‘Oh my God. What a lovely thing to do. You just put your life on hold?’
‘Kind of, yes. Dad would be awake in the night, wandering the house. He’s strong and Mum needed me there to get him back in bed. He had no idea where he was and could get cross and shout. It wasn’t very nice.’
‘So, he’s still there now?’
‘No, he moved into a home before Christmas. He was on a waiting list for ages, hence why I needed to move back in. He should have been in a home before then because he was so ill.’
‘I think that’s an amazing thing to do.’
‘Not really. Someone had to do it.’
‘No, a lot of people wouldn’t. What kind of state is he in now?’
‘A bad one. He has no idea who anyone is or where he is. I can’t visit; it’s too… upsetting. Seeing what he’s like now after knowing what he’s really like. I find it stressful.’
‘Of course you do. You’ve already done so much to help. I don’t know how you coped.’
‘You just get on with it, don’t you?’
I nodded. The way he talked about what had happened was without any trace of expectation, or reward, not wanting a medal like some people expect when they heroically take the bins out once a week or empty the dishwasher at the weekend.
*
‘Do I have your permission to rip off your skirt?’ Chris towered over me still wearing his white vest, reminiscent of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, while I perched befuddled on the edge of the bed, his giant erection comically bobbing about near my face highlighted in the amber glow from the bedside light. I thought I wasn’t going to do this.
‘Yes, just do it!’ Was that me even talking?
‘Lie back so I can get a grip on the zip.’
I did as I was told and Chris masterfully grabbed the material either side and yanked the jammed zip apart, tearing the top of the skirt in the process. He pulled it down from my waist and I shimmied at the same time to aid it on its way. Before I could even worry that I wasn’t sticking to the final commandment: Thou Shalt Not Have Sex On The First Date, Chris was executing the condom fumble with the finesse of someone who was badly out of practice. It took three attempts for the slippery bugger to fit properly. There was no point asking me to take over – I was even more useless. I had obviously missed the sex-ed demo at senior school when we all had to dress a banana for a safe shag.
He was an excellent kisser, setting the bar high for the ostensible main event and, despite the condom jitters, what followed was hardly the work of an amateur. We managed to find our rhythm almost immediately.
‘When was the last time you had sex?’ I asked as I lay next to him, his arms fitting comfortably round me while I tugged at his chest hair, trying to wind it round my finger. It was a novelty being in bed with a hairy man; Sam was like a prepubescent boy with no body hair and Woody had very little to play with.
‘Over two years ago. I was worried I wouldn’t last very long.’
‘You’re doing well then! I’m impressed with your stamina.’
‘It’s not over yet.’ He raised his head from the pillow, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘I reckon I can go all night.’
We worked our way through a small packet of condoms and the headboard repeatedly struck the wall for four hours. I thanked the universe it was an outside wall.
‘We should go to sleep now,’ I yawned after the fourth time. ‘It will be time to get up soon.’
‘Did this answer your question?’ he asked me, bashing the pillow with his fist to try to plump some air back into the flattened feathers.
‘What question?’
‘You asked me before we left the pub if I had a high sex drive. I think that was when you were properly shitfaced. Then we snogged in the doorway outside by the bins.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I do remember now.’ I always had to shoot my mouth off when I was drunk. ‘It does answer my question, though…’
In the morning I made us both a cup of tea while Chris got dressed and I felt even worse than I had anticipated.
‘Don’t look at me.’ I half-hid behind the open front door, an icy draught blasting up the front garden, ruffling my scabby dressing gown. I didn’t want the reality of the morning after to blemish the memory of the date. The shards of light hurt my eyes, and I wanted to shut the door in Chris’s face so I could crawl upstairs, forage for codeine in the overflowing bathroom cabinet, and collapse under the duvet. He bent down and kissed me softly on the lips.
‘Thanks for last night. I had a great time. I’ll call you later.’
