Naomi is in the kitchen reading a business plan written by one of Charlie’s trendiest football mates, Tayo, when the washing machine beeps the end of its cycle. The house is quiet today. The builders clocked off early claiming they had to wait for some frame they’d glued to set. She’s enjoying the silence. Her life now is a cacophony of sound. Prue’s night-time wailing has ended but it’s been replaced by the minor-key screeching of drills, sharp hammering, never-ending chart radio punctuated by bursts of machine-gun male laughter. It’s affected Charlie more than it has her. When Prue was born, as the noise, the chaos bloomed into their lives, it was like someone let the gas out of Charlie and he withered.
The business plan is exceptionally well written; the planning and timescales are well thought through and the pitch, a plant-based junk-food café, is very compelling. The branding looks fantastic. But even without doing the research Naomi knows it will struggle to sustain itself here. People who live in London think ‘the rest of the country’ are just a slightly less cultured version of themselves and if only they can enlighten them with coriander and a sustainable vision of the future then ‘the rest of the country’ will jump on whatever they’re selling with glee. The reality is that ‘the rest of the country’ has its own tastes and desires and it absolutely loves bacon.
Naomi used to work for one of the top management consultancies in the world. The sort of company that has an office that looks like some fine Italian marble and polished steel had tantric sex and birthed a beautiful interior dressed in priceless artwork. Most of her work involved telling companies how their consumers thought and she’d always found it straightforward. Consumers want more of what they already like but they want it to feel like something they don’t already have. Be it a new lifestyle regime, an even smaller food processor or a new route around their supermarket, it should seem like the final piece in their lives that makes them feel complete. People loved her there and she rose through the company quickly. Her obsessive eye for detail, work ethic and plain-speaking approach endeared her to her bosses who were more accustomed to a vague Oxbridge delicacy.
Yanking out a clump of laundry from the machine she sees specks of sodden paper covering the dark wash like it’s cut itself shaving. Charlie never checks his pockets. She piles the damp mass on the kitchen island and goes about hanging everything up on the drying rack. Prue’s stuff on the bottom. Charlie’s on the middle. Hers on the top. She can’t shift the sleepsuit out of her mind. It’s on the hall table, ready to be taken back to nursery. She’s decided it must have got jumbled up with Prue’s spare clothes at nursery and when Charlie picked her up, he brought it home and packed it away in her drawers. The only thing she can’t make sense of is why there’s a piece of clothing made for a 0–1 month old in a nursery with a minimum age of six months? And who’s still into The Powerpuff Girls? It could be one of the hipsters who live up the hill from town, she thinks, there’s a couple of them, bearded and clad in trucker’s caps, whose kids go to Prue’s nursery. Those sort of people like ironic retro things. Maybe it fell out of one of their bags. Naomi closes her eyes tight and shakes the train of thought from her head. These are the things she allows herself to get flustered by now that she doesn’t have the fast-paced seventy-hour week and the constantly expanding inbox that came with her old job.
She’s got to Charlie’s black jeans, which seem like they must belong to a giant compared to Prue’s cute indigo cords she’s just hung up, and she finds the cause of the paper explosion. It’s a receipt. The bottom has been munched together by the machine but the top is— It’s a cinema ticket. Cineworld. Screen 4. 13:35. The film title is obscured. Charlie’s been to the cinema during the day. He’s meant to work during the day. She works part time, she does the lion’s share of the childcare when Prue isn’t at nursery, she handles the renovation of the house and he works a solid nine-to-five in his study on the top floor. That was what they agreed.
Naomi finishes the laundry and picks up Tayo’s business plan. She’ll take it up to Charlie. She won’t confront him about the ticket because she’s not meant to call him out about things any more because it makes him feel like she doesn’t trust him.
She gets to the top landing and pushes his closed door open. He starts like a rodent. Hand dashes to half-close his laptop. Body snaps his wheelie chair away from her. He looks up at her, brow furrowed over his eyes like a shield. She sees her husband’s body clenched into a spiral on his office chair and an image of The Lumberjack’s broad frame, shoulders like the top of a wall, springs into her mind. She glances down at Charlie’s crotch. Nothing. She’s caught him doing something on his computer he doesn’t want her to know about but it wasn’t that. She scans his office. Of course it’s one of the more finished rooms in the house. Even down to his having completed his ‘I want all my units, desk and storage on wheels because you can always find a new configuration that works better’ project. Charlie designs products. Prototypes for new products. He had aspirations to be an inventor but there’s no viable business model for that.
