Surprise Me

TWO

It’s good news, obviously. It’s great news. We’re super-healthy, we’re going to live long … we should be celebrating!

But sixty-eight more years of marriage? Seriously? I mean …

Seriously?

On the car journey home, we’re both quiet. I keep sending little glances to Dan when he’s not looking, and I can feel him doing the same to me.

‘So, that was nice to hear, wasn’t it?’ I begin at last. ‘About living till a hundred, and being married for …’ I can’t say the number out loud, I just can’t. ‘For a while longer,’ I end tamely.

‘Oh,’ replies Dan, without moving his head. ‘Yes. Excellent.’

‘Is that … what you imagined?’ I venture. ‘The marriage bit, I mean? The … uh … the length?’

There’s a huge pause. Dan is frowning ahead in that silent way he gets when his brain is dealing with some huge, knotty problem.

‘I mean, it’s kind of long,’ he says at last. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘It’s long.’ I nod. ‘It’s pretty long.’

There’s a bit more silence as Dan negotiates a junction and I offer him gum, because I’m always the gum-giver in the car.

‘But good long, right?’ I hear myself saying.

‘Absolutely,’ says Dan, almost too quickly. ‘Of course!’

‘Great!’

‘Great. So.’

‘So.’

We lapse into silence again. Normally I would know exactly what Dan’s thinking, but today I’m not quite sure. I look at him about twenty-five times, sending him tacit, thought-wave messages: Say something to me. And, Start a conversation. And, Would it kill you to look this way, just once?

But nothing gets through. He seems totally wrapped up in his own thoughts. So at last I resort to doing the thing I never do, which is to say: ‘What are you thinking about?’

Almost immediately, I regret it. I’ve never been that wife who keeps asking, ‘What are you thinking about?’ Now I feel needy and cross with myself. Why shouldn’t Dan think in silence for a while? Why am I prodding him? Why can’t I give him space?

On the other hand: what the hell is he thinking about?

‘Oh.’ Dan sounds distracted. ‘Nothing. I was thinking about loan agreements. Mortgages.’

Mortgages!

I almost want to laugh out loud. OK, this just shows the difference between men and women. Which is something I don’t like saying, because I’m very much not a sexist – but honestly. There I am, thinking about our marriage, and there he is, thinking about mortgages.

‘Is there an issue with the mortgage or something?’

‘No,’ he says absently, glancing at the satnav. ‘Jeez, this route is going nowhere.’

‘So why were you thinking about mortgages?’

‘Oh, er …’ Dan frowns, preoccupied by his satnav screen. ‘I was just thinking about how before you sign up for one …’ He swings the wheel round, doing a U-turn and ignoring the angry beeps around him. ‘… you know exactly how long the loan period is for. I mean, yes, it’s twenty-five years, but then it’s done. You’re out. You’re free.’

Something clenches my stomach and before I can think straight, I blurt out, ‘You think I’m a mortgage?’

I’m no longer the love of his life. I’m an onerous financial arrangement.

‘What?’ Dan turns to me in astonishment. ‘Sylvie, we’re not talking about you. This isn’t about you.’

Oh my God. Again, I’m really not being sexist, but … men.

‘Is that what you think? Do you not hear yourself?’ I put on my Dan-voice to demonstrate. ‘“We’re going to be married for a massive long time. Shit. Hey, a mortgage is really good because after twenty-five years, you’re out. You’re free.”’ I resume my normal Sylvie-voice. ‘Are you saying that was a random thought process? Are you saying the two are unrelated?’

‘That is not—’ Dan breaks off as realization catches up with him. ‘That is not what I meant,’ he says with renewed vigour. ‘I’d actually forgotten all about that conversation with the doctor,’ he adds for good measure.

I shoot him a sceptical look. ‘You’d forgotten it?’

‘Yes. I’d forgotten it.’

He sounds so unconvincing, I almost pity him.

‘You’d forgotten about the sixty-seven more years we’ve got together?’ I can’t help laying a little trap.

‘Sixty-eight,’ he corrects instantly – then a tell-tale flush comes to his face. ‘Or whatever it is. As I say, I really don’t remember.’

He’s such a liar. It’s etched on his brain. Just like it is on mine.

We arrive back in Wandsworth, find a parking spot not too far from the house and let ourselves in. We live in a smallish three-bedroomed terraced house with a path up to the front door and a garden at the back which used to contain herbs and flowers, but now is mostly filled with the two massive Wendy houses my mother bought the girls for their fourth birthday.

