When they pull up outside their terraced house, Lauren lifts Emmy out and deftly unclips baby Jude’s car seat, whilst Simon goes ahead carrying a sleeping Noah. She watches as he disappears up the narrow staircase, his shoulder knocking off a chip of peeling paint. She instinctively climbs the four steps to retrieve it from the threadbare carpet. Maybe, when he’s in a better mood, she’ll ask him again when he might be able to redecorate. The last four times she’s asked, his stock answer has been ‘when I get round to it’, but the paint chips are sharp and she worries about one of the children hurting themselves, especially Noah, who’s taken to sliding down the stairs on his stomach.
‘Right, I’m going to the pub,’ says Simon, as he comes back down the stairs a little while later.
‘What, now?’ asks Lauren from the sofa, where she’s giving Jude his bedtime feed.
He looks at her. ‘I assume you haven’t got a problem with that.’
It’s a statement rather than a question. There used to be a time, before the children, when they’d run something like that by each other first, not to ask permission exactly, but as a common courtesy. Now, on the rare occasion that she wants to go out, she has to clear it with him weeks in advance. When it gets to the event itself, the children’s food, bath and bedtime are planned with precision so that Simon doesn’t have to do anything. He then proceeds to call her at least three times, to ask questions that fully grown men should really know the answer to, resulting in Lauren coming back home sober, and earlier than intended. She’d end up thinking that it really wasn’t worth her while going out in the first place, and then she’d wonder if that was actually Simon’s intention.
She watches as he walks into the kitchen, opens the fridge and drinks the milk from the carton. God, how she hates him doing that. Why can’t he get a glass, like everyone else? He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Right, I’m off,’ he says, coming back into the living room with his car keys in his hand.
‘Why don’t you leave the car?’ braves Lauren. ‘Get a taxi. You’ve already had a couple of drinks.’
‘I didn’t know you were counting.’
‘I’m just saying . . .’
He leans over her, with one hand on the arm of the sofa and the other behind her head. She instinctively holds Jude tighter to her as she feels his hot breath on her face.
‘Why don’t you worry about women’s stuff and leave me to deal with the men’s?’ he whispers.
She could take the comment as an attempt by her husband to divvy up their responsibilities, albeit chauvinistically. Certainly a few years ago, that was all it would have meant. But things have changed, and Lauren knows that Simon’s words are loaded; specifically chosen to intimidate her.
‘I’m the man!’ she remembers him shouting eighteen months ago as he pinned her up against a wall, smashing his fist into the door beside her head. Her legs had threatened to give way as wood splintered around her. ‘I’m the provider,’ he’d gone on. ‘That’s my job – not your fucking father’s.’
She’d naively thought Simon would be happy that her dad had discreetly deposited five thousand pounds into their joint account. He’d obviously known they were struggling to make ends meet after Simon had been laid off work two months before. She, for one, had been grateful. It meant that she could do a food shop without worrying and not have to constantly justify the need to use the car instead of walking. But Simon hadn’t quite seen it like that, choosing instead to see it as Harry undermining his alpha-male status; wounding his fragile ego.
‘If I’d wanted your parents’ money, I would have asked for it,’ he’d yelled, his face turning a putrid shade of red. ‘But yet again, your father has seen fit to wield his almighty sense of self-worth.’
‘He’s only trying to help,’ Lauren had offered, desperate to diffuse the hostile situation she found herself in.
‘So you asked him?’ he’d said accusingly. ‘You went to your parents with your begging bowl?’ Bubbles of anger had formed on his lip and Lauren could see the vivid red marks on his knuckles as his arms flailed in fury.
‘No!’ she’d said, though it sounded more like a yelp. ‘I would never ask them for money.’
‘So, he just used his initiative, did he?’ Simon had sneered, his face still too close to hers. ‘He decided out of the goodness of his heart to help us, without you saying a word?’
Lauren had nodded feverishly. ‘Yes, yes. I swear I had no idea he would do that.’
Simon had hit the door with his open palm one more time before turning away. If the wall wasn’t there to support her, Lauren might well have fallen to the floor in a heap; drained of nervous energy.
‘It doesn’t have to be a bad thing,’ she’d chanced, after a minute or two of silence. ‘It will take the pressure off you – off us.’
Simon had laughed and shaken his head in apparent derision. ‘You think that’s why he did it?’
‘Well, yes,’ she’d said, confused. ‘Why else would he . . .?’
‘It’s not done to help us,’ he said. ‘It’s done with the sole intention of making me look stupid – making me look less of a man.’
‘But . . .’ started Lauren.
‘Don’t you see?’ he’d said, grabbing hold of her arms. She’d instinctively flinched, but something in his eyes had changed. They had a look of what she’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
‘This is what your dad does,’ he’d said softly. ‘He makes you think he’s doing you a favour, but it’s all about making himself feel superior.’
Was it? Lauren had
