Something to Hide by Deborah Moggach

we we
; or, if not, knowing the other one is at home, the lamps lit, the drinks poured and upstairs their double bed waiting in which they can snuggle together under the duvet, safe from the horrors of the dark, and cheating, for one more night together, their inevitable death.
    I omit all this.
    We’ve finished the Champagne by now and I’ve uncorked a bottle of Rioja. Both Jeremy and I have a good head for drink and match each other glass for glass; he says it’s one of the things he admires most about me. Bev gets giggly after one gin and tonic and then falls asleep. I wonder if he’d change his mind if he saw me alone at the end of the evening, gripping the banister as I stumble up to the bathroom where I gulp down tumblers of water and gaze in the mirror at the sweating, wrinkled tomato that is allegedly my face.
    Jeremy is wandering around the kitchen, picking things up and putting them down, familiarizing himself with the place again. It’s a beautiful evening; the sun shines through the window, burnishing the saucepans hanging above the oven. It’s nice to have him here, idly popping grapes into his mouth. He’s gazing at the photos jammed around a picture frame.
    â€˜Good Lord, has Jack had a baby?’
    I nod. ‘I’m a grandmother. Well, a granny-by-Skype.’
    â€˜Lucky you.’ He and Bev don’t have children. According to Bev their peripatetic lifestyle has been unsuitable for a family. ‘To be perfectly frank, neither of us wants one,’ she told me once. ‘It might sound selfish, but we’re just so happy in each other’s company we’ve never needed little sprogs to make us feel complete.’
    We’re just so happy
. The woman has the hide of a rhinoceros. Always did. Bev and I went to school together. I remember her in the toilets when we were thirteen. I had a livid eruption of acne over my forehead and chin. Frowning at herself in the mirror she inspected, with a shudder, a minute pimple on her cheek. ‘Ugh, look at this. Isn’t it disgusting? What on earth am I going to do?
Ugh
.’
    Jeremy is an old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes kind of chap so I’ve roasted us a leg of lamb, purchased from Waitrose, which has cunningly disguised itself as a local street market whilst simultaneously wiping out the real one whose cheery stallholders were the last people on earth to call me
darling
. Swaying slightly, I split open a packet of frozen peas and empty them into a saucepan.
    â€˜Know how long they take to cook?’ says Jeremy. ‘Same time it takes to sing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”. That’s our method, anyway.’
    Suddenly my good mood vanishes. I’m filled with such a black, bitter envy that it stops my breath. Jeremy and Bev, swaying together in their tropical kitchen, belting out the Stones song. I can’t bear it.
I can’t bear it.
    â€˜That’s too long,’ I snap. ‘They’d be soggy by then.’
    I don’t want Jeremy, of course I don’t. I just long, with all my heart, for such silliness. For thirty-five years of larkiness and laughter with the man I love. What has Bev done to deserve it? She’s not particularly beautiful; she’s not particularly clever. She’s not even particularly nice.
    It’s all luck, isn’t it? Luck and timing. When you’re young you’re a plum, ripening on the branch. The man who shook me down was Paul, a chap who never sang while he cooked. Who never noticed my hair or, indeed, made any comment about me at all. Over the years I felt myself fading, like the typing on fax paper. In moments of desperation I used to prod him for compliments. Once, in despair, I asked him,
Aren’t you lucky to be married to a woman with such long, slim thighs?
Humiliating, isn’t it? No wonder he looked startled. By the end of the marriage I was marginally deranged.
    Communication. That’s what I longed for.