The Fifth Date
I felt some distance was needed; we should get our passports stamped and leave the familiarity of this leafy south-east London neighbourhood. I needed to see Chris with a fresh set of eyes, away from all the places we had previously visited. So I decreed we would meet at Waterloo, under the multifaceted clock that hung magnificently from the cathedral-like ceiling, stars in our very own old-fashioned black-and-white film, and then go to the Southbank to have a sundown drink and see where it took us.
Mel had rung me to deliver a verbal slap before I left the house.
‘Listen, that medium could be talking about Sam’s new marriage, or it could all be bullshit. Don’t be swayed by it.’
‘I honestly don’t feel like we’re going to get married. I’m certainly not madly in love!’
‘Do you think I was madly in love with Col when I first met him? God, no! Even now it waxes and wanes after twenty-odd years. But I decided to give him a chance.’
‘But you’re happy.’
‘Yes, and that’s a choice in my head. Love is also a choice so choose wisely.’
The entire way on the tube I seesawed between trying to live in the moment and wanting to run a mile. With leaden hands covered in a sheen of clammy sweat, I stood on the escalator and emerged into daylight, leaving the chaos of the ticket hall behind me. I wiped my palms on my trench coat as I walked towards the meeting place, clumsily clipping shoulders with a few agitated people, shaking inside from lack of food and nerves. He jumped out at me from behind a newsstand, tall, dark and extremely handsome, and I melted like an ice-lolly, there and then under the clock at Waterloo.
‘You look lovely,’ he said, his eyes sparkling, so different from when I had last seen him, face puzzled as I’d slammed his car door and desperately scarpered back to my house. He grabbed my hand and gently pulled me in for a kiss. It was a real knee-trembler and just what I needed. ‘Let’s go and catch the sunset on the river.’
The date was ethereal, in the same vein as my first date with Sam. I wasn’t just dazzled by Chris’s good looks, there was something more tangible there, too. We talked and talked, conversations falling over each other in their eagerness to be heard. He was very different from anyone I had ever dated. His kindness was so apparent, it radiated from him and I couldn’t imagine him being mean. Maybe this would be a new dawn for both of us…
After a delicious sushi dinner (another first for him – along with sex Laura hadn’t liked sushi, which apparently also paved the way for not trying hummus, olives, guacamole and various other ‘exotic’ foodstuffs), he walked me into Soho over the illuminated Jubilee Bridge because he could somehow tell I had an urgent need to exorcise some ghosts. We visited the writers’ pub, The French House, and kissed like blithe teenagers at the end of the bar until closing time, racking up an impressive collection of glasses.
‘You know the children will always come first, don’t you?’ I said boldly, trying to put him off, or test his mettle depending on which way you viewed it.
‘I wouldn’t expect anything else. They should always come first.’
‘But what if you get sick of it, and realise you want to be top dog, want someone who can give you more?’
‘I just want you. I don’t care about anyone else. Stop trying to put me off – it won’t work.’
We headed back to mine in a black cab and beat the impressive first date’s sex marathon into submission. When I woke in the morning, not even my piercing hangover could dampen my spirits. Everything felt slightly different: a Technicolor world existed where once it had been dull black and white. I had actually forgotten what it felt like when you were standing on the rocky precipice of falling for someone. The adrenalin rush, the topsy-turvy tummy, the laughing inside to yourself, the lack of appetite, the constant yearning for nakedness and intense sex. My body was dusting itself off, preparing to welcome in the rusty emotions swirling round that had prised open my battered cynical heart.
‘Thank you for last night,’ Chris said as he bent to kiss me on the lips. I prayed my stagnant morning breath wasn’t too toxic. ‘I’ll text you later.’
‘Bet you don’t.’
‘Bet I do.’
*
‘He’s having a baby.’ Jacqui stood on the doorstep, a week before her fortieth birthday, holding the handlebars of her bike, her knuckles white from the effort, tears streaming down her face. It was lightly spitting and her anorak hood pulled tightly round her head made her look like an extra from ET.
