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‘Touch was exactly what they couldn’t do.’
Ian met my eyes, pleading, as he gathered up our plates. ‘Can I see the plan?’ I said. I was the peacemaker in the group, which meant, like many peacekeepers, I was often riddled with metaphorical crossfire bullets. ‘Thank you, Em. It’s pretty.’
Emma was an excellent primary school teacher. She was authoritative, briskly kind, organised and on top of this a dab hand at cutting and gluing things. Unfortunately, she couldn’t curtail this, and so was prone to a vice you might call ‘scrapbooking gone mad’. Every page was decorated in sparkly gold pen, with glued-in photos and drawings. ‘So what’s the—’
‘Well,’ she jumped in, ‘I read in this book that the best way through a big life change is to have a list. A to-do list.’
That didn’t sound so bad. Lists were my comfort zone—I’d had interventions about this too. I turned the leaf. Page one said—do stand-up comedy. It was accompanied by a picture of me rather drunk, in a party hat, in the middle of saying something that was clearly very important. I looked up at them. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a bucket list,’ said Cynthia gently. ‘Except you’re not dying, of course. Sort of an embracing-life list. All the things you said you wanted to do for years, then never did because you were living in the suburbs with Dan.’
‘I never said I wanted to—what’s this—eat something weird? Ew, is that a snail in the picture?’
‘We sort of … extrapolated for some of them.’
‘You extrapolated that I wanted to … sleep with a stranger? Nice abs on that dude though.’ I tilted the book for a better look at the picture.
‘You could do both of those last ones together,’ called Ian from the kitchen. ‘I mean, if you slept with a stranger, you probably would eat something weird. Two birds, one stone, etc.’
‘Go away, Ian,’ said Emma and Cynthia in unison.
I was leafing through the lovely rough handmade paper pages, with their crazy gold-penned instructions. ‘Guys, what is this about? I didn’t say I wanted to … do yoga properly. What?’
Emma leaned across the table to me earnestly. ‘Rach. What’s happened is you’ve had a disastropiphany.’
‘A what?’
‘A terrible thing has happened to you, but you can use it to make changes in your life, and generally become much happier.’
‘Like in Eat Pray Love,’ Cynthia chipped in.
There was a problem with that—no one was going to pay me to go round the world shagging Javier Bardem and eating ice cream. Julia Roberts would definitely not play me in the film of this. Maybe Kathy Burke. There was no way I could pull off prayer beads as a look. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You must really think I’ve messed things up.’
In the silence that followed Ian pushed a large vegetable through the kitchen door. ‘What do you think, eh? It’s what Prince was singing about. “Little Red Courgette”? Eh? Eh?’
‘Courgettes are green,’ said Emma stonily. ‘And get on with the dessert, will you?’
‘Yes, sir!’ In the kitchen we could hear him singing over the noise of the blender. ‘She made some raspberry puree … the kind you find in a fruit and veg store …’ Emma rolled her eyes affectionately. At least I hoped it was affectionately.
She lowered her voice. ‘To be honest, Rach, when you and Dan split up, it made me think—is this all there is, working all day and every evening, falling asleep in front of box sets, saving for a deposit on an even smaller flat somewhere further out?’ There was a silence from the kitchen. She went on. ‘You’ve been so brave, Rach. You changed your life. Hardly anyone ever does. They just put up with it.’
I swallowed hard and look at Cynthia. ‘You too?’
She squirmed. ‘I’m all right, but, you know, Rich is away so much. I don’t see him at all some weeks—it’s like we have a timeshare on the house. I think what happened to you was a wake-up call, that maybe we all needed to try to have more fun.’
I pushed away the book. ‘Guys—I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate that, really I do, but I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I can’t afford this stuff. I’m living in the box room of a stranger who is possibly a serial killer.’ I was exaggerating here for effect. It was hardly a box room, and Patrick seemed nice enough, if a bit grumpy.
‘We thought of that,’ said Emma calmly. She didn’t respond to passive-aggressive guilt trips—something to do with being told fifteen times a day that small children hated her and she wasn’t their real mum. ‘I’m going to organise it all, as an outlet for my madness—I’ll be Official List Arbiter—and Cyn …’
‘I’m going to pay,’ she said. ‘No, no, not in a patronising way. I’m going to do some of the tasks too, and I need you to make sure I actually go and don’t stay in to work all night. You’re going to be my social assistant.’
I glowered at them. ‘Funny, because that sounds totally patronising.’
She sighed. ‘Rach. Do you know how many pairs of pants I had to buy last month because I slept at the office? Twelve. I don’t even go to La Perla now. I go to … Primark. I get them in packs. So you see, Rach. I need your help.’
Emma nodded solemnly. ‘Her gusset is depending on you.’
