"Dude, I've been sober three months for the first time since I was twelve!" " Can't talk now Chris is leaving." " You, what?" " It's fine, it's just temporary." " It's not temporary!" "This is Catherine, my extraordinarily" " beautiful girlfriend." " Hi." "Sometimes, I find myself thinking that I'd like to have sexual intercourse with women who have penises." "Right!" " What time is it?" " 7:15." "Oh!" "I love it when they sleep in." "Why do you think we don't check and see if Muireann's still alive any more?" "Because the very act of doing that could wake her up." "And that's worse than her being dead." " Happy anniversary." " Happy anniversary!" "It's such a pathetic anniversary though, isn't it?" "Three years." " Like, that's nothing to be proud of." " I'm proud of it." "I'm more proud of us than I am of the kids." " Eurgh." " What?" "No, I'm serious." "Wh-what's to be proud of there?" "I mean, who doesn't want to take care of their kids?" "You'd have to be a monster to not want to do that." "But this?" "Maintaining this?" "This is the slog." "Thanks, lover." "Do you ever think about cheating" " on me now?" " Mm-hm." " But you haven't ever cheated on me?" " No." " Why not?" " Why haven't I cheated on you?" "Because..." "Loads of reasons." "I mean, the biggest is you've been pregnant so much, so, not fucking some prostitute is the least I can do when you've been carting around our babies" " in your body." " Wha...?" "Why does it have to be a prostitute?" "Because if you think I'm going to put time and money and effort into maybe getting into some woman's pants, you're crazy." "If I ever do cheat on you, it's going to be a cash transaction with a guaranteed ejaculation, after which she immediately leaves so I can ponder suicide because of how guilty I feel." "Aw!" "That's so sweet." "What?" "Aren't you going to ask me if I've ever cheated?" "So arrogant!" " Why?" "Have you?" " No." "Oh, but..." "I did come home the other day and masturbate when a hot black guy told me I smelt good in Tesco's!" "Oh..." "Tesco's?" "Um, you know..." "Sex with someone else is like a nice idea in theory, but..." "Like, you have a penis, and it's fine and you know what to do with it now, and sex with a stranger, man?" "It's not like it would be any good, the first six or eight times." "I'd have to train him, and by then I know him, he's a person in my life and..." "Fuck that." "I may as well have sex with you at that point." "Fair enough." "Frankie's going to be here for his presents in a moment." " So better get rid of your boner." " Oh, shit." "Yeah, he was in here the other day, kicking it." "It was awful." "I don't want my son to have any memories of any contact with his father's boner." " That's trouble!" " Mm." "Plus kids, you know, they talk." "Yeah, he'll be in nursery today, "My daddy's penis is hard!"" ""My daddy's penis was harder than normal this morning!"" "It's not going down." "Um... think about..." "Think about Liza Minnelli eating hummus." "Hi." "I was..." "I just want to know... how much is it?" "Is that per hour or per...?" "Great!" "Uh, duh... fuck!" "Y-you have to stop coming by without calling first." "If you don't want me in your apartment, don't give me keys." " I could've been..." " You could have been what?" "Just call first." "I brought round some of Geoffrey's clothes." "Ironed." "Some of... your stuff got mixed up in there too, so I gave them a quick press." "Thank you." "Some of those boxers looked like they'd been worn for more than a week." " Well, I don't need you..." " Well, I mean, really." "They were grey." "And I don't want to embarrass you, but there was brown in there too." "It's no way for a grown man to live." " Should I buy you some new pants?" " I can buy my own pants." "Oh, can you!" "Who's a big boy?" "Right." "I'm going to my boot camp." "I put a vegan lasagne in your freezer compartment." "Thank you." "Morning!" "I was just smiling because you're the first woman that" "I haven't wanted to pile into a taxi the second after I've come." "Well, that's fucking romantic." " What time is it?" " It's, er...7:30." "Oh, bollocks!" "I've got a press conference at 9:00 for the Clean Water Trust." "Do you want some breakfast?" "I-I feel compelled to feed you." " I've got a machine that makes omelettes." " No, I've got to run." "I'm seeing you later, right?" "You're coming to Tina's?" " Erm, I don't think so." " Why not?" "Well, I