Private Lives

Chapter 1

Seb and Rosie walk in silence, side by side, to Eddy’s party.

Eddy adores his birthday, but it has been the same every year for the last decade. In the weeks leading up to it, Eddy will shake his curls and say he doesn’t want to celebrate, but then a few days before he’ll tug his beard and change his mind. And on cue, every year, his wife, Anna, will pull together a last-minute dinner party.

Now, outside their friends’ Victorian terraced house, almost identical to their own, Rosie turns to Seb and offers him the tennis racquet she wrapped with their four-year-old daughter that afternoon. ‘Here, you give it to him – it was your idea.’

The wrapping paper gapes and bags around the thin frame like ill-fitting clothes. Their fingers briefly touch as he takes it, and Seb catches a flash of panic in her eyes, as if she’s worried, worried he’s going to bring up everything from last night. She just shakes her head and turns towards the gate. This is their dynamic now. Their relationship more like that of passive-aggressive colleagues than the happy couple they lead everyone to believe they are. It’s normal, Seb silently reminds himself. They are just relearning how to be together without their three kids – Sylvie, eleven; Heath, nine; and Greer, four – dangling off them, screaming and needing them. That’s all. So normal.

As he follows behind her, stepping over a compressed mash of autumnal leaves, he runs through his options to lift the mood. In the final moment before they reach the front door, he opts for a classic.

‘Hey, Ro,’ Seb says, suddenly a bit shy as she turns back to him. ‘You look beautiful.’

Rosie looks down at herself. Perhaps a little surprised and a little disappointed to see herself still there, dressed in her favourite black jeans and blue silk shirt. ‘My body feels like a bag of spanners,’ she says glumly.

Seb laughs. Relieved she’s making a joke. ‘Well, I adore every single one of the spanners in your lovely bag.’

Rosie smiles, grateful, and Seb reaches for her hand, the one not holding a wine bottle, and squeezes quickly. He feels another wash of relief, because looking into her dark eyes in that moment they silently agree to let last night go.

The door opens with a big whoosh and Seb and Rosie lift their arms to the sky, calling in sing-song voices, ‘Happy birthday!’

‘Friends!’ Eddy’s laughing, folding them both into his big arms, pulling them close, smacking his lips to their foreheads like they’re his grown children who have at last come home. ‘Thank God you’re here.’

Eddy keeps his hand on the back of Seb’s neck as Anna hurries pink-faced towards them from the kitchen, lifting an apron over her blonde head. Her feet are bare and her arms – just like Eddy’s – are open wide to Rosie.

‘Hi, loves!’ she squeals like she hadn’t seen them both only yesterday at the school gates.

Rosie bends down towards Anna but as they hug, one of Anna’s dangly gold earrings catches in Rosie’s hair. ‘Ow!’

They release each other quickly, Rosie touching the top of her head.

‘Oh God, sorry! Bloody things!’ Anna says, pulling a few strands of dark hair from the complicated hoops.

Rosie shakes her apology away, keen to move on from the awkwardness, and reaches for Anna’s hand. ‘That dress looks fab on you.’

Seb looks at his wife, his gorgeous, kind wife. She is next to Anna who is now on tiptoes, twisting her curvy hips from side to side, showing off her fitted black dress, delighted, and Seb marvels at Rosie’s apparent ease in giving others what they need.

‘Thanks. Spanx are the best,’ Anna says, snapping the elastic under her dress, before turning to Seb, opening her arms again.

‘Sebbo!’ She pulls him down firmly towards her. She smells warm, of spices simmering in a stew. Eddy and Anna have been together for twenty years, and Seb’s known her for longer than he’s known Rosie. Although he feels brotherly towards her, he will always find a reason to pop out into the garden when Anna gets too much. Eddy can be similar. Seb often finds himself missing easy shots on the tennis court because he’s zoned out of Eddy’s constant chatter. Releasing him from her grip, Anna starts telling Seb about their cat leaving a bird’s decapitated head on the kitchen table. Meanwhile Eddy takes Rosie’s coat with a twinkle in his eye, a telltale sign that he is already at least two drinks down, and ushers her into the sitting room.

‘Oh wow!’ Rosie starts laughing as soon as she enters the room. It’s a blurt of a laugh, uncontrolled, one of Seb’s favourites.

Seb follows a couple of paces behind and starts laughing with Rosie. The room is plastered with photos of Eddy. The same extreme close-up of Eddy’s grinning, bearded face has been stuck up on the walls, over the fireplace and is even dangling from the lampshade over the large, carefully set dining table.

‘Welcome to heaven,’ Eddy says, raising his hands, grinning widely as Anna starts passing around champagne flutes.

