by Fiona Gibson
‘Look, Nate, I thought I’d explained—’
‘Yes,’ he says hotly, ‘but I was just thinking, how about I drive Flynn over to Abby’s – I mean, to yours – for your movie-and-pizza thing tomorrow night?’
My back teeth clamp together. ‘I’d really just like some time with him. Can’t you understand we need—’
‘Of course I do,’ he says, clearly mustering every ounce of his willpower in order to sound calm. ‘I just want to give him a lift, all right? I’m not going to hang around. I won’t get in the way …’
I lower myself onto the chair behind the counter. ‘No, I know that. I just—’
‘I only want to see you for five minutes, if that’s all right?’ he cuts in. ‘Just five minutes. I assume that’s not too much to ask?’
‘Okay, okay! Of course that’s fine—’
‘Great,’ he announces, verging on manic now. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Me too,’ I mutter, glancing around the empty shop and resorting to fibbing now: ‘But sorry, I really have to go, Nate. A customer has just walked in.’
Chapter Eleven
Nate
So, my wife needs extra therapy now, with the woman who put her up to all of this. I’m sorry, but I can’t help thinking of Rachel in that way. After all, weren’t we fine before she came along? Isn’t therapy supposed to make you calmer and happier, rather than stirring things up and driving you to write crazed notes?
Still, at least Sinead has agreed to see me tomorrow, if only briefly. I remind myself of this as I park up and saunter towards the Solworth test centre. Also: it’s good that Flynn is feeling up to movie-and-pizza nights with his mum. I have no desire for there to be any kind of rift between them. I just wish I was fucking invited, that’s all.
Filling my lungs with crisp morning air, I make a point of breezing into the office with a definite spring in my step, like the sodding Easter bunny, in order to transmit the message that, while things might be a little tricky right now, I am coping admirably.
Everyone is here – Liv, Eric, Nadira – chatting, drinking coffee and sorting out paperwork for the day’s tests. After a few pleasantries, and being handed a coffee by Eric, I perch on the edge of my desk and clear my throat. ‘Look, I don’t want to make a massive deal out of this, but I suppose I should tell you that Sinead left me last week.’
Everyone stares, aghast. Liv is first to speak. ‘My God, Nate. You mean … you’ve broken up?’
‘Well, it sort of looks that way. But we’ll see—’
‘Why on earth didn’t you say something?’ Eric exclaims. ‘Why didn’t you just tell us, or call me—’
‘I didn’t really know how.’ I shrug.
‘Oh, Nate, you poor, poor thing …’ Now Nadira is up out of her seat and hugging me, followed by Liv, resulting in a sort of cuddling clump, which I absolutely don’t want right now.
‘You should have told us last week,’ Liv chastises me. ‘We’re your friends …’
‘Really, I’m okay …’ I manage to extricate myself and back away to my desk, where I add, hurriedly, ‘Please, I don’t want a fuss over this. Maybe we’ll be able to sort things out. I have no idea. But right now I just want to get on with work, keep busy, and try to focus on that …’
‘If you’re sure you’re okay,’ Liv offers, exhaling heavily at the awfulness of it all. I can’t even look over at Eric, although I can sense him staring at me. Recently, there was talk of us all going away for a weekend on the coast somewhere: two couples plus Flynn. Now our cosy little group has crumbled.
‘I really am,’ I say firmly, grabbing my paperwork for the first candidate and glancing over towards the internal window, which is only partially obscured by flimsy vertical blinds. ‘Ah – she’s here now. Better go.’
‘Good luck, mate,’ says Eric, frowning in concern.
‘If there’s anything you need,’ Liv calls after me as I shoot through the door, perhaps a little too hastily as the girl flinches, startled, at the sight of me bounding towards her.
‘Hello!’ I beam at her. ‘I’m Nate. I’m your examiner today. You’re Julianna?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she squeaks.
‘Could I just see your provisional licence and theory test pass certificate, please?’
