by Sophie King
But Alison wasn’t. She was just numb with disbelief. ‘That’s how I feel,’ said the tiny blonde, young girl who was already in the hall when she’d arrived. ‘I can’t believe my husband has left me for my friend.’
‘Maybe it’s a mistake,’ she found herself saying. ‘Perhaps he did something out of character that he regrets now.’
‘Is that what you feel about your husband?’ asked Karen gently. When Alison had first arrived in this funny little hall – only a short distance from her house although she’d hardly noticed it before – with a horseshoe circle of half-empty canvas chairs, a cricket bat linseed smell and a flipchart with a trick word on it, she’d quite liked the look of Karen with her warm, kindly smile, despite the heavy, black, seventies eye make up. Something told her from the way this woman moved and spoke, that she might have had the kind of life Alison had, before her own marriage broke up.
‘My own husband,’ Alison heard herself saying, ‘certainly seems to be acting out of character.’ She felt her voice rise in panic. ‘Friends thought we were the perfect couple but now they’re not even ringing me, as though we’re catching.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’ Karen’s voice was soft. ‘All things must pass. It’s something someone said to me at the time. And it’s true. This pain you’re feeling – it won’t go on forever. That’s why I called the group The ‘How to Survive Divorce’ Club because we will survive.’
All things must pass. Alison rather liked that. ‘And my daughter . . .’ She stopped. ‘My sister thinks she’s old enough to cope because she’s nineteen. But she’s not. Coping, that is.’
Something flickered in Karen’s eyes. ‘Children of that age want to be coddled one minute and left alone the next.’
True enough.
‘Ah!’ Karen was looking behind her. ‘Looks like someone else has just arrived. Don’t worry about being late! Do come in.’
KAREN
Karen had become increasingly nervous as the evening approached, touching the blue stone in her pocket every now and then, for comfort. Even the handouts, which she’d been quite proud of at the time, now seemed amateurish! It was all very well for her to think that her own experience might help others. And yes, last year’s OU module in counselling would surely be useful. As well as the happiness stuff on the flipchart.
But now there were four of them, she was wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. That poor girl whose husband had gone leaving her with two young children! And that lovely woman with rather wispy shoulder-length hair whose husband had left to ‘find himself’. The good looking man in his thirties who looked as though he was going to bolt any minute. And the woman in the voluminous lilac wrap who’d arrived late – Violet was appropriately named – who just sat there, hogging the biscuit tin. Would she really be able to help them?
Perhaps she’d do the next session and if it didn’t work, simply give them their money back.
ED
‘That’s right. I’ve been divorced three times.’
Nearly four if you counted his engagement with Tatiana, Ed wanted to say but stopped himself just in time. The slack jaws around him were enough to make him wonder that perhaps he should have pretended it was twice. Or maybe just the once. It might have helped if he’d been on time too – they hadn’t stopped looking at him since he’d arrived late (the traffic from Wycombe had been horrendous). And how awkward to be the only bloke!
‘Three times?’ repeated that enormous woman in the lilac bath sheet who had, he couldn’t help noticing, a fine head of hair. Pity it was all above her top lip.
‘That’s right. Three times.’ He braced himself. One broken marriage was quite acceptable nowadays. Almost mandatory in fact like a first house or a first dog or a first job.
Two wasn’t too bad. There were some women in the office who’d just broken up with their second husbands. In fact, they’d each assured him at separate sessions by the water cooler with a desperate air of authority, that statistically-speaking, second marriages were more likely to break up than the first due to children from the first marriage resenting the new partner. Interesting. Anita (wife number two) had a daughter who had always hated him even before she could talk.
Desperately, he tried to remember what the water cooler women had told him. That was it! ‘The more you get married, the more you realise how important it is to be yourself,’ he repeated to the half-empty circle of chairs . . . Silence. ‘So you get out before you destroy yourself again,’ he added. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in marriage. In fact, it’s because I do. But only if the marriage is going to work and lead to children.’ He looked round for some sort of sympathy. ‘I can’t wait to be a father!’
