The Starter Home

by Bryony Fraser

  ‘How come they couldn’t get divorced for a year?’ I asked. It was sharper than I’d intended and I felt Kat’s eyes on me.

  ‘No one can. It’s the law in the UK, apparently – no one can even begin to divorce until a year after their marriage started. Don’t know the logic behind that. Maybe that’s why we’ve never rivalled Vegas for wedding chapel adventures.’

  I hadn’t been seriously considering divorce – I’d really, really only just been idly wondering – but now that I knew it wasn’t even one of my options, I felt even more thoroughly smothered than before. A year. What if things got worse? It had only been just under a month so far, and that left … still almost a year. A voice in my mind that sounded a lot like Ava tried to tell me that I should calm down, see how things went, nothing was set in stone one way or another, I would be ok. But all I could think was that I couldn’t even get a divorce if this all turned out to be a terrible mistake. I was stuck.

  Again.

  But worse.

  I couldn’t get into the marriage to make it work, and I couldn’t get out. I’d walked into the trap.

  ‘I’m stuck,’ I said softly.

  Ava took my foot in her hands, and began rubbing in the rest of the butter. ‘You’re not stuck, Zo. This is scary, and you don’t seem happy right now, but you love Jack and Jack loves you. Try to think about that. And Kat—’

  Kat looked up from her buzzing phone.

  ‘Don’t even think about telling anyone about this conversation. Or the only physical contact we will ever have again will be me throwing you out of my house by the ear.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Kat, ‘I know that counts when it comes from you. I wouldn’t dare. I am sorry though, Zo. Bullshit as marriage probably is, I don’t want someone I actually care about to be one of its casualties.’

  For even Kat to say that … Did she see something I didn’t? Was it terminal already?

  Any calming influence of Ava’s gentle hands dissipated entirely once I got back home in the early evening. Jack was watching TV in a darkened living room, eating some delicious-smelling pasta. I stood behind him and forced myself to put a conciliatory hand on his shoulder. ‘That smells nice. Any left?’

  He didn’t look up. ‘I didn’t know when you’d be back,’ he said blandly. ‘Sorry.’

  I closed my eyes for a second, and said in as neutral a tone as possible, ‘Ok, I’m pretty tired, so I’m going to go straight to bed. Sleep tight.’

  I didn’t open my eyes when he came to bed, hours later, but my mind was churning, rolling over hot lumps of anxiety, regret, anger, hopelessness and fear. The perfect cocktail for a good night’s sleep.

  Some time around 3 a.m., I remembered Benni’s comment about the reshuffle of staff between our school and our sister school in Manchester, and by the time I woke up, I was convinced it was the perfect solution: a fresh start. Whatever that meant for our marriage.

  The next day, in the Science office, Benni was surprised.

  ‘Darling, are you sure? We’d miss you far too much down here, you know. I’d miss you too much. Oh god, and I’d have to find your replacement for your classes. What can I offer you? Gold? Diamonds? Plus, you’d have to find new friends, new shops, new bars.’ She pouted.

  ‘Are you trying to talk me out of this? Because those last things sound like amazing reasons for signing up right now. And Manchester isn’t the moon, it’s only a train ride away.’

  ‘I know, I know. If that’s really what you want. What does Jack say?’

  I hesitated. ‘Not much. I’m sure he’ll be ok with it. And I think it’s best for both of us at the moment, really.’

  Benni looked at me, baffled. ‘He wouldn’t be going?’

  ‘Maybe not. Not now, anyway. We’ll see how it goes.’

  She nodded, turning away. ‘Well, that’s very modern of you. Marriage split between two cities. Why not.’ She banged her hands down on her desk, calling her thoughts to order. ‘Right. I’ll talk to the Head about this – we’ve got a meeting after school on Friday – and I’ll let you know asap. You know this is a permanent swap, don’t you? And it’s starting next term – that’s only a couple of months away. Is that ok? They want to get everyone sorted and settled before the year starts up again in September.’ She sighed. ‘All these bloody changes they’re making so fast, no one knows if they’re coming or going.’

