it’s direct. Because yes, if I’m properly honest, we are. But not the way Verity described them; she’s made it sound like we’re miserable and we’re just staying together so we can make money by pretending to be happy, which is a cruel misrepresentation of what I’ve been trying to do.

Clay seems to have got bored of waiting for me to answer and starts making a complicated coffee. ‘All right, easier question,’ he says. ‘Are you splitting up?’

‘No,’ I say, emphatically as I can muster. ‘We’re not.’

‘All right. Well, at least that’s easier. I won’t lie to you, it isn’t good. What this girl is saying is damning, and unless Jack can prove that he didn’t say any of it to her—’

‘He did.’ I swallow. ‘Not all of it. But he said some of it. I don’t know how much.’

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