Someone snorted although he couldn’t see who and then the blonde scraped her chair back as though she didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
‘And you’re how old, exactly?’
Forthright women always scared him. ‘Thirty eight.’ Silence. ‘Nearly thirty nine.’
He waited for the usual comments about how he didn’t look his age but they didn’t come.
‘You’ve been married three times and you’re only thirty eight? How old were you when you started?’
He hadn’t expected an inquisition. Clive, his lodger who worked at some library near this place, had told him that it seemed like a nice group. At least, that’s what he’d thought from the woman who had pressed the leaflet on him. ‘It’ll help, mate,’ he’d said in that straightforward northern accent.
‘Sorry.’ The blonde ran her hands back through her hair. Anita used to do that when she was stressed. Maybe it was a code that women learned at their mothers’ knees. Perhaps if he got to learn it, rather like Sudoku, he could crack it and get it right next time.
‘Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘It’s the journalist instinct in me. Makes me ask too many questions. And I’m afraid I smell a bit.’ She glanced round the circle. ‘My youngest threw up all over me just before I left. I nearly didn’t come but Mum made me.’
That explained the smell . . .
‘Look.’ Ed rose awkwardly to his feet, smoothing down his clean, white shirt. ‘Maybe this isn’t for me. I’m sorry. You can keep my money. But I feel . . .’ He stopped, wondering suddenly what it was that he did feel. Rejected. A failure. Stupid.
‘I feel stupid too,’ said the woman with the pale blue eyeshadow and a funny little hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t understand why my husband needs to ‘find himself’.’
‘Because he’s probably got someone else!’ Ed found himself saying. ‘And you . . .’ He nodded at the blonde. ‘You ought to march round to this so-called friend of yours and ask what she thought she was playing at when she shagged your husband. Don’t look at me like that, all of you. If I’m going to stay, I’ve got to be honest. Besides, it will do you good to have a man’s point of view.’
All four nodded and for an instant, Ed felt a thrill. They needed him!
The large woman in purple with a face like an overused Brillo pad began to crumble a biscuit into tiny pieces in her huge, soft white hands with an array of ruby rings. Someone needed to tell her that cable-knit jumpers weren’t cool any more.
‘Scuse me. But can you tell me when we’re going to start singing.’
Singing? Had he stumbled into a madhouse or – heaven forbid – some kind of evangelical let’s-put-our-marriages-right session? To his relief, Ed saw that the others were staring at her patterned purple wrap – a bit like a schizophrenic sofa – with the same confused look on their faces.
‘Singing?’ repeated Karen.
The woman produced a scrunched up newspaper cutting from her pocket. ‘Look.’ She waved it round in the air and a few biscuit crumbs tumbled to the ground at the same time. ‘Scared Of Singing? Then Join Our Always-Wanted-To-Sing Choir.’
‘Mind if I have a look?’ Ed took it from her. Just as he’d thought. The old receptionist was always getting dates wrong too. Thank God for maternity leave which meant she wasn’t t
here for a bit and bring on VAs (virtual assistants instead of the faulty personal variety). ‘It’s on a Wednesday. Not a Tuesday. Wrong night, I’m afraid.’
Good! She’d go now.
The purple woman sniffed. ‘That’s a shame. I was beginning to like it here. And these handouts are really good.’
‘You can’t stay.’ Ed felt as though he was in charge of the meeting now, just like the boardroom yesterday. ‘You’re not divorced.’
A pair of black, beady eyes fixed themselves on him. ‘How do you know?’
Karen leaned forward as though she was about to separate them. ‘Violet, please don’t be offended. But this group is really for people who are on their own again. Does that apply to you?’
The woman was nodding; all five chins. Of course it did. She’d probably always been on her own with a face like that. A bit like Groucho Marx but wider with a slash of red lipstick half way down.
‘And would you like to stay?’ continued Karen.
