The pause has definitely gone on for too long now for him not to have noticed it. It has to be addressed. One of us is going to say something. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it can only lead to him crossing this kitchen in two strides and taking me in his arms.
In movies you can always tell where there’s about to be kissing. It’s like when you know there’s about to be a thunderstorm. You can smell something in the air. I think I’ve read it’s ozone. Is it ozone? I think so. I can smell ozone in this room and there is one hundred per cent about to be kissing.
Adam turns, wiping his hands dry on my mum’s old Jenolan Caves tea towel.
‘Marriages are really hard,’ he says. ‘But looking at you and Helen tonight, and how that relationship works, and Troy too, I guess, I can see that not being married any more doesn’t necessarily make anything easier.’
I’m sorry, what? That’s not how you start a conversation that’s going to end in kissing.
‘I mean, I’m thinking about Ilse and me . . .’
I’m shutting down all the sex valves in my brain and body as he speaks. I’ve read this wrong. He’s not into me, not like that. He wants to talk to me like I’m his friend. The best thing I can do here is attempt to salvage some dignity.
‘Do you mind me talking to you about this stuff?’ Adam says. ‘I know we don’t know each other that well, but I feel like we do, because you worked on the book and you’re up on my, well, back story, for want of a better word.’
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I’m happy to talk. We’re friends. Friends talk.’ I sit down before my shaking legs give way.
Adam reaches for the wine bottle to top up my glass but I put my hand over the top. ‘I’m cool.’
He fills up his own glass and keeps talking. ‘Thanks, Emma. It’s really nice to have someone to talk to.’
No problem, I think. I’m delighted to hear all about your marital issues. I’d much rather do that than tear your clothes off and shag on my table.
Aloud, I say, ‘So what’s going on?’ in what I hope sounds like a genuinely concerned voice.
‘Ilse’s not keen to move here. Her career is in Amsterdam, and she’s never lived outside Europe. She’s worried that if she commits to Australia, she won’t get a job here. She’s only prepared to come for a visit late in the northern summer at this stage. She wants us all to go back in September.’
‘But you’ve moved here. You’ve taken a job here. You’ve brought Bon and started him in school. That doesn’t sound like you’re planning to go back to Amsterdam when September comes.’
‘I don’t know what I’m planning,’ Adam says, and he looks miserable. ‘My job is only a six-month contract, but they’d make it permanent if I could stay. I think I was trying to force her hand when I came back here. I wanted her to say, “Yes, I love you enough to give up things here for you, and start again in your country”.’
‘But she hasn’t said that?’
‘No, she hasn’t said that. She’s basically said, “I’ll come and see how it is.” She’s not prepared to let me go altogether, but she’s not ready to show me she wants me. And I’m sure if I stayed and she didn’t, that she wouldn’t let Bon stay here with me. God, I wish I was where you are in your relationship. I wish it was three years from now, and there was either a bit of a wobble in my marriage, three years in the past, or I was three years into being on my own again, like you are. Three years into moving on.’
‘This isn’t going to help much, but although it might look like I’m three years into moving on, I’ve really only recently realised this isn’t a wobble in my marriage.’
He looks confused. ‘But you’re divorced. He’s remarried.’
‘Stupid, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘I thought he’d be back. To be fair, that’s not just me being a deluded idiot. Back when it happened, when he left, Troy said he didn’t know if it was a forever split or not. Helen had just had Lola and he said he needed to look after her. He said he knew I was the strong one so I would be okay, but that he needed to be there for her. And I believed him. You’ll believe anything if it makes it hurt less, I’ve learned. God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.’
Which begs the question, why am I telling Adam all this? I think it’s the wine. That and the way I need to reframe this friendship as fast as I can to be just a friendship and not predicated on me wanting to jump into bed with him. Maybe if I talk to him like he’s a long-lost girlfriend it will help.
‘I don’t think it’s sad,’ Adam says. ‘No one wants to give up on love. What if it never comes again?’