like you a lot and I'm afraid if you see me with your cabal of do-gooders, you might realise that I'm actually an asshole and a coward." "They're not do-gooders, they're fuck-ups..." " ..." "like you." "Don't be feeble." " Oh." "All right." "Should I bring anything?" "Bring that." "Frank is in a cake coma, it's his birthday, so he shouldn't wake up." " What time do I put Mee..." " Muireann?" "Put her down around 7:30." "She's going to cry for about 20 minutes." "What Sharon does is she hides in the room while she cries." "I don't do that." "I come downstairs and I put on my headphones and I listen to the first half of Appetite For Destruction." "So you can do one of those but if you pick her up and you soothe her and you mess up her sleep training, I'll know about it and I'll come to your house and wake you up, OK?" " OK." " Great." "So what time are you back?" "Well, I don't know because it's a surprise." " We'll be back around 11:00." " Oh." "OK, ah, so, uh, watch TV, help yourself to food." "Ah, maybe don't cook anything." "Last baby-sitter we had would just really go to town, so..." "You know, just use your discretion." "If there's four chicken breasts, that's a meal for us tomorrow probably but, you know, cereal, a rice cake, some raisins, just help yourself to any of that." "OK?" "OK." "And, ah, if the mood strikes you to do a little laundry, then go for it." "I don't do laundry." "OK." "You know, I s..." "I said, "If the mood strikes you,"" "it's, ah, it's not Downton Abbey." "Just whatever you like." "I don't like her." "Last time I was here I had to send my pros-cutto back because there was a wee ginger hair on it." "Chris nearly hit the roof." "You mean prosciutto?" "Oh, right, yeah." "Well, Chris was the cook in our house," " so I never had..." " Shh-shh." "Shhhh." "No Chris." "You look very handsome tonight." "I like the way you've done your hair." " It really frames your features." " Thank you." "Sometimes when a woman your age wears her hair long, it can really drag the face down." "I wish we'd met earlier." "Oh, sorry, but I really wanted to be on set because Jeffrey was doing that scene with Maggie Gyllenhaal." "I'd heard that she was, well, less than pleasant." "Happy to confirm that." " I meant earlier in our lives." " Oh, right, yes." " That would also have been nice." " Very nice." "Francesca, I know it's a bit early in our relationship but I'm not getting any younger and neither are you." "A man doesn't meet a woman like you every day." "I think I would be a good husband to you." "So if you would do..." "And then my stomach started making all these noises, probably because I hadn't eaten in, like, a week and I thought, "Well, now I have to shut this fucker up,"" "so I held the gun to my stomach and I pulled the trigger but it just went" ""click" because, obviously, I'd already emptied the clip into the TV earlier." "And I had this moment of clarity and I called Ash." " And he pulled me out of it." " I'll never forget that call." ""Come and get me, please."" "Don't know why I called him, you were dissolving cocaine in fucking cider" " and injecting it at the time." " I liked to party." " He lost custody of his kids." "N..." " Yeah, but I got them back." "He lived in an upturned boat in a limestone quarry for two years, and I mean he fucking lived there." "Now he's an executive director at the IMF." "I have never known one man to take his pain and translate it into such pure light." "What a fucking mess!" "Huh!" "God, I mean, I was never that bad." "You know, I definitely thought I was going to die but, like, in a fun way, at a party, not in the flaming school bus that I'd stolen." "I had people telling me, "You're scum,"" "and, "You're going to choke on your own tongue,"" "etc. but, you know, I always had money in the bank and, um, I guess I sort of failed upwards career-wise." "Plus I-I was really good-looking until like two years ago" " when the cirrhosis kicked in." " You're still good-looking." "I know, but my point is-is, that I-I pulled out of the nosedive before anything really terrible happened." "So, um, how long have you been sober for?" "Five months." "What?" "Five months and one year." "Yeah... uh... one, two, three, four, five..." "Yeah, a-a-a-about one year and five months." "Approx." " You have cirrhosis, Dave?" " Oh, yeah." "Lose any teeth?" "Hell yeah, I lost a tooth." "Couple of others got quite