She shows me her documents, and we step out into the car park where we go through the preliminaries: the sight test and general vehicle-related questions. By the time we set off in her instructor’s car, she seems to have gathered herself together. In fact, Julianna drives extremely well. Will Flynn allow me to teach him to drive? I wonder. Even with his condition, there is no reason why he wouldn’t be capable of learning. We might not even need to have a car specially adapted for him, although it’s impossible to know without a proper assessment. I shake off the unsettling realisation that this might be the first Flynn-related issue that Sinead and I will deal with as separated parents. Until now, we’ve always been a tight-knit team.
My God – Where will we both sit at his wedding?
I catch my thoughts hurtling off in a ridiculous direction, and try to wrestle them back to the matter in hand. However, now, a particularly depressing realisation is infiltrating my brain: he’s just sacked me as his guitar teacher. Why on earth would he want me to teach him to drive?
Concentrate, I tell myself silently. Fortunately, Julianna continues to drive with extreme competence. The test ends, and I tell her she’s passed.
‘Thank you so much,’ she says, grinning. ‘Can’t wait to tell Mum and Dad!’ And off she skips, already snatching her phone from her bag in order to share the good news with her two-parent family.
My next candidate passes too, and the one after that, which lifts my spirits a little. Despite our reputations, we examiners gain no pleasure in telling someone they haven’t passed. However, my last candidate of the day – a chunky red-haired chap named Angus Pew – drives in such an erratic and cavalier fashion, I am forced to use the dual-control brake, which means an automatic fail. Back at the test centre car park, we park up.
I turn to him. ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but you didn’t pass your test today.’
He gawps at me. ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘No, I’m not joking,’ I reply levelly. ‘As I said, I’m sorry to tell you—’
‘Yeah, I fucking heard you the first time. I’m not deaf.’
I reel back and blink at him. I’ve been raged at in this kind of scenario plenty of times; one guy tried to grab at my shirt, and another spat at me as we parted company. As examiners, we just have to try to steel ourselves against abuse. ‘There’s no need to swear at me,’ I tell Angus Pew wearily. ‘Would you like me to explain why you didn’t pass?’
‘No, I bloody wouldn’t,’ he snaps. ‘What difference would that make?’
‘Well, some candidates find it helpful to know for next time—’
‘You know what you might find helpful?’ he growls, cheeks reddened, a purplish vein bulging from his forehead.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite—’
‘You might find it helpful to know that I work in a restaurant in Hesslevale …’
I frown at him, confused as to why he is telling me this.
‘… so you’d better watch out,’ he concludes with a sneer.
I blink at him, uncomprehending for a moment. ‘Are you saying you know where I live?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. Well, I know you live in Hesslevale. I’ve seen you out and about. You’re kind of hard to miss, being the height you are—’
‘And what d’you mean, that I should “watch out”?’
He fixes me with watery grey eyes. ‘I happen to work in a restaurant kitchen. That’s all I’m saying …’
My stomach turns as I study this man, just an ordinary bloke in his early thirties, pale-faced, substantial belly straining against his stripy T-shirt. ‘You’re not … threatening me, are you?’
Angus Pew shrugs.
‘Are you saying that, if
I eat in your restaurant, you might … do something to my food?’
‘I might. I might not. Who knows?’
I glare at him as we both climb out of the car. ‘So, which restaurant d’you work in?’
‘Ha! Now, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’ He grunts and gives me a frankly menacing stare before loping off, leaving my head swirling with the many ways in which a seemingly innocent lasagne might be contaminated. Is he talking saliva, snot … or worse? This is far from ideal if I’m planning to treat Sinead to lots of meals out as, apparently, I make no effort re us as a couple.
Perhaps it’s just as well that she doesn’t feel up to going out to dinner with me just yet.
*
After an uneventful evening – with Flynn being cordial but distant – I greet Tuesday with a little more optimism. This evening, after work, I am seeing Sinead. In those precious five minutes when I drop off our son, I shall not only show my appreciation of her, but prove that I have taken her criticisms on board, and am working through them steadily.