‘That’s a cheering thought,’ I say. ‘If my marriage to Troy was my one chance at true love, then I don’t think love’s all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘I didn’t mean you!’ Adam laughs. ‘You’ll be snapped up, Emma. There’s no doubt about that. You’re gorgeous.’
Just like that the butterflies return to my tummy, and fanned by my total confusion they spontaneously combust. I cannot read this man at all. It’s time to call an end to this evening. I don’t think my nerves can stand any more of this.
‘Yes, I am. And also very tired and a little bit pissed,’ I say. ‘Do we dare turn that movie off before it’s finished?’
‘I think we dare,’ says Adam.
We walk into the living room and find the boys fast asleep, while Despicable Me plays on, disregarded.
‘Awww,’ we both say.
Adam picks up Bon, slings him over his shoulder, and carries him down the hall to the front door. I dart in front of him to open it.
‘Emma,’ he says quietly, ‘thanks for the pizza. And for everything else.’
He leans in and kisses me softly on the cheek. For a cheek kiss, he lingers longer than I’d expect. He smells like heaven.
‘Any time,’ I whisper back.
When he reaches the gate he turns and says, ‘See you soon? Let’s text to plan something.’
‘With the kids?’ I say, before I can stop myself.
He hesitates, then smiles. ‘Sure, with the kids.’
* * *
After I’ve carried Tim to his bed, I run myself a bath. I climb in and turn off the taps only once the water level has passed the ring of scum on the tub. I don’t need to look at that while I lie here.
That was a completely baffling evening. I try to run through it in my head, to make any kind of sense of it.
I’m obviously no expert in judging these things, but Adam was definitely giving off a vibe of fancying me. There was unquestionably flirtation. That last moment, when he said, ‘Sure, with the kids,’ it seemed like maybe he meant the opposite of that.
But what about all that stuff about his marriage? It sounded like he wants to save it.
And then there was Helen. Adam has seen me being treated like staff by Helen. Adam has, though, also seen me acting like staff to Helen.
Why do I let her treat me like that? It’s ridiculous. I spend my life treading softly around Troy and his new family, trying to make things easier for them. I can see it looks bad from the outside — like they have an unpaid child carer and I have unresolved issues with my ex-husband. And honestly, it doesn’t feel fantastic from the inside either.
It might be time to turn off the help taps to Helen and Troy. Maybe see how they get on without me there to make everything easy. I’ll admit it: I thought Troy would want me back when he realised Helen couldn’t handle the challenges of married life. But they haven’t had any challenges. Life’s been golden since they got together.
What they need are some problems you can’t buy your way out of. There must be something I can do. A way to quietly disrupt the perfect existence Helen and Troy have built on the wreckage of my life.
The tap drips and I think.
Maybe I’ll stop taking Lola to all her activities. That would make things a bit challenging for them. They might have to think about someone other than themselves for once. It’s not the same as actually doing something to them. It’s no horse head in thei
r bed. But there’s power in going on strike.
Chapter Five
The entire next week, I very seriously consider making good on the threat I have made in my head to stop helping out so much with Lola. I’ll admit, as a way of standing up for myself, this mental protest has been entirely ineffective. It has reminded me of the time when I was eighteen and Laura stopped talking to me for an entire month. But she was living in London at the time, and she emailed only sporadically anyway, and since she failed to tell me she wasn’t talking to me until she started again, I didn’t notice her silent protest.
My week’s busy, too — on top of all our usual activities I spend a fair amount of time lurking around the playground hoping to run into Adam. Somehow I fail in that as well.
I make it to Tuesday night before I text him. Lying in bed, watching Tilde wrestle with her burgeoning romantic feelings for a fellow police officer fifteen years younger than she is, I keep one eye on the screen and tap on the message app on my phone.
Adam said to text. That must mean he wants me to text. Surely. You don’t just say goodbye to someone with a request that they text you unless you want them to text you.
Christ, he wouldn’t want me to text him if he knew how much obsessive thought I was putting into whether or not to text him.
