The Starter Home

by Bryony Fraser

  Once they were in, Graham turned the radio on. A Radio 2 jingle blared out, followed by the opening bars of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

  ‘Oh, this is my favourite!’ breathed Christine, clasping her hands together. Graham smiled at her and turned it up to an almost deafening volume, which she adjusted slightly downwards as he continued driving.

  Zoe turned to Jack, who now looked outright horrified.

  ‘Dad doesn’t listen to music,’ he hissed, the sound buried by Freddie Mercury’s deafening falsetto.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you shake her hand?’ Zoe whispered back.

  ‘Zo, I didn’t even know she still existed. Apart from some uncomfortable childhood memories where she terrified me through the hatch of the school office, I have literally no idea who she even is. I didn’t know she was going to turn up at a lunch with my dad. Forgive me if I’ve forgotten the social niceties of meeting your dad’s girlfriend – with absolutely no warning – only to find she was your childhood nightmare fuel.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘That bad. Seriously. I mean, she wasn’t beating us up and putting us in the chokey, but in terms of people I imagined my dad hooking up with, Christine Churchill is somewhere between Angela Merkel and George Michael.’

  ‘Alright. Alright. You did pretty well in that case. This is weird, isn’t it?’

  ‘This is totally weird, thank you. I actually feel like I’m in a dream. What next, my old lecturer turns up naked and the pub turns into a giant cake?’

  ‘You’re panicking.’

  ‘Yes, I’m panicking. She was awful at school. Awful. When did this happen? How did this happen?’

  Zoe looked in the rearview mirror, and saw both Jack’s dad and Christine were distracted, singing along to the music. She turned towards Jack, putting both her hands on his shoulders. ‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘It’s going to be ok. We just have to get through lunch, which will be fine: ordering food, eating food, we’ve done this before. Then we’ll get back on the train and we can have full meltdowns, ok? This’ll be, what? Three hours tops? We can do three hours of just biting our tongues and being insanely polite, ok? And then we can freak out and analyse the many thousands of ways in which this is completely weird. But later. Ok?’

  ‘Ok.’

  Zoe kissed him. ‘I’m really proud of you.’

  Jack looked pleased. ‘Thanks.’

  She turned forwards in her seat again, put her head on his shoulder, and smiled.

  The pub, far from being the traditional, low-ceilinged, tiny-windowed, smoking fireplaces kind of place, was beautiful and bright. One whole glass wall looked out onto a babbling stream; their table was tucked in a corner against a huge mirror, carrying in the shimmering light from outside. Christine and Graham took the furthest seats, after a long, lingering kiss; Jack and Zoe sat with their backs to the room, but still able to watch everything behind them in the mirror’s reflection.

  Christine ordered them all a bottle of house white, which they sat sipping in silence for a moment after the waitress had half filled their glasses. Zoe watched Jack gazing at Graham, who looked at the liquid in his glass with something like surprise, as if unsure how it had got there, before taking a sip and smiling slightly. Zoe was busying herself with the menu when she saw in the mirror the reflection of Christine’s hand resting on Graham’s knee under the table, stroking it softly. Thankfully, Jack had now fixed his attention on the menu, in the kind of sightless way that reminded Zoe of how Graham had looked at his wine.

  She leant over to him. ‘What do you think you’ll go for?’

  He looked up, distantly, then looked at his dad and Christine. ‘Something with cyanide?’ he whispered.

  She put her hand on his knee, then jerked it away in surprise, seeing in the mirror Christine’s hand slide up Graham’s thigh. Jack looked puzzled. Zoe tried to compose herself. ‘Pâté? Then lamb? What do you reckon? Or go halves on the lamb and the steak for mains?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Sounds fine. I’m going to the toilet. Please will you order for me?’

  Zoe took his hand as he got up, and mouthed, ‘Please don’t hang yourself.’ Jack laughed, and bent back down to kiss her hand.

  In the silence, Zoe took a nervous drink, and hoped the waitress would come back soon. Christine leant towards Zoe and said, in a stage whisper that cut across the room, ‘Is Jack alright?’