  I gave her a wry smile; I knew which I’d prefer. ‘Fine. Perfect. Thank you.’

  She patted me on the shoulder and headed off to her office, leaving me to indulge in a few daydreams about a solo Manchester flat, Jack visiting, me showing him around, settled in this conflict-free home. Ava and Esther would have to keep an eye on Kat while I was gone – it was bad enough as it was, me worrying I might bump into Chuck round every corner in London. I mean, yes, I’m sure I would miss Jack from time to time, but we’d see each other at weekends, sometimes, and school holidays. It might be hard first thing in the morning, when I’d normally see him. Or bedtime, when we’d talk for ages in bed. Or at mealtimes. Or when he’d be making me laugh. Or when he’d surprise me after school for a quick coffee. Or when I’d have a crappy day at work and he’d make me feel better. Or when I’d have a brilliant day and I could make him feel better. Fine. I’d miss him. And fine, there was a tiny voice in my head reminding me that none of this was the logical action of a rational person. But I wanted to save whatever good there had been between us. And if it meant cutting off my right hand to stop this gangrene spreading … What else was I supposed to do?

  The next morning, Jack was in the kitchen drinking coffee. I flicked the kettle on to start my tea. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ I said, pulling out a mug and keeping my face hidden in the cupboard, choosing a teabag. Jack didn’t say anything. ‘The school’s looking for people to go up to Manchester at the moment. I was thinking of putting myself forward for it.’

  I heard Jack gulping down his coffee behind me, before starting to wash up the mug. ‘How long would you need to be away for?’ He carefully placed it onto the drying rack. ‘A couple of days?’ He looked at me. ‘A couple of weeks?’

  ‘I’d be gone … at least a year. Maybe two. I don’t know.’ I wasn’t ready to admit it was for good. ‘Depends how they liked me up there.’

  ‘Zo, you know I couldn’t leave the shop.’ The kettle clicked as it reached a loud boil, and I took it off the stand, not pouring yet, just holding it, finally turning to face him.

  Jack made eye contact for the first time, as realisation dawned. ‘Oh. You weren’t planning for me to leave the shop.’

  ‘I would never expect you to. I wouldn’t ask that of you.’

  ‘But you’re going to the other end of the country.’

  ‘It’s hardly the other end of the country! It’s only a couple of hours on the train. I just thought … it might give us a bit of space to sort things out. We both want this marriage to work, don’t we? I just worry that we’re already starting to lose … you know. The good stuff. And maybe living apart, even for a little while, might help us both to clear our heads, and enjoy being together when we are together. We’ll both still be doing what we love … Will you think about it, at least?’

  ‘There are no closer schools?’

  ‘Of course there are! But this is an exchange with our sister school – I know the senior staff, I know the management, I know how they work, I know they like me, and I like them. This feels like it could be a great opportunity for me! Get me out of the same school I’ve been at for years, try something different!’

  Jack didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘When would you be off?’

  ‘I haven’t even discussed it with Benni yet,’ I lied. ‘I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you about it first.’

  ‘That’s noble.’ Jack’s sarcasm had given me my out from this conversation, and I quickly poured the hot water from the steaming kettle, trying to disengage myself from another potential row. I turned back to say something else, to change the subject to so
mething less fractious, but Jack had grabbed his coat and bag for work, shutting the front door behind him with a bang.

  EIGHT

  Six years earlier

  Whether they were merging friendship groups, meeting each other’s families or even talking about marriage and kids, conversation between them from the very start had always been easy and honest. Life wasn’t how it was in their parents’ generation, where it was a wedding, then children, then retirement. You could do things in any order now, or not at all, if that’s what took your fancy. In one of their many discussions, Zoe told Jack that she did want kids, eventually, and did want to work abroad, and she wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps and not marry at all.

  ‘Fine by me,’ Jack smiled.

