down on the floor. I sighed. We were back on familiar territory. We either talked about TV or food (but this seemed to be true of the population at large). Later on we watched a drama about a couple going through a marital crisis, and the female protagonist murders her husband by poisoning him a tiny bit each day. I secretly felt envious that they still had the will to even bother – I didn’t think Pete and I could be bothered to murder one another unfortunately.
I hadn’t said anything to Pete about my weird headache/dizziness. If I had said something then it might have gone something like this:
Me: I feel like my head is coming off sometimes and then it floats off somewhere and comes back again.
Pete: You need to get more sleep perhaps?
Me: No I think it might be something else. Maybe a panic attack?
Pete: What have you got to panic about?
Me: What are you looking at now (gesturing to iPad)?
Pete: Why do you bug me about what I’m looking at ALL THE TIME? I never ask you what you’re doing on your phone and you’re on it constantly.
Argument moves onto my phone addiction, Pete’s need to chill out with his iPad after a long day, how I justify being on my phone and say it’s ‘work’ but how it isn’t because he knows I’m looking on ASOS at dungarees.
This was the problem. We were locked into a pattern. One said this and the other that. We were two store mannequins frozen into specific poses, unable to break out. There were rarely any surprises. It had been a long time since anything unexpected had happened. We were parents, we were tired.
I thought back to the miscarriages I’d had after Bella. Each one had been relatively early (before twelve weeks) but they’d taken their toll. We’d also had to do a lot of baby-making sex. I’d used ovulation tests and special lube that promised to ‘nurture and support sperm on their special journey’. After the first miscarriage, I’d been eager to try again, almost as if getting pregnant would erase what had happened. When it happened a second time I felt a distance grow between us (apparently I was miscarrying because my eggs weren’t top notch – the doctor said miscarriages were much more prevalent in women my age). Pete continued to be supportive, we entered a third phase of trying.
It felt like it was something we were toiling through together, like a fairground ride that we’d paid for but hated (but it was too late to get off).
‘Can we just stop now?’ he’d said as I told him it was a super fertile time again and I wanted us to have a quick bunk up upstairs.
‘I want to give it one more try,’ I said.
‘But Rebecca, it’s so depressing, look what it’s doing to our relationship!’
‘We’re okay. We’re okay aren’t we?’
He made a face like ‘no, we certainly weren’t’ but to his credit, we had sex that night, then the three nights after that (the more the better in that forty-eight hour window according to my online research). I couldn’t seem to let it lie. I was trying to prove a point – I could get something I wanted out of sheer determination. When I miscarried again at ten weeks, it felt as if both of us had shut quite a lot of feelings away. We put the idea to bed (he did this more quickly and I resented how he seemed to be capable of moving on). I also felt like Pete was great in an emergency, could make cups of tea, rush to the shops get supplies, make a hot water bottle, but didn’t know what to do when life rolled along without having to visit the ‘Early Pregnancy Unit’ for scans. Or have your partner bleeding in the middle of the night and call an ambulance, and the neighbours coming outside to watch her screaming as she was wheeled into the back.
Was that how it was in relationships? Did you just hunker down and endure?
We were both fascinated with our screens. Screens were so much easier to interact with. I wanted to scroll across Pete’s face and see a different expression. I wanted to type ‘interesting conversation that is not TV related,’ onto his forehead. He probably wanted to type ‘find girl that doesn’t complain about work and not having a second child’.
By the time I’d brushed my teeth, and rubbed expensive cream into my face, Pete was asleep; his mouth making a strange flapping noise like a fish out of water. I’d read that many couples liked to have separate bedrooms nowadays – it was a nice thought but it worried me that I thought it was a nice thought. At least when we were in bed together our bodies touched now and then (even if was usually an accident and we moved away again as soon as it happened). Separate rooms also amplified the idea that you didn’t want to be around the other person. You could argue that it kept the mystery alive or some such but the reality was that they just got on your nerves too badly.
Something was bubbling away inside of me – something not right. Tomorrow I would schedule a visit to my parents. I would start the day positively and not tell myself negative things as soon as I woke up.
Tomorrow would be more good moments, more moments of happiness than bad, sad, anxious, worrying moments.
I put my headphones on and listened to a positive thinking visualization. I tried to hide my phone under the covers so it wouldn’t wake Pete up. He grunted at me to put it away, and I hunkered down under the duvet.
Just me and my little phone friend. Being mindful and positive together.
I am excited about my new future.
I am excited to embrace my new life.
I am going to be more positive.
I am open to new and different things.
THE THING ABOUT BEING ‘in your forties’ is that you feel like you haven’t much to look forward to. For a start, appearance-wise things go to hell in a hand-bucket. I was pretty much invisible to the opposite sex now. A couple of younger female colleagues had told me that it was rare to get chatted up these days so maybe it was society that was changing.
But there were simple truths that you couldn’t escape.
• I could never be an ‘enfant terrible’.
• I would never own my own swimming pool
• I wouldn’t be able to get beads plaited into my hair on holiday, without looking like one of those old women that gets beads plaited into their hair on holiday.
• I would always be referred to as ‘good for my age.’
• If I got a tattoo, it would be seen as symptomatic of a mid-life crisis.
• A hangover lasted a week
Age wasn’t just a number. We all wanted to be pumped up, youthful, dewy, glowing, energetic, sexy and dynamic. It was exhausting. My body wanted to age. My face wanted to be left alone to slide and sag. I sometimes thought ageing was easier when we just threw on a moth-eaten cardigan, collected stray cats and collected coupons from the back of Woman’s Own.
Okay maybe I was still attractive. Two months ago I’d been eyed up by a man in his sixties on the tube but this kind of event didn’t make me feel better. Old men were not ideal. I made a list in my head of exciting, dynamic and sexy older women who still got plenty of male attention.
There was Jennifer Aniston.
Kate Winslet.
Rachel Weisz.
These were all Hollywood actresses who were a different breed to ordinary middle-aged folk. I tried to imagine what it would be like to not feel quite so invisible, to still be able to arouse interest from the opposite sex, to actually make young men look at you with fresh eyes; for them