Page 38 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

Once everyone’s had a restorative Diet Coke, we’re ready to start this morning’s activity. I’ve played Mr and Mrs on more hen weekends than I can count, and while I’m now officially over watching a scared-looking man answer sex questions at the behest of his fiancée’s bridesmaids, it’s a good format for today. Light and silly, which is what we need, because we’re going to spend today talking about all the problems we’ve got with each other’s families.

Suze is playing master of ceremonies for this one and brings each couple up in turn to sit on bar stools like they’reon a game show. Chloe and Ben are first up, with Ben taking his turn at wearing the noise-cancelling headphones.

‘Has Ben’s family ever hurt your feelings?’ Suze asks.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘A bit. But mine have been way worse.’

‘How?’ Suze asks.

Chloe looks tired. She glances across at Ben, who is in his own world for a moment, tapping his toes to theDolly Parton Greatest HitsSuze inexplicably chose. ‘To start with, they kept talking about how okay they were with us being together, like there was something to object to. They said the wrong thing a lot – like I remember one time my dad randomly told Ben that he really liked Tiger Woods. We thought they were just being awkward. But then we started talking about a family and they had all these questions about how they’d look, what their hair would be like, and then one day out of the blue, my mum just told us, unprompted, that she didn’t approve of us being together. Just straight out. Over lunch. She said she thought Ben was great, but that it had gone too far, and she couldn’t support it. And my dad just sat there. Said nothing.’

I knew the overview of this story from their application for the workshop, which was written by Chloe. We picked it because it was clearly hastily written, full of spelling mistakes and unfinished sentences. It had all the signs of someone who needed help. She talked about how sorry she was, how she needed some way to make it up to Ben.

Suze gestures at Ben to take his headphones off.

‘What did I miss?’ he jokes, grinning into the painful atmosphere in the room.

‘Chloe shared with us about her family, and how they’ve behaved towards you.’

Ben’s face clouds. ‘Oh. Right.’

‘What do you think she said?’

Ben laughs, clearly trying to keep his tone light. ‘I mean, they told her they didn’t want her to have kids with a black guy, so I’m not excited to buy them Christmas presents. But look, I was the only black kid in my village, it’s not exactly the first time I’ve experienced racism.’

Everyone in the room looks painfully uncomfortable, like they don’t know what to say, or how to explain that they think Chloe’s parents are being horrific.

‘And then I started seeing my mum again,’ Chloe blurts out. ‘We’d cut them off. But she’s my mum, and I—’ She’s welling up. ‘I know it was shit. But then you just wouldn’t talk to me about it.’ Chloe looks at me, as if I can help. ‘He literally never wanted to acknowledge it.’

‘It’s a hard conversation,’ Ben says, after a long pause. He looks at the floor. ‘And I didn’t want to talk badly about your family.’

‘I wouldn’t have cared,’ Chloe insisted. ‘I don’t care what they think.’

‘But you do care,’ he counters. ‘Because you still want to see them, and be around them. Even if it means hurting me.’

She swallows, and thinks about it for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

Ben puts his hand on her thigh. ‘She’s your mum, Chlo. I get it.’

I’m not sure I would have been so forgiving. Chloe leans into him, looks him straight in the eye, and it’s like no one else is in the room.

‘No, really. I’m sorry,’ she says, from somewhere right inside her chest. I feel it. I think we all feel it.

‘I know,’ he says quietly. ‘I know you are.’

There’s a pause while Suze, who is more brilliant at this than I’d anticipated, gives them a moment to breath, to feel the connection that they’ve found. I wonder if everyone else in the room is thinking the same thing I am, that we want that moment Chloe and Ben have just had, where something clicks and there’s real, meaningful progress.

‘Jack and Jessica,’ Suze says. ‘You two next.’

We settle on to the stools and Suze passes Jack the headphones to put on.

‘Jessica. Do Jack’s family think that you’re a help, or a hindrance, to him?’ Suze reads off the card.

Jack puts the headphones on and I try to think of a diplomatic answer. Do they think that I’ve been a help or a hindrance? I mean, in any normal person’s logic, I’ve been the biggest help imaginable. I founded the thing which bought our house. But would his parents see it like that?

‘Oh, such a good question,’ I say. ‘I think they’d think I’m a hindrance because Jack’s so smart. They probably think he could be winning the Booker Prize if he wasn’t with me.’

‘Jack?’ Suze asks, after prompting him to remove the headphones.

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