by Emlyn Rees
So I know it’s my own fault that I occasionally feel isolated and like Billy No Mates – but then, doesn’t everyone feel like that, sometimes?
Of course Jack and I do have friends, don’t get me wrong, but we mostly socialise with other couples like us. And apart from those coupley mates, the people I now spend most of my time with – people like the Vi – . . . people like my other mummy mates – are convenience friends. We bump along together because we have proximity and children in common, but none of them are true friends. If something went seriously wrong in my life – I mean relationship-wise – I couldn’t turn to any of them.
It’s just as well that nothing has gone seriously wrong in my life, because if it did, I’d be stuffed. I’d have no one.
A White Sofa Or A White Knight?
Well, that’s not strictly true, I’m thinking later, because I’d have Helen. She’s still technically my best mate. I’ve had a date to meet H written in my diary now for two months. It’s the earliest she could manage. We both bemoan the fact we don’t see each other more, especially since we live in the same city, but our lives don’t coincide. Especially not now she’s one of the top directors of the TV company she joined five years ago.
I’m pleased for her that her career has taken off, even though I know she finds the responsibility and long hours hard. She’s got an amazing flat over by Borough Market and a customised convertible Mercedes – the car we both always wanted – but it makes me sad that we’ve drifted apart.
H’s flat is so spotless, it looks like a hotel. I haven’t been here for over six months, and in that time she’s bought new sofas, rugs and lights and had the painters in. It feels weird that she made all these decisions without talking to me about them once.
I generally admire everything, running my hands over the virginal soft furnishings and digging my toes into the thick white carpet. It’s the most child-unfriendly place I’ve ever seen. Has she not been inviting us over because she suspects (correctly) that Ben might trash it?
There are photos of H’s life lined up on the mantelpiece in tasteful silver frames. She looks glowing and happy in every one. The biggest one is of me and her laughing on my wedding day. I run my hand over it.
If I were a bloke coming in here, I would never think for a second that H had any need for a boyfriend. But I know different.
H had a doomed relationship with Matt around the time of our wedding. It lasted for about six months, but ended with them hating each other, and she hasn’t had a really serious boyfriend since.
‘So, how’s the love life?’ I ask, as she opens a bottle of wine. ‘What happened to what’s-his-name?’
She pulls a face. ‘Utter donkey.’
‘Oh no! I thought he was a goer. What about the other one, Greg?’
‘No good. Toff. So the usual . . . you know, Mummy fixation – and he wouldn’t stop talking about his boarding school even though he left there twenty years ago. It was blatantly obvious that he’d been buggered in the cricket pavilion, but he was too repressed ever to admit it.’
I have to tread carefully with H. I know she wants what I’ve got – a husband and a kid and a future together, but the more entrenched she becomes in her single life, the further away it seems. Her life is so ordered and comfortable, that any potential Mr Right has to be amazing for her even to consider giving any of it up. And that’s the problem. H is convinced that finding love will involve a sacrifice of some sort, and she’s not sure if she’s willing to trade in her white sofa for a white knight.
But eventually, over dinner, she relaxes and stops being scary and is back to being my old mate. As the sky turns dark over the London skyline outside, and a bottle of wine sits empty on the counter between us, I feel like I used to, like we’re best buddies and I can tell her anything and she’ll listen.
‘So how’s lover boy? Everything peachy perfect as usual? Even after seven years?’ she asks me.
What do I tell her? Nobody has asked me how I feel, or asked about the status of my relationship for so long, that I feel vulnerable and exposed. In the safe confines of H’s kitchen, I feel like confessing. I feel like telling H that things between Jack and me aren’t as peachy perfect as I’d like. That it’s hard work. That I don’t see him enough, or have sex with him enough, and that now he’s working for Jessie Kay, he’s got clear ambitions, but I haven’t, and it makes me feel jealous and resentful.
