This should be the best part of Marchant’s week. As Julia slips from their king-sized bed, he should be snuggling down, sneaking diagonally onto her side and settling in for his hard-earned hour. He needs it. He works ninety hours a week. Marchant would give up part of his body – his appendix, say, or the joint of a toe – before he’d surrender that blissful sixty minutes. But today, he can’t enjoy it at all.

It is hay fever season and Marchant is in crisis.

Downstairs he can hear Julia clattering bowls and spoons as she sets them out for their sons’ breakfasts. The TV is loud. Julia calls to the two boys, interrupting Nickelodeon, and they answer her questions in single, exasperated words. Yes, they say. No. No! Marchant pictures the boys. They are miniature, wide-eyed buddhas, an inch from the screen.

On Saturdays and Sundays, Marchant doesn’t go to the office till ten. He turns over in bed and toys with the idea of a Saturday morning treat. Lord knows, he deserves it. But in his weakened state – eyes filled with fiberglass, a Niagara of mucus flooding his throat – a hand job seems beyond him. Instead, Marchant swallows another mouthful of phlegm and pops his thousandth antihistamine.

“Useless bastard pills,” he says, and with a sniff and a backhanded swipe at his nose, he rolls out of bed. In the en-suite, he wets his face and smoothes on a palmful of Noxzema. He shaves with the direction of growth, then against. Then he pats his face dry and goes back to the bedroom, where he dabs on some aftershave balm and a fragrance free moisturizer. It’s the weekend, so he dresses casually – well pressed Ralph Lauren chinos, a button-cuff cotton shirt, gray wool socks, no tie. At the bedroom door, he pauses, like a diver curling his toes round the end of the board. Then he opens the door and plunges into the rest of the house. The rest of the house means toy cars, picture books, flat footballs, smashed cricket bats, wrinkled apples missing solitary bites, stray bits of Bob the Builder jigsaws, single scuffed shoes and discarded trainers, school bags, gym kits and wellingtons.

Marchant makes it downstairs without breaking his neck.

In the kitchen, his family are eating at the battered pine table, which is awash with milk marbled brown by stray Coco Pops. Julia seems tired, squinting against the harsh, low sun forging in through the window. They haven’t slept much these last few days. Indeed Marchant is surviving on sugar and vats of bitter, iridescent coffee, which monkeys with his heart – whomp whomp whomp. Even so, he is desperate for caffeine. Julia spots him and smiles. But Marchant’s sons stop slopping food down their t-shirts and eye him warily, staring up at their father through the thick, cowish lashes they inherited from him. The boys are skittish as pigeons. Their disconcerting olive green irises probe him, sizing him up. Marchant wants to squeeze his sons to him, one in the crook of each arm, and apologize for the way their parents have been behaving. But Toby is slathered in jam and Josh is too swift, ducking beneath Marchant’s reach and darting to the family room, where he flicks the TV to Cartoon Network and notches up the volume.

“Josh,” Marchant calls, crouching down with his arms out. “Come and give your daddy a hug.” But Marchant is no match for the 9,000th repeat of Dexter’s Laboratory. Again and again they play them and again and again his sons watch, with wide, fresh, olive green eyes. What do these shows teach them? That actions have no consequences? Is this why Josh is in trouble at school? Marchant struggles to his feet. His left knee throbs.

As Marchant enters the family room, Josh stiffens. The boy has stolen things he couldn’t possibly want – a kiwi fruit, Manchester United stickers, a Britney Spears CD. He has stolen with stealth and with childish violence, administering shin kicks and wicked Chinese burns. Marchant is not surprised. Something is hardening in his son’s face, something knowing and sly and slightly cruel that makes him shrug when confronted with his crimes. Marchant can’t tell if this is a problem or a condition called being eight years old. Is someone to blame? Is it him? Marchant works hard for this family. He never leaves that damned office.

Julia is still smiling when Marchant skulks back to the kitchen, her short blonde hair a halo in the intense sunlight. Her smile is that of a woman pleased to see her husband, a soft smile that doesn’t expose her teeth and is mostly expressed in her narrowing eyes. It is almost as if they had downed a few drinks the previous night and dusted off some old moves. Which they didn’t. Lately, Marchant and Julia have hardly touched.

