3
Mark is, as always, the first to wake up. He turns to Julia, still dead to the world, mouth open, hands clenched tightly into fists, pulling the duvet up around her ears, and he leans down to kiss her softly on the cheek. When she is like this, so soft, so innocent, he knows exactly why he loves her, why he is still with her.
He places his feet on the floor, stretches his arms to the ceiling, and yawns before padding quietly out of the room, slowly shutting the door behind him so as not to wake her.
Mark has been working hard. He has been staying in the office late, trying to get everything done, forgoing the gym as there's too much to do. He has stopped eating lunch in the canteen, instead grabbing a sandwich and eating it at his desk, piles of legal papers his lunchtime reading.
He feels tired these days. Always tired, but there's so much to think about, so much to do, that a lie-in is not on the cards. Not that he doesn't want one, but his mind is always racing. Getting off to sleep is fine. Easy, even. But most nights he is awake in the early hours. He lies there, listening to Julia, knowing that she's also awake, but unable to reach out to her, and he thinks about his work, his life.
And he is so used to getting up at 6:45 A.M. for work that even on the weekends he wakes up automatically, at precisely that time, which is ridiculous given that Monday to Friday he needs an alarm clock to wake him. Monday to Friday he stumbles groggily to the bathroom, wishing for more sleep, but Saturday and Sunday he positively bounces out of bed.
Mark goes downstairs and puts the kettle on, placing The Times on the kitchen table as he pulls two slices of bread from the plastic wrapper and sticks them in the toaster.
Crash. The noise of the post tumbling through the letterbox and landing on the doormat startles him. He groans as he bends down to pick up the letters, and shuffles through looking for anything interesting as he goes back into the kitchen and tips some fresh coffee into a cafetiere.
Nothing exciting today. Junk mail, junk mail, more junk mail, and bills. That time of year when all the bills come in. He opens the Visa statement and reads through it quickly, stopping to go back and read it again because he can't quite believe what it says.
Now Mark knows that Julia loves cosmetics, toiletries, girly things. He accepts that Julia cannot pass a chemist's without going in, and he knows that, once in, she will happily browse for hours, spending fortunes on pastel-colored bottles of things he's never heard of. She had even once emerged with a selection of velvet scrunchies in assorted colors that she deemed irresistible. When she had short hair.
But he also knows that there are strict rules about the joint account. As independent creatures are wont to do these days, they keep their money separate. Julia has her account, from which she takes money for anything that doesn't involve Mark, and Mark has his. And then there is the joint account, generally used for household bills, restaurants, furniture, food shops, gifts for mutual friends, and holidays. Anything, that is, that involves both of them. Which doesn't include Boots. And, more to the point, how in the hell did she manage to spend nearly two hundred pounds there? What the hell has she been buying?
Julia has been buying pregnancy tests. She tries to resist them, but every month, in that run-up to her period, she gets what she has come to call her ClearBlue craving. Unfortunately one just doesn't supply her with the fix she needs.
She did manage to start off with one test. They always do. Nine months ago she bought one test five days before her period, right at the beginning when they were first trying. She took it round to Sam's amid much giggling.
“I really think it's too early,” Sam said.
“But if I'm pregnant, then my body might already be producing the hCG hormone, and if it is, then it might show.”
“But the packet says you have to wait until the first day of your period, and you haven't even got any of the symptoms.”
“I bloody have,” Julia said defiantly. “Look at the size of my breasts. They're enormous.”
“But your period's due in five days, and they're always enormous before your period,” Sam said, grinning.
“And”—Julia paused dramatically—“I've been running to the loo all night. I swear, my bladder's gone crazy.”
“You've always had the weakest bladder of anyone I know, but okay, okay. Point taken. Let's do it.”
Julia's face lit up. “Great! Can I borrow a glass?”
“What for?”
Julia read the instructions out loud to Sam. “‘Place the stick in mid-flow urine, or submerge in the urine.'” She missed the look of horror on Sam's face as she explained that she didn't trust the holding-it-in-the-stream method, just in case she missed.
“You're not bloody using one of my glasses for that!”