Only my mother would buy two socking great identical Wendy houses. And deliver them in the middle of their birthday party as a surprise. All our guests were speechless as three delivery men manhandled in the candy-striped wall panels and roofs and cute little windows, and made them up while we all gawped.

‘Wow, Mummy!’ I exclaimed after we’d said our fulsome thank yous. ‘I mean, they’re wonderful … absolutely amazing … but … two? Really?’ And she just blinked at me with her clear blue eyes and replied, ‘So they don’t have to share, darling,’ as though it was perfectly obvious.

Anyway. That’s my mum. She’s adorable. Adorably annoying. No, maybe annoyingly adorable is a better way to put it. And actually, the second Wendy house is pretty useful for storing my gym mat and weights. So.

As we enter the house, neither of us seems to have much to say. While I’m leafing through the post, I catch Dan looking around our kitchen as though he’s seeing the house for the first time. As though he’s getting to know his prison cell, I find myself thinking.

Then I chide myself: Come on, he doesn’t really look like that.

Then I exonerate myself, because in fact, he really does. He’s pacing around like a tiger, eyeing the blue-painted cabinets morosely. Next he’ll be scratching a mark on the wall. Starting the tallies to mark our ceaseless, weary march down the next sixty-eight years.

‘What?’ says Dan, feeling my eyes on him.

‘What?’ I counter.

‘Nothing.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Nor did I.’

Oh God. What’s happened to us? We’re both irritable and wary. And it’s all that bloody doctor’s fault for giving us such good news.

‘Look, so we’re going to live practically forever,’ I burst out. ‘We have to deal with it, OK? Let’s just talk this out.’

‘Talk what out?’ Dan feigns innocence.

‘Don’t give me that!’ I erupt. ‘I know you’re thinking: Bloody hell, how the hell are we going to last that long? I mean, it’s wonderful, but it’s …’ I circle my hands. ‘You know. It’s … it’s a challenge.’

I slowly slide down the kitchen cabinet I’m leaning against, so I’m on my haunches. After a moment, Dan does the same.

‘It’s daunting,’ he agrees, his face relaxing as he admits it. ‘I feel a bit … well … freaked out.’

And now, finally, it’s out. The honest, deep-down truth. We’re both shit-scared of this epic, Lord-of-the-Rings-scale marriage we suddenly appear to find ourselves in.

‘I mean, how long did you think we’d be married for?’ I venture after a pause.

‘I don’t know!’ Dan throws up his hands as though in exasperation. ‘Who thinks about that?’

‘But when you stood at the altar and said “till death us do part”,’ I persist, ‘did you have, like … a ball-park figure in mind?’

Dan screws up his face, as though trying to cast his mind back. ‘I honestly didn’t,’ he says. ‘I just envisaged … you know. The misty future.’

‘Me too.’ I shrug. ‘I was totally vague. I suppose I imagined we might reach our silver wedding one day. When people reach their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, you think: Wow. They’ve done it! They’re there!’

‘When we reach our silver wedding anniversary,’ says Dan, a little grimly, ‘we won’t even be halfway there. Not even halfway.’

We’re both silent again. The ramifications of this discovery just keep on coming.

‘Forever is a lot longer than I thought,’ says Dan heavily.

‘Me too.’ I slump against the cabinet. ‘So much longer.’

‘It’s a marathon.’

‘A supermarathon,’ I correct him. ‘An ultramarathon.’

‘Yes!’ Dan looks up in sudden animation. ‘That’s it. We thought we were running a 10K and now suddenly we’ve found out we’re in one of those nutty hundred-mile ultramarathons in the Sahara Desert and there’s no getting out of it. Not that I want to get out of it,’ he adds hastily, at my glance. ‘But nor do I want to … you know. Collapse with a stroke.’

Dan really knows how to pick his metaphors. First our marriage is a mortgage. Now it’s going to give him a stroke. And by the way, who’s the Sahara Desert in all this? Me?

‘We haven’t paced ourselves properly.’ He’s really warming to his theme. ‘I mean, if I’d known I was going to live that long, I probably wouldn’t have got married so young. If people are all going to live until a hundred, then we need to change the rules. For a start, don’t commit to anyone till you’re at least fifty …’

‘And have babies at fifty?’ I say, a little cuttingly. ‘Heard of the biological clock?’

Dan is drawn up short for a moment.

‘OK, that doesn’t work,’ he concedes.

‘Anyway, we can’t go back in time. We are where we are. Which is a good place,’ I add, determined to be positive. ‘I mean, think of your parents’ marriage. They’ve been married for thirty-eight years and counting. If they can do it, so can we!’

