When Life Gives You Lemons

by Fiona Gibson

  ‘Good night out, love?’ the driver asks, his gaze meeting mine in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Brilliant, thanks,’ I reply, thinking: it was, in a way. At least, no one can say I didn’t make the most of my child-free night.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sunday, September 29

  Like the mature, sorted woman I am, I wake up fully dressed on the sofa, shoes still on, cringing as the memory of last night’s mission starts to filter into my hungover brain. My phone rings, and I scramble off the sofa and retrieve it from my bag.

  Andy! In panic, I run through what to do if accused: deny, obviously. Are you mad? D’you think I have time to go around putting omelettes under windscreen wipers? Act outraged. Suggest that it was probably just some random drunk person wandering by. (Ahem). Who happened to have an omelette about their person. Maybe they stole it from a hotel breakfast buffet? A fried egg would seem more feasible. Christ.

  The ringing stops, and by the time he calls again (which I knew he would) I’m primed to sound purposeful and together, as if have been up for hours, tackling jobs around the house, making the most of the day.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, ‘how’s things?’ He sounds oddly normal.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say.

  ‘Just wondered when Izzy’s back? I thought maybe she and I could spend the afternoon together?’

  Perhaps he hasn’t needed his car today, and therefore hasn’t seen the omelette yet? Or maybe a fox took it in the night?

  ‘She’s not back till tomorrow teatime,’ I reply. ‘It’s a school in-service day.’

  ‘Ah, shame. Just missing her quite a bit at the moment, that’s all. Heard from Spence lately? He’s hopeless at replying to texts …’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I think he’s still in Italy.’

  ‘Yep, you’re probably right. Catch you soon, then.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Oh, Viv?’

  ‘Yeah?’ My heart quickens.

  A pause. ‘You didn’t …’

  ‘I didn’t what?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing. Forget I even said anything. See you soon, okay?’

  Monday, September 30

  Off work for the school in-service day. Before the Brownie camp was announced I’d assumed Izzy would be home, but instead I have a free day stretching out ahead of me. Determined to make use of it this time, I go for a swim and a sauna, the latter of which helps me to literally sweat out the last residues of shame. Back home, I spruce up the house before setting off to pick up Izzy from the Brownie hut. By now, I have managed to convince myself that the omelette mission was nothing more than an amusing jape.

  That’s why I’ve allowed a little extra time to pop in on Penny. As predicted, she is quite hysterical with laughter when I tell her about my Saturday night. ‘This,’ she says, ‘is possibly the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m unhinged?’

  ‘Of course you are!’ she hoots. ‘But there’s no real harm done. It was only a soft, harmless omelette.’

  I nod. ‘It’s not as if I pelted his windscreen with tins of baked beans.’

  ‘Not that I’d blame you if you had.’ She smiles. ‘So, you’re still angry with him, aren’t you?’

  I exhale. ‘I probably shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s been six months since he left. I should be used to it and pretty cool about everything …’

  ‘What’s all this “should”?’ she asks. ‘You feel how you feel, Viv. No need to make excuses or apologise for it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I nod, grateful that Nick isn’t here. I wouldn’t want him to think I’m some kind of maniac. ‘Sometimes,’ I add, ‘the anger just wells up in me and I can’t help it.’

  She touches my arm. ‘That’s understandable.’

  ‘But what if I never get over it, Penny?’ I ask. ‘What if I spend the rest of my life feeling furious, hating him, wanting to leave cold fried foods on his beloved car? I can’t bear to go on feeling like this. He’s Izzy’s dad, so he’ll always be around, whether I like it or not …’

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘you’re not always like this, are you? Most of the time, you’re amazingly calm and sensible about everything.’

  I look down at the floor. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘And the omelette thing? It just came to you, and you ran with it. There’s no harm done.’

  ‘I guess so,’ I say, wishing I could tell her what the main trigger had been; i.e. being upset over the proposal for the museum, and Andy failing to understand why it had mattered so much. ‘Please don’t tell Nick about this,’ I add as I’m leaving.

