Read Online Tales From a Hen Weekend by Olivia Ryan - Free Book Online

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    We lived together for a year before we got married. We rented a flat in the area where we wanted to live, and every Saturday we went out house-hunting. Richard took house-hunting very seriously. He dressed up for it. I think I could trace the very first time I felt irritated with him back to the day I asked him why he was bothering to wear a shirt and tie to go and view someone’s house, and he looked me straight in the eye and said: If something’s important to me, why would I want to look as if I don’t care? I can remember having the same urge to tell him to go and fuck himself that I used to get when my French teacher closed her eyes, shook her head and told me to try to make my accent sound as though I actually thought my thoughts and dreamed my dreams in French. Of course, I didn’t say anything to Richard, any more than I did to the French teacher. I pretended to be impressed. Perhaps that was the very beginning of the acting career that I’ve made of my life.
    We found our perfect house, we got our mortgage, bought our furniture, planned our wedding, and all the time I kept thinking that maybe the sex would get better in due course. I wasn’t sure whether I was expecting too much. After all, if Richard was happy with a quick bonk once a week regularly on a Saturday night, it seemed a bit unreasonable to want more. I wasn’t even sure exactly what I wanted more of, though certainly not the same predictable, unsatisfying and rather unfriendly encounters he saved himself for all week. I’d experienced better sex with my previous boyfriends, but how could I admit that, even to myself, when Richard was supposed to be the love of my life? It was all very confusing.
    To take my mind off it, I got pregnant. We were both over the moon when Charlie was born, and Richard turned out to be a great dad. He was there at the birth, talking me through the whole thing with a textbook open on his lap, and took his responsibilities very seriously, as with everything else he did. He’d read all the childcare manuals. He knew about stuff like when Charlie should be started on solid food and potty training and learning the alphabet – whereas I would probably have just muddled through and made lots of mistakes along the way, if he hadn’t been so involved. If I sometimes found myself wishing he’d let me muddle through and make a few mistakes, I told myself I was being very ungrateful and unfair.
    I don’t know why I lied about my marriage. I think it kind of frightened me to admit the truth. Look, all anyone talks about these days is sex – and it’s always good sex, perfect sex, amazing sex. Nobody ever admits to rubbish sex – and certainly not to hardly any sex at all, which is what we were having by the time Charlie was born. Maybe if I’d had the guts to be honest about it from the start it wouldn’t have been so bad. I can’t for the life of me remember how Molly was conceived because it sure as hell must have been a one-off, and it obviously wasn’t memorable. Soon I had my two lovely kids, I had my nice house and my nice life, and a good husband who worked hard for us all. And I was living this huge lie, telling Katie and anyone else who would listen to me, how passionately in love we were and how great everything was. It wasn’t. It was so bloody awful that when we were on our own together, we were hardly even talking, never mind anything else.
    I’ve sat for hours looking at myself in the mirror, wondering why Richard didn’t fancy me, wondering what was wrong with me. It could drive you mad; in the end you give up caring.
    Well, there’s this guy at the gym. Andy. He started chatting to me when we were on the rowing machines next to each other. It’s kind of hard having a conversation when you’re puffing and panting like that, and after a few weeks he asked me to have a coffee with him afterwards, to carry on the conversation. We were having fun. He’s divorced, no kids, teaches at the