In the end they settled for the cap of Chris's deodorant bottle. “For God's sake, never ever tell him. I swear he'd divorce me for this.”
“Just rinse it out with bleach when I'm done with it,” Julia said, heading for the bathroom.
“I know, I know,” Sam shouted back as the door was closing. “What do you think I used for my test?”
The test was negative. So was the one she bought later that day. And the six she bought before her period started. At first it was her secret, but $13.95 is a hell of a lot of money to pay when you need around a dozen of these tests every month, and last month Julia decided that as they were trying for “their” baby, the tests should be “their” expense.
Naturally Mark doesn't know about the boxes of ClearBlue hidden under the piles of towels. Not that he'd mind them in principle—it's not like your parents discovering packets of the Pill in your bedside drawer when you're sixteen and you know they'd go up the wall—he'd just mind the amount that she's buying, because Mark is nothing if not a pragmatist. He would be horrified at Julia taking the test days before her period is due; at not following the instructions on the packet; at the impatience and extravagance of an addiction that he simply would not comprehend.
Mostly he would not understand because he doesn't understand Julia. The qualities that attracted him in the beginning are the very qualities that are pushing them apart now.
He loved her energy when they met. Loved her laugh, her ambition and unconventionality. He'd noticed her at work, had already made some inquiries before he dared approach her in the canteen, had already decided that somehow he would get to know her, touch her, be with her.
He'd pass her sometimes, in the hallway, talking intensely with one of her friends, and as he approached he'd stare at her, willing her to look up, to notice him, but she never did. Every day there would be a knock on the door from a love-struck researcher with a bad excuse, and he was never interested, because none of them was her.
Mark didn't know how to approach her, what to say, and realized it was sensitive because they worked together. Even though in-house relationships were going on all the time, they were frowned on by management. His own father had always warned him not to dirty his own doorstep. In previous jobs he'd taken this to heart, but he forgot it when he saw Julia.
Even when Julia never seemed to see him.
Mark is one of those men who is good-looking without being arrogant, and it had never served him particularly well. His friends, less good-looking but far more laddish, had always had far greater success with women. The more hearts they broke, the more emotions they trampled on, the more women fell for them. Mark was termed a nice guy, and what can possibly be worse than that? At school he was the girls' best friend because he was good-looking and therefore good to be seen with, but too nice to want to go out with. So nice he was even considered dull.
It was only when he was at university that he came into his own, and even then it took a couple of years. He had been going out with Amanda for over a year, and he ended it because he knew she wasn't right for him, and because he only had a year left to enjoy himself.
Did he enjoy himself. Making his Mark, was how his friends described it with glee, and more than a touch of jealousy. To this day he is famous for his pulling power, with the number of women he is said to have pulled growing, rather like the proverbial fish, bigger and bigger over time. Although the irony was that he never had to try. He had always been Amanda's good-looking boyfriend, and as soon as he was single he became the most sought-after man on campus.
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Except intrinsically, apart from unwittingly breaking a few hearts, he was still a nice guy, and still rather shy with women, particularly those he truly fancied. Like Julia. No one could imagine the effort it took to approach her that day in the canteen. By that time he had built her into the perfect woman, placed her on a pedestal so high she was in danger of getting lost in the clouds of his imagination.
Mark loved her vivacity, her easy, expansive, extrovert nature. She was everything he was not, everything he secretly wanted to be. When he was with her, he felt that he really was the best possible person he could be. Mark didn't want to be quiet, studious, introverted, when Julia was around. Being with Julia was like an exhilarating fairground ride, and he knew he wanted this feeling to go on forever.
Forever feels like a long time ago now. Most of the time he is exhausted by Julia. Exhausted and uncomprehending, because their worlds are so very different, and Mark sees that not only can he not escape from who he really is, but that he does not want to. He tried at first. The first year or so. An endless round of parties, of people dropping in, of being surrounded by friends, and friends of friends, and strangers. He enjoyed it for a while, mostly because he assumed it would be dropping off. Nobody can live that kind of life permanently, can they?
Julia could.
