by Jane Fallon
‘No … Mum, I think I messed up …’
A weight lifts off me. We can deal with her low grades. The thing I couldn’t have dealt with would have been knowing she didn’t trust me enough to be truthful with me.
‘What happened? It’s OK.’
‘I didn’t revise. Well, I did, but nowhere near as much as you think I did.’
‘So all those evenings round at Eliza’s? What were you doing? Watching TV? Going out? I’m not cross, I just want to understand …’
‘We were working.’
George and Eliza both have an occasional evening and weekend job at a diner in Camden. And by ‘occasional’ I do mean occasional. One night a week.
‘At the diner?’
She nods. ‘We thought we should try and get as much money together as we could before we left home. It seems stupid now.’
Well, at least they weren’t out getting drunk or taking drugs, I suppose.
‘How often?’
‘Four or five nights a week. Whenever you thought I was there.’
‘And Eliza’s mum was OK with this?’
She looks down at the table. ‘She thought we were here.’
A thought occurs to me. ‘Who was bringing you home in the evenings then?’
‘I got the bus.’
‘Jesus Christ, Georgia. If something had happened to you, I would have had no idea where you were.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
I reach across the table and take her hand. ‘It’s OK. Thank you for telling me the truth. Now we just have to work out what to do next.’
‘Don’t tell Dad,’ she says. She’s such a Daddy’s girl that the worst thing she can imagine is him being disappointed in her.
‘I already have. He’s taken it better than you think.’
I persuade her that we should call Bristol just in case, even though I know it’s hopeless. And it is. They’re very nice, and they tell her they’ll put her on a list, but obviously there are other people who only just failed to get the requisite grades who they are much more likely to make an exception for. They don’t even suggest an alternative course that might take her, that’s how much they don’t really want her at this point.
‘So clearing or retakes?’
Neither of us can get up much enthusiasm for going through clearing. Georgia makes it clear that she wouldn’t really want to go to any uni that would take her on to do Medicine with such poor marks.
‘I mean, imagine what the course must be like if they’re so desperate they’d take me,’ she says, and I’m pleased to see she laughs.
‘Do you want to try for anything else? What else are you interested in?’
She barely even gives it a thought. She’s wanted to be a doctor since she was eight years old.
‘I’m going to have to retake. Oh God, the humiliation.’
‘Don’t be stupid, loads of people have to. What’s Eliza thinking?’ Much as I have always liked Eliza, I’m not sure the idea of the two of them going through retakes together is the best one I’ve ever heard, given what’s happened. I don’t know who influenced who, but I definitely wouldn’t want the whole thing to just repeat itself again.
Georgia shrugs. ‘She doesn’t know yet.’
It’s only once I’m cooking dinner and Georgia and Robert are sitting talking it over at the kitchen table, that it occurs to me that she now won’t be leaving home in a few weeks. Obviously, a huge part of me is thrilled. No empty nest for another year. No feeling as if that whole, major chapter of my life has closed. But I know this also throws everything up in the air for me and Robert. Will he still leave to set up home with Saskia in October, as I believe he plans to? Can I bring myself to throw him out with her still living at home?
And it hits me that, just as I expect her to behave like an adult and take responsibility for her own future, so I have to treat her like one by not cosseting her from the fact that her parents’ marriage isn’t perfect. I owe it to her to present her with the facts – once I’m ready to admit to Robert that I know them – and let her react however she reacts. I’ll try and make it as painless for her as possible, obviously – I’m never going to ask her to take sides or dictate who she lives with – but I’ll be as honest with her as I can be. It’s only fair.
34
Saskia
Annoyingly, Paula looks quite cute in her yoga outfit. And confident. When I first met her she seemed to spend most of her time apologetically pulling her oversized T-shirt down over her stomach, but not any more. I wonder whether Robbie has noticed the changes. Probably not. If you see someone every day, you stop looking at them. They become wallpaper. White noise.
I have to make sure that never happens to us.
I’ve found us a flat, by the way! ‘An apartment’, the brochure called it, because I think the agent was trying to sound all New Yorky. And it does remind me of New York. All clean lines, big windows and dark wooden floors. It’s on the seventh floor, so the views of Regent’s Park are fantastic.
It’s empty, both of people and furniture, which is perfect. I’ve ordered the basics – by basics, I mean the things you need to live (sofa, bed), not that I’ve purchased them at knock-down prices at DFS or Furniture Village. I’ve spent hours in Heals agonizing over whether a couch with a chaise works better than a corner arrangement (it does). My Amex card has taken a bashing. Luckily, Joshie and I have always kept an element of our finances separate. That is, we share everything, but every month we divide an equal amount of our income into our own accounts so we don’t have to have a discussion every time one of us wants to buy a pair of shoes. That’s what kills a lot of marriages, in my opinion. The endless petty squabbling over whether it’s fair that she wants to spend two hundred pounds on a jacket when he just bought one for fifty. Of course, Josh and my marriage is about to fall apart anyway, despite our clever accounting. Oh, well, maybe it wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did without our illusion of financial freedom. Who knows?