Another nod but this time, in his direction. ‘So long as that man doesn’t get all stressy with me.’ She leaned forward. ‘Big, aren’t you? You remind me of Elvis without his hair. I used to know him.’ She flicked back her bunches which were tied up with little purple beads like an overgrown teenager. ‘When I was in films.’
In films? Probably a cleaner at Elstree. As for Elvis, that was a new one although he did have the kind of face that everyone thought they knew, ranging from Jeremy Clarkson to William Hague. But how dare she say he was stressed. He was just mystified by what Tatty had told him. Flummoxed, as Nancy had put it. (‘Bloody heck’, had been Clive’s reaction when he’d told him over an after-work Perroni.)
‘Poor you.’ The older woman with the mousy hair turned to him. She really did have the most striking eyes – almost like Nancy’s sapphire earrings – although the eyeshadow didn’t do her any favours. Gorgeous voice, though. ‘None of us meant to upset you. Maybe it’s because you’re the only man here and, unfair as it is, we’re taking some of our anger out on you. Why don’t you tell us your story?’
There was an awkward silence as several pairs of eyes fixed on him. Tell them everything, Clive had encouraged before he’d left that evening. They won’t be shocked. They’re women.
‘All right.’ He stared straight ahead. ‘I asked Tatiana to leave because I found out she was seeing someone else.’ He looked around the group challengingly. ‘Another woman.’
He waited for someone to say something. Maybe the words hadn’t come out of his mouth after all. ‘You know. A dyke. Lesbian. Whatever you’re meant to call it now. I just don’t understand it. It’s never happened to me before. Never! And I need to find out why.’ He leaned forward urgently. ‘Was it something I did?’
Still nothing. Did he have to say it all again? And what was that noise?
To his horror, he could see the enormous woman in violet throwing back her head, revealing a row of gold fillings. The bitch was laughing at him. Or was it singing? She was rocking herself back and forward with a funny crooning noise coming out of her.
As for the other noise, he knew that well enough. Had recognised it immediately even though he’d denied it when Clive had found him, head bent over the microwave.
‘There, there.’ Karen was rocking him in her arms – flabby yet wonderfully soft – hugging his sobs so tightly that he could smell her heady sweet perfume, rather like Viv used to wear. ‘Don’t cry, Eddie. You’re with friends now. That’s why this session is called GETTING TO KNOW YOU. It’s going to be all right. I promise.’
‘Wait!’
The purple woman had jumped up and was pointing to the flipchart. ‘I’ve just got it!’
Got what?
‘It’s not HAPPINESS IS NOWHERE! It’s HAPPINESS IS NOW HERE! That’s what it means. Doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Ed heard Karen saying. ‘Providing you look at life the right way. And that’s exactly what ‘How To Survive Divorce’ is all about. See you next month everyone!’
6
LIZZIE
‘Mummy, Mummy! Can we get a Shit Zoo like Harry and the Bitch in Boden? It isn’t any trouble. It just poos in his mum’s handbag instead of the pavement.’
How could he think of dogs at a time like this? Lizzie undid the top button of her Artigiano jeans (thanks to comfort eating, she’d gone up one and a half belt holes since Tom had left) and searched Jack’s earnest little face for signs of stress from the last few weeks. Nothing! Nothing to indicate they were now officially a One Parent Family. Her son’s usual little pert nose was pink with excitement and his eyes bright, feverishly pleading with her to say yes. He’d been like this all his life, almost as though he was fixated on the need to have something. Anything. A new computer game. A pair of football shorts like Beckham’s even though he didn’t play the game (Jack, that is). The violin – God, that had been a mistake! And now a shiatsu dog, as if they didn’t have enough on their plate already.
She and Tom had argued incessantly over Jack and his inability to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. ‘There’s something wrong with him,’ Tom would snap as though it was her fault. So she’d taken him to the doctor who’d suggested mackerel and Omega 3 (Jack loathed fish and besides, tablets always stuck in his throat) and then she’d taken him on the rounds of acupuncturists, cranial osteopaths and homeopaths (all of which she’d got free through writing about them) and still Jack was the same. She’d just have to make sure he got a Saturday job at Waitrose when he was older, to teach him some manners.