  ‘Why not?’ she asks.

  ‘Because he might not approve. He’ll think I’m crazy.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sure he won’t, but okay.’ She grins and taps her nose. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  I set off, trying to forget all about it now, and relieved that Izzy will be home soon, which will prevent me from losing the plot anytime soon. The coach hasn’t arrived by the time I reach the Brownie hut. My phone rings, and I flinch, hoping it’s not Andy again; but it’s an unknown number.

  ‘Hello, is that Viv?’ It’s a woman’s voice; not Scottish but from the north of England. She sounds warm, friendly and efficient.

  ‘Yes, speaking?’

  ‘Hi, it’s Hannah Jeffers from the museum. I emailed you about your Girl Friday proposal?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she adds. ‘I probably dashed it off in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I say.

  ‘We’ve had a bit of a time of it lately – a pretty bad case of vandalism, which is really not what we need right now. Or at any time really.’ She pauses.

  ‘Yes, Isla told me about that. It’s terrible. I’m so sorry it happened.’

  ‘Yes, well … I’ve now had time to look over it again. Your proposal, I mean. I wondered if you might have time to come in and talk it over?’

  My heart quickens. ‘Oh! Erm, yes, that would be fine,’ I say, trying to remain calm.

  ‘Isla said you work full time?’

  ‘Yes, but I can easily make some time—’

  ‘I don’t want to put you out. I’m sure you’re very busy—’

  ‘Not at all. I could take a holiday or pull a sickie …’ What made me say that? ‘Not that I ever do that kind of thing,’ I add, ‘but if it would help—’

  ‘There’s no need to do that,’ Hannah says, a trace of amusement in her voice now. ‘We’re open later on Thursday evenings. If that suited you, I could stay behind and we could have a chat then?’

  I take a moment, trying to regain my composure and give the impression that I am mentally running through my packed schedule. ‘This Thursday evening, you mean?’

  ‘If that suits you. How about six-thirty?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, all brisk and businesslike now, ‘that works for me.’

  Tuesday, October 1

  ‘Viv?’ Andy says. ‘D’you have a minute?’

  ‘Just about to grab lunch,’ I reply. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Erm, well … this is a bit awkward.’

  My heart starts to thud. I decide to take the stairs rather than the lift to the canteen so we can talk. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Erm … I wasn’t going to say anything. I thought it might be better to just leave it. But I suppose, well … it’s been playing on my mind, and I need to talk to you.’

  I stop and look out onto the flat, unremarkable landscape. ‘Well, what is it?’

  He sighs. ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘What? Why are you worried?’ Surely it can’t be the omelette; that was three days ago. He’d have mentioned it before now if he’d suspected I did it. Maybe I should never have shared all that stuff about the museum? Serves me right for letting down my guard and confiding in him.

  ‘I’m just wondering if something’s wrong,’ he murmurs.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Andy. And if it’s not i
mportant, I’m going to go and have lunch now …’

  ‘Viv, look … I’m sorry if this embarrasses you, okay?’

  I feel sick now. That must rank as the top phrase from the ‘things you never want to hear’ list.

  ‘But you were seen,’ he adds. The second-top phrase. ‘On Saturday night, at around midnight.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ It can’t have been me. I was tucked up in bed, reading and drinking chamomile tea!

  Andy exhales. ‘You were seen wandering about pissed in the street by my flat, and then fishing about in a carrier bag and stuffing some kind of egg thing under the windscreen wiper of my car.’

  I open my mouth to speak. I could say, ‘How dare you suggest I’d stoop to such ridiculous behaviour?’ But I can’t bring myself to do it. Standing here, with colleagues passing me on the stairs, smiling briefly while I try to look normal, I am incapable of feigning outrage. ‘Some kind of … egg thing?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, that’s what it looked like, she said. Like a tortilla.’

  ‘A tortilla?’ Don’t we call them omelettes anymore?