‘Oh, fuck. Come in.’ I held the door open and she dragged the bike in and dumped it dripping in the hall. I gave her a hug; she smelled of fresh air and leaves. Jacqui kicked her wet trainers off and followed me through to the kitchen where Grace and Sonny were having their lunch. Ali was at work and washing decorated every available hanging space. ‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please. Do you have any Beirdy Weirdy cake as well?’
‘I do, yes. An apple and walnut wheat-free one.’
Jacqui nodded enthusiastically.
‘When did he tell you?’
‘Just now. I was riding in the park before going to a yoga class and he rang me.’
‘Well, we did kind of think it was going to happen, didn’t we? We thought she was pregnant before they got married.’
‘She was.’
‘Oh. I’m assuming she lost the baby.’
‘Yes, at three months, which is why they’re not telling anyone until the last minute. I need a fag.’
‘Smoke out the back door.’ I helped Grace with her yoghurt to speed things up. I never knew a toddler so uninterested in food in my life. She could go for days without anything substantial. She shook her head as I tried to get the last few mouthfuls down. I pulled her out of the high chair and set her free into the playroom.
‘So how pregnant is she?’
‘Five months.’
‘And everything is fine?’
‘I guess it must be. When he told me, I was just riding along feeling at peace with it all, with the divorce, with the new direction I’m going in, with the yoga journey. I’ve found myself not daring to be happy because every time I think I’m OK, something comes along and unhinges it all and I feel no more moved-on than that day I was crawling at his feet, pleading for him not to leave. But today I was like, right, embrace it all. It’s OK!’
‘And then he unleashed a whole load of shit.’
‘Exactly. When he told me why they’d left it so long, it was like he wanted me to feel sorry for him in some way, to have a heart-to-heart. I did say I was sorry to hear that, but it was good the new baby was healthy, etc., but he then went on about how the miscarriage had been the most dreadful thing that had ever happened to him.’ Jacqui shook her head in disbelief and inhaled deeply on her cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the drizzle. ‘I wanted to say, how about the day you left me and the kids, all of us howling our eyes out, begging you not to leave – how was that not a hideous day? You have two children here who need you, who never wanted you to leave, but you couldn’t wait to escape. He has no idea what they feel. Since the wedding, Neve’s become more withdrawn, and we’re back to her refusing to go to his, some weekends.’
‘What about Joe? His speech seems to have improved a lot.’
‘Oh, he loves his dad and just wants to be there. Fuck knows what they’ll be like when they find out about this. He wants me to be there when he tells them this Sunday so they can have some support if they feel upset.’
‘On Mother’s Day?’
‘Exactly! What a fucker!’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I would be there when he dropped them off in the morning, and he could tell them at the house. Fuck, I feel like I’m facilitating his life.’
‘You are; we all are. All three of us nurse these children’s broken hearts. The men have no idea what emotional tsunami they unleashed when they left. It doesn’t stop after they leave; time isn’t an automatic healer. While they’re getting on
with the “real marriages”, us starter wives are parcelled up in a box, roughly gaffer-taped so our feelings, the children’s feelings, can’t escape and ruin the new paradise.’
‘Yes! That’s exactly it! But what happens if the gaffer tape starts peeling off?’
‘Well, that’s when they’ll face what they did. Realise when they reach a bump in the road with the new improved wives that marriage isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Sooner or later everyone hits the wall. It’s how you deal with it that matters. Running in the opposite direction won’t win you the race.’
‘I’ve not invited Andy to my birthday party.’ Jacqui lit another fag from the end of the previous one. ‘It’s my family, old friends and you guys.’
‘Does he know you’re having a party?’
‘He does, and he’s cool with it. I want to end it, though.’
‘Because?’
‘Because it’s going nowhere. It never will. He’s so much younger.’
‘Chris is much younger.’
‘Yes, but he seems older and he’s besotted with you and he feels like an equal. He’s also not going travelling. I’m not sure I would want to carry on if Andy wasn’t going away. It doesn’t gel like I want it to. Doing all this yoga and being in a different mind-set has made me realise it’s OK to be on my own. I never thought like that before. After Simon left, I was desperately trying to fill the void with another human being. But it never helped. Learning a new skill helps, though.’
