‘We meditate for the morning,’ says Sunbeam. She offers this as if it’s a gift. I feel like a ten-year-old who’s just found a book voucher under the Christmas tree.
‘What’s the morning?’ I ask.
‘Around three hours.’
‘Right … OK … And how long have we been going?’
Sunbeam looks at her wristwatch. ‘Nineteen minutes.’
‘I feel really uncomfortable,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit hot in here – are you hot?’
‘The growth is in the discomfort,’ says Sunbeam. ‘We all live in a personal hell. Enduring this is the key to your awakening.’
I don’t want to endure a single second more of discomfort. I hastily scribble an apology note for Tashi and tell Sunbeam to book me a cab. I don’t leave her side until she confirms that it’s on its way. I’m getting the hell out of hell but not before getting my phone back.
13
‘YOU’RE BACK EARLY,’ says Mum as I fall on to the sofa.
‘I got let out for good behaviour,’ I say.
‘I don’t understand,’ says Mum angrily; she hates feeling like someone is getting something over on her. I start to describe the weekend’s events but Mum has already started busying herself packing Moses’s change bag, so I stop talking.
Moses comes over to me waving a plastic horse. I pull him on to my lap and make the horse dance up and down his leg, causing him to laugh uncontrollably. ‘You might as well come with us to Stanmer Park,’ says Mum. I don’t really want to – I’ve just endured a cab, a train and a bus back from the middle of nowhere – I want to have a bath and some recovery time from my so-called retreat, but this isn’t an option; Mum is giving me her ‘dare to defy me’ face and Moses is bouncing like a spaniel that’s just heard the word ‘walkies’. Before we leave I stop to coat my lips in red. ‘Who’s that for?’ says Mum.
‘For me,’ I say.
Stanmer Park is just a few miles outside town but it feels like a different world. I have always intended to take Moses but other things seemed to come up. On the journey Moses waves his horse enthusiastically as Mum tells me what he’s been up to. She insists that he knows his colours on the basis that she asked him to pick out red socks that morning and he did. I tell her that he just loves red socks. ‘He is my child, you know. I know what he can and can’t do.’
‘Yes,’ says Mum, ‘but you’ve been distracted lately. I think he’s benefited from the consistency of being with me.’
‘I’ve been distracted by the breakdown of my marriage, Mum,’ I say. Mum snorts incredulously; I’m not sure what part of my claim this is in reference to.
Mum pulls up outside Stanmer House, the stately home in the centre of the park. I love old buildings like this; I’m always fascinated by the idea people once actually lived here – that we are taking a casual Saturday stroll through what was someone’s life. As I take Moses out of his car seat he makes little whinnying noises, and the simple pleasure he takes in this makes me feel a burst of joy that I had a part in creating him. ‘I love you,’ I say. He whinnies in response.
‘We better get him to those horses before he explodes,’ says Mum. We walk together through a wooded pathway, stopping regularly for Moses to pick up a stone and examine it before throwing it back to the ground.
‘You used to like coming here when you were a kid,’ says Mum.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘You used to like playing hide and seek. You’d put your hands over your eyes and think no one could see you.’
‘Fancy a game now?’ I ask, smiling at her.
She looks at me and frowns. ‘Why didn’t you wear a coat?’ she says.
When we reach the horses, it’s clear that the fantasy has not lived up to the reality for Moses and he quickly becomes restless. I try to engage him by holding him up to the fence to get a closer look at a white mare but he just wriggles furiously until I put him down; even the horse seems to be looking at me in a way that says, ‘Nice try, love.’
‘He enjoyed it last week,’ says Mum. The mare sticks her nose over the fence and starts to sniff in my direction. I want to pet her but I can’t remember how you should approach a horse; I recall something about a flat palm but nothing else. The horse sticks her tongue out and I quickly step back. She tips her head to the side, which, if there is one, I decide is the equine equivalent of a shrug, and then she backs up a little before galloping across the field. I look down, where Mum is crouched beside Moses, showing him a ladybird.