Anyway, the point is that he doesn’t need to see my American Express statements because the money comes out of my own account.
The rest of the furniture I thought it would be fun for me and Robbie to choose together. I know he loves antiques, and so do I. We can take our time. Choose the perfect piece for each corner. It’ll be a labour of love.
Meanwhile, I have asked the owner of the ‘apartment’ if I can paint a couple of walls to give the place more character. I’ve spent hours in Farrow and Ball, trying to discern the difference between String and Cord and then more hours painting tiny squares from tester pots on different sections of wall and trying to work out how the colour will look in different lights. I’m doing the work myself, would you believe? I wanted to put something of me into the place. Something I could point to and say, ‘I did that’. I’ve enjoyed it, for the most part. Dressed in old jeans and a big shirt, scarf wrapped around my hair in a very Norma Desmond kind of way. Radio on.
I’ve had to take a year’s lease. Cancellable (is that a word?) at three months’ notice but you don’t get your (ginormous) deposit back. It seems funny sitting (on the floor!) in this big, beautiful space that’s going to be our home but which Robbie still knows nothing about. I’m planning on bringing him here in a week or so – once my ‘basics’ have arrived and I’ve found a handyman to put the TV on the wall and connect it up. I’m going to make up the bed with crisp white linen (who knew thread counts could go so high and cost so much!), stash a bottle of champagne in the fridge and surprise him.
I can’t wait.
I usually like to put my mat at the front of the class. Fewer distractions, plus Adrienne can see what I’m doing more easily, and make those little adjustments that make all the difference. But I’m going to have to give up my spot and move to the back today, downwind of all those Lycra-clad behinds, because it’s Paula’s first class and she’ll need to be able to watch what other people are doing and follow them. The front is a place for those of us who can mo
ve seamlessly through the postures. It’s almost a performance.
I love the buzz I get as soon as I step into the heat of the room. The instant feeling of relaxation, like walking into a sauna or one of the hothouses at Kew. The sheen of sweat that covers you almost instantly. (‘Perspiration,’ I hear my mum say in my head. ‘Ladies don’t sweat.’) I like to get there a few minutes early and just lie on my mat and get myself into the right frame of mind. Try to forget all the stresses and strains of the week. I see a lot of the same faces each class but there are usually a couple of newbies craning their necks to get a good look at me. I can always tell. The subtle double-take when they spot who I am. The furtive glances that follow. I try to block it out. Once someone went back out to the changing rooms and got their phone – strictly forbidden, of course – and tried to take a sneaky photo. Adrienne threw them out. Banned them from returning. I pretended to be shocked at the severity of her punishment but, afterwards, I thanked her profusely.
I’m not really in the mood for having to play the role of teaching assistant. I’m trying to remember why I thought it would be a good idea to insist Paula came along in the first place. I think I thought it would be funny. She’d make a fool of herself and I could feel superior. It’s sad, isn’t it, that life’s all about these petty victories? I could feel fabulous in my skin-tight gear (even despite the few extra ‘pregnancy’ pounds I’ve been forced to gain) while she would, no doubt, be feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable. It’s a power thing, I’m fully aware of that, thanks very much. Survival of the fittest. Literally, haha!
And at our usual brunch afterwards I can lay it on thick about Robbie and Samantha (Robert. Must remember to call him Robert. Christ, that was a close call the other day.) I can drive another nail into their coffin.
So I’m being extra attentive. Smiling at her encouragingly when I get the opportunity. Whispering little helpful hints when I can. She looks as if she’s enjoying it, despite it being hard work, so I suppose that’s gold stars in the bag for me. I’m waiting for her to have to sit down, like most first-timers, but she battles on through. She’s fitter than I ever would have imagined and, you have to hand it to her, she’s determined. By the end of the ninety minutes I can see she’s hooked. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might decide to take it up properly and I’m a bit put out at the thought of it. This is my thing, my space. I don’t want to have to share it. Also, it could become a little awkward, come October, haha! I wonder how subtly I can say, ‘You’ll have to find a different club, or at least sign up for a different class,’ and I decide I can’t. Damn.
35
Paula
Saskia is in full-on Robert and Samantha mode. Robert and Samantha this. Robert and Samantha that. She tells me that she has another scheme to help split them up, still involving telling Robert that she has seen Samantha with Jez, but this time adding in the detail that she’s not sure if she saw what she saw, but offering to try to prise the truth out of Samantha if Robert will just hold off accusing her for the moment. Sound familiar?
‘Brilliant,’ I say, with all the enthusiasm I can muster. I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I have a list of local schools going round and round in my head and, while she talks I mentally run through the pros and cons of the sixth form in each one. George is adamant she doesn’t want to return, tail between her legs, to the one she’s just left.
‘Then I can eke it out, just giving him a few little tidbits here and there, but not enough for him to confront her, and so we won’t have to worry about her going straight off to Jez to get him to confirm the whole thing’s a pack of lies. It’ll just make him feel rattled. Do you think he’ll go for it?’
In reality, not in a million years. Robert would go straight to Samantha and have it out with her, regardless of what Saskia had asked him. As I now know this whole thing is a pack of lies, though, why not?