  ‘Aren’t men supposed to say that, though?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think most of my mates want to get married. Lots of them are quite happy to admit that they hope to meet someone who they’ll settle down with forever.’

  ‘Whereas you’re happy to enjoy the life of an ageless playboy.’

  ‘It’s not commitment I’m avoiding. Commitment I’m fine with. Give me kids and mortgages and a shared dog or parking space or whatever.’

  ‘Those things aren’t equivalent,’ Zoe said pointedly.

  ‘Well. Whatever. I just don’t really get marriage. My parents have done it. Some of my friends have, some of them haven’t. Sometimes it’s worked out, sometimes it hasn’t. I’m not that fussed either way. I don’t think it necessarily makes anything better, and if it doesn’t do that, what’s the point? It’s just papering over cracks, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, heartwarming.’

  Jack shrugged. ‘I’d get married if you wanted. I just don’t really care one way or another.’

  ‘Stop, stop.’ Zoe wiped her eyes. ‘That’s just too beautiful. It’s … it’s poetry.’ She gave a dramatic sob.

  ‘How about you then? Not fussed about marriage because you’re ragingly anti, or just romantically apathetic, like me?’

  Zoe narrowed her eyes. ‘When I’m raging, you’ll know about it, my friend. I suppose apathetic. No, somewhere between apathetic and anti. Maritally atheistic.’ She thought for a moment. ‘It’s not for me, although I don’t want to ban anyone else from doing it. It’s just not ever been something I’ve believed in.’ She stopped, looked down. ‘I think it would feel a bit … suffocating. And old-fashioned.’

  ‘Am I seeing a little bit of raging coming out? Just a little?’

  Zoe sighed. ‘And … I was engaged before.’

  Jack stared at her. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘what?’

  Zoe leant back in bed. ‘I was really young. Sixteen. Seventeen by the end of it. And I was a young sixteen, if you know what I mean. And this guy – this prick, if you want a slightly more three-dimensional picture – he picked me out at a sixth-form college party, and he seemed so mature, and so great, and so clever, and funny, and he decided to become my boyfriend.’

  ‘You sound like you had no say in it.’

  ‘I didn’t, Jack. That’s my point. I was sixteen – I didn’t fucking know what I was doing. We were together for over a year, so it seemed like this was forever, as stuff does at that age. I didn’t have anything to compare it to – I’d not even had a boyfriend before then, or at least nothing longer than a few days. And this … man comes along, telling me how fantastic I am, how brilliant, how grown up, how different I was. And how could I resist?’

  ‘Hang on – how old was he?’

  Zoe thought about it for a moment, then looked at Jack, shocked. ‘Your age. Your age, now. He was mid-twenties and going out with a sixteen year old.’

  Jack looked queasy.

  ‘Yeah. Exactly. His name was Chuck.’ She sighed again. ‘I haven’t said that name for a long time. Then he thought we should be together properly, that we should be engaged, that … I needed to commit to the relationship, or I didn’t love him enough.’

  ‘Zoe.’

  ‘Well,’ she said tightly, leaning back from Jack’s hands and looking away from him again, remembering, just needing to say it all and not have Jack’s comfort stop her. ‘The happy ending is that none of that mattered anyway, because I completely fucked up my A Levels and didn’t get into any of my chosen courses anyway. It was pretty much thanks to him I fucked up every single paper I sat.’

  ‘But … I didn’t know this.’

  Zoe gave him a look. ‘That’s the point,’ she said more softly. ‘No one did. He was good at that. Ava and Esther saw us out once, so I had to admit that I had a boyfriend, but they didn’t know what he was like. He wanted us to stay secret, so the relationship was just about us – no one else could be involved in something so special. No one could know. So he never met my parents, never spoke to my sisters, never hung out with my friends. In the end, I barely did either.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  ‘Yup. In the end, I told Liz, who said she’d been watching me since I first met him and knew he was up to no good. She wanted me to tell someone, someone at college or my parents or anyone at all really, but I still wanted to protect him. I thought I must have done something wrong to drive him away. To make him not want me anymore, for him to treat me the way he did. All I could think of during my exams was what I could have done to make him so upset. This was the man I was supposed to marry, remember. I was going to spend the rest of my life with him, but I was such an awful person that I couldn’t even keep him when I was already at his beck and call.’

