It was ten o’clock, and Stella was in her room with Jack. Amy had sloped off much earlier, almost the same time as Rosie. Gus had made polite chat for a bit after dinner before offering to walk the dog for Moira, who’d seemed a little reluctant to hand over the duty but accepted when Gus got close to pleading for the task, clearly the more desperate of the two to escape. Sonny had played computer games while Jack and Moira washed up and Stella did some work. Then Gus had come back and everyone had called it a night.
It was hot and sticky in Stella’s bedroom – the stone walls unable to stave off the humidity. They didn’t usually visit in the summer – too many tourists, too much traffic – popping down at Christmas or occasionally Easter instead and so it felt odd to be here in the heat. With the window open Stella could smell the sea, reminding her of when as a kid – a big swim the next day, Trials or Nationals – she’d lie on top of the bed, buzzing with nerves, eyes wide open as the heat pressed down, inhaling the calm familiarity of the salty air. But other than the occasional memory there was nothing in this room that would mark it out as ever being hers. The bright yellow walls had been neatly papered over in cream patterned with green parrots. Her mismatched furniture was long gone, now a French vintage wardrobe and chest of drawers sat next to a huge white bed with scatter cushions the same lime tones as the parrots that soared over the walls. It was like a hotel.
She sometimes wondered where her stuff had gone. To charity if her dad had had anything to do with it. She’d never given him the satisfaction of asking though. The first time she’d been back to visit after she’d left she’d just pretended it meant nothing that all her belongings had gone – all her trophies and medals disappeared while all his still lined the shelf in the bathroom, mocking her every time she went to the loo.
Stella sat at the dressing table. Jack was lying on top of the bed in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, reading the news on his phone, the duvet had been pushed into a heap on the floor.
‘I think it’s hotter here than at home,’ he said, not looking up from his screen.
Stella nodded. She was inspecting her skin in the mirror. Lifting up one side of her eye. Peering at the lines around her mouth. There wasn’t a chance in hell of Rosie comparing her to Zoella. It made her think she shouldn’t have been quite so disparaging of Amy when she’d looked at teenage Stella all brown from her sea swimming and said, ‘You’ll pay for that.’ At the time Amy’s fledgling modelling aspirations meant she was drinking a litre of water a day, eating mainly cucumber and celery, and constantly applying Factor 50. Stella had scoffed that Amy’s career wouldn’t last longer than the Just Seventeen photo-story she’d been scouted for and was right. Amy stuck at nothing. Except the application of Factor 50. When she’d turned up today – hair all newly bobbed in choppy layers – Stella had, for the first time, found herself jealous of Amy’s youth. Or maybe it was her freedom.
She sighed.
Jack put his phone down and looked at her over his new reading glasses, a move that she hated because it made him look so old. ‘Why are you sighing?’
‘Do you think my skin looks old?’ Stella asked.
Jack inspected her reflection. ‘No older than mine.’
Stella frowned. ‘That was not the answer I’d been hoping for.’
‘Why – do you think I look old?’
Stella paused for a second too long. ‘No.’
Jack laughed. ‘Damned by slow praise!’ Then he sat up and went to sit on the edge of the bed nearest to Stella and stared at himself in the mirror. ‘Christ, I do look a bit tired around the edges.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever imagined us getting old,’ she said.
‘How have you imagined us?’ Jack looked perplexed.
‘I don’t know. I suppose, whenever we’ve talked about holidays just the two of us when the kids have grown up, I think I’ve always thought of us young, like in those photos of us on the train in Rome. You know? I’ve never thought that we’ll be old.’
‘I’ll have no hair.’
‘I’ll be all wrinkly,’ she said, lifting her eyelid up with one finger then letting it drop again. ‘That’s the problem with parenthood. Half of it is spent waiting it out till it’s done and you can go back to the people you were before, but you don’t realise that the older your kids get the older you’re getting. Those before people have gone.’
Jack glanced at her in the mirror. ‘That sounds very much like the start of a column.’
Stella thwacked him on the leg. ‘I’m serious.’
They were conversing via the mirror still.
‘As am I, that’s the kind of thing you write about, isn’t it? When you’re not bashing Sonny.’
‘Thanks for that, Jack.’
He laughed. ‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘But you need to talk to him. The longer you leave it the harder it will be.’
Stella nodded.
They stared for a moment, side by side in the reflection. The heat of the room making their skin glisten.
Jack was the first to look away. ‘You look as young and vital as the day I met you.’
