Letters to Iris

by Elizabeth Noble

  ‘Trying too hard?’ He smiled when she commented on it.

  ‘It’s delicious …’

  She liked his space. It was maximalist, whereas hers was decidedly minimalist. Bookshelves ran all along one wall, filled with novels and large-format art books. There were interesting pictures on the walls – ‘Ah, my Affordable Art Fair retail problem’ – vivid still lifes and modern landscapes. Deep, worn, leather armchairs and bare floorboards. It was male, but comfortable. Lived in. Like Adam. The radio was on in the background, and she’d ended up sitting on an old kilim cushion on the floor, her back against the sofa, him in the tan armchair across the room, reading the paper. Reading little snippets out loud to each other when something was interesting or funny, and it was almost like they’d been doing this for years.

  He made an easy listener. He had that knack of letting you know he was listening and interested without speaking back to you much. She talked to him about Meg, how nervous she got before exams. And about Oliver, and how glad she was Caitlin had let him go. And it felt natural. He didn’t offer solutions to any of the issues, as Richard would have done, and she liked that. Then again, Richard was invested in the kids, and Adam had no need to be. But it was nice. And there was no sex, because she was going to work. Which, in the end, she sort of wished she wasn’t. But there was a kiss, before she left, that could easily have led to it if there was time, and left her feeling on edge in the sexiest possible way for the rest of her shift, remembering his hands on her face, and his mouth on hers.

  Which was why she agreed to a cinema date a few days later, heavy though it felt with the expectation of sex at the end of it. (Did it, though? Maybe she was putting that there …) He put his hand on her knee in the film, which created a small tremor of – was it? – desire, but they were too old for snogging in the back row. They both needed glasses to see the screen clearly. And it was a good film, a complicated, well-crafted political thriller, so they concentrated. His glasses made him look intellectual. Afterwards they had coffee and cake in a place near the cinema, and talked, about the film and other stuff, close together on a sofa.

  It was easy, and natural, to go into one home, when they got back, into one bed. She opened her eyes more this time, watching him loving her, and it was because it made it sexier, and not at all because she was trying to keep an image of Richard out of her head. It wasn’t until they’d finished that the fear of what feelings would come next encroached. But, almost as if he knew she had lied the first time about being okay with him staying, after he had held her for a time, he said he had an early start and didn’t want to wake her when he knew she had a day off and surely deserved a lie-in. He left to go back to his place. She was incredibly grateful. And even a little bereft, after he’d gone.

  If he was biding his time, he was doing it very well, and maybe it was even starting to work. And maybe it could have …

  Until he asked her to go with him to the garden centre.

  And she went, because she had nothing else to do, aware that Megan would laugh and call it an old people’s outing, and because she liked being with him, even though Megan was probably right.

  And it was okay until he asked her whether she would prefer a clematis or a wisteria in the front bed of the house.

  He wasn’t watching her, when he asked. He was unselfconsciously reading the labels attached to the plants in the climber section. A wisteria could take three or four years to flower, whereas a clematis would flower in its first year. Both liked a sunny aspect, the tags said. Both could be purple or white, although he thought perhaps the white wisteria was a bit yellowy. And both would suit the soil and be suitable for planting now, although it was a bit late for both. It was more a question of which flower one preferred. She preferred. And there it was.

  Maybe it was because he read out ‘sunny aspect’ and conjured up Richard, laughing at estate-agent speak. Maybe it reminded her of the wisteria they’d planted when Megan was a baby, which had grown lush and green but never flowered, and become a comforting, infuriating conversation she and Richard had on a loop every year afterwards. Was it too close to the wall? Could a wisteria be blind?

  Maybe he meant nothing by it. But, because he wanted her to choose, that made her very afraid, suddenly, as she stood amongst the plants and the tools and the weird books no one wanted to buy, that he was planning a future with her. That if she chose the wisteria, she’d still be there in three or four years when it flowered.