‘Yeah?’ he says, as if she were a long-standing colleague he’s never warmed to.
‘I looked at your friend’s business plan.’
‘Oh, cool.’ He keeps his hand on the half-cock laptop. He has a headphone in the ear that faces away from her. He was doing something on his computer that definitely wasn’t work and he’s hiding it from her like a schoolboy with a dirty magazine. Naomi has the cinema ticket in her back pocket. She wants to lay it on his desk like a poker player revealing a final ace but instead she holds out Tayo’s translucent turquoise folder. Charlie stands up, pushing the laptop screen back up to its normal position. What was he doing?
‘What were you doing?’
‘What?’ He laces his hands together in defiance.
‘When I came in, what were you doing?’
‘Sorting some emails.’ He swings the computer towards her. She makes a show of not looking to tell him she trusts him. She doesn’t. It proves nothing. He could have done any number of things to cover for himself. He understands technology in a way she never will. She jerks the folder towards him.
‘I’ve made some notes on it.’
‘Is it any good?’ He takes the business plan, pivoting on the ball of his foot, not wanting to plant himself too close to her.
‘He’s obviously really bright.’
‘He wants to do carbon-free music nights. He’s asked me if I can help with making a set-up that powers all the AV equipment with someone riding a bicycle on the side of the stage.’ Charlie slaps the folder to congratulate it. Naomi feels the ticket steaming in her pocket but she knows she can’t confront him now. He seems up, high on enthusiasm for Tayo’s doomed café. She cannot allow herself to be cast, once again, as the arch-villain in the saga of her husband’s happiness.
‘He’s written all that in his business plan.’
‘Course.’ He hunches back to his workstation and crams the folder into the bag sitting on the floor next to his desk. Naomi studies his workspace again. There’s an avocado anglepoise lamp glowing dimly at the end of the desk that she hadn’t noticed earlier. Their soft furnishings budget seemingly doesn’t apply to items for Charlie’s office. He’s put his artiest band posters up on the far wall. DJ Shadow. LCD Soundsystem. Gorillaz. Life before Prue. Lightless rooms humming with beer and humanity. Their clammy cheeks pressed together. Heads bobbing infinitesimally. Fingers intertwined. Their ritual as they’d wait for the beat to drop. And when it did they’d push apart like opposite poles of a magnet, launch hands into the air, whoop and smile and smile and smile until the house lights came on or the drugs wore off.
‘It’ll be a really great space,’ she says.
‘Whenever I chat to someone like Tayo, makes me feel like we did the right thing moving here.’ Perhaps he went to the film with Tayo? Perhaps it was a hipster-creatives’ version of a business meeting. She hopes that that’s it. She wants him to be spending his days making the business work, making their future work. He’s come over to her, closer than he wanted to before.
‘You know what I mean?’ He rests a hand on her hip. They used to go to the cinema together. He taught her to love films, action schlock as much as award-season fodder. A gig or the cinema, alternating every Thursday night. She made him set up a shared online calendar for it to make sure they always had tickets for something. They learnt everything about each other in darkened rooms. She meets his eyes, eyes that have become frosted glass to her in the last eighteen months, and presents him with a half-smile.
‘You know what we haven’t done for ages?’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Cinema.’ She looks right at him, trying to decipher his reaction like someone playing a memory game. He’s nodding, though he’s not aware he’s doing it.
‘We could get a babysitter,’ he says, ‘date night. Maybe in a month’s time if … If it hasn’t worked this time.’
‘There anything on you want to see?’
‘Not really looked for a while.’ He chuckles, forehead creasing. He’s giving nothing away. But, like anyone who needs everyone to like them, Charlie is an excellent liar.
‘Anyway, you’re working.’ She removes his hand from her hip, keeping hold of his fingers and squashing them together tenderly as she turns from him. What the hell was he doing?