Today, I am working from a different test centre, with another team – in the larger, further-away town of Brokely – and so I’m spared the concerned looks and gentle quizzings from colleagues. At lunchtime, I’m almost grateful for the failure of my iPhone-recovery method. As the rice didn’t absorb the bathwater within, a trip to the phone shop for a replacement mobile keeps me occupied. However, it also takes way longer than expected, leaving me no time to peruse the shops and choose a gift for Sinead.
Still, no matter. I’ll be able to pick up something for her on the way home. It’s not the price tag that’s important, but the thoughtfulness; I learnt this from the leopard skirt episode. It cost me a fortune, frankly – more than I’d imagined it possible to spend on a piece of animal-print material the size of a cushion cover – and resulted only in disappointment. ‘Nate,’ she’d exclaimed, gawping at it, ‘did you confuse me with Bet Lynch in 1987?’
Unfortunately, after the final test of the day, Kevin, the Brokely test centre manager, wants to run through a new admin procedure with me, which results in me leaving much later than I’d anticipated.
In fact, as I set off for home at 6.15 p.m., I’m now rather concerned about where I might buy Sinead a present at all. The supermarkets will still be open, but what would I choose for her there? A pair of tights, a bar of soap, a jar of speciality marmalade? None would convey the message that I view her as wonderful and incredibly desirable. Of course … flowers would be perfect. No spontaneity in our lives, she wrote. Well, I’ll prove her wrong on that count! Visualising her delighted face when festooned with blooms, I pull up at the garage just outside Hesslevale and virtually leap from my car.
Luckily, there are plenty of flowers stashed in green plastic tubs outside the shop. Most appear to be carnations and chrysanthemums in zingy colours, which always strike me as particularly cheerful. As opposed to, say, lilies, which bring to mind illness and death, and is clearly not the message I want to convey.
I choose a bunch of yellow chrysanths, decide it looks rather stingy and add red ones, then orange – and then sod it, a whole load of those flecked carnations that look like they’ve been doodled on with felt tips. The effect of them all together is quite dazzling – like an outrageous sunset. I manhandle the whacking bouquet into the shop, then carry it back out to my car, attracting several bemused glances and one ‘Ooh, someone’s a lucky lady!’ remark from a woman in a pink coat.
Will Sinead think she’s lucky? I wonder. At least, will she decide that I’m not quite the lazy, self-centred arse that she had me down for?
I set off for home, glancing back when I stop at a red light to see that the stems are leaking water from their cellophane wrappings all over the back seat of my car. Sinead once remarked to Flynn, rather unnecessarily, I thought, that I am ‘anal’ about my vehicle – meaning I’m not especially keen on it being scattered with smashed cheese and onion crisps and putrefying apple cores. How they giggled together about the time I was dismayed to discover that a half-litre beaker of Ribena had puddled onto the carpet. I suppose she was right, in that I do prefer my car’s interior to be reasonably clean and dry. But now I’m thinking: sodden upholstery is of no concern if my gesture puts a smile on my darling wife’s face.
Chapter Twelve
Back home, Flynn is slathering bagels with Philadelphia cheese when I march in with my love offering. ‘Who are they for?’ he asks, shrinking away as if they might combust in his face.
‘For Mum, of course,’ I reply, dumping them on the kitchen worktop and wondering how best to present them. As separate bunches in their wrappers? No – that would look cheap, I decide. Better to unify them into one gigantic shrub. ‘So, how was your day?’ I ask him.
‘Uh, okay,’ he says, clearly far too agog at the blooms to engage in any sort of meaningful exchange.
I pick up a few fallen leaves and look at him. ‘You’re seeing Mum tonight, aren’t you?’
‘Erm, yeah.’ His cheeks redden.
‘It’s fine, you know,’ I say, overcome by an urge to hug him but aware that it probably wouldn’t be welcomed. ‘I mean, it’s great you’re spending time with her,’ I add. ‘It’s important that you still see her, and can talk to her about anything that’s bothering—’
‘Dad,’ he interrupts, turning back to the crumb-strewn bread board, ‘can we just leave it?’
‘Oh, sure!’ I reply in an overly-bright voice. ‘I’ll just give you a lift over and drop off her flowers, okay?’