  He looked up at her face for a verdict and read there instead the fear of hurting him, and she was too late to rearrange her features into something less honest. And it was too late for him not to have asked her. And they both regretted it.

  In the car on the way home, he tried chatting, but she knew her answers were rubbish. He turned on the radio. The mood had changed. Not quite clouds coming over the sun, or the heavens opening with hard rain. But a shift in the quality of the light. Bruce Springsteen was singing about hungry hearts. Of course everyone had one. She did. Adam did. Richard did. Every one of them could be hurt. She didn’t want to be hurt any more, but she also very badly didn’t want to do any more hurting.

  Tess

  Work was winding down. She almost needn’t bother to go in. She felt excluded from the long-term plans being made – her closest colleagues were mostly female, and their attitude towards her differed depending on their own position in relation to hers. The ones above and to either side were sympathetic – many mothers themselves. The ones below struggled to hide their eagerness to shine in her absence. But for all of them, in the short term at least, she was a dead woman walking, and the combination of their load-bearing kindness and unwillingness to involve her meant her in-tray was neither full nor particularly interesting. It wasn’t like work was a passion anyway. Living with Donna and watching her enthusiasm for what she did – hearing Gigi talk about her work, even … And Oliver … Maybe she needed a change. Maybe her career was like her relationship with Sean: she’d been going through the motions. She had almost fallen into HR – a placement at university had led to a job offer with one company that she’d parleyed into a job with another. Two, three, four rungs of the corporate ladder. More money, a bigger space in the open-plan office, and then an office of her own, once she was having the difficult conversations. Nothing to love. She thought of Donna and her passion for photography. Maybe she had a passion and she just hadn’t discovered it yet. Florist? Ceramicist? Baker? Wedding-invitation calligrapher? Lifestyle blogger, getting paid in stuff, to plug stuff online? Now that was a career. There were a million things to do, and she might love one of them. Not that it mattered now. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and, although she was hardly a beggar, she’d have no choice but to go back to work once the baby was born. Single parents didn’t necessarily have the option of pursuing a passion. Self-pity threatened, and Tess resented work for not crowding her mind enough to shut it out. Perhaps if she stopped a bit sooner, let them buy the obligatory balloons and cake to see her off a week or two earlier than her planned leaving date, the nesting she kept reading about in the darn books would become her passion and her distraction …

  Tess hadn’t heard anything from Sean in ages. When his name popped up in her email inbox, she realized she hadn’t even really thought about him for a while. Seeing his name triggered a rush of adrenalin, and she clicked quickly on to the note, her eyes scanning its contents. He wondered if they should see a solicitor – or a mediator – and formalize something about the baby. He felt he needed to do the right thing, and that he wasn’t sure what that was. That maybe they should find out … His tone was conciliatory. He didn’t say anything about her – about him and her – just that he hoped she and the baby were well. That he was in New York for the foreseeable future. It was going really well. He also said he hoped that she would let him know if she needed anything. At the bottom, almost like an afterthought, there was one more line. He’d met someone, he said, an American girl at work. It was early days, and it was far fro
m serious, yet, but that he thought it might be, and he wanted Tess to know.

  Of course he had. And so he should. She almost smiled. Sean needed a girl with big hair and white teeth and a perfect manicure, a girl who wanted to jump out of bed at 5.30 a.m. with him and work out. A girl who wouldn’t fall pregnant until such a thing was agreed and scheduled, and would no doubt go back to work minutes later in her size-zero pencil skirt, chasing the partnership or the deal or whatever it was she and Sean would be chasing. Of course he had. Not the slightest twinge. How amazing was that?

