Ethan was going straight from the office to his family’s house so there was no time to have it out with him. By the time I arrived at Steve and Lynn’s home, I was still upset by Ruby’s comments and by Ethan going behind my back. It didn’t help that every time I’m forced to see Ethan’s parents, a cloud of dread descends because their favourite pastime is making me feel an inch tall. His parents don’t think I’m good enough for their son and never have.
When I first met Steve, he Google-mapped our parents’ home and I think Mum and Dad’s three-bed semi-detached didn’t quite compare to their four-bed detached with two reception rooms, and it was all downhill from there. I used to worry I was the problem – I wasn’t university-educated, our family aren’t rich, I was too opinionated – but I quickly learned that neither Lynn nor Steve had a single positive thing to say about either of their sons’ partners, past or present.
In the early years of our relationship, I was so swept up in Ethan’s charm, his money and the fantastic sex, that I could overlook how his parents treated me. Naively, I thought when we were married, Ethan would speak up against his parents when they put me or my family down. I was wrong.
Lynn welcomed me inside. She is round and homely, though every time I look at Ethan’s cookie-cutter mother, I remember him telling me she sat him down just before he went away to university and told him, ‘Be careful about taking a girl back to your room and putting yourself in a position where she can accuse you of something,’ deciding not to discuss with her son the importance of hearing a ‘yes’ before having sex with a woman and instead choosing to paint women as insidious liars out to wreck a man’s life.
With a smile, I greeted Ethan’s parents and my traitorous husband. I made polite conversation, biting my tongue against Steve’s insistence that if women did as good a job as men, of course they’d be paid the same. Sometimes I’m sure he says these things just to bait me, but I tell myself to sympathise with him because his dislike of women is most probably a product of his mother abandoning him when he was young. She went on to remarry and have a daughter; I’ve only ever heard Steve spout jealous poison regarding his half-sister.
Mum and Dad don’t know how I feel about Ethan’s family. Before the wedding, which was mostly directed by Lynn, our families only crossed paths once when we had dinner at my parents’ house. Mum put so much effort into hosting, but Steve and Lynn spent the entire evening making little snide remarks, referring to their house as ‘cosy’ and making Mum change the cutlery twice because of watermarks on the silverware. They didn’t even stay for dessert. I knew Mum and Dad were hurt, but we didn’t talk about it, and Mum just kept saying, ‘Ethan comes from a lovely family’ when what she really meant was ‘wealthy’。
The Archers make out they’re a close-knit group, but their youngest, Daniel, moved to Bali to be an artist. This left Steve, with all his abandonment issues and blatant disregard for any career in the arts, spitting feathers, and now it’s like they only ever had one son with his financially stable career. I actually bought a few of Daniel’s paintings and had them shipped to the UK. Every time Lynn and Steve come over, they compliment those pieces without even knowing they were created by their forgotten son, and I get a little kick out of it.
I was just about to tuck into a slab of chocolate fudge cake when Ethan whipped the plate out from beneath my poised fork and held it up. ‘Mum, can you cut this in half?’
I glanced at him.
‘It’s too big,’ he told me. ‘Do you need all that sugar and cream?’
A few months ago, this comment would’ve made me hate my body and go on another diet to shrink my size eight waist, but this, along with his sly attempts to manipulate me via Ruby, made anger sizzle. I bit my tongue though, not wanting to cause a scene in front of his family.
Steve chortled. ‘Lynn doesn’t have any self-restraint either.’
To my outrage, Ethan laughed.
‘Ada, I picked up some prenatal vitamins for you,’ said Lynn, taking her place beside her husband.
I stiffened, then glanced at Ethan who was studiously focusing on his dessert. This was another set-up.
‘Ethan mentioned you two are … struggling. I read it’s never too early to take prenatals,’ said Lynn. ‘It’ll all be worth it in the end. My life just wouldn’t be the same without children.’
But this is the thing. For years, Lynn’s life consisted of weekends spent at the side of a rugby pitch in all weathers while shedding her carefully chosen friends and replacing them with other mums from the school gates, pouring hours into her children’s homework to ensure they go to good universities, only to have them grow up and fly the nest. Meanwhile, she is a wife, a mother and nothing else. I don’t want that for myself. And it’s taken me long enough to admit it.