He turns to face me and frowns. ‘Why did you buy her flowers? It’s not her birthday.’
‘No, it’s not.’ I pause. ‘I don’t need an excuse, do I?’
He squints at them and bites his lip. ‘You just never do, that’s all.’ He’s right, of course – but that’s all going to change.
As Flynn drifts upstairs to change out of his school clothes, I try to figure out how to make the flowers look extra-special. Clearly, I should present them in a vase, and not as a massive, dripping clump. However, when I search the kitchen for a receptacle that’s big enough, nothing comes close. I consider the enormous stainless steel stock pot that Sinead always used when Flynn’s friends descended on our house, and she’d dish up bolognaise for the hungry hordes (for some reason, that petered out when they reached their teens. These days the only evidence of food being consumed by his mates is the odd oil-stained pizza box on his bedroom floor). A bouquet in a stock pot would look ridiculous, I decide, and might even trigger a wave of melancholic nostalgia for ‘those mass catering days’, as she fondly refers to them.
Continuing my search, I step out into our back garden, followed by Scout. All I can find is a watering can, which lacks elegance – plus, shamefully, a small turd lying in what we optimistically term our ‘herbaceous border’, and which I bag up, hurriedly, and sling into the wheelie bin.
Rummaging in our shed now, I find an old zinc bucket. This’ll have to do, and could possibly even be considered quite stylish in certain circles. I’m sure I’ve seen tiny silvery containers filled with hydrangeas in florists’ windows. Well, this is just a bigger version, I decide as I carry it indoors, fill it with water and plonk in the blooms.
There. Well, no – not quite there. The flowers still need arranging. It dawns on me now why people attend flower arranging classes – which I’ve always regarded as a bizarre concept – because, clearly, there is an art to this.
‘Can we go soon, Dad?’ Flynn calls through from the living room while I try, ineffectually, to fluff up the blooms.
‘Yeah, in a minute.’ I frown at the flowers, wondering what’s missing from my outlandish offering because it doesn’t look right. Leaves, that’s it. A proper bouquet doesn’t consist of just flowers; it has spriggy bits too. I glance through our gleaming kitchen window. There’s bound to be stuff in the garden I can use.
To avoid being observed by Flynn – who’ll probably conclude that I’ve gone quite mad – I carry the bucket outside
so I can fix my ‘arrangement’ out there, in privacy. A sense of unease starts to build in me as I investigate the garden for the right kind of leaves. Taking flowers to my wife shouldn’t feel like such an almighty deal, but, of course, it is. In fact, I’m feeling precisely how I used to just before a performance. Despite playing in several bands – and being a reasonably competent lead and rhythm guitarist – I was always beset with nerves, just as I am now. This feels like a new kind of stage fright; a sense of dread at playing the part of the newly-dumped husband, trying to make everything better with a bouquet.
‘Say it with flowers,’ the old Interflora ad used to go. So, what am I trying to say here?
I’m sorry. I love, you Sinead. I’ll never let you down again.
Having pulled up some large, floppy leaves by the shed, I plunge them into the bucket and assess my offering. You don’t consider my needs, she scrawled on that list. Well, what she doesn’t need is a load of dock leaves, for crying out loud. I yank them out and toss them onto the lawn, then scan the garden for more eye-pleasing specimens. Ferns are growing at the fence which divides our garden from Howard and Katrina’s. Ferns are frondy and pretty, I decide, also realising now that our garden requires serious attention; i.e., more than a perfunctory weeding session and mowing of the lawn. It’s only late May, yet our borders are already filling with dandelions. Even at the garden’s peak in midsummer, they are home to just a meagre selection of unremarkable plants. If I’d spent every Saturday out here in a planting and weeding frenzy, erecting trellises and creating elaborate rockeries like Howard does, would Sinead have left me?
Howard doesn’t even have a record collection. He owns about five CDs; all terrible – I’ve checked them when we’ve been over there. ‘I’m not really into music,’ he explained. I moved swiftly away from the atrocities, as if I might be somehow contaminated by standing too close to Shakin’ Stevens’ Greatest Hits, or anything by Jimmy Nail.