When I left that night, slightly tipsy and falling over my biker boots, I’d agreed to follow Emma and Cynthia’s ten-step plan for the post-split, pre-divorce lady of a certain age (thirty). I must have dozed off on the tube from Acton, because I woke up at Tottenham Court Road in a panic—when was my last train? Did I miss it?—then I remembered I lived here now. In the city, not the sleepy suburbs. Back at the house, I struggled to get my newly cut key in the lock and, to my embarrassment, Patrick was still up in the kitchen. He had a bottle of red wine and the paper spread out on the table, classical music on the stereo. He was wearing dark-rimmed glasses and a red jumper. I felt myself relax as I stepped in. It was warm, and it smelled like flowers and beeswax polish.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said to Patrick automatically.
He looked puzzled. ‘You can come and go as you like, Rachel. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.’
‘Oh. OK.’ I realised I’d taken my shoes off, and it made me sad suddenly, all the nights I’d had to sneak back in beside Dan, cold and tired, and pretend I hadn’t enjoyed myself. Waiting to hear the inevitable accusing voice. You’re late. I take it you had a good time. Praying he’d be asleep already. ‘First night out,’ I explained. ‘Since … you know.’
‘I don’t think I’ve been out since. Alex was so … I wanted to make sure he was OK.’ He looked up. ‘Would you like a glass of wine? I haven’t talked to anyone in a while, at least not about more than Lego or walkies.’
At the magic word ‘walkies’, a little head popped up from a basket by the door. Max was awake. ‘Woof!’
‘Not now, silly dog.’
I sat down and Patrick got me a glass, patting the dog as he did. ‘Thank you.’ I was keen to hold on to the fragile, slightly drunk air of intimacy from the evening, so I took a big swallow. ‘Can I ask—when did she go?’
‘Michelle? A month ago.’ He said the rest quickly. ‘A month and three days.’
‘Not seven hours and fifteen days?’
‘Longer than that.’
‘No, it’s a song … Never mind.’
He smiled thinly. ‘She just left. There was some big job in New York—she’s from there, you see, and before Alex she was high up in banking—and we were fighting a lot, because I’d just found out about her and Alan from next door, and that was it. Sometimes it takes forever. Sometimes it all falls apart in what feels like days. Supposedly it’s just for a few months, the job, but I don’t know what will happen with us.’
‘We were the opposite.’ I was rubbing my finger where my wedding ring used to be. ‘It feels like it was on life support for years—just dying day by day.’
‘Sounds awful.’
‘Yeah. But even with that, there’s only one last time, you know? Like the last time he makes you a cup of tea or you watch Mad Men.’
‘Like the start of a relationship, but in reverse.’
‘Just like that.’
We lapsed into a sad silence.
He said, ‘You had fun tonight?’ And he actually meant it. Not like Dan’s ‘I can see you had fun without me’ version of the question.
‘I did. I saw my friends, and we had a curry.’
‘What are they like?’
‘Oh, insanely bossy. One’s a lawyer, one’s a teacher, and her boyfriend’s a social worker. They sort of manage me.’
‘Can’t you manage yourself?’
‘They think not. Look.’ I fished the book out of my bag. ‘Can you believe this? They’ve actually made me a list of things I’m supposed to do to get me through the post-split slump. They’ve even already booked one—supposedly we’re doing a tango class next week.’
He peered over. Unfortunately, it had opened on the page that said ‘sleep with a stranger’. ‘Um … that one’s just a joke.’ I turned over hurriedly to ‘do stand-up comedy’.
‘Is that something you’d like to do?’
‘I don’t know. I used to rant about it, when we were at uni. How the comedians in clubs were always racist and sexist. And with my cartoons—I try to be funny with them. But I’d never have the guts to get on stage and be heckled.’
Patrick was looking thoughtful. ‘I think this is a really good idea, you know. I used to do lots of things, before I met Michelle. She was so organised, really had her life planned out, so there wasn’t time for hobbies. Then before I knew it I was married, and she was having Alex, and we were buying this place. I feel like I haven’t done anything fun for about five years.’
‘It’s lovely though. The house.’
His face softened. ‘You know I remodelled it myself? I don’t know if I said, but that’s what I do. I’m an architect. When we bought it, ivy was growing through the windows—the previous owner had been in a nursing home for years, no family to keep it up. So it was a wreck. Michelle wanted to gut it, put in beige carpets and take the walls down. But I wouldn’t. Only time I managed to stand up to her. It took months, but it was like … finding hidden treasure. Those windows—I found them by scraping off the dirt. And the garden—there were all these roses among the weeds.’ He stopped, as if realising he’d said a lot more than he meant to.
‘Well, it’s lovely,’ I repeated. ‘You should be proud.’ Silence fell again, and I racked my brains for something to say. ‘So what would be on your post-divorce list, if you had one?’
He frowned and got up to wash his glass. ‘Oh, who knows. Don’t get divorced, I suppose.’
‘It doesn’t work that way. If you can’t go back, you have to go forward.’
