Young Wives' Tales

by Adele Parks

  Hey, Sweetheart, you are on line, me too, want to chat or more?!

  xxxx

  I slam down the screen of my laptop. For Joe to have a messenger link he must have tampered with my computer. The thought is horrifying. I look around, as I half expect him to be standing in the kitchen with me. I’ve noticed that he’s always encroaching on my space at work. I’m reluctant to call him a stalker because I want to believe he is too ridiculous to warrant such a threatening label. But the fact is if I venture to the bathroom or the photocopier he always seems to pop up from nowhere, right by my side. More than once I’ve spotted him in the queue at the deli when I’ve been buying my sandwiches. He seems to be in an increasing number of the same think-tank groups as I am. I try to tell myself it is just coincidence and I find ways to avoid him – I hold my pee and send Julia out to buy my lunch. After receiving an insufferable number of text messages and phone calls I reported my mobile lost and changed my telephone number. This has been hugely inconvenient but has meant that Joe can’t call me. I’ve avoided his gaze, I’ve rebuffed his conversation and I’ve never found his jokes funny so it’s been easy to refuse to laugh at his gags. I thought he’d get the message. He’s had his moment. There is not going to be a repeat performance.

  Why doesn’t he go away?

  ‘Everything all right, darling?’

  I look up and Peter and Auriol are standing in the doorway. They have their coats on and look ready to leave. They both look beautiful and the kitchen appears to glimmer in their presence. Joe’s messages seem so dark by contrast. Shame scratches at my throat.

  ‘Yes, fine,’I say hastily. And I force a smile.

  ‘Problem at work?’

  ‘No. Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because you look worried.’

  I kiss Peter and hurry them both out of the door.

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’I assure him.

  44

  Sunday 3 December

  Rose

  I have no idea why Peter insists on torturing me on an ongoing basis. I wonder at the depth of his cruelty when I open the door and see that he has brought Lucy to the twins’birthday party. I accept that Auriol must be a guest but why is he so insistent on ruining everything?

  Of course Lucy looks absolutely wonderful. She is wearing white trousers and a white shirt, for a children’s party! It’s madness. Or at least it would be for mere mortals; she’ll probably leave the party looking immaculate. I am wearing my cerise cardigan from Monsoon and had been rather pleased with the effect until I opened the door and was faced with the combined effects of years and years of self-absorption, iron willpower (when it comes to carbs or saturated-fat intake), a platinum American Express and several hours’grooming in front of a mirror. I study Lucy very closely and note that she’s wearing her latest adultery rather well. But then, it always was a look that suited her. She looks unchanged from last time I saw her and yet my whole world has altered.

  Lucy presents the boys with two enormous boxes. She tells them that these presents are just the little gifts and that their real presents are waiting for them at home and they can open them next time they visit. I balk at her use of the word ‘home’but as the boys’real home is full of their guests I resist pulling her up.

  The boys tear off the wrapping paper while we are standing in the hall. I’m irrationally irritated by their obvious excitement. I remind myself they are just kids, they know their dad’s pockets are deep and are anticipating something especially ‘cool’; it’s not disloyal for them to be so clearly keyed up by Peter and Lucy’s gifts. I try not to mind that my more modest, but very thoughtful presents did not attract such a frenzy of attention. I’m grateful that their desire to open the gifts as quickly as possible at least means that they are opened in the hall and Lucy is denied the theatre of all our guests looking on and appreciating her generosity.

  ‘Wicked, a 360!’yells Sebastian.

  ‘Look at all these games!’cries Henry. Both boys bounce up and down and, unprompted, they lavish a number of ‘thank-yous’and ‘just what I wanteds’on the smug and self-satisfied-looking Peter and Lucy.