  But the stuff about the baby did cause a flutter of anxiety. He’d made it sound all about him doing the right thing. Not like he wanted to be involved. Not like he wanted anything. Like he was trying to do the right thing. She fervently hoped he meant it that way. Holly had asked her a litany of questions. What would she tell the baby, down the line, about him … whose name would she put on the birth certificate … would she let him, or ask him, to contribute maintenance? It was okay that Holly asked: their friendship had always been straightforward that way. Iris might have asked, if she could. Donna probably not – and she might not have earned the right, yet. Holly could. But still, Tess had minded the question, but only because she didn’t have an answer. She only knew that Sean didn’t feature at all in any of her imaginings.

  And, yes, she saw the irony in reaching for her phone and summoning Oliver’s name in the contacts list. For perhaps a full minute her finger hovered over the call button before she put the phone down and watched the screen until it went blank.

  She’d once said to him, in a moment of vulnerability, that she must seem pathetic, that she knew it was wrong of her to talk to him about the baby, that he wasn’t responsible. He had looked at her with an almost frightening intensity. Like he’d wanted to say something. His mouth opened, closed again. ‘I don’t mind. You’re maybe the least pathetic person I know.’ It hadn’t been what he was going to say, she was sure, and she wished she knew what he’d actually thought.

  Gigi

  It was always going to be a dam that burst, and if Gigi had had to guess, she’d have guessed that it would be with Emily that it happened. And so it was.

  She’d given Ava a bath while Emily made them some supper. Christopher was away at a conference. Ava was sitting up now, her little Buddha belly holding her centre of gravity low in the bubbly water. They had a sort of rubbery, plasticky ring thing with suckers on the bottom that held her safe so she could play. They had so many new things these days, for babies. Ava loved the bath; and any efforts Gigi made – pouring small cups of water over her head or sending little tidal waves towards her – were rewarded with peals of delighted laughter, and fists splashing furiously against her kicking thighs, encouraging more, more, more. You could lose yourself in Ava and bathtime, and Gigi had luxuriated in doing just that, kneeling against the side of the bath, her sleeves rolled up, but wet anyway.

  Afterwards, she let Ava kick, naked, on her towel for a while. She rolled over now and tried to pull herself up. It was a wrestling match to get a nappy on her, a contortion trick to button up her Babygro. All the while they chatted to each other – Ava without words, but nonetheless effusive and communicative for it. Gigi loved that she knew her. Loved that she trusted her. Loved that someone else was cooking supper so there was all the time in the world for this, not like when she’d been Mum and cook. She just loved her.

  Then it was time to calm down and let the lavender of the bubble bath and the warmth of the milk make her sleepy. Ava looked up at Gigi while she sucked on the bottle, eyes wide open, then lids slowly drooping. Exhausted by her day, Ava relaxed and grew heavy in Gigi’s arms. From the next room, Gigi heard the Archers theme tune. Emily was flitting about in the kitchen: cutlery and glass clinked against the table, something on the stove sizzled, and she smelt garlic and herbs. The phone rang, and she heard her daughter-in-law answer, heard her voice soften and slow when she realized it was Christopher. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but they talked for a while, and laughed a little at something. At one point, Emily came into the sitting room, smiled at her – ‘Your mum’s here doing bedtime, the absolute angel. I’ll tell her … Sending you his love’ – and checked a detail on a letter on the desk. ‘Yep. Says the 15th. Ten fifteen.’ My day. Your day. Our life. Plans. Normal married stuff. A dull ache started pulsing in Gigi’s chest.

  Off the phone now, Emily came back in with a glass of white wine for her. She leant against the doorframe for a moment, smiling at the tableau of her sleeping child in the arms of her grandmother. Then she saw Gigi’s face crumple. Without a word, she put the wine down, picked up the baby, limp now with sleep, and took her up to bed. ‘Drink the wine, G. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Gigi was crying too hard to drink anything when Emily came back down a few moments later. She sat on the footstool beside the sofa and hugged Gigi’s knees.

  ‘What is it?’

  For a moment, Gigi couldn’t form any words that made sense. Eventually, she spluttered, ‘I’m such a fool.’