‘Is that a quote?’ He dried his hands on the tea towel, then straightened it neatly over the oven door.
‘Mmm … dunno. A quote from my dad, maybe.’
‘I like it.’
‘So what kind of things did you used to do?’
He was thinking. ‘I used to be quite into extreme sports—skiing, climbing, that sort of thing.’
I was trying to suppress a shudder. ‘You can do that again. Easy.’
‘I haven’t since Alex.’
‘He could go skiing, couldn’t he? All those French kids do. I went once. I felt like I should be on a Zimmer frame.’ Dan had taken me—he was into snowboarding, or he had been before he stopped being into anything but TV and pizza. I’d fallen over on the first slope and spent the rest of the trip mainlining mulled wine while being jumped over by disdainful European tots on skis.
‘He can’t go skiing.’ Patrick was surprisingly firm.
‘Oh. OK.’ Silence fell between us again. The wine was gone, and I felt the loneliness settle on my shoulders again, like a cat that had been lurking on a wardrobe all day (bad memories). ‘You could come to some of it,’ I heard myself say. ‘When we do the dancing and the comedy and all that. Not the sleeping with strangers part … er, that’s a joke, but the rest. I mean, if you want to.’
He turned from the sink, leaning on it for a moment, and I thought how sad he looked, how tired. I wondered if I looked the same, after years of trying and failing, trying again, failing differently.
‘Maybe,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a long time since I did things like that. And there’s Alex.’
‘Does he have a regular babysitter?’
Again, Patrick looked annoyed. ‘There are a few people, but … I don’t like to leave him. It’s … Well, it’s a little complicated.’
I knew enough about dodgy emotional situations to recognise that ‘it’s complicated’ meant ‘please stop asking about that, you nosy cow’. I stood up. ‘Right, better go to bed. I’ll be working here tomorrow if you need me to do anything. Housework, that sort of thing.’
He started out of whatever he’d been brooding about. ‘You could hang out some washing, if you don’t mind. Alex will be at school, and then after-school club. I pick him up at six.’
That seemed a very long day for a four-year-old, but it was none of my business. ‘Should I walk Max?’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course. I love dogs. You know those crazy women who hang around outside shops and nick babies from prams?’
‘Ye-es.’
‘Dan—my husband, my ex-husband—he used to say I was like that with dogs. He was afraid he’d come home one day and there’d be hundreds, like in Dr Doolittle. So yes, I’d love to walk Max.’ Sometimes, I found if I ended the speech on the right note, it left people with the impression I’d said something vaguely sensible.
‘That would be great. I’ve been trying to cut back on work, but they keep really insane hours at the partnership. I’ll put out his lead and things. Just keep him on it, he’s a bit overexcitable.’ Max peeked over the basket again at this, as if he understood he was being slandered.
‘Why’d you get a dog?’ I asked. It was late and I was so tired and drunk I felt I could ask anything. ‘I mean with you working so much.’
‘I thought it would make us more of a family, I suppose. We were both so busy at work, and trying to look after Alex. She’d cut her hours way back at the bank, but she wasn’t coping well. It was supposed to be a compromise, but of course that just means no one is happy. She hated Max. Didn’t like his mucky paws and hair all over her beige furniture. But I wouldn’t get rid of him—I think once you take something home, you’re responsible for it.’
I wondered if he would feel the same about me. ‘Have you never had a nanny or au pair or anything?’
He clammed up slightly. ‘No. We never left him with anyone. It … We just decided not to.’
‘Oh.’
He hesitated. ‘Can I ask, what happened with you and … what was his name?’
‘Dan. What happened?’ God, not this question. ‘I …’
I paused for too long, and he began to talk over me. ‘Sorry, sorry, none of my business.’
‘It’s OK. It’s just that I …’
‘No, no, I shouldn’t have asked. I’ll let you get to bed.’
‘OK. Goodnight. Thanks for the wine.’
‘Goodnight, Rachel.’ The use of my name was jarring, after we’d talked so frankly. It felt almost as if he was trying to remind me I wasn’t his wife, and he wasn’t my husband. We were just strangers, sharing the same space. I went to bed, taking out the list book again to read in the pool of lamplight.
It seemed a paltry lot of things when set against the list of things I’d just lost—job, house, probably the chance of ever having a baby or dog, car, Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker … I put it aside and turned off the light. In the night I woke up, lost, somewhere halfway down the big bed. ‘Dan,’ I whispered, to the empty dark. I’d been looking for his warm back, snoring away, but it wasn’t there, and it never would be again.
Things that suck about divorce, number thirty-eight: there’s no one there. Not to tell you off for being late, not to cuddle you close and warm your cold feet, not to snore and keep you awake. There’s just you, alone again. Naturally.
Chapter Six (#ulink_98f17171-9398-5098-b209-444b2bd7fd23)
