Surprise Me

‘More?’

How could he think it would be more? Just the thought of it makes me feel a bit dizzy. Eleven thousand more shags, all with Dan. Not that – I mean, obviously I want them to be with Dan, but … eleven thousand times?

How will we even have the time? I mean, we have to eat. We have to hold down jobs. And won’t we get bored? Should I be googling new positions? Should I install a TV on the ceiling?

That figure can’t be right. He must have misplaced a zero.

‘How did you work that out?’ I demand suspiciously, but Dan ignores me. He runs his hands down my back and cups my bottom, his eyes full of that intent, single-purpose look he gets. The thing about Dan is, you can only talk about sex with him for about thirty seconds before he wants to be doing it, not talking about it. In fact, he views talking about sex, generally, as a total waste of time. (I rather love talking about it, but I’ve learned to do that afterwards. I lie in his arms and tell him everything I think about … well, everything, and he says, ‘Mmm, mmm,’ until I realize he’s fallen asleep.)

‘Maybe I’ll put off my run,’ he says, kissing my neck firmly. ‘It is our anniversary …’

And it is. And the sex is great – we’re pretty psychic at that too, by now – and we lie in bed afterwards and say things like ‘That was amazing’, and ‘I love you’, and everything that happy couples say.

And it was amazing.

And I do love him.

But – totally, absolutely honestly – there’s also another tiny voice in my head. Saying: One down. Only another 10,999 times to go.

THREE

I wake up early to find that Dan is ahead of me. He’s already got out of bed and is sitting in the little wicker chair in our bay window, staring morosely out of the window.

‘Morning.’ He turns a smidgen towards me.

‘Morning!’ I sit up, already alert, thoughts buzzing around my head. I reckon I have this whole living-forever thing worked out. I was thinking hard about it while I was drifting off to sleep, and I have the answer!

I’m about to tell it to Dan – but he gets in first.

‘So basically, I need to work till I’m about ninety-five,’ he says in utmost gloom. ‘I’ve been doing sums.’

‘What?’ I say uncomprehendingly.

‘If we’re living forever, that means we’ve got to work forever.’ He gives me a baleful look. ‘To fund our ancient, elderly lifespans. I mean, forget retiring at sixty-five. Forget retiring altogether. Forget taking it easy.’

‘Stop being so miserable!’ I exclaim. ‘It was good news, remember?’

‘Do you want to work till ninety-five?’ he shoots back.

‘Maybe.’ I shrug. ‘I love my job. You love your job.’

Dan scowls. ‘I don’t love it that much. My dad retired at fifty-seven, do you know that?’

His attitude is really starting to piss me off.

‘Stop being negative,’ I instruct him. ‘Think of the opportunities. We have decades and decades in front of us! We can do anything! It’s amazing! We just have to plan.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dan gives me a suspicious look.

‘OK, here are some of my ideas.’ I shuffle forward in the bed and fix my gaze on his, trying to inspire him. ‘We divide our life into decades. Each decade we do something different and cool. We achieve things. We push ourselves. Like maybe for one whole decade, we speak only Italian to each other.’

‘What?’

‘We speak only Italian to each other,’ I repeat, a bit defensively. ‘Why not?’

‘Because we don’t speak Italian,’ says Dan, as though I’m totally nuts.

‘We’d learn! It would be life-enhancing. It’d be …’ I gesture vaguely.

Dan just gives me a look. ‘What are your other ideas?’

‘We try new jobs.’

‘What new jobs?’

‘I don’t know! We find amazing, fulfilling jobs that stretch us. Or we live in different places, maybe. What about one decade in Europe, one decade in South America, one decade in the States …’ I count off on my fingers. ‘We could live everywhere!’

‘We could travel,’ Dan allows. ‘We should travel. I’ve always wanted to go to Ecuador. See the Galapagos Islands.’

‘There you go, then! We go to Ecuador.’

For a moment we’re both silent. I can see Dan digesting this thought.

His eyes start to gleam and he suddenly looks up. ‘Let’s do it. Fuck it, Sylvie, you’re right. This is a wake-up call. We need to live life. We’ll book flights to Ecuador, take the girls out of school, we’ll be there by Friday … Let’s do it.’

He looks so excited, I don’t want to dampen his enthusiasm. But wasn’t he listening? I was talking about the next decade. Or possibly the one after that. Some far-off, unspecified time. Not this week.

‘I definitely want to go to Ecuador,’ I say after a pause. ‘Absolutely. But it would cost a fortune—’

‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’ Dan bats my objection aside. ‘We’d manage. I mean, Ecuador, Sylvie.’

‘Totally!’ I try to match his level of animation. ‘Ecuador!’ I leave a pause before I add, ‘The only thing is, Mrs Kendrick doesn’t like me taking unscheduled holidays.’

‘She’ll live with it.’

‘And it’s the girls’ school play. They can’t miss it, and they need to be at rehearsals …’

Dan makes a small, exasperated sound. ‘OK, next month.’

‘It’s your mother’s birthday,’ I point out. ‘And we’ve got the Richardsons for dinner, and the girls have got sports day …’

‘All right,’ says Dan, sounding as though it’s an effort to stay calm. ‘The month after that. Or in the summer holidays.’

‘We’re going to the Lake District,’ I remind him, and wince at his expression. ‘I mean, we could cancel but we’ve paid a deposit …’ I trail off.

‘Let me get this straight.’ Dan speaks evenly, but he sounds like he wants to explode. ‘I have endless years ahead of me, but I can’t fit in one spontaneous, life-enhancing trip to Ecuador?’

There’s silence. I don’t want to say what I’m thinking, which is: Obviously we can’t fit in a spontaneous, life-enhancing trip to Ecuador because, hello, we have lives.

‘We could go and eat at an Ecuadorian restaurant,’ I suggest brightly.

Although from the look Dan shoots me, maybe I should have just kept quiet.

At breakfast I pour out muesli for myself and Dan and add some extra sunflower seeds. We’re going to need good skin if we’re going to last another sixty-eight years.

Should I start getting Botox?

‘Another twenty-five thousand breakfasts,’ Dan suddenly says, staring into his bowl. ‘Just worked it out.’

Tessa looks up from her toast and regards him with bright eyes, always ready to find the joke. ‘If you eat twenty-five breakfasts your tummy will explode!’

‘Twenty-five thousand,’ corrects Anna.

‘I said twenty-five-a-thousand,’ Tessa instantly retorts.

‘Honestly, Dan, are you still thinking about that?’ I give him a pitying look. ‘You really have to get past it.’