  ‘Zo. You had such a narrow escape.’

  She laughed. ‘I know. I realise that now. But I didn’t for years – and, the thing is, it’s kind of put me off marriage. Plus all that wearing white and changing your name and having your father hand you over, signing your life over to someone. It’s gross.’

  ‘But you can get married without all that stuff. Wear black and keep your name and have no one hand you over. And not everyone is like your incredibly gross ex.’

  She blinked at him for a moment. ‘Yeah. I suppose. But it doesn’t really change the nature of the whole institution. That’s it’s just the government’s way of keeping tabs on who owns who.’

  ‘Now who’s the romantic poet?’ Jack tried to laugh.

  ‘It is, though! I can go to a wedding and cheer and throw confetti with the best of them, but I can’t say a little bit of me doesn’t die inside. Just a tiny bit. And it might come back to life later on, after a few drinks and once I’ve hit the dancefloor, but it doesn’t change my feelings. I just don’t get marriage. I don’t want to. I’ve had my little nibble at the edges of it, and it just didn’t sit particularly well in my guts.’

  ‘Alright, alright. I’ll throw away the floor-length black dress I’ve bought you and bin the Haribo ring.’

  ‘No, I’ll take the Haribo. You can keep the frock, though.’

  Jack pulled Zoe into a strong hug. ‘I’m sorry, Zo. I’m sorry you had to go through that.’

  Zoe kissed him, already feeling better. Lighter. Freer. Jack understood now.

  NINE

  Now

  Things were quiet in the flat for the next few days, both of us waiting for confirmation of our new lives together. Or rather, our new lives apart. I’d managed to whip myself up into an almost constant cocktail of the familiar fear, regret and anxiety, when Benni came barrelling over one Monday morning, just as I arrived in the Science office, and headed straight to my workspace.

  ‘Looks like it’s a no,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning to you too. What’s a no?’

  ‘Check your email, darling.’

  In my inbox was a staff-wide message from senior management explaining that for various reasons, no further school transfers would take place between the two schools. Shit.

  ‘Zoe, I’m so sorry—’

  ‘It’s not your fault. It was only an idea, anyway.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, at least our new Physics teacher got in under the wire?’ She had her hand on my shoulder
again, so different from the confident pat just a few days before. I knew she felt awful about it, too. She understood that I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important to me. ‘There’ll be other opportunities, I’m sure, darling.’

  ‘I know.’ I tried to smile at her. ‘It just would have been really handy right now.’

  In the afternoon, I noticed an unread email from Liz, titled ‘New theory’, just as I saw the new Physics teacher heading my way. Forgetting about my cancelled move for the first time today, I stumbled to open the email, desperate to look like I was doing something other than just swooning and waiting for him to arrive at my cubby. My eyes raced over Liz’s words, reading and re-reading to distract myself from my blush.

  Going out with a terrible person makes EVERYTHING better, not just other possible partners. I actually smiled at birdsong this morning. But what if I end up marrying Henry because he makes every single other thing in the world more beautiful by comparison?

  This theory has potential hidden dangers, I’m finding.

  How are you? How’s things with Jack? See you tonight.

  L xxx

  Interesting. Liz knew me well enough to know that Jack’s absence at our meal out a couple of weeks ago – and my pathetic effort at explaining it away – would be a ‘thing’, although even she might not have guessed that things were so bad. Or that I’d tried to move to the other end of the country. I realised I’d been avoiding her, not willing to talk about this yet. Maybe the current status between me and Jack would mean I could get my smiling-at-birdsong magic just from small talk with the new Physics teacher in the sandwich-smelling Science office.

  ‘Oh hey, Ms Lewis, is it?’