  The boys pick up their spoils and run through to the sitting room so that they can show off to their friends. All thoughts of the zoologist I’ve hired are forgotten. The boys came across Mr Mammals and his collection of exotic pets (ranging from tarantulas to pythons) at someone else’s party months ago. Since then, they have repeatedly asked if he could come and entertain at their party. They’ve talked of nothing else all day and we’ve been waiting for their father to arrive, to let the show begin. Now the lizards and geckos are forgotten. I snatch the Xbox away from the boys, muttering that we can look at it later, after the party is over. I’m pretty certain that Henry and Sebastian are now desperate for the party (which we’ve planned with minute detail and for several months) to zoom by.

  As I pass Peter I mutter, ‘I battle every day to limit the time they waste on their Game Boys and watching TV. This isn’t going to help matters.’

  ‘They are kids, Rose. This is the stuff kids like.’

  As opposed to autumnal displays on the table in the lean-to, I suppose. I wonder if the boys have told him about the conkers. I take a deep breath and consider whether this would be a good moment to blow that haughty, superior look off his face? Would it be fun to see Lucy shrivel with ignominy as I announce the fact that she has a new lover and my husband, ex-husband, is yesterday’s story. I bite my tongue. Between them they have ruined enough ‘special occasions’for the boys and me. They are not having this one.

  I remember that the twins’third birthday was the day Peter chose to tell me he and Lucy were expecting a baby. Auriol was a honeymoon baby. Or at least that was the official line. By my calculations she was conceived a few weeks before the vows, not that that sort of thing matters a jot to anyone any more, even me. That’s why I think it’s pathetic they’d lie about it. It sometimes seems to me that lying is Peter and Lucy’s natural state and they are actually incapable of being straightforward. Lots of women who have secret fears about whether they can or can’t get pregnant throw away the pills as soon as. No shame there. The interesting thing is, of course, Lucy would never admit that she had secret fears about anything, but she must have. Despite all the evidence, she’s only human.

  My take on it is that she was desperate to have a baby, motivation questionable. Probably just to show me that anything I had with Peter she could have too. She no doubt assumed that fifteen years of aggressive dieting, high-stress living, moderate to high alcohol intake and low use of recreational drugs might well hamper her attempts, and therefore she stopped using contraception as soon as Peter moved his shoes out from my understairs cupboard and into hers.

  When Peter called to tell me his good news, Lucy was sixteen weeks pregnant, although not showing, naturally. He had known about the upcoming addition to his family for eleven and a half weeks, yet he decided that the twins’birthday was the optimum time to tell me. Sod him.

  Obviously, I congratulated him. A baby is something I get excited about, whatever the circumstances – it’s a new life. But I was vexed to the extreme when he commented that we’d all need to sit down and discuss the best way to introduce the twins to the subject of a new brother or sister.

  ‘Half brother or sister,’I corrected.

  ‘That seems unnecessarily pedantic,’he’d replied.

  He’d never been one for details. Who he slept with while he was married to me was nothing but a detail, apparently. I wanted to point out that Peter had not thought to sit down with either the boys or me to discuss the initial move out of our family home. The destruction of their family life was executed with Ninja silence. Why the sudden keenness for chat? Instead, I sighed, said I’d give it some thought and that I’d come up with an idea on how best to approach the matter – after all, my concern was to save the boys’feelings. I didn’t want them to feel rejected or pushed out as Peter started afresh.

  Feeli
ng rejected and pushed out must be, exclusively, my territory.

  When I first told people about Peter’s happy news they were sympathetic but sensibly pointed out that I must have always known it was going to happen. True. I also know that one day I am going to die but I don’t like to dwell on that fact either.

  It’s simply another biological fact in favour of chaps, isn’t it? They get to pick themselves up, dust themselves down and start all over again with incredible – in fact indecent – ease. I’m of course delighted that the boys live with me and are my responsibility. I would die rather than have it any other way. But occasionally it crosses my mind that Peter ought to have had a single restless night because Henry hasn’t quite got the hang of long division (will he ever get to university?) or a sleepless night because Sebastian is in trouble for being too rough on the rugby pitch (do I have a thug in the making?). It seems unfair that the only necessary qualification for starting up a second family is destroying the first one.

