The morning after I had told Hattie about Jarvis, Luke was standing in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches for Max’s school lunch, and I was cooking some mushrooms in bubbling butter in a pot on the stove. ‘There’s a conference in Sydney that it might be good for me to go to,’ Luke said.
‘How long?’
‘Only two nights.’
‘You should go,’ I said eagerly. Luke never went away, he was always around: always there to pick Max up from school, always hanging around the house on Sundays. In fact, having lost touch with many of his more adventurous friends over the years, he rarely went out anymore. His ideal Saturday night was ordering takeaway from one of his four favourite places and (legally) downloading a movie with a minimum four-star rating from Margaret and David.
‘You might meet a nice lady friend,’ I teased. He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘You know, a bit on the side.’ He wasn’t enjoying this taunting, he was a straight and narrow guy, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘It could be good for you, especially because we’re not getting any.’ We were two bits of stale toast that had forgotten how to butter each other. And there was no jam or honey being spread either; we’d lost all our sweetness over the years.
‘I’d understand,’ I said to him, assessing his eyes to see whether he would give me the permission to do the same. ‘I wouldn’t blame you.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Max at the kitchen table, innocently eating his Weet-Bix.
‘You know, we’re still young. You’re still good-looking enough. We’re a bit dead together. Don’t you ever worry about just being with me for the rest of your life?’
‘No, I don’t.’
I was sensing that I should shut the hell up. I was premenstrual and tired from the night before. I’d had too many wines with Hattie and was probably too fragile for a conversation like this one; one that should actually be carefully navigated rather than steered through icebergs at a hundred miles an hour without any thought or pre-planning.
‘Affairs can be good for relationships,’ I said. ‘Way back when, the aristocrats in Europe were expected to have affairs. It kept marriages together. Men kept mistresses for their own good health.’ Apparently this was true — my therapist, a very clever lady, had told me this just the previous week.
‘Why the hell are you telling me all this?’ He bent down to put the milk back in the fridge, his work pants riding up his calves.
‘I don’t know. Don’t you ever get bored? Wonder what else is out there?’
He straightened up, closed the fridge and looked at me directly with those green eyes of his. ‘No, I’m not bored. I’m content.’ I could see that I’d hurt him, and he didn’t deserve it. He was a good man, and I was a bitch who had somehow fallen out of love with him and discovered someone else.
‘Maybe content isn’t enough,’ I said, still itching to win the battle.
‘Maybe it isn’t. But then some people will never be satisfied.’ He put his banana and plastic-wrapped sandwich in his bag and went over to give Max a kiss on the head, like he did every morning. He whispered something to him that made him laugh. And it broke my heart, because right at that moment I loved the two of them so much. I couldn’t understand why I was feeling the things that I was feeling. How could I even contemplate destroying this precious family unit of ours?