Other Halves

by Nick Alexander

  A huge lump formed in my throat. “The three of you?”

  “Yes. And you wouldn’t want Luke to have to move, would you?” Hannah asked, glancing over her shoulder to check that he wasn’t back yet. “This is enough upheaval for an eleven-year-old as it is, don’t you think?”

  “So you’re also assuming that Luke will want to live with you?”

  “I’m assuming that he won’t have the choice,” Hannah replied quickly, and from the fifteen years we had been married, I could tell that Hannah had rehearsed this conversation in her head – she had it all worked out. “Unless you’re intending to start taking him to school and picking him up, and cooking and cleaning,” she continued. “Unless you’re going to start buying his clothes and doing his washing.”

  “I already do half of that, and you know it.”

  “But you’d need to do all of it. And you can’t, not with your job.”

  “Nor can you,” I said. “Which is why you’ve just asked . . . sorry, told me to pick him up tonight.”

  “Well . . . that’s only because James isn’t here,” Hannah said. “So for now, I have to go out to see him. Once he’s here it won’t be a problem anymore.”

  I snorted angrily. “Do you really think I’d let James move in here?”

  “Again,” Hannah said flatly. “I don’t think you’ll have much say in the matter. Not once you’ve moved out.”

  “So you get Luke and the house, and I . . .”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Cliff. I’m assuming we’d have joint custody. You’d have him most weekends, maybe two out of three, and some of the holidays. Don’t pretend that wouldn’t work better for you than trying to look after him during the week when you’re flat out. You know what you’re like.”

  At that instant, Luke appeared beyond the frosted glass of the front door, soon joined by a second blurred form, presumably Peter.

  “Look,” Hannah said quietly, all good-cop again. “Think about it. Think about what you really want. And think about what’s best for Luke. But something has to give. Because you’re right. These last few weeks have been dreadful.”

  “And you’re not going to change your mind?” I heard my own voice wobble, and hated myself for expressing such weakness at a time like this.

  Hannah smiled sadly and shook her head. “No, Cliff. I’m not going to change my mind. So you might as well get on with it. OK, look, I’ve gotta go.”

  The second Hannah opened the door, Luke said, “Peter’s got a lizard!” The buoyant optimism of his voice jarred against the deathly ambiance of the hallway. “It’s awesome.”

  As the door closed and the three figures retreated down the path, fading into impressionistic blurs, he continued, “Can I get a lizard?”

  “No,” I heard Hannah say. “You can’t.”

  I felt dizzy. I reached out to steady myself on the bannisters, then lowered myself down so that I was sitting on the stairs.

  What I wanted. What was best for Luke. The answer to both of these questions was easy. The status quo. Or rather, the status quo that we had before James barged back into our lives.

  But clearly, that was now out of reach. “Get on with it,” Hannah had said, and beyond the fear, and the shame, and the sadness, I felt an unexpected glimmer of relief, as if a pressure valve had been located. I hadn’t opened it yet, but even knowing that it was there seemed reassuring. And though I was a little ashamed of the fact, I had to admit to myself that I also felt the vaguest tinge of excitement. Because I too had practised this conversation. I too had run through every possible way this conversation might go, including the exact way it had just unfolded. So if I was a little traumatised that this had finally come to pass, I wasn’t entirely unprepared.

  I sat for a few minutes in the silent house gathering my thoughts, then pulled my phone from my pocket and called my work colleague Bill.

  “Hey Cliff,” Bill answered. “What’s up? You got car troubles?”

  “No,” I replied, my voice a constrained croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “No! No, not at all. Look. Bill, I was just wondering . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever find someone for that flat of yours, or is it still available to rent?”

  * * *

  That night, as we drove home, Luke stared silently at the screen of his phone. When, at a set of traffic lights, I glanced over, I saw that it was switched off. “Everything OK, Champ?” I asked, reaching out to squeeze his knee.

  “Um?”

  “Are you OK? You seem distracted.”

  Luke shrugged. “Just tired,” he said. “We had cross-country running. I hate it.”

  “I get that. I hated cross-country too. But everything’s OK?”

  “Yeah, course,” Luke said, then, “So, are you and Mum splitting up?”

  Deciding I needed to be able to look at his face to have this particular conversation, I scanned the horizon and pulled onto the forecourt of a pub.

  “What are we doing here?” Luke asked.

  “Nothing. Just talking.”

  “Right. So you are splitting up then.”

  I pulled on the handbrake, switched off the ignition and turned to face him. “Has Mum said something?”

  Luke shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “But she’s weirding me out. And James keeps creeping in and out.” A shadow crossed his face. “Shit. Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For saying.”

  “About James?”

  “Yeah. Did you know?”

  “Of course I know,” I told him.

  “Oh, OK then.”

  “Look. This isn’t how . . . I mean . . .” I stumbled. “I thought we’d sit you down, your mother and I . . . when the time was right to have this conversation.” Luke’s wrinkled nose implied that he couldn’t think of anything worse. “But I can’t see any point in denying it,” I continued. “So yes, I guess we are. Splitting up, that is.”

  Luke nodded. “Don’t you like her any more?”