  Following the ill-timed announcement of the pregnancy, Peter chose Christmas day to text me with the news that the baby Lucy was carrying was a ‘healthy baby girl’, although I can’t believe they got their scan results on that particular day. In the text he also asked if I would ‘hug the boys for him’. While texting these good tidings and good wishes it appears that he didn’t think to use the phone to actually speak to his sons. He’s not what I would describe as a traditionalist. He asked me to sign divorce papers on Mothers’day and every Easter I fight to keep the children at home with me. Whether his actions are malicious or thoughtless I am unsure. It hardly matters. In addition, birthdays, anniversaries and holidays are spoilt because like an amputee I ache in the place where my limb once was.

  All the children are now agog watching spiders scuttle and frogs leap so I leave the room, partly because I have to take the clingfilm off the sandwiches and partly because since Joe Whatshisface’s revelation I am continually angry and irrational, which is not a great mindset at a kids’birthday party.

  Connie follows me through to the dining room.

  ‘Do you think there’s enough food?’I ask her. She gazes at the table.

  ‘Yes, even if you open your doors and call in the homeless of London. Please tell me this stuff is shop-bought.’

  ‘Certainly not. All home-baked.’

  She groans dramatically. ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  ‘You can make some juice. I have cordial in the top left-hand cupboard, it’s –’

  ‘Organic?’she interrupts with a grin.

  ‘Am I very predictable?’I ask.

  ‘No, actually, Rose, you are not.’Her tone is suddenly serious and I get the sense that Connie followed me out of the sitting room with a mission. ‘I’m quite relieved that you’ve put on such an elaborate home-baked, organic, tooth-kind spread, in fact.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Normally she gently teases me about my party spreads. Her style is to stuff as many E-numbers down a child as possible and hope they don’t throw before they get home. In fairness her attitude to adult entertainment is similar, except she’s more likely to ply her adult guests with champagne than Jelly-tots.

  ‘Recently, you haven’t been yourself at all, Rose. I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,’I say.

  I count the paper plates, we’re one short. I bustle through to the kitchen to unearth the wayward plate; I know I bought enough. Connie trails behind me.

  ‘You will be fine. So, you are saying that there is something wrong.’

  ‘Bit out of sorts,’I admit.

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘It’s not physical.’I bend down and bury my head by rummaging in a cupboard; this way I can avoid meeting her eye.

  ‘Is it something to do with Mr Walker? I mean Craig. Did something happen when you went to that wedding with him?’

  I consider the question and decide to start with the easy bit. I keep my head in the cupboard and mumble. ‘The wedding was wonderful. Craig and I were getting on beautifully but –’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’Lucy’s imperious tones are instantly recognizable. Hastily I pull my head out of the cupboard and, naturally, I bang it while doing so. I yelp but try to hide my discomfort. Why is it that I am always clumsier, uglier and sillier in her company?

  ‘Everything is under control,’I inform her. ‘You can go and watch the entertainer, if you want to.’Or go to hell, I don’t mind.

  ‘Creepy crawlies are not my thing,’she says.

  That’s not what I hear.

  I have found the missing plate, so I push past her and go back into the dining room to set it down. They both follow me. My house isn’t large at the best of times. I’m beginning to feel awfully claustrophobic.

  I watch Lucy cast a disparaging eye over the table. The food had appeared wholesome and appetizing only a moment ago, but under her gaze my offerings look dull and basic. Lucy always hires outside professionals to cater for Auriol’s parties. They are triumphant social events.

  ‘Eight years old. I can hardly believe it. They grow up so quickly. It seems only minutes ago they were in nappies. Thank God that’s all over, hey?’she says.

  I would consider this comment innocuous if it had been issued from anyone else and as such would not have caused me much discomfort, but, like all of Lucy’s trite conversational fillers, I find it insulting and dishonest.