She sighed a laugh. ‘That’s just a blatant lie.’
Jack went back to sitting up against the headboard scrolling through his phone.
Stella stared at herself a moment longer. Seeing in her face the features of her mother. Swallowing when she thought of the simmering animosity her mum was currently showing towards her father. It made her pluck up the courage to turn to Jack and ask, ‘Is everything all right between us?’
‘Fine,’ he said, looking up with a frown, bemused as to why she was asking the question.
Stella nodded.
Jack put the phone down. ‘Stel, we’re fine. Just a bit tired, probably.’ He scooched over the bed and gave her a kiss on the cheek, ruffling her hair a bit. She swatted his hand away with a half-smile.
‘All right?’ he checked.
That was the reassuring thing about Jack. Whatever happened he’d soldier on through, pick you and everyone else up who might be floundering without a moment’s pause to question.
But as she watched him go back to his phone, she knew it wasn’t fine. The car journey had proved as such – like a condensed version of their current relationship, normal one minute and bickering the next. Both of them too quick to react, like they knew each other so well there was no point plodding through the benefit of the doubt.
A couple of weeks ago, her editor had asked her if she’d wanted to write a piece called MOT Marriage for an upcoming edition of the magazine. They wanted it written as Potty-Mouth, picking up on the current trend for critiquing the minutia of stuck-in-a-rut long-term relationships with a list of tasks and questions for the married couple to complete. Stella agreed, and while she knew she and Jack had precisely the kind of long-term relationship that most of her readers had – a bit stuck in a rut but getting through the day-to-day via Netflix and the anticipation of mini-breaks – she had fully intended to make up the content. Nowadays, fierce competition in the Slummy Mummy marketplace had pushed the Potty-Mouth brand to be much cooler and far more exciting than Stella, like an older sister she was constantly trying to impress. Stella already had it plotted out: Potty-Mouth and her fictional husband were going to throw the questions out of the window and do it their way – going to a host of exciting erotic workshops, flamenco dance classes, and a bit of swinging with another set of parents at the fictional school gate. She’d researched it all, the article was practically written and in the bag.
Now, however, she stared at the face in the mirror, as she thought of the clear disintegration of her parents’ marriage and the strain on her own relationship since the Sonny incident, she wondered if maybe she should do it, for real.
She swivelled round on the bed to face Jack, feeling a nervous warmth creep up her neck.
Outside the sound of the waves rolled gently in the darkness.
Jack looked up. ‘What?’
‘Do you want to help me with an article I’m doing?’
He narrowed his eyes, uncertain. Stella never asked for any involvement in what she was writing. He usually just read about their souped-up life over his Shredded Wheat. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s called Marriage MOT,’ she said.
‘Oh Jesus, Stella. We just said everything was fine.’
‘Well, then it should be easy.’
Jack tipped his head back against the wall. ‘What do we have to do?’
‘You know the type of thing: are you having enough sex? Are you listening enough to each other? Harbouring any grievances … blah blah blah.’ She tried to spin it all casual.
Jack sighed. ‘I’m not harbouring any grievances.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘We’ll tick that off the list.’
Jack thought about it and frowned. ‘We have enough sex, don’t we?’
‘Well that’s what we test. You think you’re fine but you can never be completely sure until you check. Like when we had the car done and he said the brake pads were worn out.’
‘Would the sex be the brake pads?’
‘Maybe?’ Stella smiled.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my brake pads,’ said Jack, puffing his chest out.
‘I’m not sure that analogy makes sense.’ Stella shook her head.
There was a pause. Jack bit down on his lip. ‘I don’t know, Stel. Seems all a bit forced.’
‘Yeah but maybe it’ll be fun. At the very least it might stop us from becoming like them,’ she said, angling her head towards her parents’ bedroom. ‘I don’t want you to go missing.’
Jack looked at her, his eyes softening. ‘I don’t want you to go missing either.’ Then he shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. ‘All right, fine.’ He slid his phone onto the bedside table. Stella did a little cheer and came round the bed to get in next to him, the beautifully ironed sheet crisp and momentarily cool. ‘So, what’s the first step of this MOT?’ he asked.
‘We have to start having loads of sex,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Jack looked sort of intrigued.
Stella nodded, the pillow soft beneath her head.
Jack nodded.
There was a pause as they lay in the sticky humid heat.
‘But I’m really tired,’ Stella said.
‘Thank God for that.’ Jack exhaled with relief. ‘Me too.’