But just as I’m about to tell her all this, something stops me. This is just a phase, after all. Jack and I are fine. It feels too sacrilegious to let H into the inner sanctum of my marriage – and besides, I don’t really want to inspect in there myself.
So, instead of talking about Jack, I bitch about Kate, which makes me feel a bit better.
‘I want something exciting to happen,’ I admit. ‘I feel a bit run down by my routine.’ I lean over and cup her hand. ‘What I really need is for you to get married.’
‘For me, or the event?’
‘The event, of course,’ I laugh. ‘I’m just bored. I haven’t been to a good party and let my hair down for ages. Everyone else seems to have so much more fun than me.’
It’s only when I say this that I realise how true it actually is.
‘Well, you know as well as I do, that I don’t need to be married to be happy, but I kind of hoped that this would be the year . . .’ she shrugs her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. It’s so hard finding someone. It was so much simpler when we used to go out clubbing, and then get off with someone and find out whether we liked them afterwards.’ She sighs.
‘Well, what’s stopping you doing that now?’
‘What, try and go pulling at a nightclub? I can’t think of anything worse.’
‘Come on, we’re not that old,’ I say, trying to chivvy her along.
‘We’re not that young either. Don’t you remember watching women our age when we used to go out? They looked ancient. We used to say that they were mutton dressed as lamb and should be dancing around their handbags.’
‘What about that site you talked about?’
‘What? Give me some cock dot com?’ she says.
I know H has paid a fortune for membership of some exclusive dating site. ‘Is that what it’s called?’ I ask, shocked.
‘Durr,’ she says, pulling a face at me, as she reaches for her laptop and boots it up.
She’ll Settle For Ninety Per Cent
I look at the screen and I’m instantly hooked. This internet dating lark is a totally new world for me. How exactly do you sum yourself up and sell yourself as a potential date without sounding arrogant or apologetic, or downright desperate?
I get H to show me the profile she’s written of herself. She leans over and reads down it with me.
‘Tess and Jodie helped me do it,’ she confides, mentioning two of her friends I’ve heard about, but never met. Or, her ‘comfortable-shoe-wearing lady companions’ as Jack likes to insinuate.
How comes H has got so many hobbies? I barely have time to paint my toenails, but H holds down an important job and apparently still has time to ‘go Salsa dancing’ and ‘trawl flea markets for vintage film posters’. Not to mention how she ‘goes regularly to foreign films’, or ‘just hangs about daydreaming in the spa’.
Does she mean the Spar? I wonder sceptically, because as far as I know, that’s the closest she’s ever been to a gym.
‘But you’re not into fine art – or chess – and you’re certainly not patient,’ I point out, reading on.
‘I am.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Yes, I fucking am.’
‘And I see you’ve forgotten to mention that you’re a complete control freak,’ I add.
‘There’s nothing wrong with liking order,’ she says, shooting me a warning look.
I get to the end of it without commenting that I’ve known her for all of her adult life and, apart from the odd concert on the hilly bit of Richmond Park, she’s never to my knowledge ‘climbed mountains’ o
r ‘embraced world music’, or shown the slightest glimmer of ‘a keen interest in wildlife’. Unless you count boy-spotting, that is. But hey, who am I to nit-pick?
‘Well, you sound great on screen. I’d shag you,’ I conclude.
She flicks me with the tea towel, but I can tell she’s pleased.
‘Oh, hang on. There’s more!’
I scroll down to the long section detailing H’s essential criteria for a possible suitor. It’s baffling.
Sensitive and caring, yet manly and independent. Must like the hustle and bustle of city life, but embrace the wide outdoors. Must like staying at home as well as travelling, but also must be the life and soul of any party. Must care about his health, but know how to have a good laugh. Must be passionate about politics and the arts and like arguing in an erudite, yet respectful way. Must remember birthdays and plan amazing surprises. Must love food and wine and appreciate beauty.
And so it goes on.
And on . . .
Real men aren’t like that, I think. Try: Moderately sensitive when reminded, occasionally utter fuckwit. Main hobbies: scratching own balls and celebrating flatulence.
