But if it was going to go forward, I would have to be the driver. Without Angelina’s declaration of confidence in me, I would not have been able to do it. While her words had not made a great impact at the time, lost as they were in our last-ditch efforts to save our relationship, they now gave me a semblance of confidence that it was possible to overcome a bad start.
Claire’s friend Mandy, a human-resources manager, and her husband, Randall, a networks guy, were also trying for a child. Despite Mandy being a tiny bit too driven, we all got on well and over time became close friends.
With their support, Claire and I worked our way through the parenthood issue to the extent that we saw our future as a family rather than a couple, with children at the centre of our emotional life.
After all that, Claire didn’t get pregnant. Medical intervention was a step too far for her, and because she didn’t want to have any tests there was never a specific moment when we acknowledged that we were not going to have children. I had myself tested, which was pretty straightforward, and it seemed that all was well there, which, in a way, was a shame. I would have been willing to explore options on my side. After some soul-searching, I decided not to share the result with Claire: it would only have put pressure on her to do something herself, or to take an unfair share of the blame for it not working out.
There was another thing that we had not factored in: we had agreed that we would get married when Claire got pregnant. As time passed and one didn’t happen, the other got lost, too.
Somewhere along the way I stopped playing piano. I suppose I grew out of it. Plenty of people play music, join bands in their teens, but unless you’re one of the few who manage to make a living at it, giving it up is part of the passage to adulthood—and parenthood.
I kept practising, but fell into a habit of just doing exercises on the keyboard with the headphones on.
Early in our relationship, I had told Claire about Angelina, to the extent that there had been a woman in Australia, that she was an actress in a TV series whom I’d met when she sang in the bar, and that she and her husband had got back together. Claire asked me a few questions, I gave her the answers and that was that. She was more interested in my live-in relationship with Joanna than a three-month affair in another country.
It was only with the passing of the years, as my relationship with Claire cooled, that memories of Angelina resurfaced. Should I have shared that with Claire? To what end? Surely all of us have private thoughts that would only create conflict, make laughing stocks of ourselves or hurt others if we shared them. I was committed to Claire, and if I had the occasional moment of nostalgia, that was for me to deal with.
Long before that, the second letter from Angelina came, the one I came to interpret as Come and rescue me. I didn’t, and she married Charlie.
Claire became my life partner and, in time, Angelina became my Great Lost Love, a poignant memory to add pathos to a sad song, with no substance in the present world. I forgot about Love in the Time of Cholera.
Until my inbox went Hi and Do you want to live dangerously?
16
On Wednesday, I was at my desk in London. Thanks to some smart work on the part of my agent, there had been a change in my lifestyle: a contract with a major oil company in the West End, daily travel covered, just six weeks, great rates and an immediate start. It was a long train ride from Norwich, then a short hop on the Tube from Liverpool Street.
I had learned a little about the consulting game since my days of heaping advice on Tina and her Australian colleagues. The essential lesson of a further twenty years’ experience was Shut up and listen, a mantra that sat uneasily with my undiminished need to prove I deserved the money.
On my second day of listening, I discovered that my desk had been taken from one of the field workers who now had nowhere to put his family photos. I offered to work from home three days a week to ease the pressure on office space. Nigel got his desk back and I passed the savings in train fares back to my client.
But on Wednesday I was doing one of my two days at the London office and fitting Angelina into my lunch break.
I sent the first message, right on noon, 11 p.m. her time.
So, what brought all this on?
Brought what on? came the reply a few seconds later.
We should have been using instant messaging, but we were in our forties. Email was more our speed.
Communication. It’s been a little while.
Just feeling twitchy.
Jesus. Twitchy had been her word for being turned on. Did Charlie see her emails? Did she use that word with him?
Twitchy…
I was using the word in a broad sense.
A broad sense.
First time you’ve felt twitchy, in a broad sense, since 1989?
I was very twitchy in 1989.
I’d forgotten…
We went on in that vein, saying nothing that would suggest we were intelligent adults, or indeed that we had anything of substance to say to each other after all this time, while I munched on an apple and drank a bottle of mineral water. My enquiries about why she had got in touch were deflected. I did manage to convey that I had a job.
Have to go. Keeping lunch breaks short: long commute Norwich–London.
TTYL xxx.
Come again?
Talk to you later. Where have you been living?
Under a rock, apparently.
On the Friday, working from home, I had an attack of cabin fever, which I treated by catching the bus to the supermarket and buying a Jamie Oliver shoulder of pork for dinner, skipping lunch to keep the calories under control.
By the time Claire got home, the Weber was making enticing smells, the potatoes were in the oven and I had a bottle of Rioja open. I had not intended to set up a seduction, but that was the way she read it.
We ended up in her bed, the bed that had once been ours. It was good to put myself back in the real world, remind myself what I had. Afterwards I got up to go to the bathroom and Claire said, ‘Hey, come over here,’ and patted my belly.