  ‘He’s fine, just tired.’ She explained that they’d had friends over for dinner the night before and he was just a little sleepy.

  Christine wrinkled her nose. ‘Had he forgotten he was seeing us today?’

  Zoe tried to think of a polite way of saying Us? but just smiled and said, ‘It was only a quiet meal with friends. Perhaps we’re just getting old too.’ She realised the weight of her insult as she watched Christine’s mouth slowly pucker around the comment. Fortunately at that moment the waitress arrived, and although Jack was still absent, Zoe was able to persuade her to take their orders, rather than wait for him. ‘He might not be out until dessert,’ she whispered as the waitress took her menu. The waitress smiled knowingly back and Zoe thought there was some solidarity there – at least she could rely on the staff if she and Jack absolutely had to escape and needed a distracting plate crash or small kitchen explosion.

  By the time the bread basket arrived, Jack had returned. ‘Feeling a little better after last night?’ Christine asked. Zoe opened her mouth to explain again that it was just a quiet but late dinner, and Jack looked at Zoe, wondering what she’d said. Graham interrupted them with his first comment since they’d sat down, saying, ‘They do good bread here. Lovely stuff,’ before laying the entire dish of butter on a single piece of warm sliced baguette and pushing the whole thing down his throat in two mouthfuls.

  While Jack asked for another dish of butter – ‘Actually, better make it two, please?’ – Zoe ate a whole slice herself, unbuttered. Last night’s dinner felt like a long time ago, and all she’d had since then was their coffee from the station. She tore the bread in two, chewed one half, swallowed, and was chewing the second when she noticed Christine staring at her with something like horror. Zoe swatted at her face, patting it down for any smears or crumbs, then looked over Christine’s shoulder into the mirror to see if there was something she’d missed.

  Christine blinked at her. ‘Well, you’ve certainly got a good appetite, haven’t you? It’s like watching some kind of medieval banquet from this side, isn’t it, Graham?’

  Jack’s father nodded and smiled. ‘Glad you’re enjoying yourselves,’ he said, before swallowing his own unbuttered slice in two unchewed mouthfuls again. Christine watched him with an oily smile on her face. ‘We’ll get you some more bread, Graham, before these two polish it off.’

  Jack tipped the bread basket towards Christine, offering the still-warm slices, but she shook her head quickly and said, ‘Oh dear, no, thank you, Jack, bread doesn’t do any favours to a lady. By our age we have to be a bit more careful, don’t we, Zoe?’

  Zoe looked at Jack with a deadpan face; he made a slight choking noise as he tried not to laugh. Zoe picked up a second slice, took the new butter from the waitress’s hand, thanking her, spread it thickly on the bread before biting into it and almost groaning with pleasure. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Graham, this really is very good bread.’ He nodded and smiled again, and Jack joined them in a new silence, filled with chewing and spreading and little noises of enjoyment and delicious gluttony.

  The main course was a little better: Christine actually ate something, but Zoe’s appetite was all but blasted to smithereens when something moving in the mirror caught her eye, and she saw the reflection of Christine’s hand not just stroking Graham’s thigh, but actively moving higher and higher up his leg throughout the entire course. When Jack asked if she was ok, Zoe muttered something about last night catching up with her.

  After the bill had been paid – Christine had refused dessert, looking meaningfully at Zoe, and Graham said he was sure he had a Cor
netto in the freezer at home, that’d do him – and they had stepped out into the pub carpark, Christine muttered something in Graham’s ear.

  He nodded, cleared his throat, then said without any preamble, ‘Listen, Jack, Christine and I – we’re actually married. Got it done quietly the other day. Just the legal stuff. Didn’t want to bother you. But thought you two – you three – should probably meet.’

  Jack looked stunned. It was the most his father had spoken for the whole meal – for much of recent history, in fact, as far as Jack and Zoe could tell. Christine leant in to give him and Zoe a hug, arching her body away from theirs as if physical contact would be the terrible icing on today’s uneaten cake. She stood back with a face that suggested she’d never quite mastered spontaneous happiness, as Graham gave Zoe a peck on the cheek and Jack a firm handshake, two-handed, with real warmth.