‘You really think you’re going to find all this in one man?’ I ask.
‘I’ll settle for ninety per cent of it.’
‘Ninety?’
‘OK. Eighty. But he’s got to be drop-dead gorgeous.’
I whistle. ‘We’d better start looking, then.’
The Chocolate Box Effect
After a few more glasses of wine, I really start getting into it. I can see that this could become as addictive as looking through estate agents’ websites.
It’s like fantasy window-shopping. Each new face is a new dream.
‘Bloody hell, H, I can’t believe the amount of seriously hot totty on here.’
‘Yeah, but, come on, Amy, don’t be naïve. Everyone chooses flattering photos. Most of those blokes don’t actually look like that in reality. They’re all probably older and balder and fatter.’
‘But even so . . . why didn’t they have this when I was single?’
And I mean it. The world has moved on, while I’ve been standing still.
Suddenly, presented with so much choice, I feel retrospectively miffed because when I was single and I met Jack, he seemed to be my only option. OK, OK, so I fell in love with him, but was that because I was ready to fall in love and Jack just happened to be there at the right time?
Then it hits me.
What if I’d fallen in love with someone else? Would I have been as happy? Could I have been happier?
If, like H has now, I’d had a wider selection of men to choose from, might I not have chosen someone with whom I could be more compatible? Someone more well travelled and cultured? Someone who could support me and loads of kids? Or someone who wanted to stay at home, while I pursued a fabulous career? Or just someone posh enough to sail me away in his yacht?
Because I tell you, the possibility is all here, right on the screen before me – and momentarily there’s part of me that feels like I’ve settled for a penny chew, when there was a luxury chocolate shop around the corner all the time.
Maybe I’m just a bit drunk. I blink hard, shaken that I’ve had such a deceitful thought. Jack’s not perfect, but he is mine. I’m doing this for H, not for me, I remind myself.
I trawl through the site a bit longer, while she clears up the kitchen.
And then I spot a profile without a picture.
I’m about to skip over it, but instead, find myself reading what Tom has to say about himself. I like the way he’s slightly worried that he has to be on this website in the first place, but after several long-term relationships, he’s found himself single when all his friends are married. The more I read, the more I like him. He’s self-deprecating and funny.
‘What are you laughing at?’ H asks.
‘This one. Tom. He’s a literary editor,’ I say, angling the screen so that she can see it.
‘But there’s no photo.’
‘That’s because he says that he doesn’t want to be judged on his looks alone.’
‘Because he’s ugly.’
‘Or drop-dead gorgeous. Anyway, I agree with him. Love isn’t all about the way somebody looks. It’s about the way they make you feel. If you ask me, I think you should have done with it and marry this Tom bloke and have his babies.’
H grins at me. ‘Mrs Rossiter, I do believe you fancy him yourself.’
‘I’m a married woman.’
‘But you would, wouldn’t you, if you were still single?’ she asks, pressing me for a commitment.
‘OK. I suppose, hypothetically, if I was in your shoes, yes, I would.’
When The Cat’s Away
It’s a long way home, especially with a bottle of white wine inside me. I’m exhausted as I open the front door, after one of those soporific late-night tube and bus odysseys that make you feel like you’re in a gritty art-house movie.
As I softly turn the key in the door, I expect to find Jack asleep on the sofa, but there’s music, the smell of cigarettes, and the sound of clinking glasses and laughter.
I find Jack in the garden with Kate and three of her friends: Bells and Max and another absurdly thin pretty girl whose name I don’t catch, but something poncy and posh, like Persephone or Paris.
‘If I’d known you were having a party, I’d have come home sooner,’ I say, not meaning it.
My barbed comment is for Jack’s benefit. I’m slightly miffed. I haven’t been out on my own for months. I was expecting him to take his babysitting duties seriously. I was hoping for a kiss and a hug and for him to ask me how my evening went. I sincerely doubt that he’s checked on Ben once.
