Page 8 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

‘Well. She’s not exactly – you know. She looks like more of a party girl than a reader.’

I fix her with what I hope is a look of disdain. ‘You know, for someone who talks a lot about the patriarchy, you’ve made a pretty lazy judgement about another woman.’ And then I walk out.

Three hours later, back at the flat and having received exactly zero messages from her, I call Jessica.

‘Hi!’ she shouts when she picks up. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at home,’ I say, like a Victorian father. ‘Where are you?’

‘Some club, it’s really shit. Do you want to come join?’

‘No,’ I say.

There’s a change in background noise and I can tell she’s gone somewhere quieter so we can talk. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I thought you were here to see me,’ I say, hating the childish whine to my voice. ‘Not random blokes from the street.’

‘It was quite clear you needed some space with that girl,’ she snaps.

‘What girl? Look, do you want me to come and find you? Or do you want to come home? I mean back. To mine.’

We have a long, irritating discussion where neither of us can decide what to do and eventually it’s agreed that I’ll meet her and we’ll go home. So I trudge over to the Purple Turtle and collect her, once again feeling like the most enormous loser. We walk home, no longer hand in hand. How did this go from the absolute best day to the absolute worst?

We stop at a kebab van at Jessica’s insistence. She orders something complicated involving extra halloumi, and then we arrive back at mine, still in total silence. Creep up the stairs. Get to my bedroom. And sit in more silence.

‘Jack,’ Jessica says.

‘Yes?’

‘I know you’re upset, but I really want to eat my kebab.’

I can’t stop myself from laughing. ‘I think it’s very important that you eat your kebab,’ I say.

She does eat it. And then, once she’s licked the mayonnaise off the inside of the foil, she looks at me. ‘Right. What’s the problem here?’

‘I don’t understand why you left?’ I say eventually, because someone needs to say something.

‘What?’ she snaps. ‘How could you not understand?’

And then it starts. We go around and around and around. She talks about how Calliope was rude and snooty, I inexplicably try to defend her despite completely agreeing. I say that it was poor form of her to go off with other blokes hours after we’d had sex and she accuses me of being a puritan. At some point I start trying to defend the party Calliope threw and I realise that I’m fighting for the sake of fighting. I need to stop it. She’s been caring for her mum non-stop, of course she wanted to blow off steam. I should have thought to take us to a club instead of the worst party in human history.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, trying to form a sentence which is apologetic without being weak. I look over. She’s fallen asleep, lying on her front, on the bed. I consider waking her up so we can go back for round five thousand of this argument. You’re not supposed to let the sun go down on an argument, everyone always says that.

I go and start to try to inflate the air mattress, but the pump is too loud and it’ll wake Jessica, so I sort of lie on the half-deflated shell.

‘Jack,’ Jessica murmurs, half asleep.

‘Yes?’

‘Come and sleep with me even though I smell of onions.’

I lie next to her and fall asleep almost instantly.

‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she says, as she rolls over and stretches. I look at her stomach under the white pyjama T-shirt she changed into at some point during our row.

‘Me too,’ I add.

‘I just wish you’d told me that you didn’t think we were dating.’ She sighs, getting up. ‘I’m going to be honest. I was starting to have feelings for you.’

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