  ‘Thanks for coming, son. Thanks to both of you.’ He nodded again. ‘It’s been really great that you could join us. And, er, congratulations on your own engagement.’ He nodded at Zoe, this time. ‘Welcome to the family.’

  Christine took Graham’s other arm. ‘I’m sorry we can’t give you a lift back, though. We’ve got plans for later.’

  Zoe hitched her bag up on her shoulder and Jack released his dad’s hand. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘We’ve got all that bread to work off, after all.’

  They watched Graham and Christine head to their car, Christine waiting for Graham to open the door for her as he walked around the car to his own side and got in, starting the engine and rubbing his hands in the cool of the car. Christine looked around, saw Zoe and Jack watching her, and climbed into the car in one sharp movement, slamming her door and turning her face away from them. Graham raised his hand once more to wave goodbye, before the car slowly crunched over the gravel and turned away into the road.

  ‘That was …’ Zoe couldn’t find quite the right word.

  ‘I know. Wasn’t it just.’

  ‘Did you have any idea?’

  ‘That my terrifying primary school secretary had secretly married my dad? No, Zoe, I can honestly confess that I did not.’

  ‘But has he ever said anything about seeing anyone?’

  ‘Has he ever said anything about anything?’

  ‘Good point.’ She put an arm around Jack’s waist. ‘Married, though. Do you think your mum knows?’

  ‘Oh god. Mum. I doubt it. Unless … Oh god, do you think that’s the real reason they broke up? That she found out about her and Dad?’

  ‘No. No, it can’t be. It didn’t feel like that, did it? He’d look more … embarrassed or something, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Plus I haven’t heard anything from the Norwich grapevine. It would have been all over the local gossip pages had he run off with someone from his son’s school. Or at least all over the pubs at Christmas. No, this seems a bit … new.’

  ‘Ah, young love.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  Zoe put on a mock therapist voice. ‘Now now, Jack, your father is allowed to be happy too. Can you accept his happiness without it lessening your own?’

  Jack slung an arm around her shoulder. ‘As long as this is just his rebound marriage. That’s up to him. And as long as I don’t have to actually ever spend any time with her in any kind of family situation, that’ll be fine.’

  ‘So you’re not up for opening your stocking with her on Christmas morning?’

  ‘Or holding her hand while I search for Easter eggs?’

  ‘Or giving her a New Year’s kiss at midnight?’

  Jack put his hand to his mouth and swallowed. ‘Oh god, seriously, that lamb’s going to come up again.’

  Zoe laughed, and tried not to think about exactly what Graham might be getting out of that apparently quite handsy relationship. ‘Maybe your dad just needs to have a bit of fun.’

  Jack looked at her. ‘I’m sure he does. But if fun’s what he’s after, he might be dipping his bucket in the wrong well.’

  ‘Don’t worry! We’ll probably only ever have to see her once a year. Twice, tops, I reckon.’

  Jack hugged her and kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Come on, let’s head back to some stinking, crowded, anti-social civilisation.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Now

  A week after I’d caught Jack and his new girlfriend on our sofa, our kitchen units were coated in more paperwork than an origami exhibition. It started with a rota I drew up the night after interrupting Jack and his girlfriend, because no one wanted to find their spouse in flagrante, even if they were in the process of splitting up with them already. I’d decided we needed formal arrangements for when we could have partners over. When I’d come home two evenings later just as Jessica was leaving, I had reprinted the rota with Jack’s times circled in red. I woke the next morning to find Jack had created a rota for washing up.

  I understood. He was after blood.

  I countered with a bathroom rota. Jack parried with a TV rota. I launched a hot water rota.

  This morning, I discovered Jack had labelled every single item in the fridge: Jack’s, Jack’s, Jack’s, Jack’s, Jack’s, Jack’s. A single jar of capers from an ambitious pasta recipe six months ago bore my name, plus a wilted paper bag of carrots that were fractionally softer than the overcooked linguine I’d served with the capers.

  With a flourish, I wrote Jack a thank you note and stuck it to the mirror with a hearty dollop of his artisanal jalapeño-and-red-pepper-hummus. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t clever, but it was unbelievably satisfying.

