No-One Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday (29 page)

Silence descended.

‘Good news is that me and Ben are mates again,’ Braindead piped up. ‘You know, after the fracas with that mate of Charlene’s. What was her name?’

Ben and Katy continued to stare at Braindead.

‘What
was
her name?’ Braindead repeated.

‘Abby,’ Ben whispered.

‘That’s it, Abby,’ Braindead nodded. ‘Can’t believe I forgot. Anyway, do you think I should call her? You know, now you’ve told her the score, Ben? Now you’ve told her to never pounce on you again because you are totally in love with Katy and would do anything for her. And you mean anything, not just stuff like watching what she wants on the telly, even if it’s crap, or pretending to like drinking wine. No, the kind of anything you mean is giving up your job to look after Millie so she could go back to the high-flying job she loves and you can have enough money to move to the suburbs and have a fancy wedding that she wants and you don’t give a shit about. That is the kind of love you are talking about.’

Ben and Katy continued to sit very still, staring at Braindead.

‘So should I?’ asked Braindead.

‘Should you what?’ muttered Ben.

‘Call Abby! Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying?’ Braindead paused, swivelling his eyes between the two of them. ‘Sod it,’ he declared. ‘I’ll go home and call her now. What have I got to lose, eh? Nothing, that’s what. You don’t mind if I go now, do you, mate?’

Ben shook his head.

‘Good to see you,’ Braindead said to Katy. ‘Just like old times, eh? Same time next week?’

Katy nodded mutely as Braindead got up from his chair and left.

Katy and Ben continued to stare awkwardly ahead, neither knowing what to say.

Eventually Katy swallowed, knowing it really was down to her to make the first move.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

Finally Ben looked at her. ‘What did you say?’

‘Thank you,’ she repeated, feeling her hormones start to swell and the first indication of possible tears.

‘What for?’ he muttered, looking back down at the floor again.

‘For giving up your job for me,’ she said, to the top of his head. She felt utterly ashamed. ‘I don’t think I ever said thank you.’

Ben didn’t look up. His shoulders moved up and down to indicate he was still breathing, but that was it. When eventually he did look up, to Katy’s astonishment he had tears in his eyes.

‘I just wanted you to be proud of me for a change,’ he said. ‘Instead of being some hopeless layabout PE teacher, I wanted to be someone you could be proud to call your husband. Someone who was being a great dad to your daughter whilst you could concentrate on your career. Turns out I couldn’t get that right either.’ He looked down again and she watched his hand reach up to wipe something away.

‘We got thrown out of Music, Mummy and Me,’ he said, looking back up.

‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought you’d think I was a failure,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get it. It was just too . . . weird. I couldn’t make any sense of why we were doing what she said so I got arsey with her and she threw me out. Told us never to come back.’

Katy was just to about to interject when he launched into his next confession.

‘Then I couldn’t get the sodding steriliser to work. I know you’d shown me, but I just thought it would be a piece of cake so I didn’t really listen. I
couldn’t make it do its thing, and I was panicking because we had no bottles sterilised and I thought I was going to murder Millie because of dirty bottles, so I did the unthinkable, well, actually, I did two very stupid things.’

‘What?’ said Katy, wide-eyed. What else hadn’t he told her?

‘I roped in Braindead and Charlene to help me. What was I thinking?’ He made his hand into the shape of a pistol and pretended to fire it into his own head. ‘Braindead nearly totalled the damn thing with a screwdriver and Charlene . . . well,’ he stopped, biting his lip. ‘To start with she just told me to watch videos on YouTube to help me work baby stuff out.’

‘YouTube?’ Katy echoed.

‘Yeah,’ Ben nodded. ‘Melissa from Minnesota showed me how to use a steriliser.’

‘You’d rather ask Melissa from Minnesota for help than me?’

‘I just didn’t want you to think I was an idiot. Then when I had a bit of a meltdown because I wasn’t coping, Charlene said she had the answer to all my problems, only I didn’t realise she meant Alison. She just arrived on my doorstep with her . . . and Abby.’

‘Oh,’ said Katy. ‘I see.’

‘I didn’t invite them, I swear I didn’t, but once she was there Alison made it seem all so simple, somehow. She knew exactly what to do. She could even make me look like I knew what I was doing.’