‘Let’s go get a scone,’ I say. Mum looks up at me and rolls her eyes but she doesn’t protest as I start to walk back towards the house.
We are seated at a table next to an amazing open fire. I order a scone and a slice of carrot cake for Moses and me, while Mum has an espresso. After it all arrives Mum says, ‘Are you going to tell me what happened with you and Alexander?’
‘Nothing happened, Mum. We got married, it didn’t work out, we broke up.’
‘Do you think he had someone else?’ she said. Oddly this comment doesn’t upset me but it offends me. It doesn’t occur to her that it could have been me that had someone else, that I could have been the desirable one.
‘There was no one else involved, Mum.’
‘You don’t know, though,’ says Mum, ‘men can be very sneaky.’ I think about Dad shining his shoes at exactly ten o’clock every evening.
‘I think you young people give up too easily; as soon as it gets tough you’re looking elsewhere,’ says Mum as she brushes cake crumbs from around Moses’s mouth. When she has finished, I give him another piece.
‘I don’t know why you’re so bothered,’ I say, ‘you never even liked Alexander.’ She doesn’t correct me.
‘If you had listened to me and delayed the wedding I think things would have been different,’ says Mum.
To my mind the wedding was not rushed. I had been wanting it since the day we met, or perhaps the day after; Alexander had not been as sure. He had told me more than once that marriage was an institution and he was not ready to be committed to one. His escaped engagement was a sign, he felt, that marriage was not the right choice for him. I would have been happy with that, to be together but not shackled together, for an eternity. I had made the decision to be happy with that and then I got pregnant.
I knew I wanted children and Alexander had not resisted the idea. Our discussions about a family were always cut short by him making a vague statement about the right time. I think on some level I feared that that time would never come and this was probably why I took such a cavalier attitude to contraception. When the two lines appeared, it felt like a magic trick. I kept closing my eyes and thinking that when I reopened them the test would say something different. I carried the pee-soaked stick through to Alexander in his office. He stared at it for several seconds before saying, ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’ What I wanted was to get married. Never in my life had I described myself as a traditionalist but I was a sucker; I had been sold a lie of fairy tales and Barbie princesses and I wanted my turn. It was the first time in our relationship that I had been insistent on anything and I think it may have been this, rather than the pregnancy or the marriage, that caused Alexander such concern.
I went about choosing invitations and planning guest lists, unperturbed by the anxieties he voiced. One evening I asked him to help me pick colours and it seemed he had reached his limit; he told me he didn’t care, he didn’t even want to care and he was going out to meet Matt. Matt is the man that every woman loves until he is friends with her partner – good-looking, charismatic and unnecessarily wealthy. The only thing matching the size of his bank balance is his ego. Matt and Alexander went to school together and appeared to have retained a childish sense of rivalry from their youth; they were always pushing each other to go faster and further, and more than once it resulted in physical or emotional injury. The first time I met Matt we were two champagne bottles into the evening when he began telling me that he could have any girl he wanted because h
e had the cash and connections to meet any woman’s needs.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘I can get you anything.’ My mind battled to come up with something suitably cool to ask for. ‘I can have coke here in twenty minutes,’ he suggested. I didn’t want cocaine but I said yes just to see if he could actually come through, and he did. An hour later, when half of the supply had been ‘tested’ by the boys, Matt leaned across our small table and said, ‘If Al ever fucks up, I’ve got a seat for you right here.’ He indicated his lap. I turned to Alexander to see how he was reacting, what he might say or do to defend my honour; I’m not sure I had ever seen him look so pleased.
The night that Alexander left me at home with my aquamarine napkins he was anything but pleased. I don’t know where he went that evening because I did not hear from him or see him until three the following afternoon. I was lying on the sofa, queasy from hormones and worry, and he knelt on the floor beside me.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll marry you. If you think it best, I’ll marry you. Just let’s do it without all the crap. Let’s do it the way we want it.’ The next day he gave me Jenna’s emerald and I booked the soonest available wedding date at the town hall.
