And Anna starts to walk, duck-like, tits swinging free, towards the pool.
‘God, I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed like that,’ Rosie says after their swim as she lies back on the bottom shelf of the wood-panelled sauna while Anna, breasts now safely contained, lies on the top. Anna doesn’t say anything, but Rosie knows she’s smiling, glad. She loves to make people laugh. Rosie bubbles up with giggles again before they both settle into a delicious, endorphin-charged quiet.
After a couple of minutes, her face just a few inches from the ceiling, Anna says, ‘You said you had something you wanted to talk about?’
For a moment, Rosie can’t remember what it was she’d wanted to discuss with Anna, but then the weird disquieted feeling blooms up in her again. ‘How often do you and Eddy have sex, Anna?’
Above her, Anna laughs.
‘Quite an opener,’ she says, but Anna doesn’t squirm like Rosie when sex is mentioned. ‘Umm. Once a week, every Sunday. He reads the papers, I read the supplements and then we have sex.’
Once a week?
‘How about you guys?’ Anna asks back.
‘We’re going through a bit of a dry spell, actually. I’m just kind of trying to get back into it, I guess.’
‘Oh, babe.’ Anna twists around, peering down at Rosie between the slats. ‘That’s so normal, especially with young kids. I wouldn’t worry about that. How often do you have sex?’
Rosie feels her veins leap before rushing with shame. She’s never talked with anyone about the drought, only argued with Seb about it. She can’t go straight in with the truth. She needs to ease in gently. ‘Umm, maybe it’s been three months?’
Anna’s eyes widen. ‘I prescribe a maintenance shag. It’s worked for us before. Even if you don’t feel like it, gets you back on the horse as it were,’ she says with a snort of laughter.
‘Yeah,’ Rosie says, irritation nibbling at her now because all the sex she’s ever had has felt like a maintenance shag. She’d been trying to uphold and maintain some false version of herself – Rosie the sexual, generous, intimate lover – when really she had no idea who she was sexually. No idea what turned her on or even how she liked to be touched any more.
Above her Anna is quiet, so she adds, ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Thanks, Anna.’
Rosie wants to ask, but could never without confessing how long it has been: is a year really just a dry spell? Sure, after each baby they didn’t have sex for a few months. A couple of months after Sylvie, around three after Heath and even a bit longer after Greer. And perhaps this longer drought is simply an expression of their lives becoming fuller, busier.
Seb acts like sex is as urgent and necessary as breathing, something that keeps him alive. Rosie is sure she used to like sex, but she’s never felt like that about it. Never felt like she’d fade away without it.
‘I remember you saying that as soon as you saw Eddy after Singapore you knew something had happened.’
Anna peers down at Rosie again, wondering why Rosie’s asking this now. This time, Rosie avoids her eye completely.
‘Yeah. I did. He stepped through the front door and I knew something had happened before he even took his coat off. He had nervous energy; he’d spent the whole flight home trying to figure out what to say, eaten up with guilt.’
‘As he should!’ Rosie adds.
‘Yeah,’ Anna agrees, wiping sweat from her brow. ‘Women’s intuition, I guess. I knew something had changed.’
‘He told you right away?’
‘Yes, right there in the kitchen, and then I threw a plate at him.’
A drop of sweat falls off Anna’s chin as she shakes her head and half smiles at the memory.
It had been on one of Eddy’s flashy business trips two years ago.
Eddy runs a company specializing in car tech design and is frequently put up in five-star hotels, encouraged to order whatever he likes at the bar. This trip had been to Singapore and the woman perched on the hotel bar stool next to Eddy laughed at everything he said. Eddy told Seb that the woman was the opposite of Anna – dark, thin, spiky. He knew she was bad for him in the way he knew smoking or having another whisky would make him feel awful the next day. But Eddy was a glutton. He couldn’t – and he didn’t – resist. The flight home was the worst day of Eddy’s life. It never crossed his mind to lie. Eddy was many things – selfish, an impossible flirt, arrogant – but he was not a liar. He could never lie to someone he loved.
Forgiveness took time. Anna and Eddy had counselling and Eddy – for a few months at least – gave up drinking and cut back on the business trips. Both Rosie and Seb knew but never said aloud that Anna wouldn’t end their marriage. For all his flaws, his maddeningly selfish behaviour, Anna loved the idiot.
An unexpected outcome of Eddy’s infidelity had been that for a time, at least, Rosie and Seb had been closer. Rosie remembers feeling like a bit of a traitor, Anna going through the worst time of her marriage while Seb and Rosie were briefly golden. For a few nights, after the kids were asleep, they’d sit in the bath together and talk. Then they’d wash each other, shining and buffing the untarnished commitment between them. They’d been beautiful, those baths and, yes, a couple of times Rosie thinks the slow washing had led to them having sex. She remembers how connected they felt then, how easy it had been to fall asleep wrapped up in each other. Why couldn’t they go back there now?
‘Why is this coming up now, babe?’ Anna asks gently.
Rosie tells Anna about how she convinced Abi to stay for dinner, how Seb came back with straining takeaway bags, how when she came back down after the kids’ row upstairs, the atmosphere was weird, and how Abi immediately said she had to go. Seb told her later that there’d been a minor disagreement with Abi, some school issue about Lily, that he hadn’t realized the parent – Ms Matthews – he’d been exchanging terse emails with was also Abi, Rosie’s new friend.
‘OK, what’s the problem?’ Anna asks.
Rosie lifts her hand to her sweat-slick brow, feels the flesh on her legs swing as she bends her knees.
‘It’s a bit weird, isn’t it, that Abi didn’t mention this thing with Lily? I mean, I’m not saying I expected her to tell me everything, you know, if it was confidential, but Abi could have just flagged it, don’t you think?’
Rosie doesn’t tell her that Abi has suddenly gone cold on messages. Saying she’s too busy to come for dinner but will be in touch. She’s told herself Abi probably wants to wait to hang out again until this school issue with Seb is resolved.
Anna adjusts her position again, leaning back on her arms.
‘It’s a bit odd,’ she agrees. ‘Yes, I know you like Abi, but, to be honest, I’ve been getting some strange vibes from her. I told you I asked her if she could mind Albie after school for me and have him just for an hour on Thursday? Well, I suggested I bring a bottle of wine over, so we can have a glass when I collect him – you know, get to know each other a bit – and honestly, she looked like I’d just slapped her. Just grabbed her kid and disappeared.’
Anna is prone to hyperbole but still Rosie can picture the scene, Anna widening her eyes at Abi’s retreating back, turning to the parent next to her, mouthing, ‘Rude!’
Rosie wants to step in, defend her new friend. Anna has done this before, asking for help with childcare from women she just wants an excuse to interrogate. She can be too quick to form an opinion and despite whatever happened the other day, Rosie still feels drawn to Abi.
‘Maybe she’s just getting used to how it is down here. You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty different and she’s Hackney through and through, right?’