  ‘Viv, look,’ Andy blusters, ‘I don’t want to make big thing of it. There was no harm done, it’s not about that. It’s more about … you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I ask faintly.

  ‘I’m worried about you,’ he exclaims, adopting a headmasterly tone now. ‘Getting drunk – okay, we’ve all done that …’

  ‘Please don’t start crowing at me.’

  ‘We’ve all been pissed, we’ve all done stupid things …’

  ‘Can you stop this phoney concern please?’ I cut in, anger rising in me now. ‘Okay, so I did it. I’ll admit it now, and it was a bit mad, a bit stupid, not exactly how I’d planned to fill my time when our daughter was away at Brownie camp.’ I focus hard on the uninspiring view of car parks, garages, shabby low-rise buildings and scrubby ground. It’s mainly light industrial units around here. When Flaxico’s sweet potato falafels are released into the wild, the cutely illustrated packaging will suggest they’ve come from a country kitchen with its own vegetable plot. But they’ll have been churned out in the factory like everything else we make.

  ‘It was dangerous,’ he adds gravely.

  ‘It wasn’t dangerous. It was just … ill advised.’

  ‘Anything could’ve happened to you, tottering about on your own like that.’

  ‘I was just a little bit tipsy,’ I mutter, teeth gritted, wishing this wasn’t being discussed on the main stairwell of my workplace. ‘I was hardly lying comatose on the pavement with my knickers on display.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you were more than just a little—’

  ‘Don’t I-think-you’ll-find me!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a thing you say. It’s so patronising. “I think you’ll find the fan heater’s fine.” “I think you’ll find reptiles are dry-skinned, Viv”.’

  ‘What are you on about? Jesus, I really am worried about you. Should you see a doctor?’

  ‘For anti-depressants, you mean?’ I snap.

  ‘Well, for something anyway. I don’t know …’

  ‘Don’t try and come over all concerned about my mental health now. It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m only saying,’ he cuts in.

  ‘Who saw me, anyway? Who saw me doing that thing?’

  ‘Erm, Estelle did,’ he says quietly.

  I let this new information sink in for a moment as Jean approaches on the stairs. Seeing me, she raises a brow and makes a knife and fork motion with her hand. I nod and will her to move on. More people are coming now; it seems to be a craze right now, this taking the stairs rather than the lift. At least, amongst us older ones it is. The youngsters seem to ride up and down in the lift all day, slurping their calorie-laden lattes, without worrying about it.

  I wait until no one seems to be around. ‘She saw me?’

  ‘Yes, she did, I’m afraid, just after she’d left my flat, on the way to her own car.’

  ‘But …’ I push my hair back from my clammy forehead. ‘How did she know who I was?’

  Andy sighs heavily. ‘She, erm … recognised you from seeing pictures on my computer and stuff.’ So he’s shown her our family photos? ‘And she took a picture of you with her phone, and I said yes – it was definitely you.’

  ‘She photographed me? Isn’t that a bit creepy?’ It’s a little hard, at this stage, to maintain any sense of indignation.

  ‘I think it was kind of justified,’ Andy says wearily.

  ‘Oh, do you? And you confirmed my identity?’

  He sighs. ‘Yes, of course I did. She was just concerned, that’s all, seeing a woman out on her own, staggering about—’

  ‘I wasn’t staggering!’

  ‘And she knew it was my car, so she thought she’d better take a photo as evidence.’

  ‘Why didn’t she just come over and say something?’

  ‘Because you looked, I don’t know … kind of scary, I guess.’

  ‘She was scared of me?’

  ‘Yes! I would’ve been scared, seeing someone running rampage with a tortilla.’

  ‘Can you stop saying “tortilla”?’ I say sharply as I start to head up the stairs. ‘This is Glasgow, not Madrid. It’s a ridiculous affectation.’

  ‘Omelette, then,’ he mumbles.