‘But why didn’t you just ask me? Talk to me, tell me you were struggling?’ asked Katy.

Ben shrugged.

‘You succeed in life, Katy,’ he said. ‘That’s what you do. I thought at the very least I could succeed at this.’ He shrugged again and she thought she saw the hint of tears coming back. ‘But it’s so
hard,’
he said, a single tear spilling down his cheek. ‘It’s . . . it’s just so
relentless,’
he gasped. ‘They need you
all
the time. You think they’re only small, they can’t make you jump through hoops, but they do. Constantly. And then they cry and you have no idea why, so there’s nothing you can do but ride it out until they finally stop because you’ve given them a different-coloured spoon to suck. None of it makes any sense!’ He drew breath, staring wildly at Katy. ‘And then there’s all this stuff you should know, like out of nowhere. Like when to start giving them
proper food, so you panic and you Google it and then you get fifty different opinions so you ask the health visitor, who talks complete and utter gibberish, so
you
, a complete and utter novice, have to decide which one to believe. What the hell is that all about? I mean seriously. How long have we been raising children as a civilisation and we still can’t decide when to start weaning? It’s utterly ridiculous. We’ve abolished many life-threatening diseases, cloned a sheep, put a man on the moon, but deciding if apple or carrot is the best first food for our kids . . . no-one is brainy enough to work that one out.’

Katy knew exactly how Ben felt. She’d spent most of the first few weeks with Millie feeling bewildered, confused and like she’d landed on a different planet where she understood nothing.

‘No-one appreciates how hard it is,’ Ben went on. ‘There’re all these people out there doing this job which is fucking impossible, quite frankly, and yet no one realises, no-one appreciates it. No-one.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Katy, grabbing his hand. ‘
I
appreciate it, I really do.’

‘And to top it all,’ said Ben. ‘Do you know what the worst of it is?’

‘No,’ said Katy, bracing herself.

‘I’ve turned into my bloody mother.
No-one appreciates me, no-one knows what I do for this family
,’ he said in a mock girly tone with his hand on his brow and a hint of a smirk on his lips.

‘I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you,’ said Katy. ‘I know I didn’t show it when you first offered to look after Millie. But . . . but I was where you are now, at the end of my tether, failing every day, thinking I was a rubbish mum.’ She hesitated, wondering whether to make her next confession.

‘I guess a bit of me didn’t want you to succeed because that would make me feel less terrible about my failings.’

Ben didn’t say anything, just breathed out slowly.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised you ended up asking Alison for help,’ she continued. ‘It would have been pretty pointless asking me. I just wished you’d told me, so I didn’t have to go and get all jealous that someone else was sniffing round you.’

‘You were jealous, were you?’

‘Of course,’ said Katy. ‘I know that you wouldn’t ever do anything like that and I feel absolutely terrible for thinking you might.’

‘I never would, you know.’

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But it would have been no less than I deserve, wouldn’t it?’

Ben didn’t reply.

‘Daniel reckons I’ve been waiting for you to punish me for what I did. That’s why I found it so easy to believe you were having an affair.’

‘I don’t want to punish you,’ said Ben. ‘That’s all done. It’s in the past. That is until I stupidly got myself involved with Alison again.’

Katy gave him a watery smile.

‘Then why won’t you have sex with me?’ she asked quietly.

‘What do you mean, I won’t have sex with you?’

‘Well, we haven’t done it since . . .’ She paused, finding it difficult to get the words out. ‘Since you found out about Matthew.’

‘Really!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is it that long? Why didn’t you just ask me?’

‘I tried,’ she said. ‘Remember? With the Dang Dang Whisky Slider Bombs, but that all ended very badly.’

‘You should have just said. You didn’t need to go to all that trouble. You should have just talked to me.’

‘What, like you just talking to me about the fact you weren’t coping looking after Millie?’

They both looked at each other in silence.

‘Shall we try just talking to each other in the future?’ said Ben eventually.

‘What a novel idea,’ said Katy.

‘Very mature of us, I reckon.’ Ben grinned and took her hand. ‘Shall I start?’

‘Fire away,’ she replied. ‘Whatever you want to get off your chest.’

‘Before I start, can I just ask where you’ve put our daughter?’

‘Oh, she’s at your mum’s. She’s having a sleepover.’

