‘Mum!’ I barked.
‘It’s OK, Emma,’ Babs said. ‘Mum, I want you to listen to me. Really listen. I am going to focus on my career for the next few years. So don’t ask me about kids, OK? I may or may not decide to have children in the future, but I really don’t need to be nagged about it. I’ve had a crappy few months and I want you to back off. I’m going to concentrate on myself and my career.’
‘So what’s changed?’ Dad smirked.
‘I’ve changed,’ Babs said.
‘It’s very subtle,’ Dad retorted.
‘It’s internal,’ Babs said, and thumped his arm.
Mum had narrowed her eyes and was staring hard at Babs. ‘What’s going on, Barbara? Did something happen?’
‘Everything is fine, Mum.’ Babs dipped her bread into the olive oil.
‘Babs has been great to me since I moved here, really supportive.’ I decided to change the subject.
‘I’m glad to hear it. Family must stick together,’ Mum said.
‘Emma’s been pretty good to me too,’ Babs admitted.
‘You all love each other, you’re all great. Now, for the love of God, can we order some food?’ Dad fumed.
James and the children came back and we ordered. Once the lunch arrived, Dad calmed down and became civil again. ‘Well, Babs,’ he began, ‘how’s your show going?’
‘It’s all right, but I’m going to move on. I’ve been talking to my agent and we’ve come up with a brilliant idea to move my career forward.’
‘Good for you! What is it?’ I asked.
‘She’s going to try and get me on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here.’
‘WHAT?’ Mum and I exclaimed.
Babs nodded. ‘Myleene Klass went in with a low TV profile and now she’s presenting almost everything. All I need is a couple of hot bikinis and I’m sorted.’
‘Is that the show where they eat the insects?’ Dad looked up from his steak.
‘Yuck!’ Lara squealed.
‘Cooooool.’ Yuri was impressed. ‘Are you gonna eat bugs?’
‘I might.’ Babs winked at him.
Mum leant over and put her face right up to Babs’s. ‘Over my dead body will you be going on that appalling television show. How could I face the neighbours?’
Babs’s phone beeped. She read the message and whooped. ‘Well, Mum, it looks like you’ll need to provide me with your dead body. That was my agent. I’m going into the jungle!’
40
That night, as I was looking forward to crawling into bed early and getting a good night’s sleep for the first time in ages, I got a call from Lucy asking me to meet her urgently. She sounded very stressed on the phone. Although I was absolutely exhausted, I agreed immediately. I could tell she needed to talk.
James had some rugby meeting he had to go to, so I asked Babs to come over and babysit because I didn’t trust anyone else. In fairness, she was nice about it. She’d been in fantastic form since she’d found out about I’m A Celebrity. She was going to hand in her notice next week and I knew she was working on the speech she was going to give Gary when she told him to shove his job. She was positively buoyant.
I hadn’t been able to get my clothes back from the charity shop yet as it was closed on Mondays, so I wore my jeans and a top that Babs had lent me, which was surprisingly not too tight. I seemed to have lost a bit more weight in the last traumatic week.
When I arrived at the restaurant Lucy was on her BlackBerry. I sat down and ordered a drink while she talked furiously into her phone. After five minutes I began to get fed up. I looked at her and tapped my watch. She mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ spoke for another minute and hung up. ‘There’s a problem with one of our deals. It’s been a crazy week.’
It was always a crazy week with Lucy. She’d always worked hard but since she’d gone out on her own she’d been twice as bad. We ordered food and she asked me to fill her in on Claire. I told her the whole saga. Towards the end, her phone beeped and she began to text back. I tried not to get annoyed.
‘Sorry, go on.’
I finished telling her and she was as shocked as the rest of us.
‘Emma, you poor thing. How absolutely horrendous. Thank God it’s over now. You and James can get back to your lives and to normality.’
‘It’s been a real wake-up call. This whole Claire thing has made me take a step back and re-examine my life, my priorities and my relationship with James and the kids. I have to get a better balance.’ I wanted to stress this point to Lucy because she also needed a better balance. ‘To be honest, Lucy, I think you need to reassess too. Your schedule is crazy. You can’t fix your marriage and spend time with Serge if you’re always travelling or on the phone.’
Lucy’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Well, I’m going to have to make a lot of changes, actually. My life is going to be very different now. Donal’s leaving me.’
I dropped my fork with a clatter. ‘What?’
‘We went to see that marriage counsellor yesterday. I really thought it would help, but all it did was prove that we’re completely incompatible.’ Lucy was struggling not to cry. ‘All we did was shout at each other and blame each other. At the end of the session, Donal apologized for wasting the counsellor’s time and stormed out.’
I leant over and held her hand. My heart was breaking for her.
‘I followed him out and he said to me, “It’s over. I can’t do this any more. I don’t like you, I don’t respect you, I don’t want to be married to you.”’
God, that was harsh. I’d known Donal for more than ten years, and I couldn’t picture him saying such cruel things. The pressure of the situation must have taken its toll on him.
