like normal families do.’
Sabrina greets us at the door in a leopard print dress which clings to her taut, skinny body, her auburn hair blow-dried big and bouncy, like Cindy Crawford’s in her 90s heyday. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she gushes, beckoning us into the cluttered kitchen.
‘Hope it’s okay that Ollie’s brought a friend,’ I say.
‘’Course it is! The more the merrier.’ A jumble of fairy lights is strewn over shelves and packing cases, and an oak dining table is cluttered with wine and beer bottles, vases of flowers and Welcome to Your New Home cards. ‘Excuse the state of the place,’ Sabrina adds with a husky laugh. ‘I know it seems mad, having a party so soon after moving in but I couldn’t wait. Tommy’s always saying how impatient I am, like a little kid.’
‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ I say truthfully. ‘There aren’t enough parties around here.’
‘Yeah, it was all her idea, the raving loony,’ Tommy remarks fondly, greeting me with a kiss on the cheek and hastily introducing us to the guests in the kitchen: a cluster of middle-aged men in regulation T-shirts (mostly black) and jeans (faded and a little tight). There’s the odd greying man-ponytail and a smattering of studded leather belts. While I’m not usually one to check out men’s footwear, there’s something about an embellished cowboy boot that draws the eye down.
The women are all lightly tanned, like Sabrina, with bare legs, polished cleavages and big, brightened smiles. Feeling somewhat lacking in high-octane glamour, I give small thanks that I chose to wear a dress tonight. ‘Here you go, guys,’ Tommy says, handing the kids a Coke each. ‘Come out into the garden and meet Zach and his merry band of men. They might look a bit scary but don’t worry – they don’t bite.’ Obediently, they follow him through to the back of the house, which I can see leads onto a long, narrow, unloved garden filled with billowing smoke from a barbecue.
‘So what d’you do, Charlotte?’ Sabrina asks, handing me a glass of wine.
‘I work in marketing for a crisp company – Archie’s …’
‘Ooh, the posh crisps?’
‘They are pretty posh,’ I agree with a smile.
‘I love them,’ she enthuses, ‘especially the new kind with sage. My God, they’re so good! I always buy those ’cause I know Tommy won’t touch them.’ She rolls her eyes affectionately. ‘He’s more your Chilli Heatwave Doritos kind of man. Common as muck.’
We both laugh, and my stomach rumbles, activated by the barbecue smells wafting in through the open back door. ‘So how about you, Sabrina?’ I ask, noticing with relief that Will has fallen into conversation with a jovial-looking bald man who’s swigging a beer by the fridge. At least Will is unlikely to be grilled about his job prospects here.
‘I run my own company,’ she explains. ‘Wedding dresses – Crystal Brides, it’s called. I specialise in sparkle.’ She chuckles and waves a tanned hand, which is heavily bedecked with ornate silver rings. ‘I love a bit of glitz.’
‘D’you make the dresses yourself?’ I ask.
‘No, no, I have girls who do that. I just design them …’ She breaks off as one of the ponytailed men hands us each a glass of champagne, despite the fact that we have wine too. I glance at Will again, conscious that I’m checking on him to make sure he’s okay. Of course he is. We might not socialise much these days, and I know he felt dragged along tonight – but he’s a grown man who can handle himself at parties. I don’t need to worry about him being ‘left out’.
Sabrina and I drift out to the back garden. ‘Don’t look at it too closely,’ she says. ‘Place is a bloody state.’
‘Well,’ I remark, ‘you’ve only been here a week.’
‘Oh, we’ll never get around to doing anything with it. We don’t even have a watering can.’ She grins and indicates the pale green shed at the bottom of the garden. ‘See that, though? It’s already been christened.’ She laughs loudly as I try to figure out whether she means what I think she means.
‘Really?’ I ask. ‘You mean you’ve …’ – I drop my voice – ‘done it in there?’
‘Yeah! What a laugh that was.’ I smile, conscious of a hollow feeling in my gut. ‘You know what it’s like with teenagers in the house,’ she goes on. ‘Impossible to get any privacy …’ Although I want to know more, I’m also a little startled by her honesty. She’s right, though: on the rare occasions that Will and I manage to get it together, we proceed with extreme caution, as if overhearing the merest creak of a bed would traumatise the kids. And when I say rare, I mean precisely that. The reason I remember the precise date of our last ‘session’ (which implies enthusiastic, thrashing-around sort of sex; in fact mice do it more noisily than we do) is because it occurred at precisely 7.15 a.m. on Mother’s Day. Afterwards, Will jokingly said it was my present. The time before that was Christmas Eve; in the periphery of my vision was a heap of wrapped presents, plus the holly garland we’d never got around to nailing on the door. It’s not that I keep a detailed account of our activities. Just that we only seem to get around to doing it on significant dates.
‘Got to grab your chance when you can,’ Sabrina adds with a wink.
‘Wasn’t it a bit splintery though?’ I ask, picturing our own, equally unlovely shed.
‘Yeah,’ she laughs, lighting a cigarette, ‘but we like that. A bit of danger, you know. An element of risk.’
I turn this over in my mind. Whenever people talk about risky sex, I imagine they mean doing it where there’s the possibility of being discovered – in the car, for instance, or up an alley or something. I’ve never considered it might involve a Black and Decker workbench. I have a fortifying gulp of champagne.
‘It was his idea,’ she adds, indicating Tommy, who’s grappling at something charred and black with enormous barbecue tongs. ‘You know what men are like. Insatiable …’
‘Oh yes,’ I say, wondering whether Will and I could possibly cram ourselves into our much smaller shed, alongside the mower, the strimmer and God knows what else is in there. A load of spiders, probably. I never go in. Perhaps I should, to assess its potential as a love den …
We install ourselves with a group of women who are all chatting on embroidered cushions on the overgrown lawn. There are quick introductions, and a woman called Abs – fittingly, she has the sinewy body of a fitness instructor – says, ‘D’you like live music, Charlotte?’
‘I do,’ I say truthfully, ‘but I haven’t seen any for ages.’
‘You should come and see Zach’s band,’ Sabrina adds, ‘next time they have a gig.’
‘That’d be great,’ trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘What kind of stuff do they play?’
‘Indie rock, I suppose you’d call it.’ She beams proudly at her son, who’s now deep in conversation with Rosie, while the other teenage boys are kindly letting Ollie and Saul hang out with them. My glass is topped up by a passing bearded man in a leather jacket who joins us on the cushions.
At the risk of sounding like a Miss World contestant, I realise I’m enjoying meeting new people. Will and I don’t do this enough, I reflect. We don’t do anything enough: have sex, go to gigs or parties … and we’re going to start doing all of those things loads more, I decide, realising the wine and champagne have whooshed to my head as I haven’t eaten anything yet. I can’t grumble that we’re in some kind of marital rut when I’m hardly making an effort to haul us out of it. Everyone I meet seems to have full, exciting lives: Abs, it turns out, isn’t a fitness instructor but Sabrina’s business partner in Crystal Brides. I meet a hat designer, a gallery owner and someone who caters for band tours. The atmosphere is lively and fun, and the music becomes gradually louder as the evening wears on.
‘Me