  “If only it were that simple. I like her lots, Luke. I still love her, in fact. But you know, we’ve been together ever such a long time. Since before you were born.”

  “Well, yeah,” Luke said sarcastically.

  “So now she wants something different,” I continued, forgiving and ignoring the attitude.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Like James?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Like James,” I croaked. From the mouths of babes . . .

  “So will it be just you and me?”

  “When?”

  “Will they get their own place?”

  “Ah. Um, well . . . I’m not sure that’s what will happen, Luke. My guess is that I’ll get a flat in the centre of the town somewhere so I don’t have to drive to work, and your mother and James will stay in the house.”

  “And me?”

  “Well it would be . . . I mean, you’d obviously have your say, but—”

  “I want to come with you,” Luke said, matter-of-factly, and my heart swelled with love and pride and gratitude.

  “Thanks, but . . .”

  “God, you don’t expect me to stay with them, do you?” Luke said. “Mum’s weird all the time, and James keeps doing that paedo thing.”

  “Paedo thing? What paedo thing?”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “Not really. But you know, he does that, ‘Hello, Luke my boy. Why don’t you come tell your uncle James what you’ve been up to today?’ thing.” Luke imitated James’ smooth Australian accent with stunning accuracy. “It’s creepy.”

  “Yeah. I can see your point. But I don’t think you should be calling him a paedo. That’s pretty serious. That could get out of hand.”

  “Sure. OK.”

  “And I’m sure he’s just trying to be friends.”

  “I don’t want to be his friend.”

  “Anyway,” I said, feeling vaguely smug that at least Luke hadn’t fallen under James’ charm, “what us
ually happens is joint custody. So you’d spend the school week at home – at the house, I mean. And most weekends you’d be at my place so we could do cool stuff together. How does that sound?” I couldn’t believe that I was discussing this life trauma in such a matter-of-fact way.

  Luke nodded, staring through me as he visualised this. “So I’d have two bedrooms, one at home and one in town?”

  I nodded. “Looks that way.”

  “Could I choose my own stuff? Furniture and all that?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Yay!” Luke said.

  “So are we OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wow, I thought. That was easy. But as I reached for the ignition keys, Luke said, “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “When I have my own bedroom, at your place . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I have a lizard?”

  I laughed. “Maybe.”

  “Really? Can I?”

  “Probably, Luke. You can probably have a lizard. But don’t tell your mother.”

  “Bad.”

  “Bad?”

  “Yeah. You know. Like, bad.”

  “Meaning ‘good’?”

  “Doh.”

  “Meaning ‘yes’?” I asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror and pulling out.

  “I might get a snake instead,” Luke said. “That would be sick.”

  “I don’t think I agreed to a snake. In fact, I don’t think that I even agreed to a lizard yet. I said ‘maybe’.”

  “You said ‘probably’.”

  “You’re right, I did.”

  “They actually sell snakes and lizards in the same shop,” Luke explained, managing to sound utterly reasonable whilst transparently pushing his luck. “So we can look at them and choose together if you want.”

  * * *

  Once the decision had been taken, there seemed to be no point dragging things out. The flat was empty and I could afford it. The house was a war zone and my stress levels were through the roof – I had started to feel actual chest pains whenever I was forced, by circumstance, to speak to Hannah, and when James was around, my eyesight tinted red with rage.

  The following Saturday, I boxed up an initial batch of belongings and loaded up the car.

  As I carried the final box outside, Hannah’s Polo swung into view. She pulled up behind the Mégane, blocking the drive.

  “I need to leave in a minute,” I told her as she cracked open the door.

  “Oh, course . . . sorry,” Hannah said, reseating herself, and restarting the engine.

  Once the car was parked back on the street, she returned and peered in through the window of the Mégane, then straightened and pressed her hand into the small of her back as if she had perhaps carried these boxes herself. “So how’s it going?” she asked. “Everything OK?”

  I stared at my wife for a moment and when she smiled questioningly, I wondered if, even now, reconciliation might be possible. “This still isn’t what I want, Hannah. You know that.”

  “No,” Hannah said, chewing the inside of her cheek and exhaling slowly, as if deflating. She reached out and touched, barely, my shoulder. It was the first physical contact between us since France.

  “It isn’t,” I insisted, encouraged by the gesture.

  “No, well . . .” she said, pulling her hand away and turning to head indoors.

  “Hannah!” I called after her, but she raised one hand in a stop sign, and said, “Just . . . don’t.”

  I leaned back against the car and looked up at the pale October sky. I could sense tears not far away, but Hannah was right. If this was to be performed with any dignity, then we needed to remain stolid, icy, controlled.

  Jolted into action by the arrival of another car in the close – thankfully not James, but I was aware that it could happen at any minute – I ran one hand over my face, exhaled laboriously, and followed Hannah inside for my coat.

  I was overcome by a thought that this was some terrible mistake, not romantically, but strategically. It suddenly seemed to me that despite Hannah’s assurances that we would not become those divorcees, and her agreement that who was to get what and who would live where would all be negotiated reasonably at some future point, I felt in that instant convinced that abandoning – or accepting being forced out of – the family home was a terrible, terrible mistake.