‘No you won’t!’ I laughed. ‘And it’s fine.’
‘What? You think I’m not going to call?’
‘Yep. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Oh.’ He looked genuinely hurt. ‘Do you not want me to call?’ This had never happened before.
‘If you want, but don’t think you have to say that because of what happened.’
‘I want to see you again.’
‘Oh, OK. Call if you want then. But I bet you don’t.’
He turned and started walking down the path. ‘Bet I do!’ he shouted over his shoulder, his feet crunching on the gravel as he pulled up the collar on his black peacoat against the early morning drizzle.
How’s your head?
Chris texted at lunch time.
Told you I would ring.
This isn’t ringing. It’s texting.
35
Voice from the Past
Four dates in and I remained stoically on the fence. How could this be? My usual pattern of behaviour, within this given time frame, is I may have furtively participated in a wedding day dream, possibly imagined how many children we might have, most likely pictured the idealised For Ever house, I may have cobbled together from places I have visited, and then giggled about all of the above with friends over a bottle of wine.
But we’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy. That was the past and the past was a foreign country. I never graduated from the school of casual dating; I am an all-or-nothing person in most areas of my life. (Why have one child when you can have three?) I either dated someone and we ended up together for ever (how many for evers is one girl allowed?), or I was single and had a few consensual dead-end one-night stands. Woody was so far, the only anomaly. Would Chris be the next one?
‘It’s understandable to feel hesitant,’ Jacqui said the afternoon of my fifth date. ‘We’ve all been burned, and I think we’re still on the road to recovery. It’s not even three years, which I know some people will think is a long time, but it’s so hard to extricate yourself from a mind set when it wasn’t you who wanted the marriage to end. For us, it was a shock, an instant plunge into the grieving process. For the men who left, they had been planning this for a while and all three of them had someone lined up who absorbed all that pain. The excitement of the new – the new sex, the new life, no kids twenty-four hours a day, time for themselves – while we were literally left holding the babies and all our broken hearts.’
Jacqui and I sat cautiously on my frail gaffer-taped-together camping chairs. This summer surely had to be their swansong. It was the tail end of March and the sun was verging just above the line of still-skeletal trees, the buds waiting patiently for their starring moment in a few weeks’ time.
‘You’ve only been on four dates, stop thinking you should be feeling a certain way. Just enjoy it for what it is. If I’d analysed what was going on with Andy we’d never have got past that first date.’
‘I know, I know. The last time I was in this situation I met Sam and that had a clear trajectory. I have no idea where this is going in my own head. I’ve ticked all my boxes: been married, had kids, bought the house. He’s at the beginning of his journey. He’s younger. Why would he want to be with someone who’s got a T-shirt for every experience?’ I shook my head in bafflement.
‘You’re not sticking to the Four Agreements – Stop Making Assumptions. He may not want to get married and he may never want kids, but
be happy to bumble along with yours. Be in the moment. Not everyone wants the conventional trappings of modern life.’
But by the time the fourth date had arrived the previous Wednesday evening, I had got myself into a bit of a pickle because on the third date he had announced his imminent move to London, for ever. I hoped he wasn’t moving because of me. My anxiety coincided with the return of the dreams that had plagued me during the worst part of the divorce. In them Sam begged to come home, declared he still loved me, and was desperate to fix our relationship. The dreams were so realistic. The reconciliation was such hard work, real back-breaking graft at forgiveness. So much so that on waking, I was suspended in a preposterous bubble of belief for about a minute, until reality cruelly popped it, leaving me strung out for the best part of the morning.
Sitting on the plush expensive seats at the back of the cinema, I could feel Chris’s hand itching to hold mine but I’d constructed an exclusion zone around me and leaned away from him, unable to eat my popcorn, loathing the film, which was some dire Matt Damon romance sci-fi tale.
‘That film was weird, wasn’t it?’ Chris said as we walked back to his car parked behind the Greenwich Picturehouse.