loose." "Georgia?" "Is, er, 30 minutes OK?" "'Cause that makes it an even hundred." "Is there somewhere I can charge my phone?" "This is a bit weird for me." "Not you, you... you're not weird, you're lovely." "Just the situation is weird." "For me." "Um..." " Do you speak English?" " You're handsome, thank God." "Yeah... yeah, yeah... yep." "Right." "Here I go." " Do you want to put them on the chair?" " Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry." "OK." "Right." "How many knuckles deep?" " How many what?" " It's a joke." "I love it round here." "Um... w-why are we stopping?" "This is what we're doing." "I booked us into a cheese workshop." "What do you mean, a cheese workshop?" "A cheese workshop." "We're going to make cheese." "You can't make cheese in a night, it takes, like, a year to make a cheese." "You've been hoodwinked." "Well, y-you don't fully make your own cheese, you learn... a, it's like a cheese-appreciation course." "I already appreciate cheese." "Can you give it a go?" "I mean, we do the same thing every year." "We go to a restaurant, you get drunk, I eat two desserts, this is different and fun." " Your favourite thing is cheese." " Have you paid for it yet?" " It's free." " It was..." "That was your plan for our anniversary, a free cheese workshop?" "What did you do, throw a dart at a shit-ideas board?" "No, a guy at work and his nice wife, who's not an asshole, did it." "And they said it was fun." "What did you plan?" "Nothing, but if I was going to plan anything, it would have been better than this." "Let's go." "Let's get some pizza while we decide on where we eat." "Thank you for a lovely evening." " And sorry about..." " Oh, it's fine." "I think, Patrick, I want to just keep things simple for now." "You know, just..." "I think maybe there could be a future for us, in maybe... four and a half to five years." "You know, when Jeffrey's..." "Do you want to wait four and a half to five years for something like that?" "Well... oh... ah..." "Ohh!" " Fran?" " Hey, Fran." " Rob!" " Er, Patrick, this is Sharon and Rob." "This is Patrick." " What are you doing here?" "Oh!" " Oh, just anniversary dinner." "Well, you picked a lovely place for it." "Chris and I celebrated our ten-year anniversary here." "Mm-hm." "Try the prosciutto." " Oh, do they carve it at the table?" " Well, we're just going to..." "Let's just go in, cos I'm pretty hungry." " Well, have a wonderful evening." " Aww!" " Bye." " Thank you." "Sharon and Rob." "Shall we...?" "Nice place." "It's not mine." "Right." "You're a wild man." "I did not expect." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "We can try something else next time." " Use a bigger vibrator, take a shower..." " No." "I don't... think so." "I love this guy." "Do you watch this show?" " Yeah..." "No, no." "I don't." " He's funny because he's very fat." "Right." "Right, right, well, I'm just going to get back to, um..." "There's the extra 20 for the... balls thing." "You fat bastard!" "Look at them." "They're so sweet." "Why, because they've got the same hairdo?" "No, because of how happy they are." "They're not even talking to each other." "Because they don't have to." "They're so peaceful." "It's crazy to think they're going to be 69ing later in front of the fireplace." "No-one 69s any more." "Except... teenagers, you know, or in pornos." " Er, people 69." " Well, if they do, it's just for show." "It's bullshit." "You can't give and receive pleasure at the same time." "You're just going to do them both badly." "You know..." "I don't mind giving you a blow job..." " Really?" " Yeah." "I mean, I know I don't do it very often, but if I do it, I'm going to do it properly." "You know, I want to be able to breathe." "And I don't want the only air available to me to be the air that's circulating round your arsehole." "Which is where my nose would be parked... if we were 69ing." "What do you think she's going to do when he dies?" " Why is he going to die first?" " Men always die first." "Yeah, well we'll see about that." "I mean, your stress level's pretty high." "It wouldn't surprise me if your heart explodes before you turn 60." "Well, I'm going to try and hold out till I'm 70, meet the grandkids and then, I'm just going to pull the ripcord." " What the hell does that mean?" " I've no interest in being old." "When I'm 70, I just want to be hidden away somewhere, drinking gin, just smoking little