‘My parents are hardly a good example,’ says Dan.

Fair enough. Dan’s mum and dad have what you might call a tricky relationship.

‘Well, the Queen, then,’ I say, just as the doorbell rings. ‘She’s been married for a zillion years.’

Dan just stares at me incredulously. ‘The Queen? That’s all you can come up with?’

‘OK, forget the Queen,’ I say defensively. ‘Look, let’s discuss it later.’ And I head to the front door.

As the girls burst joyously into the house, the next sixty-eight years or whatever suddenly seem irrelevant. This is what matters. These girls, right now, these rosy-cheeked faces, these fluty high-pitched voices calling, ‘We got stickers! We had pizza!’ They both drag at my arms, telling me stories, and firmly pulling me back towards them when I try to say goodbye to my friend Annelise, who’s dropped them off and is waving cheerily, already heading back to her car.

I hold them to me, feeling the familiar squirm of their arms and legs, wincing as their school shoes trample on my feet. They’ve only been on a two-hour play date. It was nothing. But as I clasp them to me, I feel like they’ve been away for ages. Surely Anna’s grown? Surely Tessa’s hair smells different? And where did that little scratch on Anna’s chin come from?

Now they’re talking in that almost-secret twins’ language they have, their voices overlapping, strands of their blonde hair meshed as they gaze reverentially down at a sparkly seahorse sticker on Tessa’s hand. From what I can hear, I think they’re cooking up plans to ‘share it forever, till we’re grown-up’. Since it will almost certainly disintegrate as soon as I take it off, we’ll need a diversion, or there’ll be howls. Living with five-year-old twins is like living in a Communist state. I don’t quite count out the Shreddies into the bowls every morning to make sure things are equal, but …

Actually, I did once count out the Shreddies into the bowls. It was quicker.

‘Right!’ says Dan. ‘Bath time? Bath time!’ he corrects hastily. Bath time is very much not a question. It’s an absolute. It’s the lodestone. Basically, the entire edifice of our household routine is based on bath time happening.

(This isn’t just us, by the way, it’s every other family I know with young children. The general perception is that if bath time goes, everything goes. Chaos descends. Civilization disintegrates. Children are found wandering the streets in tatters, gnawing on animal bones while their parents rock and whimper in alleyways. Kind of thing.)

Anyway, so it’s bath time. And as our nightly routine gets under way, it’s as though the weirdness of earlier on never happened. Dan and I are operating as a team again. Anticipating each other’s every thought. Keeping communication brief in our almost-psychic parent-code.

‘Shall we do Anna’s—’ Dan begins, as he passes me the hair detangler.

‘Did it this morning.’

‘What about—’

‘Yup.’

‘So, that message from Miss Blake.’ He raises his eyebrows.

‘I know.’ By now I’m combing detangler through Anna’s hair with my fingers, and I mouth over her head: Hilarious.

Miss Blake is our headmistress and her message was in Anna’s home message book. It was a typed memo to all parents, asking them please NOT to discuss or ‘gossip at the school gate’ about a certain incident, which had absolutely ‘NO FOUNDATION’.

I had no idea what she was talking about, so I immediately emailed round the other parents, and apparently Miss Christy who teaches the top year was seen googling one of the dads on the classroom computer, not realizing it was linked to the whiteboard.

‘Can I have the—’

Dan hands me the shower attachment and I blast Anna’s head with warm water, while she giggles and yells, ‘It’s raining!’

Were we always so psychic? So in tune with each other? I’m not sure we were. I think we changed after we had the girls. When you have baby twins, you’re in the trenches together. You’re feeding, changing, soothing, passing babies back and forth in rotation, round the clock. You hone your routines. You don’t waste words. When I was breastfeeding Anna and Tessa and too tired to talk even, Dan could pretty much tell just from my expression which of the following I meant:

Could I have some more water, please? Six pints should do.

And a couple of Galaxy bars? Just shove them into my open mouth; I’ll suck them in.

Could you please change the TV channel? My hands are full of baby and I’ve watched thirteen straight hours of Jeremy Kyle.

God, I’m exhausted. Have I said that more than five hundred times today?

I mean, do you realize the levels of exhaustion I’m talking? My bones have collapsed inside my body, that’s how tired I am. My kidneys are slumped against my liver, weeping gently.

Ow, my nipple. Ow. Ouch.

Owwwwww.

I know. It’s natural. Beautiful. Whatever.

Let’s not have any more after this, OK?

Did you get that? Are you paying attention, Dan? NO MORE BABIES, EVER.