‘Jesus. I had a nightmare like this once,’ Seb says, turning around the room slowly.

‘Ha!’ Eddy laughs, his palm reaching to stroke Anna’s bottom as she passes.

‘It was my idea,’ Anna says to Rosie, whose favour, even after all these years, she still seeks out. ‘He’s always prattling on about not getting enough attention, so …’ Anna gestures at the room as though this should be enough to satisfy any attention deficit.

Seb glances at Rosie. ‘See?’ he wants to say. ‘See? It’s not just us!’

Rosie’s holding out her glass to Eddy, who is pouring sparkling wine too fast, the bubbles foaming up and over, wetting her hand. She licks the rim of her glass to stop it spilling to the floor. Seb watches her tongue flick and where he would once have felt a snap of desire, he now just feels a dull thud. But Eddy’s turned, proffering the bottle towards Seb, so he keeps smiling as he offers up his own glass. When all their glasses are full, they lift them in a high salute as Seb says, ‘To Eddy!’

They turn to each other, carefully making eye contact with each member of their group, clinking glasses and chorusing, ‘To Eddy!’

When the other couples arrive soon after, there’s more kissing, more whoops of surprise, more drinks handed around. Seb doesn’t like the start of these things – the high-pitched greetings, the charge of nervous anticipation as everyone attempts to adapt to each other again.

He falls into conversation with Patrick, a friendly, enthusiastic man with a daughter at Seb’s school, married to the officious and slightly intimidating Vita. They talk about the local tennis club and the plans for resurfacing the older courts. Changing the subject, Patrick asks, ‘So, how does it feel being at the helm?’

Seb became headmaster at Waverly Community Secondary School three weeks ago, at the beginning of the autumn term. It’s what he’s wanted since he was a kid. Back then, Eddy laughed at him and told him to keep it quiet, because what kind of geek wanted to be a head teacher at twelve? Far better, Eddy said, to want to be an astronaut.

Now, whenever anyone asks about his job, Seb feels a lightness in his chest, a sense of pride.

‘Yeah, it’s good. I’m enjoying it. I mean, it’s obviously a big shift from teaching to doing a load more managerial stuff …’

‘That’s great, really great,’ Patrick says, his gaze sliding over to the women. ‘Essie loves school, you know. Adores it.’

Seb decides to give Patrick the gift he knows all parents crave, especially from a head teacher. ‘Well, Essie’s great. Such a kind girl and so hard-working.’

Patrick looks back at Seb, his eyes full of wonder and gratitude, because Seb’s seen what Patrick’s known all along – there’s some special kind of magic in his Essie.

‘She is, isn’t she?’ Patrick says, his voice a little watery with feeling.

Seb gets it. All three of his kids are at the Old School House, the primary feeder school across the road from Waverly Community. Greer, their youngest, is only three weeks into Reception and he can’t stop himself from seeking a smile, a nod, a secret transmission from her exhausted teacher that he is right. Greer is unusually bright for a four-year-old.

Seb half listens as Patrick begins to rattle away about Essie’s GCSE choices and his son’s rugby obsession before they’re interrupted by Anna, her voice high, loud, demanding attention as she shrieks, ‘A bird’s head!’

‘And that is exactly why we’re never getting a pet,’ says Vita, before making a vomiting gesture.

Eddy puts his arm around Vita’s thin shoulders, agreeing. ‘I’m with you. Worst decision of my life, getting that cat.’

‘Yesterday, you said having Albie was the worst decision of your life,’ Anna shrieks in faux-outrage, whacking Eddy on his round stomach.

‘OK, the cat was the second-worst decision, and don’t hit the birthday boy.’

From the kitchen, an alarm starts to ring.

‘Oh, that’ll be the dauphinoise!’ Anna says, putting her glass down on the table. ‘Everyone, find your seats. Ro, will you give me a hand?’

Rosie is sitting on the arm of the sofa, her phone in her hand, typing. Smiling the far-away smile of someone enjoying a private joke. She doesn’t hear Anna.

‘Rosie Kent, are you messaging your new girl crush?’

Again, Rosie doesn’t hear, so instead Anna turns back to Seb and says, ‘Unbelievable! Is she like this at home, Sebbo?’

Seb doesn’t want to be publicly disloyal, but Rosie is of course being rude, so he shrugs, nods and shakes his head. Abi is new in town and Rosie has taken it upon herself to show her the ropes. Rosie has lots of friends and acquaintances in Waverly but none of them make her smile like this or pull her phone out to message when she really shouldn’t. It’s like watching the first rumblings of love, and it makes Seb feel swampy with jealousy.

