“Remember when we used to do this but with cocktails?” I said, and held up a jumbo pack of diapers before tossing it into the cart.

Melissa smiled drily and carried on scanning the shelves.

“Nah. I don’t think I’ve ever had a cocktail in my life. People tell me I was young and carefree once, but I think it’s all a big conspiracy,” she said and winked at me.

I looked down at our haul.

Cauliflower. Toilet cleaner. Bin bags. Apple juice.

I sighed and pushed the cart along after her. It had felt like a good idea at the time. We barely saw each other anymore, but we always needed to shop, and shopped at the same store. So why not have a ‘grocery shopping meetup’? That those words had ever crossed my lips now made me cringe.

“What do you think that hot cashier would say if we went over there with a cart filled with cucumbers and lube?” I said, as we walked past the condom aisle. She chuckled under her breath.

“Cucumbers and lube? We’d have to add something else to get a rise out of him I think. A bottle of vodka. And some cable ties.”

“How many items do you have to add to a cart of cucumbers and lube before it stops looking shady and starts looking normal?” I said idly and looked down at my shopping list to see if I’d forgotten anything.

“Oh, it’s definitely six. There’s probably a mathematical formula for it.”

We rounded the corner and went back again through the produce section.

“Melissa?”

“Yeah?”

“Melissa, I’m bored to death.”

She stopped the cart and looked at me.

“You’re the one who wanted to shop together.”

“I mean… with everything. I’m bored with everything.”

She slowly started pushing the cart again.

“I’ll never understand you, Nora,” she said and began to examine the blueberries. “I thought things were going well for you.”

“They are. They’re wonderful.”

“You’re married to a man who adores you…”

“I know.”

“You have a beautiful, healthy little girl.”

“I know…”

“And you’re doing a job that you love. Right?”

“Yeah. Right.”

“So, where’s the problem?”

I grabbed a box of blueberries from her hand and chucked them in the cart already.

“Ugh, that’s the thing. It doesn’t feel like I deserve to be unhappy about it, does it?”

“Well… sure, you can be unhappy, but I don’t get why. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? This is your happily ever after.”

I sighed.

“The thing about happily ever afters is that …well, they’re the end of the story. That’s it. Done. Now what am I supposed to do?”

Melissa was laughing again.

“I don’t know, enjoy it?”

I didn’t expect Melissa to understand, really. I looked back down at the diapers in the cart.

“It’s not that I’m not happy. I mean, I’m not happy, not really, although I guess it’s hard to explain, because I can’t point at anything and blame it because obviously it’s not his fault… but then again it’s not my fault either and, it’s just that—”

She stopped the cart, grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me square in the face.

“Nora, you need to relax. You’re overthinking things.”

I nodded and pulled myself from her grasp.

“I know, I know. Baby hormones,” I said and waved my hand vaguely through the air.

Matilda was already three months old now. I had begun to wonder how long the ‘baby hormones’ excuse would hold up, and when I’d have to admit that things were horrible all in their own right.

We walked on in silence and paid for our shopping. I gazed at the bright tabloid magazine covers and tried to remember when it was my face on the covers.

There was a time when the world reeled with the great whacky love story that was Nora and Dean, and the interviews came thick and fast, and our lives felt like a superhero movie, only bigger and more exciting. People wouldn’t recognize me nowadays anyway, not with a wardrobe of pastels and sensible shoes and a giant mommy handbag filled with snacks and hand sanitizer. I felt like how Cinderella must have felt coming home from the ball after meeting the prince in her epic frock, and looking at her old, shabby life again and wondering if it had all been a dream.

“Melissa, I love her more than anything in the world. I love Matilda, you know that right?” I said when we reached the car and began piling things in. She smiled warmly at me.

“Of course I do” she said.

I wanted to tell Melissa something else. As we drove on in silence, I wrestled with whether to tell her what was really tormenting me. I said I wasn’t sure about why I felt so restless, or when exactly it started, but the truth was I knew. I had so few friends, but Melissa was my oldest and most loyal. There was nothing we hadn’t shared with each other, and no secret or disagreement had ever come between us for long. And yet I couldn’t say what was really weighing on me and had been for months.

But I can tell you, dear reader.