Marchant intercepts a drip from his nose.

“You’re not doing it,” he says. “No way.”

“Right,” Julia says. And her smile doesn’t waver as she flips the dregs of Josh’s Coco Pops down the front of Marchant’s pants.

Toby, as he often does these days, begins to cry.

***

It is 1991 when Marchant and Julia get together. The economy is tough and people are struggling. Marchant, though, is okay, a solicitor and at twenty seven, already earning good money. He has a two bedroom flat in St Margarets, a four year old BMW on the street outside and a single Cerruti suit in his wardrobe. He is not surprised by any of this. But he is certain there is more than this to him. He was the brightest kid in London, according to his mother. So Marchant knows he is destined for something important, something outside the narrow concerns of the law – property, probate, divorce, divorce, divorce. Marchant is uncertain what this something will be, except that it will be culturally significant and spectacularly remunerative, enough for a house on Richmond Hill and a weekend place with fifty acres.

And in the meantime he’s in bed with someone remarkable, his girlfriend of three months, Julia. She is an actress, which he admires. In fact she’s an excellent actress, RADA trained and passionate about theatre. This, Marchant feels, gives him one over Stothard, his best friend and contemporary at the firm. Marchant needs that. They both want to make partner and lately, Stothard’s smirk has suggested inside information.

The more Stothard smirks, the less guilty Marchant feels about Miriam.

Already, Marchant and Julia are testing each other in a jokey way about marriage and kids. In the half-light of his bedroom, not quite ten on a Sunday morning, he runs an admiring glance down her flank as they rest after their latest tussle. They are ruining the bed. The wooden frame is listing as they pound the joints loose, a tilt Marchant offsets with strategic placement of his limbs. It is ruining his back. But it’s worth it. With Julia, Marchant sobs when he comes. She likes it too. And she loves him, she says, because he prioritizes life above money and conventional measures of success.

Marchant believes this is true.

Julia props herself up on one elbow. They have been discussing, half seriously, whether she should move in with him. She earns nothing, which Marchant secretly considers giving him an edge in the relationship, a tilt in his direction in the balance of power.

“I won’t keep house for you,” she says, indicating rabbit-sized dust balls lolloping around the varnished floor. “I won’t cook or iron your shirts. And if you interfere with my work, I’ll chop you into steak tartare.” She needs acting, she says, the way a car needs petrol. “Anyway,” she says, piling her auburn hair on top of her head, “are you sure you want to get involved with me? You can’t trust an actress. You’ll never be certain who I am.”

“Don’t be silly,” Marchant says. But there is something in this. Julia pronounces her measured words with the clarity required for someone fifty feet away. Who’s talking? Julia, or the person it suits her to be? Still, what’s the alternative? Someone like Miriam?

Marchant kisses Julia and tastes the line of sweat on her lip. “Darling,” he says, “I’ll love you, whoever you want to be.”

She is remarkable enough.

***

In their ten years together, Julia has been in almost constant demand. With her experience, professionalism and long, wiry frame, she is perfect to play someone skinny and neurotic, screwed up and strung out.

This is not Marchant’s taste.

Marchant dislikes the gloom of modern plays, the squalor, the swearing, the gratuitous nudity. He doesn’t like these things swung in his face. He appreciates that Julia won’t strip, that her body is just for the two of them. Even so, he develops her insecurities, lifting her buttocks and letting them bounce, weighing her breasts thoughtfully in the tips of his fingers, claiming to like her fuller figure.

But he cannot prevent these problems arising.

The play is called Toothpick. They are in the living room rehearsing her lines, Julia in one of the two bulky armchairs, Marchant spread full length on the sofa, with a single malt scotch. He is having as much fun as his tortured sinuses allow, affecting ridiculous accents and camping up the female parts with a whooping voice that rattles the crystal in the drinks cabinet. As usual, he does not take it seriously.

Then they reach the last page.