  So that I could obtain some final reassurance, I waited at the bottom of the stairs until Hannah returned from the bathroom.

  “Hannah,” I said. “You promise that we will, you know, deal with all of this prop—” But at the sight of her brandishing my toothbrush, my voice failed me.

  “You forgot this,” she said, descending the stairs with a hard, fake smile.

  I hadn’t forgotten my toothbrush at all. I had simply been unable to force my hand to lift it from the rack. It was one emotional wrench too many.

  When I failed to take the toothbrush from her grasp, Hannah dropped it into the pen pocket of my jacket. I glanced down at it and then, still unable to speak, nodded, took my coat from the peg and turned to leave.

  “Make sure that Luke’s back by seven, will you?” she asked as I walked away.

  Alone in the car, I stared back at my house. At my old house. Fifteen years we had been living there. I glimpsed Hannah looking out at me from behind the shimmering reflection of the autumnal maple tree in the front garden. She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them again and turned back inside. She looked hard. She looked icy.

  “God this is tough,” I muttered to no one in particular as I started the engine and reversed to the road.

  As I pulled away from the kerb, I saw a white Fiesta – identical to the one James had been renting – and had a brief fantasy about accelerating to full speed and ploughing headfirst into it.

  As I passed the car, I was unable to resist glancing in, even though I knew that seeing James rushing in to take my place could only hurt. The driver was, in fact, an elderly woman. She was gripping the wheel, sitting forward, her nose almost squashed to the windscreen.

  When I got to the flat, Luke was waiting outside, his pushbike chained to a tree. I pulled up onto the pavement and switched on the hazard lights.

  “I’ve been here for ages,” he said, exaggerating.

  “Sorry,” I told him. “It’s rush hour. The traffic was bad.”

  “Can I have a key so I don’t have to wait outside next time?”

  “Of course,” I said. I loved the idea that Luke had asked for a key. I wanted, at that instant, to sweep him up in my arms and hug him to thank him for wanting a key. But I knew Luke wasn’t big on hugs. “I’ll get another one cut tomorrow,” I told him.

  “So can I stay here tonight?” he asked as I popped the hatch.

  “You know you can’t.”

  Luke pulled his it-was-worth-a-try face and looked inside the car. “Wow,” he said at the sight of the stacked boxes.

  “So, you just stay here and make sure no one nicks anything,” I explained. “I’ll carry the boxes in.”

  At the top of the stairs, I balanced a box on my knee and fiddled with the lock, then lifted the box again and pushed into the flat.

  It was a beautiful space – a mini loft in a converted kiln building, right in the centre of Farnham. The supplied furniture was sparse but tasteful: brightly coloured modern stuff that looked like it might have been from Ikea, but which, knowing Bill, was far more expensive.

  I dumped the box on the desk and looked around the room, taking in the vast leather sofa, the huge TV screen, the sliding doors and the balcony, and tried to imagine myself living there. It was very much a single man’s flat and I couldn’t picture myself there, because I still didn’t feel single.

  “Has my room got a bed?” It was Luke’s voice from just behind me.

  “Luke!” I shouted, spinning to face the door. “You’re supposed to be watching my bloody stuff. My laptop’s in . . . Jesus!” I ran past him and jogged down the stairs.
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br />   Outside, the car was untampered with. As I piled three boxes up and linked my arms around them, Luke returned. “The flat’s amazeballs, Dad,” he said, and my annoyance evaporated.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. It’s awesome. Can I bring the PlayStation here and put it on the big telly?”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Now, this time, can you just stay here while I take these in?”

  “Sure,” Luke said. “I only wanted to see.”

  By seven the boxes were piled along one wall, the car was relocated behind the building and I was anticipating, with not-a-little-fear, the moment that Luke would leave.

  At seven-o-five, my phone rang. “Is he still there?” Hannah asked without preamble.

  “Yeah, he’s just leaving.”

  “Tell him to leave now.”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you, I want him home for dinner.”

  “You could phone him yourself,” I pointed out, thinking as I did so that this was risking a new level of conflict between us. Moving out was changing the way we related, already allowing me to take greater risks. But the line had gone dead. “You’re gonna have to get going,” I told Luke.

  He nodded and stood wearily.

  “Hug?”

  Luke pulled a face.

  “Please?”

  Luke rolled his eyes but stepped towards me and allowed himself, rigidly, to be hugged.

  I squeezed him tight, breathed in the smell of him. “We can go get a bed tomorrow, OK?” I said as I released him.

  “I wish I could stay here,” Luke said as he headed for the door. “You’re so lucky.”

  I watched the front door close with a sinking feeling and thought, am I? I performed a slow, numb lap of the new space, peering into each room, my hard shoes echoing on the tiled floors. I thought of animals, pacing the limits of their cages, and felt vaguely similar.

  I returned to the lounge and sat on the arm of the sofa. I was hungry, but I had no food in. Ordering a pizza crossed my mind, but I couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than eating alone in front of the television. I tried to remember the last time I had been alone for any period of time. It must have been fifteen years before, when Hannah and I had split up the first time around. That had all been James’ doing too.