‘Why don’t you wait until your birthday?’
‘No, I think I need to face forty as I mean to go on. Single, working towards being a yoga teacher, and OK with it. The kids will be disappointed, especially Joe. They were always playing football and messing around in that blokey way boys do. I need to be with someone for me, not them. I’d better go. He’s coming round tonight and I want to wash my hair. Don’t want to look like an old bag. Leave him with a happy memory!’
*
A few weeks later and a month before Sam married Carrie, Royal Wedding fever hit the country and the single mums’ mansion in a flurry of Union Jacks and bunting. Ali and I had planned a midday tea party around the wedding of William and Kate, inviting everyone we knew to arrive in their very own wedding attire. We made a legion of different cakes, including a chocolate wedding cake topped with a Sylvanian Panda bride and groom. The kids woke before seven in the morning, all frothing at the mouth about the forthcoming party. Isla, Grace and Meg wore floaty bridesmaid dresses Ali had procured from a shoot, and Sonny wore a shirt and trousers.
‘I’m a pageboy, Mummy.’
‘Have we missed anything?’ Jacqui cried as she bustled in through the front door wearing one of Neve’s dress-up tiaras and a scarlet princess tulle dress we’d found at Absolute Vintage in Shoreditch. Neve was sporting a beautiful white party dress and Joe smiled awkwardly from behind Jacqui, wearing a smart shirt and trousers instead of his usual Chelsea kit.
‘I binned my wedding dress when I moved house. I didn’t want it contaminating the new place,’ Jacqui had explained when I said I was going to wear my dress. Because Ali never made it down the aisle, she had to source a white dress especially for the occasion and chose a lace knee-length frock from Topshop. I still loved my gauzy wedding dress. Microscopic crystals had been carefully embedded in the gossamer silk over-skirt that covered the tulle meringue and bodice. It unfurled memories of nervously getting dressed at a friend’s house, waiting for Rob to drive Dad and me in his turquoise Beetle to the orchard where Sam was waiting.
‘She’s just got in the car. We couldn’t see the dress,’ Ali informed Jacqui.
‘We need champagne. I’ll sort it.’ By the time Kate arrived at the Abbey, Ali, Jacqui and I were guzzling fizz, Ali and I sitting on the sofa making the sandwiches on a production line using one of the benches as a table, while all the kids ate croissants cross-legged on the rug in front. How terribly British.
‘Oh, that dress!’ Jacqui cooed. ‘She looks so regal.’
‘Look at Pippa’s arse!’ Ali guffawed. ‘Bet that makes all the front pages!’
‘Yes, good arse,’ I agreed. By the time Kate had joined William at the altar, we had abandoned the sandwiches and were watching totally spellbound. Even the kids were entranced.
‘Oh, he just said “I love you”.’ Ali abruptly stood up, knocking over a plate of cucumber sandwiches waiting to have their crusts removed, tears streaming down her face. ‘I can’t watch.’ She grabbed her champagne and stormed out to the kitchen. I could hear her blowing her nose. Grace ran out to her. After a few minutes, she returned, Grace on her hip, her face blotchy from crying. She wouldn’t sit down, hovering by the door in case it overwhelmed her again. ‘That should have been me,’ she admitted during a boring hymn none of us knew. ‘My dad will never walk me down the aisle now, even if by some miracle I actually meet someone nice.’
‘You’ll meet someone,’ Jacqui assured her. ‘Just stop looking so hard.’
‘I want to live with someone properly, not just be Anne Frank in the Attic. God, this wedding has made me question everything. I want what they have! I want to be a grown up.’
Chris turned up halfway through the ceremony.
‘I thought you were coming at midday?’
‘I wanted to come now,’ he said in the hallway eyeing my dress. ‘Wow, you look beautiful.’