  ‘You’re not. Ssh. Please don’t cry. You’re not …’

  Gigi sniffed. ‘I’ve made such a bloody mess of everything.’

  ‘Hey. Ssh.’

  ‘You don’t know …’

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  Taking a deep breath, Gigi blurted out what she hadn’t told anyone. ‘I’ve left a good man. A man who loves me. The father of my children. The man I’ve spent more than half of my life with. I’ve broken his heart, Em. Broken all of him, actually. Just broken him. Destroyed my family. Or at least the togetherness of my family. The wholeness. And I’ve slept with Adam.’

  That was the stinger. That last bit. Emily sat up like a meercat.

  ‘Adam your landlord Adam?’

  ‘Adam my landlord Adam.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘When? Sorry. None of my business …’

  Except Gigi was making it her business.

  Emily rephrased her curiosity. ‘I mean … like a one-off? Or are you a thing?’

  She said ‘thing’ with incredulity, despite herself.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay.’ Emily was buying herself thinking time, clearly entirely unsure about how to react to this news.

  ‘You must promise not to tell Christopher.’

  ‘Of course. Does Richard know?’

  Gigi shook her head vigorously.

  Emily took the glass of wine she’d poured for Gigi off the coffee table and swallowed a big glug. ‘I was giving up alcohol mid-week. Sod that …’

  She laughed. Gigi laughed too, although the sound of it was very close to tears.

  ‘Do you want to be with this guy?’

  ‘No … I don’t know … maybe.’

  ‘And Richard?’

  ‘I don’t know. I miss him.’

  ‘Lawd.’

  ‘See … told you … a bloody mess …’

  ‘And totally inappropriate behaviour for a grandmother.’

  ‘I know,’ Gigi wailed, and Emily hugged her.

  ‘I’m sure this is an overshare, but I never slept with anyone except Christopher’s father before.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Brave.’ It was an unexpected word. Gigi was grateful to this loving, lovely girl. Not only for not judging her, but for seeming to understand.

  ‘I totally one hundred per cent completely have no idea what to do. I feel like an idiot.’

  Emily shook herself, and looked straight at her.

  ‘Right. Stop that. You’re not an idiot. And you’re not a mess either, by the way. Stop. Look – you’re an adult, Gigi. Working through some stuff. Trying to be happy. Trying to be happy without making other people unhappy, which is laudable, even if it isn’t always possible. Maybe sleeping with Adam was a mistake. But it’s just sex. Or it’s more than that, I don’t know. Maybe leaving Richard was a mistake. Maybe both were, maybe neither. You’
ve committed no crime. And, more to the point, you’ve closed no door. Sleeping with Adam doesn’t mean you owe him anything. Doesn’t mean you’ve ruined things with Richard either. Whether he finds out or not. Your life, your body, your decisions, your right to take a bit of bloody time out of a life lived so much for other people to decide what you need.’

  It was quite a speech. Emily had a hand on either hip now. She nodded her head decisively.

  ‘So no more of this mess talk. And no more tears, please. I can hardly bear those.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And no more sorry, dammit.’ The rage was faux. ‘I saw you unhappy with Richard. And your marriage was never any of my business, any more than anyone’s. But I confess I always thought it needed tweaking. Not obliterating. There has always been love. You can see when that is there and when it isn’t. And Richard loves you. Maybe he just needed shaking up a bit. But your going seems like the right thing to me. Space. Time. I’m not necessarily right. Only you know that, Gigi. You two. If I’m wrong, and you’re happier on your own or happier with Adam, or some other guy you haven’t even met yet … that’s all right too. You haven’t wrecked things for us. Your kids still have two healthy parents. Their own lives – even Princess Megan … Even Richard would survive. You’ve got to do what is right for you.’

  ‘It feels so selfish.’

  ‘It’s what everyone else is doing all the time. You’ve just not flexed the muscle for a long, long time.’