‘We’re going out,’ Kate announces. ‘Pretesh is playing at Urban Wall.’
Like I give a shit. I look through the window at the clock on the kitchen wall. It’s one in the morning. ‘What? Now?’
‘The night is young,’ Max says.
‘Do you want to come?’ Kate asks, but the way her eyes flick towards Jack’s makes me suspect it’s a loaded question. This has all been rehearsed.
‘No. Thanks anyway. I’m knackered. I’m off to bed.’
I’m about to move in and put my hands on Jack’s shoulders and claim him back, when Kate says, ‘Can Jack come out then? You won’t mind if you’re asleep.’
‘Yeah, he’s gotta come, mate,’ Max chips in. He’s got a stupid haircut and a pierced nose. ‘It’ll be fly, man.’
I don’t want to make a fool of Jack in front of his new ‘yoof’ mates by reminding him that:
a. He has to get up in the morning for work.
b. He’s far too old to go clubbing.
c. It’s one a.m and he should have been asleep for at least three hours.
‘Jack can do what he likes,’ I say to Max. ‘I’m not in charge.’
But Jack deliberately takes my comment at face value. He shrugs in a ‘What can I do? I’ve been forced into it?’ kind of way.
Kate’s phone bleeps. ‘That’ll be the cab,’ she says. ‘Oh, it’s Sally,’ she adds, reading a text. ‘Has anyone seen her bag? She thinks she might have left it here.’
Sally?
She better not mean who I think she means. Sally McCullen. That slag who tried to seduce Jack when we first got together?
She was here?
In my home?
The second my back was turned?
Jack catches up with me in the bedroom.
‘She was here for five minutes,’ he says in a hushed whisper, holding my arm.
But I’m filled with jealous rage. I shake him off. ‘Oh, really.’
‘Come on, Amy, don’t be like this. She came over to see Kate. What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I asked her to stay.’
‘It never stopped you before.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Jack says, angry now, but still whispering. Ben stirs in his cot. We both stare at him for a moment, but it doesn’t look like he’s go
ing to wake up. ‘Have I ever given you a reason not to trust me completely?’
‘Yes,’ I remind him. ‘Once. With her.’
‘But you know I’d never . . . I mean, we’re married, aren’t we? It’s different now.’
‘Exactly. Which is why you should understand how I feel about this.’
‘Well I don’t. I think you’re being ridiculous.’
I can hear the others in the corridor.
‘Cab’s here, Jack. You coming?’ Kate calls.
Jack stares at me. I stare back.
‘Go on, then. Fuck off,’ I say. It sounds vicious, even to me.
He holds up his hands. ‘You know what? I can’t talk to you when you’re in this kind of mood,’ he says, exonerating himself.
And he turns and walks out.
Bastard.
But He’s So Out Of Practice
I lie in bed, fuming. The room is split by a line of moonlight. On the other side of it, I watch Ben’s face through the bars of his cot.
I feel like he looks. Like I’m in prison.
I’m full of Why?s.
Why is Jack behaving like this?
Why can’t he see what a bitch his sister is being?
Why isn’t he on my side?
Why does he think it’s OK to go clubbing with Sally McCullen?
Why don’t I trust him?
There are no answers, and after a while my anger turns to guilt. What if Jack’s having some sort of midlife crisis? Is it because I don’t make him happy? Is it because he finds me boring? Is it because we don’t have sex enough?
Because maybe we are arguing too much. Maybe we have got a problem. And if we have, does that mean that Jack might think about having sex with someone else? After all, he’s so out of practice with girls, maybe he wouldn’t even notice someone like Sally McCullen seducing him.
Until it was too late . . .
Fear creeps over me, like a cold chill.
Images strobe into my mind of Jack in the nightclub. Then it all warps into the porn movie we watched and Jack is with Sally McCullen and some other, fit twenty-something girl with perfectly pert tits and a flat stomach, and I feel sick with jealousy.