Seb still hasn’t met Abi even though her eldest daughter is at his school. Abi had cancelled a meeting they’d arranged last-minute, and it occurs to him now that he should make an effort to rearrange. That meeting with Abi might bring him a little closer to unlocking whatever is going on with Rosie.

From the sofa, Rosie looks up. ‘Sorry, I just had to reply to something …’

‘So it is Abi you’re texting?’ Anna asks, eyes still wide with disbelief to hide any genuine hurt she might be feeling.

‘Sorry,’ Rosie repeats, dropping her phone back in her bag. She glances briefly to Seb for backup; he smiles at her but she immediately looks away, back towards Anna, as she says, ‘Sorry, Abi was just asking about after-school clubs for Margot …’

‘Oh, well then.’ Anna crosses her arms under her large chest. ‘You should have said it was something so incredibly urgent. I honestly don’t get what all the fuss is about. I mean, Abi seems nice but …’

Rosie pouts out her bottom lip, gets up from the sofa and puts her arm around her friend. ‘Oh, Anna, don’t be jealous – you’re still my number one,’ she says in a soppy voice, too theatrical to be true. The truth, which Seb knows, is that Rosie enjoys Anna, loves her in her way, but probably wouldn’t have chosen to be friends with her were it not for Seb and Eddy’s long-standing friendship.

‘Hmm,’ Anna replies, like she understands she will never see all of Rosie, but that’s OK because right now Rosie’s arm is round her. Seb watches Anna’s shoulders drop with relief.

Anna and Eddy are the same in that respect, needing constant reassurance. Their huge personalities, like fur coats, belying the sensitive, brittle little creatures inside.

Then Patrick turns to them, nose twitching, and asks, ‘Is that burning I can smell?’

‘Shit! The dauphinoise!’ Anna says, grabbing Rosie and pulling her towards the kitchen.

The rest of them shuffle around the table looking for their handwritten place cards. Seb is sitting next to Lotte, another parent from the school.

Lotte and her husband, Richard, are opening a new restaurant in town called PLATE (the capitals were Lotte’s idea) and Seb finds that Lotte is – as usual – in a chatty mood. She grasps Richard’s hand, which is balled in a tight fist on top of the table, as she tells Seb how Richard poached an excellent London chef – ‘Diego someone, have you heard of him?’ Richard smiles reflexively but pulls his hand away from his wife and turns his attention back to Eddy, who is asking him something about the wine. Seb makes sure he keeps nodding as Lotte chatters about tile options for the restaurant toilets, and he feels the rush as a great wave of loneliness rises up within him. Rosie appears holding a platter of steaming pulled pork, she must feel him looking – she smiles briefly, like he’s an acquaintance she’s just spotted in the street.

‘Hope everyone’s hungry!’ Rosie says, leaning over the table to put the meat in front of Anna’s place at the head, next to a bowl of bean stew for vegetarians Patrick and Vita.

Lotte picks up a serving spoon to dish out the potatoes that Anna places in front of her as she asks Seb, ‘Has Rosie told you that we’re employing – on Diego’s insistence, actually – her new friend, Abi? She’s going to be our restaurant manager.’

‘Oh?’ Seb says, accepting a spoonful of sloppy, creamy and only slightly blackened potatoes. Rosie hadn’t told him – but that’s hardly remarkable, a bitter little voice reminds him inside.

‘Yeah,’ Lotte replies. ‘I wasn’t sure about her at first, I thought she had a bit of a too-cool-for-school vibe, but I think that was just because she’s from Hackney, you know? Tattoos, cropped hair, you know the type. Now, of course, I love her. She’s super cool.’

‘Give it a year or two in Waverly and that’ll change,’ Vita says across the table, holding up her plate to Lotte before turning, like a hunter spotting a deer in the woods, towards her husband. ‘Patrick, is that meat on your plate?’

Patrick pinks but doesn’t look up before sliding the small piece of meat on to Rosie’s plate next to his, muttering, ‘Sorry, sorry, V.’

Vita shakes her head at the table, as if she blames all the other carnivores for Patrick’s momentary lapse of judgement. Poor Patrick.

Anna whoops again. ‘Shit! The gravy!’

This time Seb stands quickly; he’s closest to the kitchen and needs a break. ‘I’ll get it.’

Anna blows him a kiss. ‘Love you, Sebbo.’

The kitchen is chaos. It looks like Anna’s used every utensil, every pan. Seb spots the gravy bubbling on the hob, picks up a cleanish spoon, tastes, before adding more salt. He goes to the cupboard for the cow-shaped gravy boat he remembers from Sunday dinners made by Eddy’s mum long before her dementia set in. Just as Seb’s about to pour the gravy into the boat, the back door opens, and Blake appears. At fifteen, his godson’s got the same body Eddy had as a teenager, before beer and a desk job filled him out. Blake’s tall and solid; he seems to take up half the kitchen.

