Sunshine on a Rainy Day: A funny, feel-good romantic comedy. Bryony Fraser

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      ‘When is it?’ Esther said, fishing out her phone. We all checked our calendars: Jack and I had a date with Iffy and his girlfriend that we couldn’t get out of, but Esther and Ava promised to report back everything about the company.

      ‘And let me know what her boss is like. If he’s smoking, etc.,’ I said. Jack coughed politely at my elbow. ‘I meant for Ava!’ I insisted, pointing to her. ‘I meant for her.’ Kat snorted at me, and Jack gave me a kiss on my hand, before releasing it to grab another biscuit himself.

      Wednesday was an exhausting day at school – the revving up to reports time and parents’ evenings had begun in earnest, with no consideration for how many hours we actually had in our days – and all I wanted to do was curl up on the sofa with Jack. I made myself a cup of tea and sat down, ready to finally exhale the day, but Jack doubled back to the sink.

      ‘Zo, you do realise that I literally just finished doing the washing up, don’t you?’

      ‘Um … thanks?’

      ‘You just dumped your teabag and teaspoon in here – it would have taken you five seconds to wash that spoon.’

      ‘And it’ll take me five seconds to wash it once I’ve actually sat down for five seconds too. It’s not going anywhere.’

      ‘I know it isn’t! Unless I wash it up.’ He looked exasperated.

      ‘Jack, I really didn’t leave it there for you to wash up. I’m knackered and I just want to sit down with you for a little while. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.’ I sighed.

      ‘I know you don’t mean anything by it. That’s the problem.’

      ‘Jack! Please don’t be a dick about it?’

      Jack rubbed his face with his hands. ‘I’m pretty sure if you’d just spent an hour on a boring chore you’d be delighted to hear me calling you a dick.’

      ‘I didn’t call you a dick! And I thought you liked washing up.’

      Jack almost laughed. ‘I don’t like washing up! This isn’t the hugest flat in the entire world, and I like living in a clean and tidy house, so I make sure there’s not dirty laundry and dirty plates and dirty cutlery piled up everywhere! It’s hardly a disorder. So no, I don’t like washing up. I just understand that it needs to be done, and that, unlike some people, I don’t have a magical fairy who comes and does it all while I sit on the sofa and reflect on my day.’

      ‘Please, I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling sick at how this argument was rolling out of my reach. ‘Didn’t we say we wouldn’t still bicker about chores once we were married?’ I didn’t want to get into a lifetime habit of debating my teabags being dumped in the sink.

      ‘No one’s waved a wand to make housework go away, Zo. It still needs to be done. It just depends on how much you’re willing to pay attention to that. Because I hate living in a pigsty.’

      ‘Our flat is always tidy! It’s never a pigsty!’

      ‘Because I never let it get that bad!’

      ‘We can’t keep arguing about this for the rest of our lives!’ I yelled.

      Neither of us said anything, letting my last comment echo around us.

      ‘Right,’ Jack said, washing up my spoon. ‘I’m actually pretty tired so I’m going to go to bed now. Are you coming?’

      ‘I … I need a bit of time to unwind. I’ve only just got in.’

      I ended up washing my hair and watching four hours of American sitcoms until my eyes were itching and my mouth was dry.

      Another magnificent evening, Zoe. Really well played.

      * * *

      When I got into school the next morning, Benni was hovering around my desk.

      ‘Hello, darling. I was just scribbling you a note – it’s that fun time of year, updating all our details for the council’s records!’

      ‘Oh no, and I didn’t even get you a card.’

      ‘All you need to do is log in with your work email and make sure everything’s up to date. Yay! Thanks, darling. And … pub after work? Gina’s taking the boys to the theatre. Or—’

      ‘Don’t.’ I narrowed my eyes at her.

      ‘I was going to say have you got too much on here, but clearly there’s something else going on. Pub it is,’ she announced before hurrying off.

      I decided to get Benni’s request out of the way before I got sucked into the school day. It was simple enough: just as Benni had said, I just had to make sure all my personal and health details were up to date. Name – yes, goddammit, Zoe Lewis – date of birth, National Insurance number, blah blah blah. Oh. ‘Cohabiting’ now needed to become ‘Married’, so I unchecked the cohabiting box, and ticked the married box. Suddenly, half the options on screen were greyed out, and other options popped up below them. What the hell? The whole section on hobbies and interests had become unclickable, but another section had popped up asking how many dependants lived with me. Had I somehow slipped back to 1954? I unclicked ‘Married’ and the boxes ungreyed. Click again, greyed. Married life: children, dinner parties full of painful pointed subtext, the closing in on your inevitable death. Unmarried? You’re probably just into scuba diving, mountain climbing and retaining your will to live. I clicked, unclicked. Clicked. Unclicked. Clicked. Unclicked. All the while watching my options fade in and out.

      After a while I realised Benni had come back and was watching over my shoulder.

      ‘Is someone having an existential crisis?’ I raised a horror-filled face to her as she shook her head in sympathy. ‘You should try telling these things that you’re a female and so is your wife.’

      I laughed a little. ‘It isn’t just me, is it?’

      She bent forwards and looked closer at the screen, clicking and unclicking as I had. She laughed too. ‘Bloody hell, that is a bit on the nose, isn’t it? I reckon some bitter programmer’s having a small dig. It’ll probably be all over social media in the next half hour. Now, in the meantime, just tell them you’re not dead yet and we’ll leave it at that, ok?’

      She watched me send off my details – including a checked ‘Married’ box – and led me into her office for some actual curriculum talk. We had a new exam board and a whole range of different topics to cover in our upcoming parents’ evenings. For the next forty-five minutes, I managed to focus on what she was saying, making notes, and asking questions. But in another part of my brain, I was still simmering, perhaps more than I would have done if I’d not found out the night before that I hadn’t been invited to someone’s weekend away in Ibiza because they’d assumed I wouldn’t go as a newlywed. Sorry!!! she’d texted, I thought you’d want to be with new hubby at the mo ;).

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