Mark realized sometime during their second year together that the constant stream of people through the house did not seem to be abating. That Julia coming home with handfuls of waifs and strays from work and expecting there to be enough food was not going to change.
And Mark knew it wouldn't be fair to expect her to change. He did, after all, know what he was letting himself in for when he first got together with her, but somehow he thought they'd be able to find middle ground, find a way of making it work.
At the beginning, still flush with passion and excitement, still full of the possibilities of finding that middle road, he had even thought he would propose. He planned a trip to Barbados in January, booked a restaurant overlooking the beach that had been voted one of the top ten romantic restaurants in the world, had even dreamed up his speech.
The unease started a couple of weeks before they left, prompted mostly by an argument about New Year's Eve. They had not been invited to any parties, much to Julia's disgust, and Mark had said that his ideal New Year would be to invite the two, or three, couples to whom they were the closest round for dinner and crack open the champagne at midnight.
Julia was horrified. She wanted to throw a party. A huge bash open to all and sundry, to really see in the New Year with a bang. She wasn't going to give way, so Mark had to, and even as he conceded he was rethinking the prospect of togetherness for the rest of their lives.
But he had already planned Barbados. Already planned the holiday. The proposal. Even the ring. Yet sitting on the terrace, watching Julia's face through the flame of the candle, he knew he couldn't do it. He loved her but he wasn't sure. He loved her, but he wasn't sure that love was enough.
He would wait. Not long, but the ring in his pocket would stay in his pocket, and who knows, maybe next year things would be different, maybe even next month things would be different.
Four years on, nothing is different. Mark and Julia have found a way of living in the same house, sharing the same bed, leading ever more separate lives.
As he sits at the breakfast table and reads The Times, the pile of bills pushed to one side with the offending Visa statement on the top, Mark decides that they are going to have a nice day today, they are going to enjoy themselves.
Today is Adam and Lorna's wedding. They are getting married in Blackheath, a proper white wedding in an old-fashioned church.
Adam and Lorna are Julia's friends. Mark has to make this distinction because so few of their friends cross over. They never have. Julia finds his friends nice but too straight for her, too dull, while Mark has never really understood female friendships, with their gossip and secrets and giggling.
Many's the time he's walked into the kitchen to find Julia sitting at the table deep in conversation with two or three of her girlfriends, mugs of coffee and glasses of wine littering the table, ashtrays overflowing with Silk Cut Extra Low. Their voices are always lowered, they invariably start teasing Mark, which makes him uncomfortable, even though he tries to smile and go along with it. He tends to help himself to whatever it is he needed, before leaving them in peace and disappearing up to his study for the rest of the evening.
“Why can't you make more of an effort with my friends?” Julia asked when she went to bed, much much later that night.
“Why don't your friends make more of an effort with me?” Mark replied in self-defense, although what he meant was, Why can't they understand me? Why don't I understand them?
Mark has retained his friends from school and university, as men tend to do. He speaks to them more than he sees them these days, is adept at catching up with news via e-mail. They meet up from time to time, generally when Julia is away. On the few occasions when Mark tried to bring Julia into the equation it was an unmitigated disaster.
Julia tried to be nice. She tried to like them. But she really had nothing in common with them—less than nothing—and found each meeting more exhausting than the last. Eventually she told Mark she loved him but not his friends: He'd have to see them on his own. Mark pretended to be offended; in truth he was relieved. It was as much a strain on him as it was on Julia.
Now they have their own friends, lead their own lives, but on occasions such as today the two will converge, and the truth is that Mark has always quite liked Adam and Lorna. In fact, with the exception of Sam and Chris, they are probably the people he likes most in Julia's circle. Adam and Lorna have been living in Brighton this last year, he has hardly seen them, but they are coming back to Blackheath, where Lorna was brought up, for the wedding.
Mark likes weddings, has always liked weddings, as indeed has Julia, so perhaps wishing that this will be a nice day is not so unrealistic after all, and to start off the nice day he will bring Julia breakfast in bed.
