Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

The husband is named Carter.

She calls in sick on Monday. If she keeps changing husbands every couple of days, she thinks, she will never have to work again: she could coast forever on the diligence of her past selves, constantly dodging to new worlds where she hasn't used her sick leave yet.

Her messages with Carter go back almost two years. She can't pinpoint the exact moment they met, but she thinks it might have been at a house party she remembers going to and leaving early; he's in her phone as Carter (From Party) (Husband).

"Remember when we met?" she tries.

He grins. "Thank god for small bladders." So, perhaps the toilet queue.

They have separate finances, plus a joint account for bills and rent. They have blinds instead of curtains or shutters. They have a big American coffee machine, the sort where coffee drips through into a jug.

The spare room is set up with a single bed and Carter's clothes in the wardrobe, which surprises her since they shared the bedroom after he arrived (no sex; she went to bed before him so she could look through old photos and google him in secret). Perhaps he just has more clothes than previous husbands. Their past texts are affectionate and frequent, the occasional Thanks, love you among them.

She looks up their wedding, which is informative.

It's not that it's an immigration marriage exactly. They were definitely seeing each other. But they got married about seven months after they started dating, in the town hall with a party at the pub afterwards, her in a dark-red beaded dress with a big flouncy skirt and gold roses in her hair, him in a jacket and a shirt and no tie; and when she looks through her emails they sure do have a lot of paperwork around Carter's right to stay in the UK.

The party at the pub looks like a great time, though: fifty or sixty people, her friends, some strangers, kisses, confetti. And now it's a year and a half later, and here they are, still together.

The second night he's out late because he is, somehow, playing baseball (in London; she didn't know that was even possible) . He gets back before she goes to bed, wet from a flurry of rain, the wave in his hair flattened against his head. "Don't hug me, I'm soaking, it started right when I got off the train," he says, and pulls his shirt up over his head. When his face reveals itself again, the shirt has set his damp hair awry.

○○

His pajamas are shorts and a V-necked T-shirt, and he offers to make her a hot chocolate.

They sit on the sofa with the window open while she drinks, listening to the slow drops of rain against the glass. "Hold on," he says, "it'll go for it again in a minute," but it never does; they open the bedroom window a crack too, and she falls asleep with him, waiting for a storm that doesn't come.

○○

On Tuesday she goes into work at the council. She's growing to like this husband, and if she might want to keep him around after the wedding instead of sending him on his way, she probably shouldn't just burn through all her sick leave.

This is the first time she's been to work since the husbands appeared, other than that visit to the hardware store, and she's nervous. But nobody even looks up when she walks in. First task for the day: she calls into a Teams meeting with a borough resident who's putting together a business plan for a new bakery that even has the same terrible name it did originally, Loaf Is What You Bake It. She talks through the forms then tries again to persuade him to consider different names, and again fails.

"It's not that all pun names are bad," she says to Zarah as they make coffee, and remembers the photo of Fishcotheque that she's had on her phone in at least two different versions of the world.

"There's a barber near Farringdon called Barber Streisand," Zarah says, "which my mum likes, she says it's a joke about a singer from the olden days."

Zarah is the youngest person in the office by almost a decade and enjoys horrifying the rest of the department with the fact. Lauren refuses to rise to the bait. "I know you've heard of Barbra Streisand," she says.

The whole day is shockingly normal. She takes her turn replying to the perpetual backlog of email enquiries about business rates and VAT and finding office space. She updates some slides for a webinar for her boss. The whole office is so much the same as it used to be that she has to keep touching her wedding ring. She messages the husband once, nervous, How's the day? , and he replies a few minutes later: a photo of a horse by a bus stop. Not too bad , he says. What possible job has him hanging out with a horse, in London, at ten past eleven? Riding instructor? Bookie? Literal cowboy? She googles Carter's name; he works on the video production side of a marketing agency. That makes more sense.

○○

She and Zarah pick up lunch from the falafel place around the corner. It's the usual guy, and he remembers Lauren's order like he always does. Doubt and panic creep in again, the impossibility of the husband system. By quarter past two she can't take it any more, and she runs out before the weekly catch-up to stand in the stairwell and phone Carter.

He doesn't answer. She calls again five minutes later.

"Hey," he says, "is everything okay?"

Even now, worried, his voice is slow and gentle. "Yeah, sorry, I just—I was thinking maybe we could get dinner in town tonight. I could come and meet you." That's the sort of thing a married person might say, right?

"Oh," he says. "Yeah, I won't be done till almost eight, though, could you come over this way?"

"Sure. Let me know where to meet you. Message me." It will be more proof that he exists, she thinks. At fourp.m. a message comes: an Italian restaurant in Pimlico.

○○

She arrives before him. He comes five minutes later; she stands up and he kisses her fleetingly on the lips, and again he seems out of place in this world. He eats spaghetti perfectly, fork in, a twirl, a whole compact little package in his mouth, a loose strand that he sucks in sharply with his lips parted in just the right way to conceal the food without allowing the sauce to slide off and gather in stains around his mouth. The perfect wedding dinner companion. He offers her a forkful and she thinks no, no spaghetti on dates , but: they're married. It's okay. She can eat a forkful of spaghetti.

