"A stranger would give your marraige a week"

HOME, 9am — and it strikes me that we need to revise certain household arrangements, for it’s an unhappy fashion in our house that all offspring burst open our bedroom door when we least expect it, to look for towels in the linen cupboard, saying things in passing like, “by the way, we’ve run out of milk”.

This morning it’s Daughter One assaulting our cupboard and privacy; walking past our bed with a towel and a bottle of Lidl’s hair conditioner, which is like “washing-up liquid, for god’s sake, I mean what is it with Dad and Lidl?”

Then she pauses at the door. “Not being funny,” she says, “but if a stranger saw you both right now, they’d give your marriage a week.”

After she’s departed, the floorboards judder in the way they do when my husband turns over in our old cast-iron bed.Then my husband’s head appears over the side of it. He looks down at me on the floor. “We’re going to have to tackle this once and for all,” he says, looking like he means business.

“I know,” I say. “We really should move the linen cupboard.”

“You can’t sleep down in that doggy-basket forever,” he says, “your sister was right — you’ve started to like it.

“It was supposed to be a temporary solution,” he continues. “Pass me the lap-top and come up here. I’m going to Google it.”

I roll up my doggy-basket — a thin foam pallet — and stuff it under the bed, considering for a moment, the degree of difficulty in combining for a lifetime, two lives by day, and how it is nothing compared to combining for a lifetime, two lives by night.

“What are you going to type into the search engine?” I ask.

“Orthopaedic mattresses,” he says.

“That’s one place to start,” I say, climbing onto our expensive memory-foam mattress, which is like climbing onto a half-cooked sponge cake. “Though I can think of others.”

“Like what?” he says.

“All-round sleep incompatibilty,” I say, sinking slowly down into the middle of the cake until I come to rest right at the bottom of it where my husband has been folded in overnight, restless legs a-twitch..

“I’m not Googling that,” he says, looking terrified.

“Relax,” I say, winching myself out of the cake by pulling on the bed-post; “could be worse — could be sexual incompatibility. So count yourself lucky, stop twitching and pass me the lap-top.”

I type in the words “couples” and “sleep”, finding it harder than ever to maintain a sitting position on sponge, what with my back.

This search leads us through the politics and practicalities of bed-sharing — who gets pushed to the edge, who sleeps near the door, restless legs, cold feet, snoring — and onto a book in which 39 sleeping positions, including the ‘Springloader’, ‘Heimlich’, ‘Classic Spoons’ and ‘Paper Dolls’ are illustrated and decoded. It’s not until we get to the ‘Cliffhanger’ that we finally identify our own: clinging to opposite sides of the bed with your backs to each other. The decoding of Cliffhanger is sobering and the doggy-basket doesn’t even get a mention.

“Orthopaedic mattresses,” my husband says, looking all chicken again and taking the laptop.

This search leads us to a West Cork beds and mattresses outlet, a 20-minute car ride away.

Downstairs, I play a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears for half an hour, finding every bed too hard, too small, or too soft — and the game itself oddly empowering.

In desperation, we head upstairs and try out two separate three–foot bunk-bed mattresses, made out of cheap foam, on top of two divan bases, which we’ve pushed together with no gap between. I have a feeling this might be just right.

“Right, let’s get into the Cliffhanger,” I instruct.

“Now turn over,” I continue. “No! Not like that. Like an agitated walrus.

“With no consideration whatsoever, like you do at home.”

My husband turns over grumpily.

“Now twitch your legs and jump about constantly- and breathe really, really heavily, while I lie still as a dormouse with a broken back.”

My husband pounds about.

“Harder. Come on. More twitching. Way more twitching. Like you’re being electrocuted. Christ that’s nothing like as bad as when you’re...”

I stop immediately. A stranger is looking at us both from the top of the stairs.

It is the store manager. And I think he’s giving our marriage a week.