Haven’t you stuck with me all this time, too? Haven’t you hung around and looked on, through thick and thin? You were there when I was Mistress Morgan, and even if you judged me, you never said so, and I appreciate that. You were there when I first met Dean, and you sat by and watched me fall hopelessly and stupidly in love with him. You’ve watched me morph from the well-groomed fuck up I used to be to …whatever I am now.

And you’re still here.

So, I guess I owe it to you to try and explain why I was being such an ungrateful bitch about my ‘happily ever after’.

Well, the truth is I’m up to my old tricks again.

I can’t orgasm anymore. It’s gone. It’s like I had just temporarily found out how to turn on a tap but now the handle’s broken off and I can’t get it to open again. Nothing.

The first time it happened it was strange but I didn’t care. The second time it happened, Dean shrugged and kissed my forehead and said that I had just had a baby, and it was to be expected. The third time it happened… well, I began to panic.

It was that feeling you get when you wake up and can almost feel the memory of your dream slipping away from you, and nothing in the world can bring it back. It’s the feeling of thinking you’re going to sneeze, and your whole body pauses and tenses up in expectation, and your eyes close and you feel that shivering tickle in your nose and you’re sure it’s coming… and then nothing. You don’t even want to sneeze anymore.

The fourth time it happened I lay like a dead fish in his arms and wondered what the hell I was doing. Why were we squashing our bodies together like this? Why were we naked and rubbing over one another like weird sea anemones, and why was he suddenly making those embarrassing faces?

So, there’s my secret. My stupid, inconvenient secret. I’m Nora Cane, living the dream, with a beautiful, glittering home, a rose-cheeked baby girl and a husband who more or less worships every last inch of my body. There’s enough money for whatever I want and need, and gradually, I’m losing the baby weight, and even if I wasn’t, I could get surgery if I was desperate. Things aren’t just fine. They’re brilliant.

Except for the sex thing.

After I dropped off Melissa I headed over to Maeve’s to pick up Matilda. Dean insisted that Maeve work for us exclusively after the wedding and take care of Angelica, but Maeve loved little Matilda so much that she soon saw herself taking care of both the girls in my life. Angelica and Matilda now played together like sisters. And I had even less on my plate to take care of.

At her house, I waved Melissa goodbye and drove on, still in my thoughts.

I pulled up at home, admiring the wisps of cloud framing the house, parked, then went inside. They did an interview a little while back, a photoshoot with Dean and the baby and me, and we had sat in this front parlor and smiled for the pictures. They had wanted a picture of me in all the rooms of the house, and standing by the pool. They wanted to show their readers what the gold-digging retired sex worker celebrity had bagged when she caught the eligible bachelor Dean Cane for a husband. They had wanted the happy ending. They said, “you must be so happy”, and I thought to myself at the time the two slightly different meanings of the word ‘must’.

So, maybe you’d also like to know what my house looks like? It’s OK, I don’t mind. It is beautiful. It’s three floors, 17 rooms, has a conservatory that’s also an art studio, modern stained glass windows and art deco mosaic tiles trailing throughout the entire ground floor. It used to belong to the late ballerina Maria Tallchief. When we moved in, Dean wanted them to construct a magical fairy tree in Matilda’s bedroom, complete with cushioned nooks inside the trunk and hung with lamps in the shape of flowers. I told him to focus on one thing at a time. Anyway.

I kicked my shoes off, unhooked my earrings and quickly found an old pair of running shorts and a beleaguered grey tank top to wear.

Matilda sat patiently in my arms, chewing on her own gooey fingers. I set her down in her play pen, admired the supernaturally soft touch of her fat little legs and feet, kissed her head and left her there.

Bare feet on the tiles, I walked into the kitchen where something caught my eye. A giant bouquet of pink freesias sat on the counter. Underneath it was a little white tented card, which I picked up and examined.

My love,

Something beautiful, for a beautiful woman. I’ve left you another surprise in your closet.

I can’t wait to see you tonight.

D.

I stared at the D at the end of the letter, with its little dot, and thought how it looked like an upside down sad face, but with only one eye.

I went upstairs trying to imagine what the latest gift could be. Chocolates? Fancy jewelry? Shoes?

I flung open my closet door.

Shit. It was worse than I thought: lingerie.

Friend, if you are male, let me give you a little advice right now: lingerie might possibly be the worst thing in the world you could buy for a woman you claim to love.