But he hasn’t texted. Why hasn’t he texted? Stop acting like a fourteen-year-old, I tell myself. Although fourteen-year-olds probably don’t even send text messages any more. I expect they use some horrifying platform I’ve never heard of and communicate entirely in nude selfies.
I’ll send the breeziest text ever. There will be no hint of all this Sturm und Drang or any other emotionally fraught German terms for things we don’t name in English because it’s better to just not talk about that sort of business.
Hey, I type.
I delete it. I’m not sure we’re on ‘hey’ terms yet.
Hi Adam, I type. Pizza night again soon? Kids loved having you guys over.
How to sign off. An x or not? Maybe just an E.
E.
I tap send quickly, before I can delete it and start again.
Now I’m not going to check my phone until I hear a text alert. I’m just going to nestle into my lovely comfy bed and enjoy my show and if he replies that’s great but if he doesn’t it’s no big deal at all.
* * *
Sixty-eight hours later it’s Friday again, and he hasn’t texted back.
I check my phone one last time before I get in the car to drive to Dad’s house for dinner. There are no new messages. Which is completely fine. The last thing I need is to get involved with someone who’s constantly checking his phone. One of those in a relationship is plenty.
Dad would like it if both his daughters came over to his house for dinner once every week, like we used to do when Mum was alive. She had delighted in feeding us while we unloaded our woes and dirty laundry. First it was just Laura and me, from our share flats; then we’d come with boyfriends, then Laura with her husband, then with her babies. I never got to bring my own family home to Mum.
We should have tried even harder after she died to keep up the tradition she loved so much, but it was too sad and difficult. And then there were more babies and more husbands and an untrustworthy dog, and with no Mum there to make it easy, we fell out of the habit.
Now it’s a stretch to coordinate our schedules for anything less than Christmas or a funeral.
Out of guilt for last weekend, Troy and Helen have taken Freya and Tim for two whole nights, and Dad texted me this morning to say he was making curry.
Laura’s husband and kids are at their house watching some football game or other on TV. (The Stingrays versus the Stoats? Does that sound right? I don’t pay much attention to these things.) For the first time in I don’t know how long, it’s just Dad, Laura and me, sitting in the living room of the house we grew up in, eating bowls of chicken curry on our laps.
Dinner on laps in front of the TV was a no-no in this house under Mum’s rule, and Dad has tried very hard to keep to her standards, but tonight there has been a special dispensation made, since there are no children to corrupt with our anarchic behaviour and there’s a new episode of Midsomer Murders on.
Dad hates Midsomer Murders so much he can’t miss an episode. His objections are threefold and all equally valid: it’s too white, it’s statistically absurd, and too many characters don’t call the police when they should.
Tonight his third objection is bothering him the most. A man has discovered the body of a young woman in his shed. He knows her, and this is apparently why he doesn’t call the police for several days. This, as far as Dad is concerned, is complete madness.
‘Why?’ he splutters through a hail of rice and shards of pappadum. ‘You’d call the police. You absolutely would. This just wouldn’t happen. Can you imagine, you’re a normal, law-abiding farmer and you happen across a dead body — a body you know, the body of your daughter’s friend, no less. In what realm would you not call the police at once?’
‘Dad, maybe he isn’t a normal, law-abiding farmer,’ says Laura. ‘Perhaps that’s why.’
‘Then there’s even more reason for him to call the authorities at once. If he hangs about like this with a cadaver stinking the place up and putting the cows off their feed, the cops are going to be even more suspicious of him once they do find out. And mark my words, girls, the cops always find out.’
‘Well, in police dramas they do,’ I say. ‘They could hardly make a storyline out of a crime the cops aren’t aware of. Things have to happen in stories. That’s kind of what stories are.’
‘Don’t get all up on your narrative high horse with me, Mrs Emma the Editor. My point is valid. And if you’re not going to eat your naan, pass it over here.’
‘I’m going to eat it, I just haven’t eaten it yet.’