black cigars." "I don't want to see any young people." "Sorry, I forgot to tell you all this." "Fine, you can rot in the attic while I live on the floor below with my new, fun, young wife." " New, fun, young wife?" " Yeah, she's Chinese." "You got a problem with that?" " Have you noticed something about tonight?" " What?" "We don't normally have fun on our anniversary." "Well, that's because we didn't end up sitting in a room full of cheese." "No, that's the reason I wanted to do the cheese thing, so we didn't wind up sitting across the table from each other crying again." "I just think we should change the date of our anniversary." " OK." " It's not that our wedding wasn't wonderful." "It's just too hard to celebrate when it's also the date you watched your baby be born and then nearly die." "And it's not just that." "Like, I became a wreck on that day." "You know, that's why I was so shit with Muireann." "I was scared to love her the way I love Frankie." "'Cause I was afraid of what would happen to her." " I'm still scared." " Nothing's going to happen to her." "Yeah, well you say that, but it doesn't matter, because I'm a paranoid mess now." " You got away lightly." " You always do this." "You don't have a monopoly on pain." "Look around you." "She's in pain, they're in pain." "Other people's pain doesn't make your pain any less awful." "You didn't even let me hold Frankie until he was three weeks old." "I went from being a single asshole in Boston to a married-to-a-stranger asshole in London with a premature baby in a little see-through coffin thing hooked up to, what, 80 tubes?" "I'm sorry." "I've got a sticky toffee pudding and the profiteroles." " Who's having what?" " They're both for me." "Can I get another Sauvignon?" "Er, bottle." "I think I'll get some cheese." "You said you'd been sober a year." " Yeah, well, I'm on my way to being." " What you did was called lying." "And liars don't usually stay sober for very long." " Oh, bullshit." "That's not what this is." " Yeah, it is." "No." "It's because my tale of redemption isn't" " "inspirational" enough." " Your tale of redemption?" "You practically soaked through your panties in there with Ash." "Y-you think because I just destroyed my liver and didn't live in a fucking septic tank" "I can't be in your little bad boys' club?" "I could have lived in a septic tank." "Well, you're obviously not ready for this." " Or for me." " Maybe I'm not." "May-maybe I should just go and butt chug one of Ash's cocaine smoothies or whatever the fuck." "So, that's it, then, huh?" "Is this it?" "Let's make our new anniversary the date we first met." "OK." "Let's do that." "Which was...?" " You look so beautiful in the moonlight." " It's the fucking 5th of March, arsehole." "Hello." " I miss you." " What do you miss about me?" "Mm, uh, I don't know." " Oh!" "Bye, Chris." " The way you sing in the kitchen." "You hate my singing." "Yeah, but it's noise, isn't it?" "Cuts through the silence." "That's not a reason." "OK, I miss the way you make a sandwich." "I miss hearing the creaky floorboards when you're walking around upstairs." "I miss you saying "Ta-da!" when you take popcorn out of the microwave." " Look, I'm sorry you're lonely, Chris." " I'm not." "Do you know what my problem is?" "You didn't miss me when I was there." "You didn't miss me enough to reach a foot and a half across the bed and touch my face." " Fran..." " Well, somebody's touching my face now." "Somebody actually wants to touch my face, and my breasts, and..." " and my..." " I get it!" " More Riesling?" " Lovely." "It was Chris." "Siri, I'd like you to call my good friend Rob Norris." "Just to confirm, you'd like to call" " Rob Norris?" " Yes." "I need help from Rob Norris." "Calling Rob Norris." " Is this what you wanted?" " Huh?" "Uh-huh." "Oh, God." " I'd better get her, 'cause..." " Well, what about sleep training?" "Yeah, but she's just... she sounds upset." "Well, I mean, we're either sleep training or we're not." "I can't have sex with a baby crying." "Are you covering my ears?" "I'm just... if you hold on minute, I'm just... finishing." "Uh... uh." "Ahh!" "Ah!" "Nggh!" "Uh!" "Uhh!" "What you just did is very bad, OK?" "Like, that's how a serial killer might warm up before a spree." "But just listen." "Is she crying any more?" "No, she isn't." "That's because her daddy helped her with her sleep training." "Uhh..." "Oh, God."