Marchant slams down his glass and rears from the sofa, prowling round the room and circling Julia, now perched on the very limit of her chair.

“Darling,” she says, “we’re under a sheet. It’s not a peep show. It’s acting.”

“So it’s fine to pretend that you’re sucking him off?” Marchant has seen the male lead before. That face! That body! Who needs talent or intelligence? “Please God,” he says, “tell me you’re not naked.”

Julia hesitates. Marchant watches a complicated series of expressions cross her face – anticipation, amusement, contemplation and concern. Finally she says, “I’m not.”

“But he is!” Marchant can’t believe it. His beautiful, talented, modest Julia, with her face a curly hair’s breadth from that meathead’s dick! Bob and suck, he thinks, bob and suck. My God! He might faint. He prowls and circles, his footsteps silent on the inch-thick carpet, his hands opening and clenching as if snatching mosquitoes. “Please don’t do it,” he says. “For my sake.”

Julia tenses. “It’s a wonderful part,” she says.

“Which? Yours? Or his?” And Marchant jabs a finger at his groin.

One of the boys – Josh – moves overhead. They have woken him. Julia grabs Marchant’s wrists.

“Both,” she says. “Both.”

And the irony is that Julia doesn’t even like to suck.

***

It is 1997 and the start, Marchant believes, of a new part of their lives. Josh hasn’t taken to his new little brother but is charming in his way, a willful little boy running Julia ragged in the few moments that Toby’s not clamped to her chest. Marchant expects Julia’s acting will recede into the distance now, a frippery compared with the serious business of raising the children and his practice of law. He is doing well. And the more hours he puts in, the better he does. They have a house in Sheen and a new BMW estate on the gravel outside. It really doesn’t matter that Stothard has his partnership. Marchant has found something outside the narrow concerns of property, probate, divorce, divorce, divorce – personal injury. With Julia’s support, he can go it alone.

So when he sees her reading a script while breastfeeding Toby, extricating Josh’s fingers from her mocha-brown bob and whipping up a smoked salmon quiche from scratch, Marchant treats it as a form of nostalgia, a way of staying connected to something that used to be important to her. As usual, they do not discuss it.

Julia asks Marchant to help her with her lines.

***

What does it signify? Love or contempt? Power or weakness? Abandonment or self-control? If Marchant can follow it, perhaps he’ll feel better. Perhaps he’ll stop worrying, if he can explain the scene to his clients and staff, Stothard and Miriam, the worn out kid who delivers his Times.

Perhaps he’ll be less concerned about how this makes him look.

In the office, Marchant diverts his phone and makes space in his diary. He rubs his eyes and blows his nose. He rests his head on his desk. Then he sits up and blows his nose again. He scowls at the copy of Julia’s script as he waits for the Nurofen to kick in. Then he sips his bitter coffee and using all of his strength, turns to page one.

He should be able to figure out why people do what they do.

His secretary enters, bringing tissues, more coffee and an apricot danish, to keep up his blood sugar. For the first time, Marchant sees more than sublime tits and arse tacked onto an efficient administrator.

“If you could have anything,” he says, “what would it be?”

“The same as everyone,” she replies, setting down his fresh cup. “Lots of money and an easy life.”

“Exactly!” Marchant says.

He has given Julia money. So where’s his easy life?

Then, on the one Sunday a month he takes off, Marchant makes his life more difficult.

Julia is in their bedroom, on the phone to her mother. They talk about everything. In Julia’s family, this is thought healthy.

Marchant though thinks it ghastly, unhealthy, disloyal, for them to talk about him. So when he hears Julia laughing her abdominally powered laugh and slapping her hand across her mouth as if her teeth could fly out with sheer hilarity, he pauses outside their bedroom door.

“You’ve seen him. I know! Delicious!”
“. . . .”
“No Mummy! You know how I feel about that.”
“. . . .”
“Yes Mummy, I know how you feel about it. Daddy’s lucky.”
“. . . .”
“No!”
“. . . .”
“No!”
“. . . .”
“Well, just a little lick!”

There are eight feet of air and two inches of wood between Marchant and the phone, and still he hears his mother-in-law’s cackle.