‘Yes, odd.’ I just wanted to go home; my hands were purposefully stuffed in my pockets. We talked pointlessly about the film on the journey home and when he pulled the car into a space outside the house, I had unclipped my seatbelt and leaned over to kiss him briskly on the cheek before he had even turned off the engine.
‘Thanks for taking me. I’m really tired tonight. Going to get an early night. See you soon.’
He looked nonplussed and nodded. ‘Hope you sleep well.’
I bolted out of the car and had to refrain from running so I didn’t appear rude. He drove off as soon as I disappeared into the house and I burst into tears, falling dramatically to my knees in the hallway right at the bottom of the stairs. As I lay on the scuffed floorboards, the stale smell of sweaty feet emanating from the shoe basket nicely complemented my misery.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ I wailed pathetically into the dark. ‘Why aren’t I fixed yet?’ I felt frightened of nothing and everything, and I wanted to be on my own because it felt safe and uncomplicated. When I was with Woody, a kind of shorthand had existed. He knew me from before, and as a mum, and as Ali’s friend. I didn’t love Woody and even though it had ended like it had, an easy companionship smoothed out any initial awkwardness. Chris and I had no shorthand. We had yet to write it. I wanted him to be Sam, for us to have those cliquey in-jokes, shared memories, years of experience and knowledge of each other. What I needed was a just-add-water partnership with all the trial and error removed. I wanted to know I could just stop waxing my pubic hair, let my legs grow some stubble, wear tracksuit bottoms for three days in a row, pick my nose, swear like a builder, not wear any make-up – ever – and he would still fancy me. I wanted an end to the pretence of dating; age and marriage had rendered me impatient and it was easier to disengage.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Jacqui sympathised when I tried to explain the jumbled-up mess in my head that day in the garden, ‘but I think you need to give him a chance. He’s a good egg.’
‘I know he is, but I don’t think I fancy him, even though he’s a Perfect on Paper Man.’
‘He’s pretty good off paper, too! And he’s not a carpenter.’ I smiled. ‘Look, go on this date tonight. I think you need to have sex and reconnect. Try and stop the eternal loop in your head. Read through The Four Agreements and have a glass of wine. You don’t really want this to be the final date, do you?’ I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know. ‘Look how far you’ve come – we’ve all come – in such a short space of time. I think you need to remind yourself of that.’
‘You’re right. I wrote a diary during the darkest part so I could get all the madness out of my head. I don’t think I’ve ever properly looked at it. Maybe I should.’
‘Come on, why don’t we find it? It will probably shock you how much you’ve moved on, help you get some perspective.’
22 May 2008
Week two. Pain still wrenching my heart. I want to die and not wake up. I vomited on the school run today, in the gutter. Cried all the way without the kids noticing and then just puked. It’s half a life, no life. No sleep, no joy, just pain. Even Sonny, who is so small, brings no joy. It’s an excruciating slog. A woman came up to me on the way back from school and pointed out my skirt was about to fall down. I didn’t even know. My bones are sticking out, nothing fits. Sam doesn’t want to come back. I am praying he will see he needs his kids. I pray most minutes when I can remember. Dear Universe, please let him come home.
‘Oh God, that’s how I felt,’ Jacqui said wretchedly. ‘It’s so awful, so heart-breaking. Where did you go up to?’ We sat on the edge of the bed in my office. The diary, which was just a non-descript ring-bound blue notebook, had been rammed in a drawer with cards and pictures the kids had made me throughout the years. Even my handwriting looked deranged with grief, barely managing to graze the lines, words spiralling into each other messily as my hand tried vainly to keep up with the torrent of raw agony surging from my whole body.
‘Until I ran out of space. Some of it is absolutely insane, about magic spells I cast, Tarot readings that proved he would return, dreams of him coming home. I literally latched onto anything for months and months, refusing to believe he’d gone. Look.’