‘Definitely,’ I say. ‘Just emphasize that he doesn’t want to make himself look like an idiot by accusing her falsely. Robert hates to look like an idiot. And that women value trust over everything, so if he shows Samantha that he doesn’t trust her without reason it’ll affect their relationship. Some bollocks like that.’
‘I should be taking notes,’ she says, and then, of course, she adds, ‘haha,’ for good measure. It’s odd how I’d become used to it, even started to find it endearing, but now it sets my teeth on edge all over again.
We’re sitting in our usual café – too drizzly for outside, even though it’s still hot. Saskia is freshly showered, smelling of Molton Brown, and damp-haired. I, on the other hand, look like I’ve had a fight with a garden hose and the hose won. The idea of stripping naked in front of my husband’s lover with her über-judgemental body image issues was too much for me so I am taking my sweat home to wash it off there. I know I smell, and not in a good way.
I loved hot yoga, by the way. Loved the slow pace, the instructor’s soft voice murmuring the transitions as if she’d said this same thing a thousand times – which she almost certainly has – and it had lost all meaning, the feeling that my body had become like a piece of elastic, the rivers of water running down my back after only a few minutes. I can see why it’s addictive. I was rubbish, obviously (Adrienne: ‘Yoga is not a competition. There is no such thing as being good or bad at it. It’s a personal journey’), but it didn’t seem to matter. Two people gave up partway through and lay down on their mats like they really were just there for the sauna element, and no one batted an eyelid. I’m proud that I stuck it out, though. I’m proud that I’m strong enough.
Saskia nibbles on a bread roll, perfect little veneered teeth like a row of shiny tiles. I’ve never understood that veneers thing. People with healthy but slightly wonky teeth replacing them with something that looks like your great-granny’s falsies that she only got very reluctantly because her real ones rotted and fell out of their own accord.
She looks exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her, except that I now know she’s way more of a bitch than I ever imagined. The vain, vacuous husband-stealer I thought she was then seems like a saint in comparison to the piece of pure evil I think she is now.
I now know that the flat is already hers. I called the agents, claiming to be her assistant (what was the worst that could happen? They have no idea what I’m talking about, have never had any dealings with Saskia and tell me I must be mistaken? Saskia has, in fact, rented a different flat and they think I’m incompetent? What do I care?), and asked if they could remind me of the end date of the lease. I gave them the address confidently, dropped Saskia’s name, and the woman I spoke to sounded all smiles.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘It was twelve calendar months from August the fifteenth, so that would be August fifteenth next year.’
I thanked her and got off the call as quickly as I could. It had been over a week since Saskia took possession. I didn’t really know what to do with this knowledge except to phone Josh and let him know.
‘Check in the cupboards and see if her favourite dinner service has gone missing.’
I was glad to hear him laugh. ‘She’s welcome to it. It’s hideous. Maybe I should start making a pile of all the stuff I’d rather see the back of.’
I told him all about Georgia and how, now that she was no longer leaving home, everything had changed.
‘It makes no difference now if I kick him out in October or next week. And I suppose Robert must feel the same. He could announce he’s going at any moment. Especially now they have the flat to go to. If we’re going to do anything to try and derail their future, we have to move fast.’
‘Do you still have the appetite for it?’ he said, and I had to think for a moment to work out what he meant.
‘I don’t know. It seems a bit petty, doesn’t it? Maybe we should just let them get on with it?’
‘No chance,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to do anything cruel, I just don’t want it all to be so easy.’
‘That’s how I felt at the start. Stil
l do, I suppose. I don’t know now. It doesn’t seem that important any more in the scheme of things.’
‘Georgia will be OK,’ he says, getting right to the heart of what’s really bothering me. ‘It’ll be one of those things where, in a year’s time, you’re saying, ‘Well, thank God she failed the first time …” ’
I can’t help but laugh. It’s such a sweet attempt to make me feel better. ‘Let’s hope so.’
We agreed to meet up on Sunday night, when both Robert and Saskia would have travelled up to Oxford, ready for filming on Monday. Ordinarily, Josh would be there too, but he told me it’s not unusual to leave filming in the hands of one of the script editors if he has things to do in London. I find myself looking forward to it. Not because I think anything is going to happen between us. That was a blip, a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that he was feeling rejected. But it won’t hurt to spend the evening in the company of an attractive man.
‘It’s nice around here, isn’t it?’ I say to Saskia as we eat our salads. She has her dressing on the side again, of course. I, assured by Chas that a bit of olive oil and balsamic is actually going to do me more good than harm, have slathered mine over the top. Chas is big on eating right, not (necessarily) eating less. Saskia’s starvation method of weight control fills him with horror. And who am I to argue because, so far, I’ve lost more than two and a half stone. And – more importantly – a whopping ten per cent fat. At this point, if Chas told me to put olive oil and balsamic on my breakfast in the morning I would probably do it. Except that he never would because Chas, above all, does not believe in fads.
‘Yes,’ she says, looking around. ‘I love it.’
We’re about three minutes away from the ‘love nest’, as Josh and I have started to refer to it. Of course she loves it.