It wasn’t perfect but it doesn’t put me off it all; if anything my previous failure has reinvigorated me – how many chances do you get for a do-over of one of life’s key events? As soon as I have disposed of this marriage, I want to get married again but I want to do it the right way, with the right man. I look up at the six-foot fireplace and imagine it covered in peonies. I decide that I want to be married right here with someone who knows, to their very core, that marrying me is the right thing for them.
‘Excuse me,’ I say to Mum. I go to the ladies’ toilets, lock myself in a cubicle and pull out my phone.
Marthashotbod: Do you want to get married?
Undeterred83: To you? :)
Marthashotbod: :) Generally.
Undeterred83: Yes. Definitely.
Marthashotbod: I’m spending the afternoon with my son. Do you want kids?
Undeterred83: That’s brilliant. I really want kids.
Marthashotbod: Why haven’t you had them already, if that’s not too forward?
Undeterred83: It’s not at all. Can I call you later? I would rather tell you over the phone and anyway I think it’s about time we spoke, don’t you? What’s your number?
I type the digits into the screen with unsteady fingers. Suddenly I’m nervous. Within the next few hours my list will start to become my reality.
14
MUM TELLS ME she needs to go to Waitrose on the way home. I cannot endure a turn round the supermarket with my mother right now; there’s a legitimate chance I might brain her with a frozen leg of lamb. In the carpark, she asks me to fetch a trolley and as I do I call Cara.
‘Can we meet?’ I ask.
‘Sure,’ she says.
‘When are you free?’
‘It depends what you need,’ Cara says.
‘I need to get pissed,’ I say.
‘Meet me in Neighbourhood in twenty,’ she says. I push the trolley over to Mum and she sets about strapping Moses in.
‘I forgot there’s something I have to do,’ I tell her. She doesn’t respond. ‘I could take Mosey with me but …’
‘It’s fine, you go,’ says Mum. ‘He’ll be ready for a snack soon anyway. I’ll see you at home.’ I don’t wait for her to change her mind. I practically run to Neighbourhood, a small bar squeezed in between the charity shops on the high street. Cara and a strongly mixed drink are waiting for me.
‘What’s the update on A-hole?’ says Cara. I take a swig of my drink.
‘Well, first of all, we don’t call him that because we’re doing a thing called respect and focusing on productive co-parenting,’ I say. Cara does the face you make when someone farts.
‘I’ve heard about this co-parenting – isn’t it where you don’t think about yourself all the fucking time? How’s A … sorry, it’s Alexander right? How’s he getting on with that?’
‘It’s an adjustment,’ I say, ‘but I’m hopeful. We’ve agreed the days he’ll have Moses and how we’ll do the exchange. He’s being reasonable.’ I don’t tell Cara that these arrangements were made over a series of sinisterly formal text messages and that Alexander has engineered things so that he always collects and delivers Moses to nursery and there is no risk of us having actual, human contact.
‘Hmm,’ says Cara, ‘so he’s getting his dick wet.’
‘That’s not relevant,’ I say, as I push unwanted images from my mind.
‘It’s totally relevant,’ says Cara. ‘Speaking of which, how are you getting on with Linger?’ I have a short debate in my head. Just say it, I tell myself, say you’ve found the man of your dreams and you’re working towards becoming the best version of yourself so that you can meet him and fall in love and live your days out together like that couple in The Notebook.
‘I’m a bit confused by how it works; do you have to swipe right to get a match?’
‘Aren’t you the one with the degree?’ asks Cara. ‘It could not be simpler: right for the treasure, left for the trash.’
‘But it’s random. You can’t just get sent a match, based on your profile or something?’
‘Give it here,’ says Cara, reaching for my phone.
‘No, no, it’s fine!’ I say, snatching it out of reach. ‘I’m probably just not ready for it.’
Cara rolls her eyes. ‘You don’t have to be ready for it, it’s not a German invasion. It’s not like you have to marry the guy.’
I sip my drink. ‘Cara,’ I ask, ‘have you ever been in love?’