  That evening, Jack had emptied my capers jar to spell out THANKS FOR THE NOTE along the kitchen worktop. I gently squeezed out his pricey deli tube of chilli and ginger paste to write YOU’RE WELCOME underneath, underlined four times.

  If we couldn’t keep our good manners, what did we even have?

  A few days later, Jack crashed into the flat in a chaotic whirlwind of boxes and leather samples, linings and thread spools. I looked at him over the top of my magazine. ‘You’re home then.’

  He checked his cheerful face and sighed heavily. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise I had to give written notice.’

  I swallowed my own sigh, knowing that a comment about the noisy nature of his entrance would have garnered a smile in the old days, not a sigh. I tried again. ‘Got a new project on?’

  ‘Mmm. Something like that.’

  I went back to my article, when something reminded me. ‘Oh, the wedding list people called. They said our own stuff should be with us in the next four to six weeks.’

  Jack laughed humourlessly. ‘Just in time for us to mail it all back to our guests then.’

  ‘Is that what we’re going to do?’

  He looked at me, with exaggerated horror. ‘Is that not what you were planning?’

  ‘I don’t know … It hadn’t crossed my mind. I wouldn’t even have called them – they called me today. I hadn’t thought about it for ages.’

  ‘But you’d taken for granted that you’d keep these gifts that, thanks to this company’s incompetence, didn’t even arrive during the actual marriage?’

  ‘But sending them back to people. It’s a bit … passive aggressive, isn’t it? “Thank you so much for your lovely salad bowl but actually we’ve broken up now so you can keep it.”’

  ‘Who knew you could still surprise me after all this time?’ Jack was smiling sarcastically at me.

  ‘Jack,’ I said pleadingly. He picked up all his stuff and carried it into the bedroom, closing the door with a horrible gentleness until I heard it click. ‘Ugh,’ I said to myself. ‘Handled with your usual tact and charm, Zo. Keep up the good work.’

  Jack called through the door. ‘I can still hear you.’

  I balled a fist in my mouth and screamed silently.

  A couple of weeks later, I was sharing dim sum with Liz. Her hair was back to normal, and her nails were still beige, but only in scraps, chipped and chewed down to their usual stubby length.

  ‘So am I to fin
d a hat for your summer wedding?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not saying my theory was wrong,’ she said, pushing a cabbage parcel into her mouth, ‘I’m just saying that the practice is only sustainable for six months, max.’

  ‘You seemed to be having a pretty good time there, for a while.’

  ‘I was! I loved it. He was so rude, so bossy, so dim – I just kept thinking what a contrast he was to my last few boyfriends. And we’d go to great restaurants, great bars, always fifty-fifty, because he “didn’t want to invest in me until he was sure he’d get a return”.’

  ‘He did not say that.’

  Liz nodded gleefully. ‘He did! And it was fun, like I was stepping out of my life for a while. I was never going to stay with him—’

  I stuck my lower lip out in mock disappointment.

  ‘—but it was like a holiday from all that real dating.’

  ‘Yeah, right, ugh, real feelings.’

  ‘Actual connection, bleurgh.’

  ‘Common interests, yuck. What finally finished things?’

  ‘No great event. I just woke up one morning and felt like I’d had enough.’

  ‘Enough to find someone better?’

  ‘Mmm. Not sure. Just enough of him, for now. I’m not sure where that will take me … But maybe next time I won’t give up on a relationship so quickly. New Dating Plan: as long as they aren’t Henry, give ’em a chance.’

  ‘Snappy.’

  She bowed her head. ‘You’re welcome. How’s your dating philosophy going?’

  ‘Ugh. I’ve got enough to worry about with Kat and Chuck.’

  ‘Jesus, is that prick still alive? I thought karma would have taken him out by now.’ Liz squeezed my hand. ‘I’m sorry. What does Kat say?’

  ‘Nothing. She won’t talk about work at all, which I think is what worries me most.’ I toyed with my duck hearts and sighed. ‘So there’s that, and no, I’m not seeing anyone – Jack is, though.’

  ‘Is he? Brutal. How do we feel about it?’