The Family Next Door(12)
“Name the two letters that don’t appear in the periodic table.”
“J and Q,” he said without even a pause, “although Q is occasionally used as a placeholder for the artificially created, super-heavy elements until a suitable name has been adopted.”
“What is the most common blood type?”
“O,” Fran cried, desperate to get an answer in before Nigel. “Everyone is O.”
“Actually the most common is O positive,” Nigel said. “O negative is quite rare.”
“Really?” Fran said. “I’m O negative.”
“So am I.”
They smiled at each other.
“Is it true,” she said, “that two negatives make a positive?”
She’d meant it as a throwaway, cheesy line, but Nigel’s brow furrowed. “Well, not always. For example, negative ten plus negative ten doesn’t equal positive twenty, does it?”
That was the moment she fell in love with him.
By the end of the night Fran had to physically restrain herself from jumping him, right then and there. Intelligence, she’d always thought, was the most powerful aphrodisiac. And if there was one thing that could be said about geeks, it was that they were very eager to please.
She looked at him now. He had no book, no phone in his hand. He was looking at her in that familiar way. Her heart rate quickened a little.
It had been a while.
While Nigel was depressed, he’d lost interest in sex almost entirely. It had become so bad that Fran had even bought a book called Rekindling the Spark in Your Marriage and started trying new things like turning up at his office unannounced and telling him she’d booked a hotel room, or joining him in the shower while Rosie was watching cartoons. Nigel usually managed to perform, but it was always lackluster, and only ever when Fran initiated it. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her like this.
He crawled across the bed toward her, and kissed her. Fran’s knees weakened. It felt so good, being pressed against him. And they hadn’t kissed like this in years. She pulled him closer.
And something inside her cracked.
“What is it, Fran?” he said, pulling back. “You’re crying.”
She wiped her face. “Am I? Sorry.”
“You’re not yourself.” He sat up. “Tell me what’s going on. Please. Maybe I can help.”
The concern in his face was undeniable. Nigel had always been the person she could turn to when things were bad. He was always so calm and ready to formulate a plan. She had always found him a tremendous comfort in difficult times.
Fran felt the tears begin to flow in earnest.
That’s the problem, she thought. You can’t.
7
ANGE
When Lucas came to bed, Ange was going to have sex with him. She lay there, listening to him clattering about in the kitchen, thinking all sorts of amorous thoughts. There was truly nothing sexier than a man who did the dishes. The first time she and Lucas had hosted a dinner party together, Ange had collapsed happily into bed at the end of the night, thoroughly drunk, leaving all the dishes and pots on the counter and the half-drunk glasses of wine on the dining room table. (Ange liked things to be meticulously clean when her guests arrived but once they’d left she could happily ignore the mess until morning.) But the morning after, when she woke and crawled out into the living room for coffee, she’d found the place sparkling.
“I enjoy doing clearing up,” Lucas had said. “It helps me wind down at the end of the night.”
It was the moment she knew she was going to marry him.
Ange rolled herself onto one side. She was naked because it was far too hot for lingerie. Besides, a few nights ago she’d fastened herself into a complicated garter belt–type arrangement only to wake up in the early hours of the morning with Lucas snoring beside her—the lingerie still fastened. Apparently since reaching forty her window between horny and asleep was ever shrinking. But tonight, she was determined. They were going to have sex, and not mundane sex. Hot sex. Decidedly unmarried-person sex. She was going to be the wife every man wanted … if she was able to stay awake.
The funny thing was, Lucas probably wouldn’t have minded mundane sex. Lucas had an odd affection for mundane things. Replacing light globes the moment they fizzed. Writing important events on their family calendar in the kitchen so things couldn’t be forgotten. Ensuring there were batteries in their battery drawer. It occurred to Ange that, without Lucas, their family would come to a crashing halt. Sometimes she even had shameful thoughts about what would happen if he suddenly dropped dead. She imagined herself going to the battery drawer and finding it empty, then sliding down the wall of the kitchen, sobbing. The kids would find her there at the end of the day screaming, “Batteries! There are no batteries in the battery drawer!”
She could hear Lucas now, in the kitchen, hand-washing the hand-washables. She willed him to hurry up. Come on, Lucas! Her eyelids were starting to droop. The two glasses of wine she’d had with dinner didn’t help matters. It was just so exhausting, being an adult.
Ange wondered if Will and Ollie were asleep. It was possible they were, but it was equally possible they’d located an iPad and were watching random people play video games on YouTube. She didn’t get it. Why would you watch someone else play a video game, for goodness sake! (‘It’s a guy thing,” Lucas had told her when she’d lamented about ridiculous it was. A guy thing! She loved her boys but sometimes she thought that Y chromosome had a lot to answer for. Sometimes she yearned for a daughter so badly she could almost reach out and touch her.)