by Emily Barr
‘I still think you could sneak out now,’ he says, grumpily. ‘You can play the diva, can’t you? It’s your right. You do it with me all the time.’
I hold up a hand. ‘Jack,’ I say, my heart suddenly thumping, ‘sit down a minute.’
He takes an apple from my fruit bowl and paces round the room. ‘Why? I’m starving. Got anything to drink that isn’t water?’
‘No. Actually, there might be some wine in the fridge, I think. But sit down a sec. There’s something I’ve got to talk to you about.’
He sighs. ‘What?’
I don’t reply, and he lowers himself, with a show of reluctance, on to the sofa.
‘Jack,’ I tell him, terrified by what I am about to do, and still elated by the post-performance adrenalin. ‘It’s about us. You and me. Our marriage. I don’t think it’s working any more.’ I hear myself speaking, wondering why it’s not possible to say words like these, words which change the course of two people’s lives, without sounding as if you’re in a bad soap opera.
He freezes, the apple almost at his lips. I watch him intently. Jack has always been good-looking, but age and confidence have not served him well, and now, at thirty, his pores are blocked and his chin and cheekbones have lost their old definition. Nonetheless, I know he is handsome. I just don’t want him anywhere near me.
‘What are you talking about?’ he demands. ‘That’s bollocks.’
‘It’s not.’ I am still terrified, but now that I have begun this, I am going to finish it. My emotions are heightened anyway, and this is not a moment for backtracking. ‘I know you know I’m right, really. I don’t want us to be together any more. I’m not happy. I don’t think you’re happy either - I think you’re happy in most of your life, but not with me. It would be best if we tried living apart for a while. I’d like you to move out. Go and stay with Ian and Kate, maybe.’
He pretends to splutter. ‘Evie, this is completely out of the blue. Are you having a laugh?’
I shake my head. ‘Of course not.’
He looks around the room. ‘And you tell me this now? Backstage at the London fucking Palladium?’
‘I’d been wanting to talk about it for ages,’ I tell him, trying to be soft and sympathetic, ‘but it never seemed the right time. Then I realised there was never going to be a right time, and that I just had to do it when I had a moment. When we were alone together. I know you must have noticed it too.’
He stares at me. ‘You are a hard bitch, do you know that?’
I’m stung. ‘I’m not! I’m right, and you know it. You’ve had your head in the sand for the past three years or more.’
‘Oh, have I? It’s all my fault?’
‘No! It’s not all your fault. It’s no one’s fault. We’ve just changed a lot since we were twenty-two, that’s all.’
‘And in five minutes you’re going to go back out on to that stage and play “Happy Birthday” to Prince bloody Charles?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Even divorce won’t get me out of that.’
I sit, he stands, and we look at each other in silence while the word echoes between us. Jack looks at the apple in his hand, then tosses it into the bin. His arms hang by his sides and he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. I look at our reflections in the big mirror above my dressing table. We present a strange tableau: a computer technician in his jeans and a shirt, with an overgrown Barbie doll.
‘All right,’ he says, after a while.
I look at him. ‘Thanks, Jack.’
He avoids my eyes as he picks up his coat from the back of a chair. ‘I’ll go home now. Pack up some stuff and get out. We can sort out the rest of it later. You’re going to regret this, Evie, I promise you. Let me know when you come to your senses.’
He leaves the room, the theatre, and my life without looking at me. As I watch him leave, I force myself not to smile. The moment the door shuts behind him, I look at myself in the mirror and grin. I am still high from the performance, and I am certain I have done the right thing. Finally, I am capable of being on my own. I don’t need my mother to look after me, and I don’t need my husband. Fifteen years after the event, I can stand on my own two feet.
I reapply my lipstick and wait to be called back to the stage.
chapter two
A week later
I’m sitting at home in the early evening, watching our wedding video forwards and backwards, and waiting for Kate to arrive. She said she’d be over after work, and it’s now half past six. The trouble with living in Greenwich is that it sometimes takes people hours to reach you. I think I should move somewhere more central. I need to get away from the remnants of my married life.
