His disinterest felt almost exquisitely painful, as if it was a pain she needed, a boil she needed lanced.
‘So you definitely don’t want another baby?’ she said. There it was again. Like at dinner the other night at the restaurant. That desire to push him, to shove him off this ledge where they were stranded.
‘Another baby?’ said Sam. He hung his wet shirt on the handle of Holly’s door. ‘Us? Have another baby? You’re not serious.’
‘Oh. Right,’ said Clementine. She piled clothes on top of each other. ‘You haven’t seen Holly’s strawberry top, have you? It’s vanished.’ She looked around her in frustration and tried not to cry. ‘Oh, I can’t stand it, why do things keep vanishing?’
chapter thirty-seven
The day of the barbeque
‘Mummy!’ It was only Holly calling for her mother’s attention.
‘Holly!’ sighed Clementine. ‘You gave me a fright! You don’t need to call out as if it’s a matter of life or death each time.’
She stood up and left the table, carefully avoiding Sam’s eyes. She couldn’t wait to be alone with him in the car to go over the night’s events. They’d be dining out on the story of this night forever. It was getting curiouser and curiouser. They’d gone down the rabbit hole. Erika who had never wanted children now wanted babies. Oliver wanted Clementine’s eggs. Their hostess used to be a stripper.
‘Have you ever heard of the boy who called wolf?’ she said to Holly.
‘I don’t know anyone called Wolf. I’ve been calling you a million, trillion times.’ Holly looked up at her accusingly from her spot in the swinging chair next to Dakota.
‘Sorry,’ said Clementine. ‘What is it?’
‘Why is your face all red?’ asked Holly.
‘I don’t know,’ said Clementine. She pressed cold fingertips to her hot face. The air was getting cooler. ‘Are you girls warm enough?’
‘Yes,’ said Holly. ‘Look at this game Dakota showed us! It’s so awesome.’
She pointed at some colourful, animated game on the screen of the iPad in Dakota’s hand.
‘Wow!’ said Clementine, staring at the game without seeing it. ‘Awesome.’
‘Thank you for taking care of them like this,’ said Clementine to Dakota. ‘You let me know when you’ve had enough, okay? When you get bored?’
‘Ruby and I are not boring!’ protested Holly.
Dakota smiled conspiratorially up at Clementine. She seemed like such a serious, good little girl. It was hard to believe she was the daughter of such colourful people as Vid and Tiffany.
‘All okay here? You girls being good?’ Sam stood next to her.
Clementine glanced up and met his eyes. There was a spark there. A spark she hadn’t seen for a while. Maybe they’d have good sex tonight, proper good sex, the kind that used to be a given, not that weirdly uncomfortable let’s-get-this-over-with sex they’d been having for the last couple of years. Something had gone wrong with their sex life after Ruby was born, or it had for Clementine; sometimes she felt a sense of loss, of actual grief over the loss of their sex life, and other times she wondered if it was all in her head, if she was being typically melodramatic about something natural and inevitable. It happened to everyone, it was called getting ‘stale’, it was called marriage.
She sometimes felt a terrible sense of inappropriateness during sex, almost an incestuous feeling. It was like she and Sam were old, beloved friends who for some reason – a religious or legal or medical reason – were obligated to have sex every few weeks in front of a small panel of impartial observers, and it wasn’t exactly unpleasant to have sex with an attractive old friend, but it was awkward, and a relief for all concerned when it was done.
She’d never spoken about it to Sam. How could she put that into words? ‘Sometimes our sex life feels incestuous and religious and ever so slightly yucky, Sam, don’t you think? Any suggestions?’