‘Great,’ he replied. ‘So here’s the first thing I want to say.’

‘Hit me with it.’

‘What on earth are we doing sitting in a microbrewery when we have the flat all to ourselves? We should be having sex.’

Chapter Thirty-One

Six weeks later

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘You really think I need to wear a tie for a christening?’ asked Ben for the fourth time that morning.

‘It’s not a christening, it’s a naming ceremony,’ Katy told him.

‘I know. Amounts to the same thing, though, doesn’t it?’

‘Not really, given that a christening is religious and a naming ceremony isn’t.’

‘What I mean is that it’s just an excuse for a party. The ceremony bit is something to be endured so you can have a right old rave-up.’

Katy stopped applying her lipstick and turned to look at Ben.

‘And it’s an excuse to buy a new outfit,’ he added. ‘Am I right?’

She looked down at her Fifties-style dress. It was pale blue lace, mid-calf length, and she’d spent every lunchtime for a month searching it out. It looked amazing, and in normal circumstances she might have been upset if it hadn’t been immediately obviously she’d bought a new frock. But then he was a man, after all, and today of all days she refused to be upset.

‘Oh, I’ve had it a while,’ she said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘Just never got round to wearing it.’ She decided to change tack. ‘Actually, I picked this up yesterday. Thought you could do with a new tie. Why don’t you try it on with your white shirt and smart trousers?’ She handed him a bag and held her breath as he pulled out the tie, which was exactly the same colour as her dress. She prayed he wouldn’t notice. He shrugged and dropped it on the bed, then reached for the ironed white shirt she’d left hanging on the back of a chair. In fact, he would wear pretty much whatever she wanted provided he didn’t have to put any thought into it.

‘I’ll go and get Millie ready,’ she said as she gave herself one last check in the full-length mirror. She looked just how she wanted to on this important day. Pretty and happy. Perfect. She checked her watch. It was all about timing now. Being late would ruin everything, and given that she’d not
tackled getting Millie into her outfit yet and Ben was only half dressed, then anything could happen to cause a delay.

‘Come on then, you,’ she said to Millie, pulling her out of her baby seat and easing her into an abundance of white taffeta. Ben hadn’t asked what Millie would be wearing today. Clearly her outfit hadn’t registered as important. Katy hoped again that he wouldn’t notice that the wide sash around her belly was the same colour as his tie and her lace dress. She lifted Millie up once all buttons were secured and held her tight to her chest, looking in the mirror at the pair of them. She should be nervous, she realised, but she wasn’t. She was just happy. Her only worry was whether Millie would throw up over her before they made it to the ceremony.

Ten minutes later they all stood in the hall waiting for the taxi to arrive.

‘You look fit,’ said Ben.

‘As a mother approaching forty way too rapidly, I take that as a massive compliment.’

‘That’s how it was intended,’ said Ben, tugging his tie loose. Katy fought the compulsion to tighten it back up again.

‘Remind me who’s coming,’ he said.

‘Oh, the usual, you know,’ she replied. ‘Just close friends and family.’

Ben nodded. Katy had offered to organise everything for today’s ceremony and that suited them both.

‘Do you not think this tie is over the top?’ he asked, taking another tug at it.

‘No,’ said Katy, trying to stay calm. ‘Why don’t you keep it on until you get there and if you’re not comfortable, take it off then.’

‘Right, I’ll do that,’ Ben agreed. ‘We could drive, you know. We don’t really need a taxi, do we?’

‘Look, it’s all organised. Just try and enjoy it, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Ben was making Katy feel nervous. Where was the bloody taxi so they could just get on with it?

‘Shall we wait downstairs?’ she suggested. If she watched Ben bobbing around on one foot any longer she might throw up.

‘Good idea,’ he said, picking up Millie.

Katy went to pick up the nappy bag, which weighed a ton.

‘I can take that,’ Ben offered, taking it from her. ‘Bloody hell, what have you put in here? The changing table?’

‘Just stuff we might need,’ she said.

‘You need some lessons on nappy bag efficiency,’ Ben declared. ‘Me and the Millster have it down to a five-item maximum these days. And we’ve agreed that by puberty she’ll have it down to just two. Wet wipes and spare pants, that’s it. No messing.’