she saw how mortified Johnny was that she felt some sympathy. It was a horrible thing to organize a disastrous weekend, then to have to see it through.
But very quickly, she’d moved on to fury: she’d hinted long and hard about the world-famous place in Perthshire and this was a million miles from it. Johnny was happy to spend lots of money on everyone else. Her money. But he wouldn’t spend it on her. She could have organized the weekend herself and she’d have made sure they all went to Scotland. But she’d wanted to be ‘surprised’.
Well, she was fucking surprised all right.
But her anger would have to be parked for the next two days because it wasn’t just about him and her. Other people were tangled up in this shit-show and she was obliged to be mannerly. There were times, though – more and more often lately – when she wondered about Johnny. Anonymous creeps online were always saying he was a cheater. Not just because he was good-looking and charming, but because, as the main breadwinner, she’d emasculated him. What other choice did he have, they reasoned, but to be unfaithful? Was this shitty weekend a passive-aggressive punishment? Was everything finally catching up with them?
Persuading him to sleep with her, that night in Limerick all those years ago, had been pure spontaneity. He’d been there, his hair rumpled, his tie askew. She’d made a jokey remark, he’d said, I do want you, and bam! She’d gone from dead to alive, from nothing to everything. Out of nowhere had come that astonishing spurt of lust, that flood of longing. Oh, my God, I’m a woman and you’re a man and let’s have sex because I bet sex with you would be pretty amazing. She’d wanted him and she didn’t give a flying fuck about the consequences. Like buying a fabulous coat she didn’t need and couldn’t afford.
But sleeping with Johnny wasn’t like buying a Tory Burch coat. Tory Burch coats could be returned and her money would be refunded.
That first night confirmed that, yep, they were very sexually compatible. That, yep, they were mad about each other. That this thing was real, that this thing was on.
She and Johnny had hit the ground running. Sex, sex, sex. Work, sex and more sex. Getting pregnant had given her a wobble – just what the hell was she at?
The distress of the poor Kinsellas gave her an even bigger wobble. But then it united herself and Johnny more tightly, in an us-against-the-world bond.
She’d thought they were happy, but when you’ve got kids and you share a frantic work schedule, there’s a lot of scaffolding keeping you operational. If things slipped off the tracks, it might take a while for someone to notice.
She had to admit that, despite their relative harmony, Johnny sometimes treated her like a joke: a headstrong nightmare, who needed robust management. When he and the kids sometimes ganged up, calling her Herr Kommandant, she’d assumed it was good-natured, but was she wrong?
Love faded and soured, so she’d heard. Had Johnny’s feelings for her curdled because she was too much of a bossy-pants?
Look at how different Ed and Cara were: Ed adored Cara. It was so obvious. There were no grand gestures from him, but he behaved as if he were the luckiest man alive. And Cara loved Ed back: that was for sure.
She never really got that from Johnny, that feeling of being cherished. Instead, she had a picture in her head of him slinking around, fearful of more chores and on the constant lookout for sex, like a raccoon around a bin.
He could be cheating. He actually genuinely could. The possibility made her feel sick. He had no shortage of opportunity – he travelled a lot without her. God knew who he met. People fancied him. She’d seen it in action. Jealousy surged, like hot lava.
Again she thought of him, like a raccoon nosing around a bin, wondering if he could persuade her into bed. There was a constant imbalance between the amount of sex she felt he wanted and what they actually managed. The thing was, she liked sex. She liked it a lot. It was just that accessing it felt like having to hack her way through a dense jungle, clearing obstacle after obstacle out of the way. Work and tiredness and children interrupting and last-minute chores all conspired to wreck any opportunities.
Once again she remembered the strange things he’d been saying during the weekend