“Mmmm.” Julia slowly props herself up and stretches with a lazy smile as Mark places the tray carefully on the bed. She eyes the tea and toast, dipping a finger into the pot of honey and licking it off, for they have not shared breakfast in such a long time that Mark has forgotten which exactly is her favorite spread. He thinks it's honey, but he doesn't want to be wrong. To be on the safe side he has clustered Marmite, honey, peanut butter, and strawberry jam on one side of the tray. “What have I done to deserve this?”
“Nothing,” he says, smiling back, sitting next to her on the bed, and dropping the paper on the pillow. “I just wanted to surprise you. Plus we've got the wedding today and if I'd let you sleep we would have missed it.”
“The wedding,” Julia sighs. “I can't believe Adam and Lorna are actually getting married. God. I thought they'd just live together forever.” She sneaks a sideways peek at Mark. “Rather like us.”
“Are you saying you want to get married?” Mark is shocked. It's a subject they haven't brought up for months. Years. Not since the early days. Julia's thoughtful look dissolves into giggles.
“Scared you, didn't I?” she teases. Although Mark won't admit it, his mental sigh of relief is enormous. He hides it by picking up his coffee and taking a sip.
“Seriously, though, I never thought Lorna wanted to get married, but I suppose I never thought she'd last this long with Adam.”
“But Adam's a really nice guy.”
“Yeah, but let's face it, he's not exactly the most dynamic man in the world. He's practically had a charisma bypass . . .” and she tails off, knowing that she has, in her more vicious moments, said exactly the same thing about Mark. “But he is lovely,” she quickly continues, before Mark has a chance to notice, “and I'm sure they'll be very happy together.”
“Go on, then.”
“Go on what.”
“I know what you're thinking. What's your prediction?”
Julia hugs her knees to her chest as she grins at Mark, because at times like this she remembers why she is with him. Although she usually admits it grudgingly, he knows her better than anyone else, knows the way her mind works, knows how to get her attention and keep it.
“Five years.”
Mark raises an eyebrow. “That long?”
“Okay, okay. Four years and three months. You?”
“You know I don't indulge in these games.”
“I'm guessing you'd give it ten and a half years.”
“That sounds about right.” Mark laughs, and in that moment of intimacy he leans over and plants a kiss on the side of Julia's neck. She turns to kiss him in return, laying her toast slowly down on the tray.
“Wait,” he whispers, pushing her gently away as he lifts the tray from the bed and places it carefully on the floor. Julia inches down in the bed until she's lying down, and Mark lowers himself on top of her, kissing her, smelling her hair, her neck, feeling her skin.
He moves one hand down and unbuttons the top button of her pajamas. “F*ck, I hate these pajamas,” he whispers into her ear, and she giggles before moaning as his fingers stroke her nipples to a peak, all the while kissing her.
“Wait,” she whispers, pulling back until she can look at him. “It's not . . . you know.”
“Not what?” Mark speaks quietly because he knows what she is about to say, and can already feel the mood beginning to break.
“Not, you know . . .” She is embarrassed and she looks away for a second before meeting his eyes again. “. . . the right time.”
Mark doesn't say what he would normally say. He doesn't explode. He simply lowers his head to kiss her as his fingers move further down her body. “I know,” he whispers as his tongue follows the trail his fingers have left down her stomach, and then neither of them says anything for a very long time.
“Well, that was a lovely surprise,” Julia smiles and curls up in the crook of Mark's arm, lazily trailing a hand across his chest. The smile is genuine, she truly had forgotten how wonderful it had once been to make love with Mark. It had always been the glue that held them together, this extraordinary passion they had, right from the start.
The first time they went to bed together it stunned both of them. The electricity was so strong you could almost smell the sizzling in the air. They lay in bed, that first time, breathless, speechless, unable to believe their luck at finding one another, neither having ever experienced anything like that before.
Julia thought it had disappeared. Mark thought maybe he had imagined it in the first place.
He remembers now.
Perhaps that is the problem, Mark thinks, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror and feeling good, really good, for the first time in months. We don't make love anymore. We make babies. And we're failing. We need to make love more, to reestablish the closeness, the warmth, the intimacy that is so lacking.
If we can do that, then maybe we'll be okay. Maybe everything will turn out fine.