‘I tried to reason with him,’ Lucy said. ‘I offered to come home earlier some weeks, like you’d suggested, but he just laughed in my face and told me not to make promises I wouldn’t keep. He said it was clear that my job came first. He said I’d walked away from them when I’d taken it on, and now he was walking away.’ Lucy dragged her hand across her eyes and took a few deep breaths. ‘Then he said he’d found a two-bedroom town house to rent near our own house and he was going to move in there with Serge. He had it all organized, Emma. He’d made his decision before we’d even gone to the marriage counsellor.’
I grabbed her hand. ‘Oh, Lucy, I just can’t believe –’
Her phone beeped, and she was texting again.
‘For God’s sake, Lucy, you’re in the middle of telling me your marriage is over and you’re still texting?’
‘If I don’t answer this, a ten-million-euro deal could be lost,’ she snapped. She put her phone down and rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Emma. I’m just sick of having to justify my job all the time. No one makes really big money without being on call day and night.’
‘But your marriage is over because of it.’ I was exasperated. ‘Your family life is in tatters. Is any job worth that?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘My marriage was over long before this. Donal and I have been limping along for a long time. You know it and so do I. Since he pushed me into having a baby we’ve been fighting and bickering non-stop. I resent him for forcing me to have a child and he resents me for not having more. We want different things in life. He wants a house full of children. One child is more than enough for me. I love Serge and I’m so glad I had him, but I’d hate to have any more.’
‘But you and Donal were so good together. Think back to when you got married and how happy you were,’ I reminded her.
‘We were happy,’ she said sadly, ‘really happy, but it was a false happiness. We never really discussed children and family and careers. We just fell for each other and thought the rest of it would all fit neatly into place. But it didn’t. Life gets more complicated as each year goes by, and if you don’t have a rock-solid foundation, your relationship won’t last. We’re not like you and James.’
‘I walked out on James three days ago. We’re not bulletproof either.’
‘You’ve gone back. You guys are
meant to be together.’
‘I don’t know, Lucy. I always thought so. I was very confident about my marriage, but this has really shaken me. I can see how stale we’d got and how we were taking each other for granted. James and I haven’t had fun together in so long. Everything’s been so serious and complicated and awful. When did the fun go out of our lives? Suddenly it’s all about jobs and budgeting and bills and children and lying and suspicion and stress …’ I chewed my lip. ‘It’s as if we woke up one day and life had ceased to be any fun at all.’
Lucy poured more wine into our glasses. ‘I know – one minute we’re having sex on the kitchen floor, licking whipped cream off each other, and the next we’re sleeping in separate bedrooms.’
Whipped cream? Really? James and I had never done stuff like that.
‘Do you think if you tried some really intense marriage counselling, you could make it work?’ I asked.
Lucy shook her head. ‘No, it’s over. As I said, it’d been coming for ages. My new job just put another nail in the coffin, and Donal trying to trick me into getting pregnant made me realize we have no future. We want different things and we’re just hurting each other and lying to each other now. The trust is gone.’
I sank back in my chair, completely weary. Our best friends were breaking up. It was just awful. They used to be so great together. ‘Lucy, I’m so, so sorry.’
‘I know, it sucks. I never wanted Serge to come from a broken home.’ She was clearly fighting tears. ‘But what can I do? He’s better off living in a calm atmosphere rather than with two parents shouting at each other all the time. And I’ll still see him the same amount. Donal said I can have him all weekend. So, in a way, Serge’s life won’t change.’
I set down my knife and fork. ‘I’ve been so grumpy with the children because of all the stress. I want to spend more time with them and have them fall in love with me again. The whole Claire fiasco has shown me that it’s not just about being physically there, it’s about being there emotionally. They loved her because she played games with them, she cooked with them, she went to the park with them … She was fully present. When I’m with them, half the time I’m on the phone or reading a book or shouting at them to tidy up. I don’t actually do things with them and that has to change.’
Lucy folded her napkin. ‘Emma, please don’t tell me I have to start crawling into sandpits with Serge.’
I laughed at the idea of Lucy with her Jimmy Choos full of wet sand. ‘No, I draw the line at sandpits.’
‘Thank God for that.’ She smiled. ‘But I do need to engage with Serge and take him to the park. Ignoring him while I catch up on emails isn’t going to get me any Mum of the Year awards.’
‘You might need to leave your BlackBerry at home,’ I suggested.
Lucy looked horrified. ‘How about if I only check it every hour?’
‘Three hours.’
‘Two,’ she said, smiling.
We clinked glasses and toasted the future … whatever it held.
41
I sat in the lounge, surrounded by boxes. Inside were my clothes, shoes, bags, photos and accessories, all of which I had got back from the very nice lady in Oxfam on Putney High Street. When I explained to her that my belongings had been taken without my knowledge, she very kindly returned everything. James gave her a donation for the inconvenience.
‘Here you go, darling.’ James handed me a cup of tea.
‘Thanks.’ I gratefully took a sip. It was cold in the house, even with the heating on.
James sat on the floor beside me. I pulled out a framed photo of the two of us at a black-tie event. We were laughing, our arms entwined around each other.
‘I remember this,’ James said softly. ‘It was a good night.’