“Yes, Mummy,” Julia says. “I’ll tell you everything. Yes! Yes! Every last vein! Bye now. Kisses to Daddy.”

Marchant is stunned. He has peered into the center of his wife’s feelings for him and seen contempt. And since he obtained the information in this nefarious way, he cannot use it against her. Inadmissible! On unsteady legs, he pads downstairs and stands over his sons as they sprawl in front of the Powerpuff Girls. Within a minute, Julia arrives. She drops on one of the food-stained, family room beanbags and wipes a single, laughter induced tear from her eye. Marchant can’t forget what she said. The knowledge is a maggot in his brain, crawling, tunneling, eating away his control. So it’s not really his fault when a second later, his crotch is in her face and he’s reaching for his fly.

“Hey,” he says, “you can practice on me.”

Julia slaps him away. “Stop it,” she says. “You think I want that in my mouth?” She mimes throwing up. “I thought you would understand.”

Marchant swallows a thick gobbet of phlegm. “You’re flattering me,” he says. “I don’t think I could manage a stomachful.”

“I’m afraid we’ll never know,” she says, and with a waft of her hand, she dismisses him.

Marchant loses it.

“Oh come on!” he screams. “Just a little lick! Then you can tell your mother about every last vein!” Marchant doesn’t realize he’s crossed the line until he sees the boys’ faces. They are like children sensing the start of an earthquake.

“Pathetic,” Julia says. And she sweeps from the room with an air of disappointment that crushes Marchant to the size of a pea.

The cartoon finishes. Toby turns to his father and with his hand on Marchant’s knee, says, “It’s all right Daddy. Mummy doesn’t hate you. Promise.”

Marchant gathers Toby up.

“Of course she doesn’t. We’re just disagreeing about something.”

“Fellatio,” Josh says, stabbing a finger into Toby’s ribs. “Mummy wants to put a man’s willy in her mouth.”

“Josh,” Marchant says, “she does not. Your mother DOESN’T EVEN LIKE TO SUCK!”

“Brilliant,” Julia says from the doorway. “Just brilliant.”

“Fellatio,” Josh says. “Fellatio, fellatio, fellatio.”

Toby looks at his father and begins to cry.

***

Eight years old. Where does he get it? This time, Josh has turned nasty, the hair pulling followed by a well-aimed punch to a little girl’s nose. Marchant hasn’t been in the school since Julia chose it. Though once a month, he makes a point of driving Toby to the nursery then dropping Josh at the gates. He sits in the car as Josh slips into the playground and within seconds, he cannot distinguish him from his identically uniformed peers. Marchant understands the comfort children find in similarity.

Mrs Latimer has been talking for some time. She reminds Marchant of his own favorite teacher – big glasses, baggy arms, a hint of gray. Marchant glances sideways at his wife, prim and attentive in the head teacher’s office. She seems like any other parent. Then Mrs Latimer’s voice deepens and slows, telling Marchant that this is the serious part.

“When I intervened,” she says, “he called me ‘Mother’. And I said, ‘Josh Marchant, I’m not your mother.’” Mrs Latimer pauses, folding her arms and eyeing them in turn. “What happened next, we cannot condone. Your son said, ‘I know that, stupid. I called you a mother.’ I can’t tell you which word he used next.”

Marchant turns to Josh. “Is this true? Josh, answer me. Is this true?” But Josh is not really on the grubby plastic seat. He is somewhere else entirely, a place where swearing at teachers, ripping hair from another child’s scalp and causing your father to cancel three important appointments are of no more concern than a bluebottle buzzing at your window.

Julia sighs. “He wet the bed.”

“When?” Marchant says.

“And he’s been crying at night.”

“When?” Marchant says.

“Go on,” Mrs Latimer says, and the women discuss it. And the longer Marchant has nothing to contribute, the more he’s certain they think he’s to blame. For five minutes, they talk. No one asks what he thinks.