‘We’re looking distinctly trimmer,’ she said. ‘Stay.’
So I stayed the night with my partner. Life was not getting any simpler. Better, but not simpler.
We slept in on Saturday morning, and I made coffee. Claire went to the gym, I went for a jog, we went to a cafe for lunch together, she had some work to do, I browsed the net, made pasta for dinner, opened another bottle of red and then it was bedtime. I looked at Claire, she looked at me, we kissed—and went to our separate beds.
I can’t explain it. If I had followed her to bed, I know she would not have sent me away. I more than half wanted to. But I was drawn back to my room, where I did something I had never done before. I lit the candle that sat on my bedside table. I turned off the light and let it burn for a few minutes. Then I blew it out.
Over the next week, I was conscious that something had changed in me, beyond the re-energising that had pushed me back into the workforce. It manifested itself as a desire to play and sing again. I had kept up the daily practice, often just swinging around in the chair to play a few exercises as a break from the internet, but without any heart. And no voice. Singing required a different sort of effort and a certain emotional state that, until now, I had almost forgotten.
Claire caught me one evening. ‘Were you singing?’ she said. ‘I haven’t heard you sing for ages.’
‘There’s a reason for that.’
‘You really ought to think about this six-months-on, six-months-off thing. I think work’s good for you.’
‘Could be. I just don’t want it to take over my life.’
‘Point taken. Sing me something.’
‘It was just practice.’
Come Wednesday, I was back in London. No choice about that: there was a weekly team meeting that I was expected to attend, and Angelina’s availability seemed tied to Charlie’s wine-tasting night. I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about our next exchange.
r />
Between Hi Dooglas and her TTYL xxx, I managed to establish that she did not want to talk about her current life, but that reminiscences were fine, even when they slipped into flirtations.
Do you still have the dress you wore to the Mock Tudor?
Which one?
Blue, split down the middle. Of the top.
Believe it or not, I’ve still got it somewhere. Not sure I’d be brave enough to wear it now. I know why you remember it.
Why?
You were all over me in the taxi. It didn’t offer a lot of protection. Lucky the driver didn’t throw us out.
You wear a dress like that, you’ve got to expect that response.
Expect but not deserve.
That’s what I said. I seem to recall you didn’t mind.
And so it went. Harmless fun.
17
I settled into a new routine, or at least managed to assemble the components of my life into a workable shape.
My contract was extended indefinitely, and I was able to organise my London travel to accommodate the pub quiz three nights a week.
My relationship with Claire had taken a turn for the better. On Friday nights we would eat together, open a bottle of wine and sleep in her room. We never discussed it; it just happened. It was not about Claire substituting for Angelina. I had no image of what Angelina looked or sounded like now. It was just a flow-on from feeling alive again.
I was making good progress with the jogging, and with the diet. I was playing real music and singing, often well beyond my regulation twenty minutes. My voice was coming back.
The exchanges with Angelina were the most routine thing of all: a quarter of an hour of online flirting from my desk, once a week, at noon to begin with, then later as winter turned to spring in England and the clocks changed on both sides of the world. I learned nothing about the present-day Angelina beyond the fact that her sexual proclivities had not changed.
Been caught recently?
In your dreams.
I think that one’s yours.
Possibly.
We’re applying for a home loan, and the bank manager steps out for a few minutes…
Behave.
I would sometimes go over the email threads again, and it’s fair to say they occupied more than fifteen minutes in my thoughts each week, but I did not let my imagination take me further. As for Angelina’s motivation: I assumed that she wanted a little of the risqué fun that you can’t expect in a long-established marriage, and had chosen a collaborator who was at a safe distance, shared some history and, thanks to the passing of time, had no emotional attachment.
When Claire reminded me that she would be spending a three-day weekend with her walking club in the Lake District, I found myself feeling edgy at the prospect of being alone. My busy life was working well; I didn’t need any unstructured time. A trip away with Claire seemed like a good idea.
‘I don’t suppose partners are invited on these drinking fests,’ I said on the Monday morning, as Claire woke me with coffee.
‘Everyone’s welcome. But this one’s a point-to-point: we end up somewhere different from where we start, so you can’t stop behind and do barbecue duty.’
Claire was referring to holidays from more than ten years earlier. Randall and Mandy, still without children themselves, had moved to Silicon Valley for weather, money and adventure, and pushed us to do the same. Claire might have gone, too, if I had been willing.
After they moved, we got into a routine of joint holidays (which Randall, in due course, called vacations), alternating between the US and the UK (which Randall had stopped calling home). Mandy was a hiker, and she pulled Claire into it. It worked for everyone: Randall and I would spend the day in scenic surroundings drinking and preparing a barbecue for our partners to eat on their return. If a walk were particularly famous or promising, we might even join them.
