Nell

Saturday, 31 March

Shane opens the front door and we both miss a beat, stare at each other awkwardly, then avert our eyes. Then: ‘Hi,’ we both mumble, clear our throats and then say ‘Hi’ in a normalish voice. Every time we do this. Every. Single. Time.

Macy has lived with him for five years now, they’ve been together for nearly seven years, and we still do it.

‘Who is it?’ Macy calls, coming out of the kitchen and into the corridor. I can hear the children in the house – the TV is on in the lounge; sounds of a games console drift down from upstairs.

‘Oh. Hi.’ Macy says this like it’s a surprise for me to be here. She called me at five-seventeen this morning as usual and told me what I had to do today: help Willow with her maths homework; wash Clara’s hair; beat Aubrey at chess. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ I almost said to her. Almost, then I remembered that last weekend I didn’t answer the phone, which meant she was going to punish me this week. Not that spending time with the children was a punishment, it was just that her way of making me pay for ignoring her last Saturday was to immerse me in the realities of family life. So I agreed to everything, then made sure on the way over I picked up Easter eggs for everyone, even Shane.

‘Are you coming in then?’ Macy asks.

Thankfully she didn’t see how Shane and I greeted each other. It’s all the more mortifying for the fact we actually do it.

Shane, still with his eyes averted, steps aside to let me in and I try – and fail – to smile at him as I enter.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Macy snaps, ‘are you two still doing this? You had sex, get over it.’ She rolls her eyes and turns to go back the way she came, flicking her tea towel over her shoulder as she goes.

I can’t believe she said that so loudly with the children around. Even if Aubrey doesn’t have a clue what sex is (unlikely), Willow does, as does Clara. There are some things children don’t need to know. One of them is that Shane was my first. My first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first go at sex …