"How was the horse?" she says.

"Enormous. Bit of a prima donna. What's the latest with your bakery guy, was that today?"

What a marriage they must have, that she tells him about her incredibly mundane video calls. Is it a good sign, that they share so much? Or a bad sign, that they have so little of real interest to talk about?

The waiter brings the dessert menu, and Carter leans over the table towards her. "What's maritozzi?"

"Dunno," she says. "Try ordering it." But he orders the tiramisu instead, and she goes for the maritozzi in response. It turns out to be a plate of tiny buns.

"Can I try?" he says.

"Nope." She pops one whole into her mouth, then relents.

"They're not great, are they?" he says after he's eaten one. "But I love you for trying." And she feels something unexpected, a little moment like stepping on a paving stone and feeling it shift, at the word "love."

Afterwards, they walk to the river, and lean over the wall near a triangular patch of grass. The Thames is at low ebb, exposing the wet green sides of the embankment. Old white buildings behind them, bulbous new flats to one side, wide patches of dirt in the threadbare grass. Empty glass towers, and cranes building more. A seagull is standing on the wall and staring at them, and she's not sure she's ever seen a seagull awake this late at night. She waves her arms at it, shooing; it remains in place, impassive.

"Oh no," Carter says. "I thought it'd be romantic to gaze out over the river, but it definitely isn't. I'm so sorry, I've brought you to the worst place in London."

"Nah," she says, "worst place in London is over on Cable Street. Where they said they were building a museum of women's history, but they put up a Jack the Ripper museum instead."

"Oh, I thought I heard that closed?"

"Did it?" She looks around. "In that case, yeah, this is the worst place in London."

He laughs and leans forward, a little husbandly kiss, and of course it can hold no particular charge for him because they have done this so many times. But for her it's new, and she's aware of her forearms, her shoulders, his breathing close to hers, and he's looking at her, noticing her response.

"Hello," he says, and laughs.

"Hello," she says back.

And then a man strides up to the wall right next to them, right there, perhaps two feet away on an almost empty street, yelling into his phone, and the night seagull squawks and takes off. "Yes," the man says, "I left it in the bin, but that was for safekeeping , so it wouldn't get lost! I put a piece of paper on top of the bin, which is a clear indication that I didn't want it to be emptied, it's like a beer mat on a pint glass, right? Exactly! And I'm sorry, but if you don't understand universal British symbols of communication, then I don't think you can blame me if the paperwork goes missing."

They pull apart. Worst place in London, Carter mouths, then, aloud, "Let's go home?" She's aware of his body next to hers on the train, but when they get back to the flat he's missed a call about the horse and he has to respond—"Sorry, I'll just be ten minutes"—and it turns into half an hour. And when he's finished, he has to pack for his work trip, and then it's late, and she lets the moment go. She does not, she finds, want to rush things with him.

○○

He's due back noon on Friday, and she swaps around her work-from-home days so that she's there when he gets in. And when he steps into the house, it feels right again. They go to bed at ten, because it's the day before the wedding and they have an early start, and she is feeling suddenly shy but she curls up to him, head on his shoulder, conscious of his arm around her and his breath in and out, the thud of his heart; then after ten minutes of that he says, "Okay, my turn," and tips her out of his embrace and leans against her shoulder instead, curling into the space between her arm and her body.

○○

Saturday: Elena's wedding day. Lauren wakes well before her alarm, creeps out of bed beside Carter, and goes to splash water on her face.

When she opens the kitchen windows, the air has the smell of a day that's getting ready to be hot.

She will have a convoluted journey before she even gets on the train, made more complicated by having to haul her dress and shoes in a bag, and a detour to pick up Elena's favourite cream-cheese bagel. "The tent and the present are on the landing," she says to Carter, who is half-awake in bed. "You're okay to bring them?"

"Yeah, no problem," he says sleepily, and smacks at her bottom as she walks away. "Wait, come back, I forgot something," he adds, and she does, and he sits up and reaches around and smacks the other buttock. "There," he says, so pleased with himself.

"Okay," she says, and laughs. "I'll see you later."

○○

Out at Aldgate, the dress in its zipped-up bag catching the leaflets that blow down the stairs as she walks up. Along the road to the two not-quite-identical bagel shops (thankfully, the one Elena believes to be morally superior in some indeterminate way is the one with the shorter queue). A walk through crowds into the weekend calm of the financial district, and on to a train at Fenchurch Street, where the slow, rattling carriage is almost empty.

She calls her mum, who doesn't answer, but calls back ten minutes later.

"Hey," Lauren says, "I didn't have a chance to send Marmite yet, sorry."

"What? No, don't, darling, I have a dozen jars in the pantry. Send me a Twix."

The Marmite must have been with a different husband. "Don't they have Twixes in Spain?"

"There's something wrong with them. Natalie thinks there's a special ingredient in the chocolate to stop it melting in the heat, which is clever but it doesn't taste right."

"Oh, okay," Lauren says.