I haven’t really worked today. I practised for two hours in the morning, packaged up the proof of my past three months’ earnings and a blank VAT return for my accountant, and sat down to watch daytime television. I tell myself that I am doing fine. I didn’t miss Jack today: how could I have missed him at a time when he would never have been home, anyway? After Neighbours and Doctors I had a little nap, then walked to the corner shop, as an experiment, to see how I felt leaving the house. I thought that, perhaps, the boring, unchanging real world would make me feel superior, as it normally does. I walked along the familiar pavements to the shop where they almost know my name, after five years of daily patronage. The wind was evil, and I wished I’d worn a proper coat, rather than my flimsy denim jacket. Denim jackets are for summer, not for November. I passed a few people as I went. Two mothers with pushchairs ambled along side by side, blocking the pavement. As I loitered impatiently behind them, with no reason in the world for my impatience, nowhere to go except the shop, I heard one of them say to the other: ‘Oh! I know what I was going to tell you!’ in a tone of great excitement. I walked on her heels to hear what it was. ‘Bernie did a wee in the potty yesterday!’ the woman continued, and my heart sank. ‘He’s such a clever boy, aren’t you, darling?’
The other mother was enthralled. ‘Really?’ she gushed. ‘A wee in the potty? That’s so clever. Well done, mister.’
I rolled my eyes, sighed as audibly as I could, and stepped into the road to pass them, nearly finding myself mown down by a speeding motorbike as I did so. Slim chance, then, of distractions from mothers. I turned to look at the children. Clever Bernie had a snotty nose and looked old enough to use a loo like any civilised human being, and the other child was red-faced and asleep. I have to be scathing about children I see out with their mothers. It’s the only thing that works.
The mothers were plump. Their hair was messy and they were both in need of some foundation. Women have babies, and let themselves go. I would never be like that.
I passed a couple of kids who should have been at school, and a few old people. They all looked normal. None of them looked as if their world had fallen apart lately.
Mine hasn’t either. I am absolutely fine. In fact, I am rather enjoying the excuse to lounge around. If you can’t watch bad television and eat junk food when your husband has just moved out, when can you? It is the novelty of it all that is confusing me. Jack and I were so settled for so long that I’m simply not used to rattling around on my own. I felt like Superwoman when I dumped him, but now that the high has worn off, I’m not finding it easy to be alone.
I’ve cancelled several work engagements, which I’ve only ever done before when I’ve been too ill to get out of bed. Even then, I’ve sometimes forced myself. I’ve been citing personal circumstances, and told my agent to let people know, subtly, that my marriage has broken down. I may as well use it. It’s now only a matter of time before it appears in the tabloids.
I am, perversely, looking forward to that day. Once the press start taking an interest, the decision will be made for me. Events will be taken out of my hands. I’ll have to get on with my life. I will have to get my hair done, think about what I’m wearing, choose a bright lipstick and go to a party or premiere one evening, to prove that I’m emerging stronger and wiser from my ordeal. I
f they catch me moping about in tracksuit bottoms and a big T-shirt I will be in trouble. Image is everything. In a few months I could judiciously allow myself to be caught with an aspiring pop star or someone similar. I can see myself on the front pages entwined with someone young and fresh-faced. Some boy from a band.
My trip to the shop was a resounding failure, and it took all my strength not to cry until I got home. South-east London can be unremittingly grim. I came back with a thin plastic bag, the handles already stretched almost to breaking point, which contained a pint of milk (no need for large quantities any more, now that Jack no longer gulps it straight from the carton every day), two bottles of red wine, and an enormous bar of Dairy Milk. Having never been in this situation before, I am turning for comfort to the sort of props recommended by women’s magazines. I can’t think of anything else to do. I put it down in the hall, next to three cardboard boxes of Jack’s things, leaned back on the front door, and took deep, gulping breaths. I feel that he’s died. But that is good.
Our house has always been my sanctuary. Jack, if it had been up to him, would have lived in a bachelor pad with no ornamentation or decoration whatsoever. All he needs is a Gameboy and a duvet. Left to his own devices, he would be a prime candidate for buying a ‘men’s’ duvet cover, a black one with thin grey and orange stripes on it. Perhaps he will get one, now, to see him through until the next woman comes along. There will be a next woman. I know there will. Jack will replace me, just as I will replace him. I hope I replace him, with a fanfare of publicity, first.