‘Sure,’ she says, ‘I fall in love once a week. I’m in love with the guy that made this drink. I am fucking love.’
‘But you know,’ I say, ‘love, love. Can’t-live-without-you love.’
Cara examines me carefully. ‘Why on earth would I want to put myself in a situation where I can’t live without someone?’
‘Because it feels good,’ I say.
‘It feels good to feel like your very existence is tied up in someone else’s regard for you?’ She doesn’t sound like she’s judging me; she sounds like she genuinely wants to understand. I don’t know how to explain it – it does feel good; even the lows feel good because the lows are proof that the highs are real.
Cara leans in towards me. ‘You know what feels good? Knowing that your happiness is a product of nothing but your own damn awesomeness.’ Her eyes are intense. I try to turn my head away from their glare but Cara gently pulls my face back towards her. ‘When you get,’ she says, and I have never heard her sound so serious, ‘that no man or child or beast or fucking face cream will make you feel like enough; that being you is enough. That feels really bloody good.’
My throat starts to get hot. ‘It’s not that I want a man to make me feel good, it’s that … I don’t know …’
‘You want a man to make you feel good?’ suggests Cara and we both laugh.
I throw my hands up and say, ‘Is that so bad?!’
‘It’s not bad,’ says Cara, ‘it’s just too easy.’ She reaches out and stops a man walking past our table. ‘Would you like to have sex with my friend?’ she says.
I say, ‘Sorry,’ at the same time as the guy says, ‘Yeah, all right then!’
Cara turns to me. ‘You see? Where was the creativity, the hustle, the magic?’ The man clears his throat and Cara turns back to him. ‘Did you want something?’
‘Err, no,’ he says before walking away.
‘I believe in magic,’ I say. I touch my phone before I realize what I’m doing. Cara downs the rest of her drink.
‘Oh God, I can’t believe you’re gonna make me go all Oprah on you. You know how much I hate that shit.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
She sighs. ‘What have you done for you since the break-up?’
‘Loads,’ I say. I tick the points off on my fingers. ‘I’ve signed up for a h
alf-marathon, I’ve just come back from a retreat …’ Cara makes a face like she ate something rotten. ‘Also, I’ve got a business coach.’ I try not to smile too widely but I do seem to be on a bit of a roll.
‘For what business?’ asks Cara.
‘The one I’m starting,’ I say.
‘Why are you starting a business? I thought you wanted to be a singer?’
‘Yes, but I’m not sure how practical that is. I mean, singing would be great but I don’t have any access to that world; this way I can build the life I want.’ As I’m talking Cara raises her arm in the air and holds a peace sign above her head. When I see the barman spring into action behind her I realize she’s ordering us fresh drinks.
‘I’m an events organizer, babe; if you want a link into performing, I’ll get you one. I haven’t before because I thought you were kinda committed to the old married lady vibe.’ Cara starts to look through the contacts on her phone.
I wave my hand no. ‘It’s OK—’
‘I’m gonna send you to Marc,’ says Cara. ‘He’ll look after you – besides, he owes me.’
‘The thing is I’m not sure it’s what I want …’ The barman places two tall rum and ginger ales in front of us.
‘Thanks, darling,’ says Cara, and then she says to me, ‘If it’s not what you want, sack it off. You’ve had some practice at that recently.’ I’d like to be enthusiastic but singing means travel and late nights, something that’s tough to do as a single parent, and more to the point not the best plan when you’re about to meet the love of your life.
I try to distract Cara: ‘What’s going on with you, anyway, what are you working on?’
‘Don’t try to distract me,’ says Cara, still fiddling with her phone. ‘There, I’ve sent Marc your details, I’ve told him you’re kinda funky, kinda jazzy, kinda rocky cause I wouldn’t know.’ She swallows half her drink. ‘I’m good, thanks for asking. I’ve not picked up any new projects ’cause I’m going abroad for a bit, see if I can get anything going in Stockholm.’
The Single Mum's Wish List Page 10