"And of course you can't be good at everything," her mother says. "The Spanish do so well at the sea and wine bars, and that festival with the tomatoes. Olive oil. Don Quixote. So you can't expect them necessarily to make a good Twix."

"No, I suppose not."

"Picasso. Ham. I know you don't eat it but if you ever change your mind, the Spanish make such lovely ham. Anyway, darling, what were you after? Was it just about the Twixes?"

"No," she says. "It's about Carter."

"Carter! What a nice young man he is," her mother says. "You know, there's an American bar that's opened quite near the beach here. It seems very authentic, they show basketball on the television and you have to tip the bartenders. Next time you come you must bring him."

"Okay, I'll do that."

"Was that what you wanted to talk about? Are you coming out to visit? It would be lovely to see you both, except of course it shouldn't be during August because everything is so expensive then, and anyway I don't think you're set up for the heat, you get so flushed to the face and your hair gets terribly lank."

"No," she says. "I mean, maybe. I just wanted to know if you like him."

A moment's silence. "Well, yes, of course," her mother says. "I won't try to say I wasn't worried about the wedding at the time, but it's turned out nicely for everyone."

"Okay," Lauren says. "Thank you. That's good to know."

○○

She gets out at the country station and phones the number for a taxi. Its route winds past hedges and cows towards the farm, which is hung about with sun-faded bunting. A rabbit hops past as she gets out, a bird circles overhead, a woman in an apron ushers her into the big farmhouse. It's all extremely bucolic, though the day is beginning to heat up.

Inside, Elena's maid of honour, Noemi—who is in a white cotton robe over only her knickers, effortlessly glamorous, or maybe, Lauren thinks, effortfully glamorous, but either way it works for her—anyway, Noemi is sipping a coffee, and Elena is lying on a sofa, her head off one end, her legs up against the wall. She has her eyes closed, and her hair is hanging towards the floor.

"Hey," Lauren says.

"Ugh," Elena says as she hauls herself upwards and opens her eyes. "Going to be thirty-three degrees, did you see? It's too hot. Can you check if we're allowed in the pond? Can you get married underwater?"

"Stop panicking. Eat this," and Lauren hands over the greasy bag.

Elena pulls the bagel out and shoves it into her mouth, tears away a chunk of it with her teeth. "Gub-spub," she says, then chews and swallows the first mouthful, and repeats: "Godsend."

"How's it going?"

Elena swallows another mouthful. "Terrible. Why am I getting married? And if I have to get married, why would I get married to an accountant who can't even make an omelette ? Catastrophe. Where is my helicopter pilot, my chef, my leader of a revolutionary street dance troupe?"

"As I recall," Lauren says, "the helicopter pilot you went on that date with was a liar who turned out to be an accountancy student, so I think you must just have a thing for accountants."

"You absolutely do," Noemi says. "Remember when you used to masturbate to the Count from Sesame Street ?"

"I didn't masturbate ," Elena says. "I was four. I didn't even know what masturbating was ."

"Pigeons don't know what shitting is but that doesn't stop them," Noemi says.

"I just wriggled around a bit."

"That is one hundred per cent not how my speech is going to tell it." Noemi pours three more coffees.

"And you don't want someone who can make an omelette. You hate it when other people cook," Lauren says. "Remember when I had you round for dinner and you brought a whole pan of soup, on the bus, just in case?"

"It's not my fault I don't trust English cooking," Elena continues, "which is another issue. Why am I marrying someone English ?"

"You are also," Lauren points out, "English." Elena's mother is from Turin, but Elena herself was born in Croydon and hasn't even got around to applying for an Italian passport.

"It's not the same."

Lauren is pretty sure that Elena is just trying out thoughts, indulging herself, saying the worst things she can think of now so that she doesn't say them later.

"Yeah," she says. "Maybe you're right, maybe it's a mistake. Send him back, get a new one."

Noemi takes her robe off and starts unzipping her dress bags. "Don't get married at all. Spend the money on flying lessons. You be the helicopter pilot." She glances up at Lauren, and mouths, She'll be okay , and Lauren nods.

Elena groans. "It's too late," she says.

"It's never too late," Lauren says. "Wanna run?"

"We'll go with you if you do," Noemi says. "But I've got a big work thing on Tuesday so I don't think I could do, you know, Peru. Leamington Spa, maybe?"

Elena rotates, sits up straight. "You two are terrible at pep talks."

"Yeah," Lauren says. She's been through a lot of husbands lately and they weren't all good. She tries again. "I don't know, Rob's not perfect, obviously. But it's not like there's some magical version of the world where you wouldn't be a bit nervous right now, you know? You're getting married. It's a big deal. Being nervous doesn't mean he's the wrong guy. Being nervous is just part of the process. The question is whether you want to do it anyway. And if you don't, that's fine, we go out and tell everyone it's off. I mean, Noemi does, I'm not really into public speaking."

"Yeah," Noemi says, "I would be amazing at cancelling a wedding. I would knock that shit out of the park."

"God," Elena says, "fine, yes, congratulations, you've called my bluff, I guess I like Rob and I want to marry him."

"Good," Noemi says. "In that case, let's get you into this big fucking dress."