I moulded this place, over the years, into the home I wanted. On the outside it’s a grey-brick terrace with a red front door and a tiny front garden. The most striking thing about it is its location, with the Thames at the bottom of the street. Indoors, it is open plan, light and airy. The walls are all white, the floors all stripped and varnished, with rugs here and there. The sofa is large and welcoming and cream, with heaps of cushions hiding various red wine and curry stains. There are paintings on the walls, a few of them done by people we know from Jack’s art school days. A few years ago I had the fake fireplace removed and a woodburner installed, which we light on cold evenings. There’s a pile of kindling next to it. I have been lighting it, all alone, lately. I’m good at doing that. I always lit it for Jack and me too. I love the ritual of the kindling and the scrunched-up newspaper.
The coffee table is cluttered with books and papers and pens and letters, and the shelves are overflowing with books. This is not an immaculate house, by any means: it is a friendly house. People who come here comment on the welcoming atmosphere, and sometimes I find it unlikely that I have created such a home, while I have relatively few close friends.
I keep finding Jack’s bits and pieces in among the clutter. Every time I come across a book or a CD or a magazine that belongs to him I force myself to throw it into one of the boxes in the hall. I love our house, and I would never have imagined that I was capable of feeling lonely here. Yet here I am, alone and, perhaps, not as happy as I would like to be.
I watch our wedding over and over again. When I watch it forwards I stare at myself, younger and skinnier, barely a size eight in those days. I walk slowly up the aisle in my dream dress, with its tight bodice and full net skirt, smiling beatifically, pretending to be Grace Kelly, and adoring the attention. My hair was long then, loose down my back, with rosebuds tied into it at the crown. I am holding a small, tasteful bouquet of roses. As I watch myself, again, pledging myself to Jack for as long as we both shall live, I remember exactly how I felt. I was deliriously happy. I was twenty-two; and I was happy because I was the first of my friends to get married. I was happy because I knew I looked adorable, and because there were a hundred and fifty people in the church and every single one of them was staring at me. I thought I loved Jack, but now I suspect that a large component of that love was the fact that he reflected my view of myself. In those days, when he, too, was twenty-two, Jack was struggling as a professional artist. I already had a recording contract and was in the process of being launched into the classical stratosphere as a scantily clad cello babe. I felt we were superior in every way to people with proper jobs, and anyone who had to ask why we were better than they were was a philistine and would never understand. I knew nothing, back then. I was obsessed with the surface. As I told OK! magazine the other day, I am much deeper and more spiritual now.
Above all, I was making a stable life for myself. I gambled on my instinct that Jack would never leave me. It never occurred to me, back then, that I might, one day, leave him. I didn’t want to be on my own, so I got married. If it hadn’t been Jack, it would have been someone else.
I remember, as I walked up the aisle, half wishing that I’d asked Louise to the wedding. I wanted her to see how gorgeous and happy I was, to show her that, despite her best efforts, I had won.
I see Kate, in the second row of pews. She wipes a tear away as I glide past her. Ian is standing with Jack, as his best man. I wish we’d captured Kate and Ian exchanging glances on tape. I think they dance together later on the video. They met at our wedding and have been together and, as far as I can see, properly happy, in a way that I can barely imagine, ever since. That happiness has been tested, but it hasn’t faltered. Three years have passed, now, since Kate breezily announced that they were trying for a baby.
‘Fingers crossed,’ she said, unable to sit still with excitement, ‘it’ll be a late summer baby. If I’m pregnant this month, it’ll be due on August the twenty-fourth. I wonder if I’ll have morning sickness? I won’t care if I do, you know. I’m sure it’ll be worth it. I won’t mind at all if it’s a boy or a girl.’
Such concerns long ago began to seem like a luxury. Kate and Ian have ‘unexplained infertility’, and no amount of tests, diets and, lately, fertility drugs and IVF seem to be able to do the trick. I’m immensely thankful that Jack and I never decided to have a child; not just for the child’s sake, but also for Kate’s. When we got married, I thought I would like to be a mother before I was twenty-five, but when it came to it I didn’t want that at all. We never even discussed it. I might have a child with my next husband. The magazines would love it.