Mandy and Randall continued their efforts to start a family. Where Claire had drawn the line at medical intervention, they tried all the options and, after four years of the best that Californian clinics could offer, produced a pair of British-American twins.
We were envious, of course, but the IVF and then the kids took a bigger toll on their relationship than the failure to have children had taken on ours. A major screw-up on Randall’s part was the last straw and there was a horrible custody battle before Mandy won the right to return to the UK with the children.
As happens with divorces, we ended up on one side: in this case, Mandy’s. Claire had not pushed it, but she did not have a big social circle outside work and Mandy was her closest friend. She was also the one living in the UK, so there was a practical aspect to it. Randall and I exchanged emails for a while, but it fell away. Mandy now lived in Liverpool and Claire had joined her walking club.
‘I can walk,’ I said. I was regularly running six miles.
I bought some decent walking kit from a London outdoors shop. Technology had moved on since I had last used a rucksack: the one I bought sat clear of my back and had a built-in rain cover. I took the salesman’s advice that leather boots belonged to the middle ages—or the middle-aged—and chose a pair of blue Gore-Tex shoes that would not have been out of place in a skate park. A lightweight jacket, neat trousers in matching blue rather than khaki and waterproof overpants completed the ensemble.
We took the Friday off and made it a leisurely drive. I sensed that Claire had been in two minds about having me along, but there was no tension. Whatever our sleeping arrangements, we were still a couple.
About an hour into the drive she punched the stop button on Elton John’s ‘Skyline Pigeon’.
‘If I can interrupt your dreams of flying off to distant lands,’ she said, ‘I can give you an update on real life. Distant lands might be part of it.’
‘I gather you’re getting closer to a deal.’
‘It’s looking like I’ll have the deciding vote. VJ wants to take the money and run. Tim still thinks we can do better growing the business ourselves. But he’s not going to stop us if we both want to sell.’
‘You think they might have set it up that way? Split the vote so you have to make the decision?’
She laughed. ‘You may be right.’
‘So?’ I said. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I want to do what’s right for the product. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s been my baby for the past four years.’
‘I have noticed.’
‘I know it’s been tough on you. But we’re almost there. They’re offering distribution in the US. The Americans administer child support at the state level—so we’re talking potentially fifty state governments. Plus DC and all of Canada.’
‘You can’t market it yourselves? From here?’
‘Not to government clients. You have to have the infrastructure. Offices, sales reps, contacts. That’s what they’re offering. But they’re going to need someone who knows the product inside out. Which means me. It’s possible the sale won’t go ahead unless I’m prepared to go to the States and kick it off for them.’
She turned from the wheel and looked at me.
‘For how long?’ I said, glancing out my window at England’s green and pleasant land.
‘A year. Maybe longer. That’s what I wanted to talk about.’
‘We talked about going to the US when Randall and Mandy went.’
‘That was permanent. This would only be for a while. You worked overseas.’
‘In my twenties.’
‘I’m serious about this. It’s really important to me.’
‘I’m taking you seriously. But the deal’s not done yet. Let’s jump it when we come to it.’
Claire waited a few moments, then pushed the play button.
We were staying at a pub in Ennerdale Bridge, where our walk was to start. Another couple of about our age turned up while we were having a drink in the bar. Claire introduced them as Kate and Liz, members of the walking club, and they joined us for dinner.
/> ‘How’s the big deal going?’ Kate asked Claire. Claire saw her maybe once every six weeks, and she knew about it.
‘Painfully,’ said Claire. ‘No guarantees it’ll go ahead.’
‘If they don’t buy it, someone will,’ I said. ‘It’s a great product.’
And hopefully, if someone else bought it, they would have their own experts and not need Claire to relocate.
I had cut short our conversation in the car for the simple reason that I did not want to move to the US, away from my friends, my mother and a local job network. Or, for that matter, from England, my home. But I was beginning to realise that if Claire needed to go she would do so, with or without me.
Her job had become a bigger part of her life than I was, and that would surely continue to be the case if she was running all over America. My own unwillingness to move must be sending an equivalent message to Claire: living in England was more important than our being together. If the deal went ahead, our relationship would quietly come to a close. It would be sad, and I had not started imagining a life alone, but nor was I contemplating any action to prevent it.
We went up to our hotel room, to a bed with those crisp clean sheets that you never get out of the dryer at home. It was a Friday night, but I sensed Claire was not in the mood to follow recent tradition.
We met the other dozen walkers in our group the next morning. The rain had been coming down all night, and was showing no signs of stopping. I stood out like Boy George at an AC/DC concert. Everyone else, Claire included, was wearing shorts. Heavy leather boots, checked flannel shirts, oilskin jackets: this was old-school hiking. I had my rucksack’s rain cover on and my high-tech gear was keeping me dry, but I was glad I had resisted buying the carbon-fibre walking poles.