25 June
Dearest Universe, please bring my husband back. My body hurts all the time for him. I hate everything. Though sometimes I am OK, and I have no idea how I am. I think it’s the universe supporting me until he returns from his time in the wilderness. I will forgive him everything, even if he’s slept with someone else. I know I was a nag and a total cow. I know I was negative and moany. I’m on a journey to change, not for him, but for me, to be my own hero. Living in the now helps, but the thought of him never being here, never loving me, makes me want to die. I cast a spell from my book, I hope it works.
‘I made him a book, too, in one of our empty wedding albums, of all the photos and letters and keepsakes from our time together. I had a box stuffed with so much stuff it was actually insane; it was like a museum of our relationship. Even a letter from his dead granny thanking me for some nail varnish. He was so far up on a pedestal, I felt like everything needed to be documented.’
‘Where’s the book now?’
I shrugged. ‘It was beautiful. I handmade all the decorations inside and linked all the letters and memorabilia with corresponding photos in chronological order from our years together, up until the Christmas before he left. I left space at the back to add future photos for when he came home. I was so deluded, but then so were my friends. Amy helped me, as did Rob – they were almost as traumatised as me that he could leave the kids. My mum came and stayed for a week and looked after the kids constantly so I could finish the book. It took me two weeks to eventually get it all together. Even Amy was convinced it would work. How could it not? She said I needed to wrap it in velvet to contain all its magic powers inside, like a mystic talisman. I gave it to him on 1 July, sent it to the flat he had rented, via a courier. Rob organised it for me from his work account. The courier returned it: no one was in at seven in the morning. Now I knew he left for work at eight. He made up some excuse about staying the night at his brother’s. It was a crock of shit – he was at Carrie’s flat. Even then I was blind to it.’
‘So, did he ever get it?’
‘Yes, I left it for him one day when I went away to see Mel and he came to get more of his stuff. He never said a word. When he dropped the kids back, I asked him what he thought. He was so shifty. He hadn’t even opened it. Looking back, how could he? It was like the Taj Mahal, a monument to our so called “love”. He was already shagging Carrie and making plans for their life together. That’s when he said he was never coming back. It would kill him to play the role of the husband, and that he would save the book for the kids when they were older. I felt like
he was leaving all over again, though a part of me lived in hope for a long time. It was weeks of effort for nothing because he then “lost” the book when he moved house.’
‘Fucking hell. What a total dickhead. I bet he threw the book away.’
‘Probably. I remember when he said the word “kill” I thought I would crumble. He really had no thought on how words affected me, or anyone really. So self-absorbed in his own pain of having to be a husband, and how horrific it was. He used to be so lovely, but that’s what happens when you cut off from love, stop trying. In jumps all the things you hate about the person but overlooked because you loved them.’
‘Chris isn’t like that,’ Jacqui said confidently.
‘How do you know?’
‘I can tell. Someone who sacrifices their time like that to care for a parent who is so sick wouldn’t give up like that.’ I nodded in agreement. ‘Ooh, what’s this?’ A CD slipped out of the back of the diary and onto Jacqui’s lap.
‘Oh, it’s one of the Tarot readings. This guy was really good, spooked me. I’m pretty sure he mentioned something about a man I would meet.’
‘Let’s listen!’ I loaded it into my ancient portable CD player. I fast forwarded the man’s voice till we reached the part where he talked about future relationships.
‘This card here indicates a man, younger than yourself, he’s not ready to meet you yet, he’s on his own journey right now… Do you know anyone called Chris?’
‘Oh my fucking God!’ Jacqui screeched. I shushed her.
‘My guides are insisting on this name Chris. Very adamant they are. He’s going to be very important to you. It could be the young man… Anyway, look out for him. There will be a man before him. But you will know he’s not him. There’s energy for a marriage, too.’
I stopped the CD.
‘You’re going to marry him!’
36
The Single Mums' Mansion: The bestselling feel-good, laugh out loud rom com Page 25
