‘She is sexy! She’s exotic … sinuous … You must agree.’

‘No!’ I shudder. ‘I can’t even look at her. It,’ I correct myself quickly. It’s an it.

‘Can we have a dog?’ pipes up Anna, who is quite intuitive and has been watching our exchange. ‘Instead of a snake?’

‘No!’ cries Tessa. ‘We have to keep our lovely snakey …’ She attempts to hug the glass tank and the snake uncoils.

Oh God. I have to look away. How could Dan think a snake was a sexy surprise? How?

By the time the girls are in bed, we’ve reached a compromise. We will give the snake a chance. However, I do not have to feed, handle or look at the snake. I will never even touch the freezer drawer dedicated to its food. (It eats mice, actual mice.) Nor am I calling it Dora, which is what the girls have named it. It is not Dora, it is the Snake.

It’s 8 p.m. and we’re sitting on our bed, exhausted by our negotiations. The girls are in bed and have finally stopped creeping out to ‘see if Dora’s all right’.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ says Dan dolefully. I think the truth has finally dawned on him. ‘I mean, we talked about having a snake …’

‘I was joking,’ I say wearily. ‘As I have explained about a hundred times.’ It never occurred to me he might be serious. I mean, a snake?

Dan leans back against the headboard with a sigh, resting his head against his hands. ‘Well, I surprised you, anyway.’ He looks over with a wry smile.

‘Yup.’ I can’t help smiling back. ‘You did.’

‘And you liked your cardigan, anyway.’

‘It’s stunning!’ I say with enthusiasm, wanting to make up for the snake. ‘Honestly, Dan, I love it.’ I stroke the fabric. ‘It’s so soft.’

‘You like the colour?’

‘I love the colour.’ I nod as emphatically as I can. ‘So much better than the bl—’

I stop mid-word. Shit.

‘What did you say?’ asks Dan slowly.

‘Nothing!’ I paste on a bright smile. ‘So, shall we watch some TV, or …’

‘You were going to say “blue”.’

‘No I wasn’t!’ I say, but not quite convincingly enough. I can see Dan’s mind working. He’s not stupid, Dan.

‘Tilda called you.’ The light is dawning on his face. ‘Of course she bloody called you. You two talk about everything.’ He eyes me balefully. ‘That cardigan wasn’t a surprise at all, was it? You probably—’ He breaks off, as though a fresh theory is dawning. I have a horrible feeling it might be the truth. ‘Is that why it was warm?’ He’s shoffed, I can tell. He’s goggling at me, as though his whole world is crumbling about him. ‘Were you at Tilda’s house?’

‘Look …’ I rub my nose. ‘Look … I’m sorry. But she didn’t know which size to choose, and this way you didn’t have to faff around … it made sense …’

‘But it was supposed to be a surprise!’ he almost bellows.

He has a point.

For a while we’re both silent, staring up at the ceiling.

‘My surprise breakfast wasn’t any good,’ I say morosely. ‘And you didn’t even notice my kitchen makeover.’

‘I did!’ Dan says at once. ‘The … uh … candlesticks. Great.’

‘Thanks.’ I raise a wry smile. ‘But don’t pretend. I was deluded to think you’d get excited by a kitchen makeover, of all things.’

Maybe I was deluded, I’m thinking more honestly to myself … or maybe I just wanted an excuse to buy new stuff for the kitchen.

‘Well,’ replies Dan, his hands spreading in acknowledgement. And I know we’re both thinking: Same goes for the snake.

‘And we never went to Tim Wender …’ I add mournfully.

‘Tim Wender?’ Dan swivels round. ‘What do you mean?’

Oh my God. What with all the snake shenanigans, he doesn’t even know.

‘I had tickets!’ I almost pop with frustration. ‘A special lunchtime performance! It was going to be—’ I break off. There’s no point rubbing it in. ‘Never mind. We can go another time.’ A sudden gurgle of laughter escapes from me. ‘What a fiasco.’

‘Maybe surprises are a red herring,’ says Dan. ‘It was a fun idea, but maybe we should call it a day.’

‘No,’ I retort. ‘I’m not giving up so soon. You wait, Dan, I’m going to come up with an awesome surprise for you.’

‘Sylvie—’

‘I’m not giving up,’ I repeat obstinately. ‘And in the meantime, I do have one more thing up my sleeve.’ I pull open my bedside table drawer, take out my tingly massage oil, and throw it to Dan.

‘Now you’re talking.’ His eyes shine as he reads the label and I can tell I’ve scored. The way to Dan’s heart has always been through sex. So …

Wait a minute. Hang on.