I mouth the words in perfect synchronisation with my twenty-two-year-old self.
‘I, Evelyn Rose,’ we say, ‘take you, Jack Matthew, to be my lawful wedded husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward . . .’ I wonder whether we should have a divorce ceremony, if we do reach that point. We could dress up again, get all the same people back to the same church and retract our vows. ‘I, Evelyn Rose,’ I could say, ‘demote you, Jack Matthew, to be my lawfully divorced ex-husband. To snipe and to argue, from this day forward, for as long as we both shall bother to see each other.’ I think Jack would like the idea.
At the moment when Jack and I kiss, I pause the video. This is the happiest moment of my life: from here, it went downhill. I press rewind, and watch myself eating my words, and rushing off, backwards, down the aisle.
The doorbell rings, and I freeze the screen. When I try to get up, I discover that I have been sitting on my leg, that it’s numb and alien to me. I punch it a few times, and as the feeling comes back it seizes up in an agony of pins and needles.
Kate is on the doorstep.
‘Hello!’ she says, with forced jollity. She jigs up and down in the cold. Kate is beautiful, with long corkscrew curls and a creamy complexion. She’s holding a bag which smells of chips.
‘Come in!’ I tell her, forcing a breezy smile. ‘’Specially if you’ve brought food.’
She hands me the bag. ‘Fish and chips. Thought you probably weren’t eating, so you can get a whole day’s calories out of this.’
‘I’ve got wine and chocolate.’
‘Perfect. Pour us the wine and I’ll get this on some plates.’ She steps into the hall, and looks round the ground floor. ‘Evie! I don’t believe you. You’re watching your wedding video. That is so unhealthy.’
‘I know. I’ve been torturing mysel
f. Wishing I could step back in time and run away at the last minute. You know’ - I pick it up and fast forward, then pause it again - ‘if you rewind it from exactly this point, we’re divorced.’
I press the rewind button, and we both watch Jack and me, in turn, swallowing our words. Then I rush backwards down the aisle, for the ninth time today. The tear flows upwards into Kate’s eye and melts away.
‘You don’t really wish you’d never done it. Not really,’ she says, quietly, staring at the screen. ‘You and Jack have had great times together. You were good. You were perfect, actually. You two have always looked perfect from the outside. You were an inspiration to us all. I’m sure Ian and I wouldn’t have got married as soon as we did if you hadn’t already done it.’
I think about it. ‘Really? You’re my inspiration now. I want what you and Ian have got, not me and Jack. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think I’m ever going to find it. I’m too selfish. I’m no good at relationships. I’ve got too much else going on.’ I can’t explain exactly what I mean, but I know this is the truth. I am not cut out for long-term relationships, for fidelity.
‘You’re not. And don’t romanticise us. It’s impossible to know what goes on in other people’s marriages. We were gobsmacked when Jack told us about you two splitting up. You know that. I would never have predicted it in a million years. And you of all people know what Ian and I have been through. It does put a strain on your relationship. A horrible strain. It’s not all roses at our house, Evie.’ She looks away. ‘Far from it, in fact.’
I crumple up yesterday’s paper and arrange it in the woodburner. I’ll need another bag of kindling tomorrow.
‘But you’re so solid together,’ I tell her. ‘I just don’t know about Jack and me. I didn’t think I’d miss him. I felt great when he moved out. And now I think I might be missing him a little bit. Part of me can’t help thinking that we’ll give it another go and maybe get it right this time, and that this is just a blip.’ I place the last piece of kindling in the stove and light a match. ‘It’s the strangest thing, Kate, it really is. I remember times, so many times, when Jack was away, with work or with the boys, and I adored having the house to myself. I used to secretly hope that he’d stay away longer because I enjoyed being my own boss so much. And you’re the only one who knows that I wasn’t always exactly impeccably behaved when he wasn’t around. So I should be getting on with it, getting out and meeting new people. But I just can’t quite seem to shake myself into action. I wait for the sound of his key in the door. If he came back now and asked if we could give it another go, I might even say yes.’ I can’t look at her. No one else knows that I’m feeling like this. Most of the time I don’t know it myself. All my family think I’m fine and strong and happy.