I opened the box and took out a frilly, lacy teddy alternating sheer and heavily embroidered patches. It was slutty and expensive looking, with two studs at the crotch for easy access and enough padding at the bust that the whole thing seemed to have breasts of its own already.

I put it back in the box and sighed. Lingerie makes me fucking tired. Firstly, it’s a gift for the one who gives it to you, and not for you. Secondly, it’s a gift that comes pre-loaded with as much expectation and obligation as a gift can possibly have. It’s like a token a man can cash in for sex – a particular kind of sex – and then pass the whole thing off as him ‘spoiling’ his girl. But lingerie is uncomfortable. It requires the belly to be sucked in, the cellulite to be displayed, and worse, it requires a certain artificial attitude of its wearer. I had told Dean time and again that I was feeling like shit after the birth and wasn’t comfortable in my skin anymore. And now he had given me a gift that required me to squeeze that body into a scratchy slut uniform and display all those flaws for his entertainment. Ugh.

I slammed the closet door and went downstairs again to check on Matilda, who was laying on her quilt, happy as a little slug, sucking on her teething ring.

These are the dark thoughts that keep me company when it’s just me and Matilda at home, and the work day is over and there’s no more shopping to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, I used to run a successful business of my own. I used to rake in the money, and I had full, exciting days. And now I was a stay at home mom, waiting for her husband to come home so she could titillate him with overpriced underwear she’d wear once and then never again.

I sat with Matilda a little, rubbing her plump belly and smiling and cooing at her, half wishing she’d fuss a little so I had something to do, but she just smiled contentedly as she looked around, alert and unbothered. I sat in the playpen with her, kissed her feet, and stared up at the ceiling, framed now with the pink, padded edges of her playpen. Then I sat up, painting. Painting always cheered me up.

I went and hauled out my paints, brushes and paper and set myself up next to Matilda, who was now hiccupping and gazing at me with calm, unfocused interest. Yes, that was the solution. I could still be artistic. Art and music had always saved me, I was sure they could do it one more time.

I kneeled before the blank page, hands on my knees, eyes closed, and tried to find the inspiration I needed. Dean’s face came to mind. Sweet, wonderful Dean who was too good to understand the dissatisfaction in my heart, too sweet to know just how fucked up I was. Lovely, gorgeous Dean with his kind smile and sparkly eyes and the most photogenic cock in the known universe.

I sprang to action and grabbed some paint. Blue, red and white. I had gotten rid of all my swirl artwork from my past life, maybe I could start again and paint some new ones. I used to paint what I thought others felt when they experienced that coveted moment of bliss that had evaded me. I painted what I had read people describe orgasm as, tried to capture that bursting, that swirling sense of things about to come happily undone.

I pressed the wet tip of the paintbrush down into the center of the page and waited for it to guide itself over the dry paper. I thought of Dean again. Of how he had fucked me over and over, more and better than anyone ever had, of how well-worn those paths were to us now, of the countless times he had been inside me. The paintbrush began to move. Eyes half closed, arm limp like I was channeling a spirit, I let the brush go where it wanted, to carry that smear of blurred purple over the white.

I tried to remember how it felt to have the thick weight of him inside me, to feel his breath on my neck and to hear his voice, coaxing me on, teasing me, soothing me even as he stroked harder and faster.

The paintbrush moved. I began to trace tight circles that then opened up and swirled outwards, picking up more paint as I went, blending red with blue, and pressing the oily colors into the grain of the paper. He had fucked my ass. My mouth. Everything. There wasn’t a part of me that he hadn’t thoroughly kissed and stroked and loved and taken…

Yes, I just had to remember… just had to find again that sweet, crazy thing he knew how to do to me, those scary delicious places we had visited a lifetime ago before weddings and babies and laundry. My hand moved more quickly. I did love him. More than anything. I picked up more paint and swirled faster round that center.

Burp.

I looked over to Matilda, the paintbrush frozen in my hand and hovering over the paper. A translucent white liquid dribbled out her mouth and over her cheek. She began to cry.

I dropped the paintbrush and went to pick her up. I wiped her down, rocked her in my arms and tried to soothe her. When I looked over to the painting I had made I was shocked to see how bad it was. Just an amateurish looking blob that was nothing like what I had created before.

Scowling, I jostled her in my arms a little more to get her to stop crying, but the mood was spoiled. Not only did I have to suffer the inability to come, I apparently also couldn’t even paint that suffering anymore.