When Lauren arrives home, quite drunk, from her best friend Eleni’s hen do, she is surprised and alarmed to find a man in her house. What’s more, the man says he is her husband, and there is evidence everywhere to suggest he is right: there are photos of them together around the flat and on her phone, he has a key (which she discovers when she tries to throw him out), they have a long string of text messages involving quotidian things like picking up milk on the way home. She decides to sleep it off in the spare room and sort out this husband situation in the morning.
The husband, the first one, is called Michael. He does appear to be her husband – which Lauren now confirms with her sister Nat, her beloved toddler nephew Caleb and numerous other sources. She googles him and finds out that he’s an architect (not bad) and, though there are subtle changes around the house like new cushions and a different rug, she still has her job at the council and most other aspects of her life are in place. Just as she is getting used to the idea that she is now married and sharing her life with a stranger, Michael goes up into the attic to change a lightbulb. An entirely different man comes down.
Very soon, Lauren is tapping into an apparently endless supply of husbands – when one goes up to the attic, another comes down. Sometimes the paint on the walls is different or there are other little touches, hints of a shared life, but as far as the husbands are concerned, Lauren has no idea what to expect. One husband comes down cursing and violent. Lauren is scared. Sending him back is more difficult, but she tricks him into it. Several more husbands follow. One she keeps around for a while, Jason, is a gardener and her garden has never looked so good. But eventually he doesn’t seem right, and she sends him back.
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