‘Thanks.’ I felt rather bashful and overdressed as a blushing virginal bride in front of him. This was only his third outing as Mummy’s friend. The day before Sonny’s fourth birthday last weekend, we had all optimistically visited Hyde Park. We had started off cautiously hopeful with Sonny perched on Chris’s shoulders with him foolishly uttering the fateful sentence: ‘I don’t know what you’re worried about,’ and closed with Sonny having a colossal meltdown at Hyde Park Corner about an apple juice drought, Meg almost fainting from low blood sugar after the snacks ran out, and just when they were tucked up in bed so some serious snogging could take place in the living room, Sonny projectile vomited spaghetti Bolognese all over his bed and wall. Chris didn’t bat an eyelid and cleaned up the garlic-stinking sick while I hosed down Sonny.
‘It’s actually no different to dealing with my dad on a bad day,’ he admitted when I protested about his baptism of fire. But how many incidents like this would it take before he realised the kids weren’t just for Christmas? Inevitably they would grow up, and someone at some time was bound to sling shot the emotive words: ‘You’re not my real dad!’ There I was again, racing ahead, living in the future…
The wedding party followed a similar trajectory. Apart from Ali’s tears, it started off sedately. Chris mixed guests a lethal pear vodka cava cocktail as they arrived, and by about tea time the occasion had descended into drunken anarchy, with cake strewn all over the mottled lawn, the piñata’s dolphin head swinging portentously on the washing line, its ransacked body trampled underfoot, discarded wrappers and spat-out sweets mulching in with the cake, creating a sugar-infested bog. The crystal silk layer on my dress had accidentally ripped off like a satisfying sheet of sunburned crispy skin and, even though I had sworn every single adult to secrecy about Chris and me, I proceeded to snog him about ten times in full view of the children.
‘Is Chris your boyfriend?’ Neve asked me, after one particular public display of affection.
‘Noooooo! We’re just friends.’ Her raised eyebrows told me she wasn’t convinced.
*
I sat bolt upright on my bed of nails, my mangled wedding dress twisted back to front, a cloak of shame almost choking me. Sonny was burrowed under the duvet, his arm proprietorially across my midriff, his pudgy fingers hooked into the red-wine-stained tulle.
‘Mummy, why was Chris naked in your bed last night?’ Isla was standing next to the bed looking at me inquisitively.
‘He wasn’t.’ If I sounded like I was in control, she might just believe me.
‘Why did you shout and used the F word?’
‘Because Neve barged
into the bedroom without knocking.’
‘She said she could see Chris in the bed.’
‘He was in the bed, but he wasn’t naked. He was having a lie down before he went home.’
‘Oh, OK. Was he having a sleepover?’
‘Yes, kind of. Isla, don’t ever open my door if it’s shut without knocking, OK?’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
I lay back down. Sonny was now awake.
‘Mulk, Mummy. Where’s my mulk?’
A party bomb had exploded in the kitchen and garden. The forlorn bunting hung lopsided from the acer tree, half-heartedly flapping in the gentle breeze, having somehow untied itself from the fence. The lawn was in need of a good hoovering. Tissue paper, cake, crisps, plastic cups and empty bottles formed an impressive carpet of detritus from the garden to the back of the kitchen. It must have rained in the night because all the food we’d lazily left outside now looked like bloated corpses dragged from a river. The wedding cake icing had washed away in the downpour, along with the two Sylvanians, who were probably tragically drowned somewhere by the raised flowerbed, star-crossed lovers united in death.
I delivered Sonny’s milk and returned to the garden to find Jacqui smoking, sitting on the bench in the sun wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else, and Ali on a beanbag with a wet flannel on her head, squashing her shagger’s clump.
‘What was that shouting about at eleven? Neve said you told her off.’
‘She walked in on me and Chris rolling around. I was fully clothed, as you can see; the zip’s stuck. Is she upset? I’m so sorry.’ My head felt detached from my body, like a helium balloon full of frozen peas, rattling around.
‘She’s fine, though you may want to say she’s not in trouble. We all know she’s a bit of a nosy parker.’
‘Of course I will.’ I wished someone would whip me with the damp bunting.
‘That seems to be a habit of yours with zips. Wasn’t Sonny in the bed?’
‘Yes. I hate myself. Nothing really happened – it was just a fumble. Chris came up to help me get my dress off before he went home. I was hideously drunk.’
The Single Mums' Mansion: The bestselling feel-good, laugh out loud rom com Page 26