‘Dad, there is more naan in the kitchen,’ Laura says. ‘Feel free to help yourself. Treat the place as your own.’
This is how Mum used to talk to Dad. Despite communicating almost entirely in snide remarks and passive aggressive mutterings, my parents were actually very happily married. It feels weird that Laura’s slipped into Mum’s role in this respect.
‘I didn’t father two wonderful healthy daughters in order to miss my show because I’m getting more naan from the kitchen, Laura.’
‘Stop pretending to be sexist, Dad. No one’s falling for it. We know you’re just lazy.’
Laura’s got his number. Dad has realised, from his intrepid lurking on Twitter, that he might be from the last generation of men that is going to get away with being sexist oafs and from time to time he has a go at milking it for all it’s worth. This wouldn’t be half as annoying if he was actually sexist, but he’s a bold champion of women’s rights. Online, when he’s not writing screeds on Midsomer forums, he’s usually found gallantly attempting to slay trolls on feminists’ Twitter feeds. You can imagine how well that goes down.
Sometimes I think it would better if he hadn’t ever discovered the internet.
‘I am lazy, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I’ve spent the better part of my life at your beck and call, attending to your whims, dear daughters, and now I don’t care which of my children gets me the naan. If I’d been blessed with a son I’d be making him get it for me. I am now in my dotage, and I’m no longer going to leap up all the time like one of those dancing bears in Russia where they heat up the floor so it can’t stand still. This bear intends to remain right here in his armchair. If you heat up the floor I will simply put my feet on the coffee table.’
Ignoring Dad works, sort of. It doesn’t stop him talking, but you can tune him out because he doesn’t care if you’re listening or not. I nibble my naan and watch a line of uniformed police officers searching a field for clues.
‘And by asking you to get me some naan, I’m also building resilience in you girls. That’s a very important thing, you know. I read an article about it on Facebook. By letting your children do more by them
selves, they become stronger and more able to face the slings and arrows that life throws their way. Apparently if you are twenty per cent sure your child can do something, you should let them try.’
‘Dad,’ I say, ‘that’s for little kids. I don’t think they mean you should make your adult daughters get more naan for you from the kitchen. I feel like that’s a stretch.’
‘No.’ He’s adamant. ‘It’s character-building for you, me asking you to do things like this. Think how proud of yourself you’ll feel — whichever one of you gets the naan — once you’ve achieved this, all by yourself.’
Laura gets him some more naan.
‘You are a dying breed, Dad,’ she tells him, as she drops the bread in his bowl and sits back down.
‘Thank you, my treasure.’
‘That wasn’t a compliment,’ she says.
‘It may not have been intended as such, but I shall receive it thus anyway. I am a dying breed and you two would do well to heed my example. You both need to teach your kids resilience. Laura, you mollycoddle those boys. By the time I was Harry’s age I was getting myself to my footy games on the bus. Every Saturday. Get them to do more for themselves. You too, Emma.’
‘Yeah, Dad,’ I say, ‘I’ll get my three-year-old to do more of the driving, shall I?’
‘Don’t be facetious, Em. You’re in no position. You’re even worse than your sister. Not only do you do absolutely everything for your own kids, but you run around like a chook with its head cut off for someone else’s kid! Your Troy’s no fool, is he? You’re practically raising Lola for him and Helen.’
‘Dad!’ says Laura. ‘Don’t say that to poor Emma. And he’s not “her Troy” any more. He’s Helen’s Troy.’
‘Well you wouldn’t know it, for all the running around Emma does for him,’ Dad continues. ‘And all the free babysitting she does for that little girl.’
‘Dad, she’s Tim and Freya’s sister. What should I do, ignore her? Not let my kids see her?’
‘She’s their half-sister, not their sister. Why can’t they see her when they are at their father’s? You don’t need to offer yourself up as a free chauffeur and nanny, that’s for sure. Why do you let them take advantage of you like that, Em?’
How to Be Second Best Page 7
