Page 63 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

I pick up my bag and turn to Clay. ‘Put it on my tab. And don’t talk to him like that again.’

‘He’s been a prick to you,’ Clay protests. ‘Someone needed to tell him.’

‘It’s my marriage,’ I say over my shoulder, walking away. ‘Stay the fuck out of it.’

Rule Seven

Always leave the party together

The Anniversary

Jessica

‘Remind me why we’re doing this again?’ Jack calls, from our bedroom. It’s still mostly not unpacked; there are cardboard boxes, bubble wrap in neat piles, a mirror and a handful of framed prints propped against the wall. It’s surprising our stuff has made such a mess, given that our previous flat was like,fivesquare metres, and this is a three-storey house. Honestly, I’d have been tempted to get rid of everything from that place, donate it to charity and start again. But obviously Jack would never have countenanced it.

‘We’re doing this,’ I call back from our pristine en suite, newly painted the exact colour of the inside of a shell, ‘because we barely even had a wedding last time.’

‘I liked the first time,’ Jack says defensively.

I loved our wedding too, but it wasn’t what I would have chosen. We were broke, we wanted as little help from our parents as possible, and we were in our mid-twenties so we’d barely been to any weddings and had no idea how you were supposed to plan one. So in the end we had a little ceremony at a registry office onUpper Street in Islington and then we rented out a pub with the lowest minimum spend we could find. We put cash behind the bar and ordered loads of pizza. The photographs were all taken by our friends, and someone Jack worked with at the BBC, a nice middle-aged dad in a Supergrass tribute band, did some songs for free because they liked the chance to practise. They playedMy Girl, fairly badly; everyone drank Punk IPA. I wore a dress I’d got on a mega discount and then tried to starve my way into, which never properly fit because I kept forgetting I was on a diet and eating crisps. All the pictures show me with chubby arms and a huge grin on my face, clinging on to Jack in his blue suit and shiny brown shoes. We look like teenagers going to prom.

So when the money from the book deal, the big fat sexy money, hit our bank account, I proposed that we do a party to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary. And yes, a little part of me was thinking that it would make good content and that we could probably partner with, if not a champagne brand, then at least an English sparkling wine label, and that someone would probably lend me the kind of wedding dress I’d spent the last decade watching my friends wear for their own big days. Jack had rolled his eyes a bit, but more in a performance of being a typical man than anything else. He’s not really the kind of blokey bloke to object to putting on a beautifully tailored suit and hosting our friends for an evening.

‘Bloody hell,’ he says, looking up from his chest of drawers, haphazardly unpacked, where he’s searching for his aftershave. ‘Look at you.’

I look in the mirror behind him. The dress is floor-length and almost white. There’s the merest hint of ivory in a nod to the fact that I’ve been married for an age so if I’m still a virgin then things have gone pretty catastrophically wrong. It’s got tiny laceedges and little straps, and I’ve had the best spray tan of my life so for once I’m not the colour of printer paper. My hair is slicked back and a make-up artist has applied gentle pink-gold make-up. I look nice. For the first time, possibly ever, I can’t see anything in the mirror that I could improve. In fact, there’s only one thing which is going to improve this moment and I can’t quite believe I’m about to do it.

Jack goes back to putting cufflinks in, his back to me. I grab my phone and take a picture, his back, and in my hand a positive pregnancy test. The last photo ever taken of him before he learns he’s going to be a father.

‘Jack,’ I say. ‘Turn around.’

He looks at me for a moment, smiling, and then notices what’s in my hand.

He bounds across the room and wraps his arms around me, smelling of the same spiced fragrance he’s been wearing since we were students. ‘Let me see!’

I hand him the test and watch as he drinks in the two lines, one very strong and dark, the other light but still very much there.

‘It’s light,’ he says, ‘that line, is that okay?’

I nod. ‘That’s normal, it just means it’s really early. So we can’t tell anyone.’

‘Of course,’ he agrees, clearly trying to fight the smile lighting up his face, trying to seem cautiously cool. ‘But fuck me, Jess. We’re having a baby.’

The car arrives and drives us to the venue, the top floor of an art gallery with panoramic views of London. Everyone is already there, milling around, drinking, chatting. My father and Karen have found seats and are probably complaining that the food is vegetarian. Jack’s parents are talking to his brothers and their wives, all wearing the plain navy shift dresses they whack outfor every single occasion. Our friends, our lovely friends, Tom and Grace holding hands, always so in love, Jack’s work friends, the team from our agency and our publishers, everyone’s here. We walk in, hand in hand, and the band I found after hours of scrolling start playingMy Girl, just like at our real wedding.

The air smells like flowers and perfume; people are on the terrace smoking and looking at the haze over the city as the sun goes down. Dinner is served at long tables. It’s all sharing plates and I insisted on catering for one hundred when we’ve only got seventy-five because I want everyone to eat as much as they want. It’s perfect. I step outside on to the terrace to take a picture of the sunset, as everyone else is starting to sit down to eat.

‘Jess.’ Clay catches my arm. He looks worried. My stomach drops.

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘There’s something on your dress.’

I look down at the front of my dress. It’s pristine, I’ve been so careful. Then I look at Clay’s expression and realise what he means. I run my hand down the back of the dress and my hand meets a sickening, sticky wetness.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asks.

‘Get Jack,’ I whisper.

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