‘Argh!’ My reminiscing comes to an end as Tessa swooshes the water so hard out of the bath, I’m drenched.

‘Right!’ snaps Dan. ‘That’s it. Get out of the bath, both of you.’

At once, both girls start wailing. Wailing happens a lot in our house. Tessa is wailing because she didn’t mean to splash me so hard. Anna is wailing because she always wails when Tessa does. They’re both wailing at Dan’s raised voice. And of course, they’re both wailing because they’re exhausted, though they’d never admit it.

‘My sti-icker,’ says Tessa in choked tones, because she always brings every calamity she can think of into the frame. ‘My sti-i-i-i-cker bro-oke. And I hurt my thu-u-umb.’

‘We’ll take it to the sticker hospital, remember?’ I say soothingly as I wrap her in a towel. ‘And I’ll kiss your thumb better.’

‘Can I h-h-h-have an ice lolly?’ Her eyes slide up to me, spotting an opportunity.

You have to admire her chutzpah. I turn away to hide a giggle and say over my shoulder, ‘Not right now. Maybe tomorrow.’

While Dan takes over story duty, I go to change out of my wet clothes. I dry myself off, then find myself moving over to our mirror and staring at my naked body.

Sixty-eight years. What will I look like in sixty-eight years’ time?

Cautiously I press the skin together on my thigh until it’s all wrinkled up. Oh God. Those wrinkles are my future. Except they’ll be all over my body. I’ll have wrinkly thighs and wrinkly boobs and … I don’t know … a wrinkly scalp. I release my wrinkles and survey myself again. Should I start more of a beauty regimen? Like exfoliation, maybe. But then, how’s my skin going to last me till the age of 102? Shouldn’t I be building up layers, not scrubbing them away?

How do you keep your looks for a hundred years, anyway? Why aren’t they telling us this in the magazines?

‘OK, they’re settled. I’m going for a run.’ As Dan comes in, he’s already peeling off his shirt, but he stops when he sees me standing naked in front of the mirror.

‘Mmm,’ he says, his eyes gleaming. He throws his shirt on the bed, comes over and puts his hands around my waist.

There he is in the mirror. My handsome, youthful husband. But what’s he going to look like in sixty-eight years’ time? I have a sudden, dismaying image of Dan all elderly and wizened, batting at me with a stick and yelling, ‘Humbug, woman, humbug!’

Which is ridiculous. He’ll be old. Not Ebenezer Scrooge.

I shake my head sharply, to dispel the image. God, why did that doctor ever have to mention the future in the first place?

‘I was just thinking …’ I trail off.

‘How many more times we’re going to have sex?’ Dan nods. ‘I already worked it out.’

‘What?’ I swivel to face him. ‘I wasn’t thinking that! I was thinking—’ I stop, intrigued. ‘How many times is it?’

‘Eleven thousand. Give or take.’

‘Eleven thousand?’

I feel my legs sag in shock. How is that even physically possible? I mean, if I thought exfoliation was going to wear out my skin, then surely …

‘I know.’ He takes off his suit trousers and hangs them up. ‘I thought it’d be more.’

‘More?’

How could he think it would be more? Just the thought of it makes me feel a bit dizzy. Eleven thousand more shags, all with Dan. Not that – I mean, obviously I want them to be with Dan, but … eleven thousand times?

How will we even have the time? I mean, we have to eat. We have to hold down jobs. And won’t we get bored? Should I be googling new positions? Should I install a TV on the ceiling?

That figure can’t be right. He must have misplaced a zero.

‘How did you work that out?’ I demand suspiciously, but Dan ignores me. He runs his hands down my back and cups my bottom, his eyes full of that intent, single-purpose look he gets. The thing about Dan is, you can only talk about sex with him for about thirty seconds before he wants to be doing it, not talking about it. In fact, he views talking about sex, generally, as a total waste of time. (I rather love talking about it, but I’ve learned to do that afterwards. I lie in his arms and tell him everything I think about … well, everything, and he says, ‘Mmm, mmm,’ until I realize he’s fallen asleep.)

‘Maybe I’ll put off my run,’ he says, kissing my neck firmly. ‘It is our anniversary …’

And it is. And the sex is great – we’re pretty psychic at that too, by now – and we lie in bed afterwards and say things like ‘That was amazing’, and ‘I love you’, and everything that happy couples say.

And it was amazing.

And I do love him.

But – totally, absolutely honestly – there’s also another tiny voice in my head. Saying: One down. Only another 10,999 times to go.