I nodded, suddenly flooded with emotion. Despite my best efforts to stop myself, I began to cry.
‘Hey now.’ James put the photo down and put his arms around me.
‘Sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying, it’s just all so …’
‘Overwhelming.’ He finished my sentence.
‘Yes, overwhelmingly overwhelming.’ I gave him a watery smile.
‘Look at me,’ he said, turning me to face him. ‘I promise you that from now on things are going to be different. We’re going to be happy. I’m not going to work past seven o’clock, and at least two nights a week, I’ll be home by six. And we don’t have to worry about Claire any more. Maggie called me to say she’s booked her in to see a psychiatrist and she’s not going to let her out of her sight.’
‘I’m just scared.’
‘Of what?’
I decided to be honest. ‘Of the future. Of our life here in London.’
‘It’s going to be all right, darling. We’re going to start with a clean slate. I’m going to work less and you’re taking some time out from work to be with the children, which they’re thrilled about. We’ll do a family outing every Sunday, and things will be so much better, I promise. I know I’ve been obsessed with the club and that I neglected you.’
‘I understand why you did it. I know you’re just trying to prove yourself, but I find London lonely, James. I need you.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’
Things really would have to be different, I thought. I needed to carve out a life for myself here. I’d have to try to make friends. Good friends, women that I could be myself with. Carol was very different from me, but she was a lovely person, and although Poppy was a bit mad, she was nice too. I needed to work on those relationships and nurture them. The new Emma was going to host coffee mornings and force those mothers at the school gate to talk to her. I was going to break through their icy façades if it killed me.
‘This whole Claire situation has made me realize we need to be more careful with each other,’ I said.
‘You mean not take each other for granted?’
‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘And make more time for ourselves. We need to be a couple again, James, like this.’ I held up the photo.
‘You’re right. Lately it’s been all about working and the children. We hardly ever go out on our own.’
It was simple, really. Life had got in the way: we had neglected each other and our relationship. And, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t just since we’d moved to London. Even before that we’d stopped making an effort. Even when we had gone out together, we’d usually been to the cinema and straight home. It had been a very long time since we’d had a really romantic night out, lingering over our wine until the restaurant staff begged us to leave. It had been a long time since we’d had fun together. We were stale, our marriage was stale. Yet beneath that James was still my James. Older, greyer, yes, but still the man I had fallen head over heels in love with, the man who had made me so happy. My rock. I reached over and kissed his cheek. It felt good.
‘Why don’t we have a weekly date-night?’ I suggested. ‘I know it’s a really lame expression, but let’s pick a night that’s sacrosanct. Every week, on that night, we go out together, no matter what.’
‘I like the sound of that.’
‘But there’s just one problem. Going out requires leaving our children with a babysitter.’
‘We’ll find a nice girl we can trust.’
‘Claire was a nice girl we trusted.’
‘Yes, but that was just very bad luck,’ James said. ‘We can’t let it poison us against all babysitters and childminders.’
‘I know, but it’ll be difficult for me in the beginning.’
‘We’ll be very thorough in our research.’
‘James?’
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s be really nice to each other. Let’s appreciate each other more from now on.’
‘I think that’s an excellent idea.’
‘I know I can be a grumpy cow, but I do love you and I love our family.’
‘Me too, darling. And, in a twisted kind of way, this whole situation with Claire has made me appreciate what I have even more. To see my family unit threatened
in that way and to realize that everything is breakable, well, it just makes me treasure you and the children. I have to be honest, losing my job with the Irish squad really threw me. My confidence was shattered.’ James looked down at his hands. ‘I consider myself the provider, the man of the house. I know it’s old-fashioned, but that’s the way I see things. I want to provide for my family. When I got this job with London Irish, I was so terrified of losing it that I really did block out everything else. I can see that now. I was obsessed with proving myself and making my position secure. I took my eye off the ball – excuse the pun. I put work first and I neglected you and the children.’
I kissed him again. ‘You did it for all the right reasons. Look, James, I want you to be happy in your job. I want you to be secure and to do the best you possibly can because I know how important it is to you.’
‘Thank you.’ He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘I know it’s been difficult for you, moving to London and leaving your old life behind, but I do really believe that we can have a good life here. We just need to start again, slowly.’
‘Well, it couldn’t be worse than it has been.’
He smiled. ‘That’s true.’
We kissed deeply, longingly, hungrily. It felt so good. We stood up and looked at each other. I knew that glint in James’s eye … I just hadn’t seen it in a while.
‘Hold that thought.’ I grinned.
‘Where are you going?’ He tried to pull me back into a kiss.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll like this.’
I ran into the kitchen and found it hiding at the back of the fridge. Rushing back into the lounge, where James was waiting for me on the couch, I shook it in his face.
‘What on earth …?’ He peered at it, trying to see what it was.
‘Whipped cream!’ I giggled. ‘We’ve never tried it before. I’ve been told, by a reliable source, that it’s very effective in the bedroom.’
James stood up and grabbed my hand. ‘What the hell are we waiting for?’
Click here to find out more about Sinéad and her books on her website
Mad About You Page 34