I actually blink, as my thoughts crystallize. Why on earth have I bothered with all this other stuff? Why on earth did I think he’d notice a new tablecloth or care what he has for breakfast? I’ve been a total idiot. Sex is the answer. Like they say: It’s all about sex, stupid. This is how we keep our marriage alive.

Already ideas are bubbling up in my head. A new strategy is forming. I have the perfect surprise for Dan. The perfect plan. And he’ll love it, I just know he will.

SEVEN

I don’t get to the sex plan straight away, because 1. we’ve agreed to have a few days’ rest from surprises and 2. I have a few other things to deal with first. Like giving the girls breakfast and plaiting their hair and stacking the dishwasher, all while avoiding looking at the snake. If I look at the snake, the snake will have won, is how I feel.

Which I know is irrational. But what’s so great about being rational? If you ask me, being rational isn’t always the same as being right. I’m almost tempted to share my little maxim with Dan, but he’s frowning moodily at the Sunday paper, so I don’t disturb him.

I know why he’s in a mood. It’s because we’re seeing my mother this morning. I’m actually getting a bit tired of his attitude. It’s the same as with Daddy. Dan used to be OK with Mummy – but now, forget it. Every time we visit, this horrible cloud of tension grows around him beforehand. When I ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ he scowls and says, ‘What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong.’ So I persist: ‘Yes there is, you’re all grouchy,’ whereupon he snarls, ‘You’re imagining things, it’s fine.’ And I can never face a great big argument, especially when it’s the precious weekend (it’s always the precious weekend), so we leave it.

And OK, it’s only a tiny kink in our happiness – but if we’re going to be married for another zillion years, we really should iron it out. We can’t have Dan wincing each time I say, ‘Let’s visit my mother this weekend.’ Soon the girls will start noticing, and saying, ‘Why doesn’t Daddy like Granny?’ and that’ll be really bad.

‘Dan,’ I begin.

‘Yes?’

He looks up, still frowning, and instantly my nerve fails. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not the best at confrontation. I don’t even know where I’m planning to start.

Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t tackle this openly, I suddenly decide. Maybe I need to operate by stealth. Build trust and affection between my mother and Dan in some subtle way that neither of them notices. Yes. Good plan.

‘We should get going,’ I say, and head out of the kitchen – still managing to avoid looking at the snake by fixing my eyes on a distant corner.

As Dan drives us to Chelsea, I stare ahead at the road, mulling on marriage and life, and how unfair everything is. If anyone was destined to have a long and perfect marriage, it was my parents. I mean, they were perfect. They could have been married for six hundred years, no problem. Daddy adored Mummy, and she adored him back, and they made an amazing couple on the dance floor, or on their boat in pastel polo shirts, or turning up at school parents’ evenings, twinkling and smiling and charming everyone.

Mummy still twinkles. But it’s the kind of bright, unnerving twinkle that might shatter at any moment. Everyone says she’s coped ‘marvellously’ since Daddy died. She certainly coped better than me, Go-to-pieces Sylvie.

(No. Not ‘better’. It’s not a competition. She coped differently from me, that’s all.)

She still talks about Daddy, in fact she loves talking about Daddy. We both do. But the conversation has to be along her lines. If you venture on to the ‘wrong’ topic, she draws breath and her eyes go shiny and she blinks very furiously and gazes at the window and you feel terrible. The trouble is, the ‘wrong’ topics are random and unpredictable. A reference to Daddy’s colourful handkerchiefs, his funny superstitions when he played golf, those holidays we used to spend in Spain: topics that seem utterly safe and harmless … but no. Each of them has brought on an attack of furious blinking and window-gazing and me desperately trying to change the subject.

Which is just grief, I guess. I’ve decided that grief is like a newborn baby. It knocks you for six. It takes over your brain with its incessant cry. It stops you sleeping or eating or functioning, and everyone says, ‘Hang in there, it’ll get easier.’ What they don’t say is, ‘Two years on, you’ll think it’s got easier, but then, out of the blue, you’ll hear a certain tune in the supermarket and start sobbing.’

Mummy doesn’t sob – it’s not her style, sobbing – but she does blink. I sometimes sob. On the other hand, sometimes I go hours, or even days, without thinking about Daddy. And then, of course, I feel terrible.

‘Why are we going for brunch?’ says Dan as we pull up at the lights.

‘To have brunch!’ I say, a little sharply. ‘To be a family!’

‘No other agenda?’ He raises his eyebrows, and I feel slight misgivings. I don’t think there’s another agenda. On the phone last night I said to Mummy, at least three times, ‘It is just brunch, isn’t it? Nothing … else?’ And she said, ‘Of course, darling!’ and sounded quite offended.