Marchant leans forward. “Stop,” he says. Then he tells them how it is going to be. There is much mention of nipping this in the bud and taking a stand and zero tolerance and by the time he has finished, Mrs Latimer is patting his hand and saying, “Try to stay positive,” while Julia sits there, openly appalled, holding her glassy-eyed son on her knee, the boy ignoring the tears that are stinging the ravaged skin around his father’s nose.

Eight years old, motherfucker! Where does he get it?

***

It is 2001 and Marchant is in a converted warehouse near Euston. He is waiting for Toothpick to start and fretting about Josh’s reaction to the latest babysitter. He wishes he were alone. He hadn’t known the Stothards were coming until they sat next to him, their tickets – of course! – supplied by his wife. While the seats fill around them, Miriam tells Marchant she’s just started work at an American bank.

“I’m Head of Diversity,” she says.

“Really?” Marchant says. And he thinks of the time he left a party with her, the Christmas before he met Julia. Stothard was grimly impressing a small crowd in the corner and declined to escort his fiancée home. Marchant was drunk and possibly a little stoned, but he distinctly remembers Miriam’s inviting him in and being allowed to remove her blouse and bra, before she inquired as to what the hell he was doing, suggested that he got his hands the fuck off and pointed out that she was seeing someone, surely he knew? She was drunk and very definitely stoned. She was upset. She’d been with Stothard six months. She put on a toweling robe and they talked politely about her job in personnel. Marchant recalls her nipples, dark and small as one pence pieces. They’ll look even smaller now, since she’s crammed on thirty pounds. Comfort eating, Marchant thinks.

“So who’s Head of Conformity?” he asks. The two solicitors Marchant employs are young men, white and middle class. “Sometimes,” Marchant says, “conformity is the best way to get ahead.”

Miriam sniffs as if Marchant were something on the sole of her shoe. “Not true,” she replies, and she takes a deep breath.

“Miriam!” Stothard says.

She exhales. “I’ll lecture you later.”

Head of Diversity! He can’t get over it. And he also can’t get over the Stothards’ acquiring the house he has dreamed of, a Victorian home at the top of Richmond Hill. It cost a million five.

“Down to Miriam,” Stothard says. “Diversity pays.”

Stothard’s hand rests comfortably on Miriam’s well-padded thigh. Does she cause him much trouble? Marchant doubts it. Perhaps he should have persisted, that night.

It is an appalling three hours. The play is long, long, long but the audience seems fascinated, drawn in by Julia. The scene Marchant dreads is the very last thing. He still can’t fathom why it happens. He shuffles in his seat, his pulse quickening, his heart incapable of shifting all the blood that’s required. His breathing is shallow and fast. There is an hour to the climax, thirty minutes, fifteen. Perspiration seeps into Marchant’s shirt. A hot, musty odor rises from under his arms. There are ten minutes to go, five minutes, three. As surreptitiously as he can, Marchant sucks back the snot. His head is a pressure cooker waiting to explode. The jealousy – of Stothard, of the meathead under that sheet with Julia – is murderous. The meathead can’t act, but the audience can tell he’s enjoying this thing. The sheet goes up and the sheet goes down. Bob and suck, Marchant thinks, bob and suck. He can’t watch, can’t listen, can’t bear to see his wife do it.

And then there’s a groan like the death of an elephant, and it’s over. The lights come on. Exhausted, drained, Marchant swallows a stringy mouthful of phlegm.

“Wonderful,” Miriam says, “so true. I wanted to cry for her.”

But Marchant says nothing. It is a disaster. Most of the audience have risen to their feet and some cheer as Julia bows. Every night will sell out. But then suddenly she’s smiling and waving at him and people turn to look. Their expectant faces loom round him. Stothard grabs him by the hand.

“You lucky, lucky sod,” Stothard says, and he winks as if they share a wonderful secret. The people surrounding them laugh.

Marchant begins to smile. He waves back at his wife. The Stothards clap harder and others follow their lead and no one hears Marchant say, “That’s right, she’s mine!” The clapping goes on, harder and louder. Marchant grins like a drunk. “Mine!” he yells. “Mine!”

He watches Julia milking the applause. Never in his life has he been so proud of himself.

***