Читать книгу So Lucky - Dawn O’Porter - Страница 9

I think to myself, right in the middle of it. If I am going to have all of this sex, with all of these strange men, I have to get some enjoyment out of it for me. I pull myself on top of him, and rub myself on his thigh. I forget about his pleasure, and just focus on my own. I’m bringing myself to the most phenomenal orgasm when I hear …

‘Beth? Beth?’ His voice is breathy and gentle. ‘Beth? Beth?’

My eyes open.

‘Were you having another one of your dreams?’

Shit.

‘Yes I was,’ I say. He thinks that the dreams I have, the ones that cause me to writhe around moaning in my sleep, are recurring dreams of me ballroom dancing. Because that is what I told him. I said that ballroom dancing is an unrequited ambition of mine. He got me classes for my last birthday. I am yet to use the vouchers.

‘I was doing the waltz, with you. We were going to win I reckon,’ I tell him, sleepily. Thinking it best not to mention the hot builder who was just paying more attention to my fanny than my foxtrot.

‘You’d have been a beautiful dancer,’ he says, smiling. ‘Here, he’s ready for you.’ He passes me my four-month-old baby, Tommy. I sit up, unclip my bra, and put my nipple in his mouth. Michael looks away. ‘Let me know when you’re done,’ he says. ‘I’ll come get him and you can get some more sleep.’

‘It’s OK, I better work. What time is it?’

‘Nine.’

‘Wow, thanks. That’s a legit lie-in.’

‘Well, you’ve pumped enough to feed an entire baby army. He took his bottle happily at seven, there was no need to wake you,’ he says, kissing my head gently.

‘Thank you. I’m very lucky to have you as my husband.’

‘And Tommy and I are very lucky to have you. Call me when you’re done.’

Michael leaves the room. I hold my baby to my breast with one arm and use the other to reach for my phone.

As expected, my inbox is bulging already. The caterers, the florists, the cake maker, the PRs. This job is extremely demanding. I’d hoped to get six months’ maternity leave when I got pregnant, but this came in a few months ago and I couldn’t turn it down. That’s the trouble when you run your own business, no one pays you for your time off. So I ordered the tablecloths when I was in the labour ward. I sacked a florist while my stitches were being done. I’m everyone’s best friend, but I can be a boss when I need to be.

Michael managed to negotiate three months’ paternity leave because he works for a start-up that sees itself as entirely modern in its approach to absolutely everything. Which is an ironic place for him to work. He is forty-four and not modern. Unlike me – I’m thirty-six but sit in an office with a twenty-six-year-old every day who gives a masterclass on how to be a millennial. But I am grateful for Michael’s random modern job, because it’s meant that I’ve been able to keep up with the level of attention needed to organise the celebrity wedding of the year. And I’m grateful I didn’t have to sacrifice my work, although having to be ‘grateful’ towards my husband hasn’t gotten me any closer to resolving our problem.

I was really enjoying that dream. I put down my phone and slip my hand between my legs. As if he knows what I’m thinking, my baby gurgles and pulls back from my nipple, giving me a judgemental side eye. He’s probably right.

I swap him onto the other boob and stroke his head. It’s a miracle I have him at all, and I am so grateful. Not because there is anything wrong with me. I’m thirty-six and apparently a ‘geriatric’ when it comes to making babies, but the doctor said I have the ovaries of a twenty-year-old. Michael is perfectly fertile too, despite his age. Men are so lucky in that way; they can be fathers once they’re well past their ‘peak’. We have to do it at the most inconvenient time in our lives, when our careers should really be all we have to think about. He took all of the tests as a distraction from the act of actually having sex. It was awkward in the appointments with the fertility doctor; he’d say he’d do what he could to get to the bottom of why I wasn’t getting pregnant, and all the while I wanted to scream the reason directly into my husband’s face.

‘IT’S BECAUSE YOU WON’T HAVE SEX WITH ME. YOU NEVER FUCK ME. THAT IS WHY I AM NOT PREGNANT.’ I felt like if I ever got pregnant from the once a month I managed to get him to come inside me, it would be a miracle. But I did. And then I was. And now I have my baby, so at least I got that out of this marriage.

I love my husband, I do. He is kind and fun in pretty much every area of life other than sex. His mother is the battle-axe of all battle-axes and their relationship is weird and loaded with sexual context. They, of course, don’t see it, but I do. Is it really normal for a grown man to pop over to his mum’s house for a foot massage? Is it? No, it isn’t. Is it also normal to call your mother every morning, or to ask her to go to dentist appointments with you because you are scared? I want my little boy to know that I am always there for him, but I also want him to have healthy sexual relationships with other women, and not insist that I come on all their family holidays. I will also do my best not to make his future lovers feel like their relationship with him is second place. As long as he always comes home for Christmas.

Michael is always ‘tired’. He says it’s his age.

We had a lot of sex when we got together, which was fun while it was happening but often ended strangely. He’d say things like, ‘It’s natural for a man to want to flee after sex.’ Or, ‘You didn’t come, I don’t mind if you finish yourself off.’ Funnily enough I rarely did – a comment like that can send a clitoris sailing to the ground like an unopened parachute. Thud.

It wasn’t that he was cruel, just weird about sex. But we did it lots, so the romantic in me always presumed that all we needed was time. Practice. I put his issues down to the lack of wedlock at the time. He’s kind of traditional and maybe marriage meant a lot to him? I presumed he’d be in his element from our wedding night on. But no, it was as if he had sullied his bride. When we got back to our suite he said, ‘It’s a shame you’ve slept with people before.’ I walked out of the room, took off the sexy underwear I had on under my dress, changed it for my normal stuff and went back in to discover him asleep, or pretending to be asleep to get out of having sex with his whore of a wife.

There were always subtle undertones of blame. And as his sex drive has dwindled, his challenged machismo likes to make me feel that it’s all my fault. A few weeks ago he said sex was off the cards because my breath smelt. I cleaned my teeth. To which he responded with, ‘Mint makes me nauseous. You always get the toothpaste I don’t like.’ The dentist told me two days later that there were no signs of halitosis or anything dying underneath my tongue. But even still, I covered my mouth whenever I spoke to him for about a week after that.

Even during childbirth my body seemed to bother him. He stayed up by my head and kept giving me a really annoying head massage. The midwife asked him if he wanted to watch as Tommy was crowning, and Michael said, ‘God no, that’s not something I need to see.’ I remember thinking, ‘We just created a miracle and you’re too disgusted by my body to watch it enter the world?’ He also insisted that I wore a t-shirt while I was in labour. I hadn’t packed one, so he gave me the one he had under his shirt. It was so tight on my big belly and felt uncomfortable. Also there was a strong smell of BO that made me feel sick. When I tried to take it off he said, ‘You’ll regret that. I was going to take a photo.’

My nudity makes him uncomfortable.

It’s not like my new stretch marks and flabby belly are going to help with that, is it?

‘You must have as much sex as you want,’ I say to Tommy, as he suckles. ‘Just make sure he or she is up for it, use a condom, and always say thank you.’ He looks up at me, and I think he understands.

‘Michael,’ I call, getting out of bed and laying the baby down.

‘You done?’ he asks, peeping his head around the door.

‘Yes, and I better get to work.’

He picks the baby up right away and burps him on his shoulder.

‘Cool,’ he says, leaving the room. ‘I’ll leave you to get dressed.’

God forbid he sees me naked.