‘No.’ Lizzie tried to speak firmly but kindly the way the last therapist had advised her. ‘We can’t have a Shit Zoo. I mean shiatsu. There isn’t anyone at home all day to look after it.’
That was true enough. If it wasn’t for her parents who usually looked after the kids in the holidays, she’d never have managed to hold down her job. Being editor of Charisma was a 25/7 role. Tom never got that. Since moving into computers, he’d got awfully serious.
‘You’re so competitive!’ Tom had snapped before leaving. ‘Always putting your work first.’
That wasn’t fair. And if she was (competitive that is), it was because of the way she’d been brought up. Maybe, if she hadn’t been an only child or hadn’t been the first member of the family to go to university, it might have been different. Maybe, if she hadn’t gone into something as cut-throat as journalism, she might have been less stressy.
Jack had thrown himself down now, and was beating the kitchen floor – recently laid with some rather lovely, free mock-Victorian tiles as part of a Home Style feature – with his little stubby fists. ‘I’m bored! I want a dog to play with!’
Bored was good, wasn’t it? Character-forming. They’d just done a piece on it; on how kids should have nothing to do sometimes, so they have to rely on their own resources.
‘Don’t be so mean, Mum. If you won’t get me one, I’ll ask Dad. Sharon will look after it.’
Lizzie gasped. How could he be so brazenly callous? It was precisely three weeks and four days ago that she’d explained, oh so carefully, that Daddy had gone to live with Freddie and Ellie’s mum for a bit (she’d been unable to bring herself to say ‘forever’) but that he would come over every weekend and take them out somewhere nice.
Sophie had stared at her silently, while Jack bombarded her with questions. How long was a bit? Was it another sleepover? Why couldn’t they go too?
‘This isn’t fair,’ Lizzie had said on the phone to Tom. ‘You’ve got to come over and tell them face to face.’
‘All right.’
She could hear the tremor in his voice.
‘I have to say, Lizzie, you’re being very grown up about this.’
She was, wasn’t she? Maybe it was because none of this was real. As though she had been someone else on that day when she’d found her husband’s toothbrush with the hamster’s signature in her best friend’s bathroom cabinet. As though it had been another woman who had calmly walked out of the h
ouse, a child in each hand, ignoring Sharon’s flustered excuses (‘Please wait, Lizzie, I can explain.’). Another woman who paced the kitchen, waiting for her husband to come home before silently handing him the toothpaste; the one that she used to joke made her nostrils clear.
‘Do you love her?’ she finally asked after he had sat down, equally silent across the glass, boat-shaped coffee table (that Tom had insisted on buying even though she loathed it) while the kids lounged in front of the television next door.
He had nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’ His eyes held hers as though he was scared too. ‘But we married before we really knew our minds, Lizzie. We’re still young enough to start again. Don’t you think?’
‘We can?’ Jack began jumping up and down, yanking her back to the present where frankly she’d rather not be. ‘You mean it, Mummy? Not like last time. We can have a Shit Zoo?’
She hadn’t said that! But his little eyes looked so hopeful and they’d been through so much, as Karen had pointed out gently, at the meeting. ‘OK. I’ll think about it.’
Jack whipped out his Blackberry (had Tom given him that too?). ‘How long do we have to wait? One week? Two?’
‘Tell you later. Now get ready for school, can you? We’re late.’
Sophie appeared as if from nowhere at the door of the sitting room. Had she been listening? ‘There isn’t any school. It’s half term.’
Shit. Sorry. Sugar. Of course it was.
‘What have you been drinking?’ Sophie picked up her polka dot mug, sniffing it with her disdainful look. Since when had ‘Lack of Respect’ popped up as an Options subject?
‘Coffee.’