‘Hey, Blake,’ Seb says, meaty steam from the gravy billowing around him.

‘Hey, Mr … I mean, Uncle Seb.’ Blake kicks off his trainers without undoing the laces, leaving them and his sports bag by the back door. ‘Mum always forgets the gravy. Need a hand?’

Without waiting for an answer, Blake, sweet boy, holds the ceramic cow steady while Seb slowly pours from the pan.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Seb says when they’re finished. ‘How was football?’

‘Yeah, all right, one all. Greenwood did some dodgy sliding tackles, though.’

‘God, they’re still doing that? They were like that when your dad and I used to play them thirty years ago.’

Blake smiles and shakes his head, amazed by the vast swathe of time. ‘I thought football wasn’t around back then.’

‘Oh yeah, it was right after the ball had been invented, although of course all we had to kick were pig’s bladders, so …’

‘With your bare Neanderthal feet.’

‘That’s right.’ Seb laughs now, thinking how he’d stay here in the kitchen talking with Blake all night if he could.

From the sitting room Anna calls, ‘Seb! Gravy!’

Seb widens his eyes at Blake and Blake laughs again. With a flick of his head, Seb asks, ‘You coming in to say hello?’

‘You think I’ll ever hear the end of it if I don’t?’

‘Nope,’ Seb says, smiling.

Blake breathes out.

‘Come on, then,’ Seb says, picking up the gravy boat.

As Seb follows Blake back into the dinner party, Eddy looks up at them, his eyes glazed and shiny with wine. ‘What secrets has the spy been sharing with you, Blakey?’

‘Spy?’ Patrick asks, taking a bite of his bean stew as Seb places the gravy boat on the table and decides to say nothing. Lotte and Rosie turn to Blake, asking about his football practice. But Richard is one of those people who always dawdles a beat behind everyone else.

‘Why’s Seb a spy?’

Eddy stands, picking up the bottle, and starts refilling everyone’s glasses before he comes up behind Seb, squishing his cheeks together with one hand, and says, ‘Because no man can be so good and so bloody pretty, that’s why. It has to be an act.’

Seb pushes his hand away, saying, ‘Didn’t you used to think Anna’s dad was a spy, too?’

‘No, Grandad Mike always wanted everyone to think he was MI5 but actually he was just the local busybody …’

‘Eddy!’ Anna interrupts; she has always been defensive of her beloved dad. ‘He had good reason to be protective. You don’t know what it was like growing up in Ruston!’

Eddy wipes away an invisible tear and Anna rolls her eyes before turning to Vita, telling her the story of how she was raised just a few miles down the road in Ruston. Once a lovely local fishing village, it was slowly destroyed by poor planning, a corrupt council and all the usual cruel accoutrements of poverty. Her dad fought hard to protect the town he had been raised in, costing him his physical and mental health, before finally accepting defeat and moving to a tiny cottage in rural Hampshire.

Eddy ignores Anna and instead calls out to interrupt his son. ‘Blakey. Hey, Blake. Tell everyone, why is Uncle Seb a spy?’

Blake glances at Seb apologetically. ‘Oh, Dad and I just came by his office one day and he slammed his laptop closed as soon as he saw us. It was pretty sus.’

Seb’s throat tightens, he feels his smile shake, and he keeps his eyes on his plate of food in front of him.

‘No, you’re not telling it right, Blake,’ Eddy says as he puts the wine back on the table and sits down. ‘It was funny because Mrs Greene appeared and suddenly it all made sense to me. Mrs Greene isn’t who she says she is, she’s not a secretary but the boss, like … what’s her name? N? The one from Bond? Anyway, she appeared in a puff of—’

‘Oh, I remember what I wanted to say!’ Anna interrupts, making everyone turn to her. ‘Did everyone see the news today? The story about the poor TV presenter – Max Harting? I mean, what a fall! He was basically a national treasure.’

Eddy throws up his hands in exasperation at being talked over. ‘Fine. Everyone ignore the birthday boy.’

So they do.

‘It’s his wife I feel sorry for. I always said he was gay …’ Lotte adds.

‘Oh, live and let live, I say,’ Anna returns. ‘He hasn’t done anything illegal. I mean, I bet the boy’s parents are pissed off, but they should just sort that out between themselves …’

‘I’m going to go up,’ Blake says.