  ‘Frankly, I wish Peter had left me with more children. People say how do you manage with twins? I can’t explain that I wanted four.’

  Lucy and Connie stare at me in astonishment. I’ve never uttered this thought before. How would Daisy respond? My two to her none, how could I be so selfish? But the truth is I feel incomplete and I would love to still be changing nappies. When Peter first left I had fantasies about having more children with him. Not through sex of course. I could never knowingly have sex with the man after he’d enjoyed Lucy’s body but I did consider approaching him for a sperm donation. Madness, I realize. But at the time it seemed quite sane to me – grief confuses everything. Neither Lucy nor Connie know how to follow my confession, so I take up the responsibility of conversation.

  ‘But you are right, Lucy, it’s all over for me now, isn’t it? That part of my life. It will surprise you to know that it was only last week that I finally sorted through the boys’clothes and at last parted with sacks full of baby garments. Ultimately, I had to ask myself, why do I hoard this junk?’

  ‘You might meet someone new and have more children,’says Connie, weakly. She’s mortified and sad for me. I can see it in her eyes.

  I stare her down. ‘No I won’t. Not now. I worry that I hurried the boys through their babyhood. It’s certainly flown by. I look at baby socks and can’t imagine, let alone remember, them fitting into such dinky delights. The portions of food they eat now are the same size as mine. I threw out eight ice cube trays because the days of my mashing food and freezing it are well behind me.’

  ‘For which you should be grateful. I am,’says Lucy.

  ‘But we’re not alike, are we, Lucy? I think that much, at least, is established.’

  Daisy wanders through to the dining room. The increase in volume from the lounge indicates that the show is over and the kids are ready for their tea. Daisy has probably come to announce as much. Seeing the three of us gathered around the party food stops her in her tracks.

  ‘How cosy. Just like old times,’she snipes as she glares at Lucy.

  Daisy has never forgiven her friend for stealing my husband. She says she respects my tolerance towards Lucy and can understand that I have to be civil to the woman because of the boys, but she maintains that such a courtesy is not required from her. I envy her open hostility.

  At that moment the children start to file, noisily, into the dining room. With sixteen guests it’s an extremely tight squeeze, so Lucy and Connie sensibly opt to leave the serving to Daisy and me. Peter is nowhere to be seen, situat
ion normal. I imagine he’s watching a football match on the portable and doubt that he’ll emerge until the cake has to be cut. He rarely misses a photo opportunity.

  The party is a great success. The children happily munch through my healthy goodies and defy the cynicism of our time by being entirely charmed with games of pass-the-parcel and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. However, managing a party that is devoid of incident (such as a broken limb or all-out fisticuffs) demands great energy and by the time I hand out the final party bag to the last remaining small guest, I am fit to drop.

  Connie, Luke and the girls leave promptly because Fran hasn’t practised her reading. It’s typical of Connie’s planning, or rather lack of it, that the homework has been left until Sunday night. I can’t imagine much is going to be achieved after a party. Daisy and Simon make a swift exit too. Daisy cannot bear to be in the same room as Lucy and Peter longer than absolutely necessary, and as Peter and the boys are in the middle of one of the new Xbox 360 games it’s clear they are not going to go any time soon.

  ‘I’ll stay if you need me to,’says Daisy. I note that the offer is made while she pushes her hands into her gloves.

  ‘I’m fine,’I tell her as I kiss her goodbye.

  I hear her mutter to Simon, ‘The cheek of Lucy and Peter, they –’I close the door. There’s nothing she can tell me that I don’t already know.

  I’m very conscientious about recycling so I spend a moment or two wondering if the waxy cardboard party plates can be recycled or if they will contaminate a whole container of painstakingly gathered paper.

  Lucy interrupts my thoughts.

  ‘Do you need a hand with clearing up?’

  The novelty of this question stuns me. Why is she trying to be helpful? It’s not her style.