  ‘So,’ I say, my embarrassment starting to morph into impatience as I reach the top floor, ‘she somehow managed to be both concerned about my welfare and frightened of me, and then she came back to your flat and showed you the photo? And I suppose the two of you had a good laugh about it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he says, sounding exasperated now. ‘We didn’t have a good laugh, and she didn’t come back to show it to me. Quite the opposite, in fact. She sent it to me with a curt message saying, “I think this is your wife?”’

  I frown and stand there for a moment, at the door to the canteen. ‘And that was that?’

  ‘Yep, that’s the last communication we’ve had,’ he says dryly. ‘I might as well tell you, we’ve broken up.’

  Afternoon, in the aftermath of Andy’s news

  I’ve fantasised about this so many times. I’ve pictured myself laughing in his face, then ‘turning on my heel’, as women do in the movies, leaving him standing there, forlorn and loveless, cursing himself for being such a fool. I have even imagined him turning up late at night, banging on my door and dropping to his knees as he begs forgiveness, and trying to lick my shoes – or more likely my slippers if it’s at some ungodly hour. But the funny thing is that sometimes, when you’ve yearned for something and it finally happens, the last thing you feel like doing is punching the air and revelling in smugness and delight.

  The truth is, I am neither delighted nor smug right now. I just go for lunch as normal, sitting with Jean and Belinda by the window, proud of myself for not reacting to his news, other than uttering, ‘Oh, really.’ I have no idea why they broke up, and I certainly wasn’t going to let him think I cared by quizzing him about it.

  My afternoon is spent mainly on setting up Rose’s next trip. Now and again, when Andy pops into my mind, I reflect on how unremarkable this news is to me, considering it’s his affair with her that ended our marriage. Perhaps I’ve moved on more than I’d realised? It’s a cheering thought, and one that carries me through the rest of the working day with a spring in my step.

  I pick up Izzy from after-school club, along with Maeve and Esme, another friend from their class, both of whom we’d arranged to have over for tea. As I’m tending to a chicken stir-fry on the stove, Chrissie knocks at the door, clutching a colicky baby, with Ludo hovering beside her, looking morose.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I ask, beckoning her in, as supper is still sizzling in the wok.

  ‘I’m sorry to just bowl up like this,’ she says over Lara’s fretful crying. ‘Tim’s out this evening at a work thing, and I’m at the end of my tether, frankly. It’s okay fo
r him, going out whenever he wants to.’ Her voice rises shrilly. In fact, I’ve never known a man to be more ‘present’ on the home front than Tim is, with a tea towel almost permanently welded to his hand. ‘I’d have called you first,’ Chrissie adds, ‘but I can’t find my phone, I think it might be in the pocket of my jeans that are on a forty-degree cycle right now.’

  ‘Oh, no. You could try rice—’

  ‘That’s what Tim said, last time it happened: “Try rice!” As if that sorts out all the world’s ills. Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘Ludo was asking – begging, actually – to come over to yours.’ She pulls a pained expression as she rubs Lara’s back.

  ‘Really?’ I look down at him. He smiles hopefully. ‘Of course. That’s absolutely fine.’

  ‘Thank you so much. He loves it here, don’t you, sweetheart?’ He glances at me, nodding mutely. ‘And no wonder,’ she adds, ‘when Viv’s so kind and welcoming to you, and so relaxed.’

  So Ludo stays for dinner, and is actually pleasant, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and carrying his plate to the sink, which is as startling as if he had lapsed into Japanese.

  The kids all play together – even Maeve seems to have realised that Ludo’s okay really – and he behaves extremely well. Perhaps he is conscious of making a good impression, in the hope that this may become a regular thing. I don’t think he and Izzy will ever be best friends, but there has definitely been a marked improvement in how they get along.

  ‘Ludo seems to like our house doesn’t he?’ I remark later, when it’s just Izzy and me, curled up on the sofa together with hot chocolates.

  ‘Yeah, it’s ’cause there’s no baby,’ she says.

  ‘Actually, I think he likes it here anyway. I don’t think he just wants to escape from his little sister, do you?’