The women blow him kisses and everyone calls out goodnight as Anna checks Blake found his plate of food in the kitchen, and Eddy gets up again to bear-hug his son.

Later, after they’ve eaten and watched Eddy open his gifts – ‘It’s not … it can’t be … it is! The fucking Slazenger! Thank you, you beautiful people’ – and everyone is sloppy with wine, Anna squeezes Rosie’s hand and says to her and Seb, ‘I was doing that thing of hating my kids all day, then scrolling through baby pictures of them all night, and look what I found …’

Anna holds up the screen for them to see a photo of two naked, creamy babies with arms like fat, buttery croissants, sitting opposite each other in the bath. Baby Albie – Eddy and Anna’s younger son – and baby Heath – Seb and Rosie’s middle child.

‘I mean, just look at them! Such little puddings.’

A warm longing floods Seb because there he is, their baby son. He glances at Rosie, too; she’s smiling but it’s a sad smile, like she wishes she could reach into that photo and hold her beautiful baby one last time.

‘Flick to the next one,’ Anna says. It’s a photo of Rosie holding a naked baby on a towel on each leg, having just lifted them out of the bath. Rosie frowns at the screen, like she can’t quite place herself from eight years ago. Anna’s turned away from them now, laughing at something Vita and Eddy are arguing about, so Seb and Rosie look at the photo together.

‘Look at you, so beautiful,’ Seb says, resting his hand on her lower back. Close, but hopefully not too close.

‘You reckon?’ Rosie says, doubtful, cocking her head to look at the photo from a different angle. ‘I was thinking how knackered I looked, and I think that’s breast milk leaking through my T-shirt.’

‘Still totally gorgeous,’ Seb says, before adding, ‘That photo must have been taken before we moved down here.’ He remembers back then; they were still living in London. He’d just started teaching while studying at the same time, Sylvie a boisterous toddler and Heath crying with reflux all night. They’d spend most weekends trekking down to stay with his mum, Eva, and he longed to move, craved the simpler, safer life Waverly offered his young family. Now, living in Waverly, just a ten-minute walk away from his mum and with so much to be grateful for, Seb still feels hungry. It seems he is always yearning for something.

Next to him, Rosie sighs, her eyes fixed on herself in the photo, the woman she hardly recognizes. The wine is making her maudlin. For a mad moment he thinks about picking her up and carrying her home. He wants to lie skin to skin, wants to feel the mysterious electric pulse of her, the pulse that will remind him of his own precious aliveness. Rosie glances at her phone and he knows she doesn’t want that. She never wants that any more. As she reads a message, he looks at her and tries to imagine how it used to be, Rosie naked and lovely on top of him, her head thrown back, immersed in pleasure. For a long time, that image had been almost painfully erotic but now, mostly, it makes him sad. He’d tried everything he could think of. He’d tried talking, not talking, he’d back off and then he’d come on strong – buying Rosie an expensive silk nightie he thought she’d love but which she said made her feel like mutton – and so he’d retreated into despair. He was usually so good at being who people wanted him to be, expert at denying himself to make others happy, but this – this sex thing – and Rosie’s complete detachment – no, her complete rejection of him – gnawed at him until he felt he was disappearing inside his wanting.

In the first few months they hadn’t had sex, she said she was ‘touched out’ – the kids still grabbing, so demanding of physical touch. Now they are all at school, she has more time without them, but nothing has changed. She still flinches every time he even touches her hand. It’s the confusion that is slowly dissolving him. The feeling that she is wilfully keeping him from understanding. She says it isn’t that she doesn’t desire him, it’s that she has to relearn what she wants, what will turn her on. She needs time to figure that out. That’s as far as they’ve got and nothing – as far as Seb knows – has changed in months. What has become clear – crushingly, devastatingly clear for Seb – is that sex, and specifically their sex life, is, for Rosie at least, simply not that important.

Vita and Patrick shift furniture around to make a tiny dance floor and Eddy puts a Prince record on. He’s trying to pull Anna up to dance with him, but she’s squirming away, saying, ‘No, Eddy! I don’t want to, stop!’

Eddy gives up on his wife and instead grabs Rosie’s hand. Rosie drops her phone back into her bag again and because it’s Prince and because it’s Eddy’s birthday, she lets herself be led to the makeshift dance floor in front of the sofa. Rosie loves to dance. Her body flows like liquid, natural and free as she lets the music pour through her. Seb looks at Rosie – she’s laughing and for the first time tonight she seems at ease, like she’s shrugged something heavy off her shoulders – and, as he looks at her, he feels for an insane moment like he might cry, because all he can think, when he sees his wife’s happiness, is:

How could you, Sebastian?

How fucking could you?