I tried to keep up a cheerful little patter in the car while we drove here and was largely ignored and now I’ve sort of run out of steam, so I’m doing an impersonation of a hyperactive Playschool presenter on speed. Christian comes through the door, and I can sense him recoil in horror. I rang him on the mobile to say don’t come, but he insisted. He’s trying very hard to force himself to take an interest in the kids, but I can tell it isn’t easy. And why should it be? The last time he had anything to do with kids was when he was at school and was one himself. Which, by now, you’ll realize wasn’t all that long ago.
He approaches the table and, even in my stressed state, I’m overwhelmed by feelings of love and lust for him. I need him desperately, and not in the more usual places, but I need him behind my eyelids and in the crook of my elbow and in the hairs on my neck. I’m far, far too old to be having a crush on someone so young, but I haven’t got time to discuss it at length with you now. This is an important meeting, and I want it to go so well.
“Hi,” he says with a feigned casual wave, and all my children stare at him agog. Tanya is the most agog of all. To her it is probably the equivalent of seeing her mother with one of Boyzone. He looks very trendy today in a hungover, pallid way.
“I wanted you to meet someone,” I say in my overbright singsong voice. “This is Christian.”
Christian folds himself awkwardly into a chair that is too small for his long legs.
“Are you our new daddy?” Elliott has always liked getting straight to the point.
Christian looks horrified. “No.” He looks to me for backup.
“He’s just a friend,” I say.
“Have you done it yet?” Elliott asks.
“Elliott!”
Christian has blanched. “What?”
“Have you kissed my mummy?”
Christian looks relieved. “Oh…”
“Elliott!”
My son retreats into sulk mode. “I was only asking!”
“Well, don’t,” I warn him.
“I thought he was my new daddy because we’ve already got a new mummy,” Elliott informs me brightly.
I’m glad I haven’t yet ordered the hamburgers because I probably would have spat mine out. “Have you?” I think my voice comes out.
“She’s called Orville.”
“Orla, you limpet,” Tanya snarls. “She’s called Orla. Orville was a green duck.”
“Does everyone want a Happy Meal?” I am shrieking and can’t stop.
“There’s nothing here for vegetarians,” Tanya complains.
“Have a Chicken McWotsit,” I suggest.
“That’s got chicken in it.” You can’t pull the wool over that girl’s eyes.
“Chicken is considered a vegetable in certain parts of the world,” I insist through clenched teeth. Even Elliott looks up at that one, and he is convinced that tinned Spaghetti Hoops count as vegetables.
“Right,” Tanya says, even though she means all adults are liars.
“If you’re going to be a vegetarian, Tanya, you’ll have to do a bit more research on your subject.”
“I’ll compromise my principles,” she states loftily. “Just for today. I’ll have the fish thing.”
“Good,” I say. “Thomas? Happy Meal?”
Thomas nods. He is the only one here who realizes that it would be a really bad idea to contradict me. “What do you want, Christian?”
He seems surprised that I’m speaking to him like a five-year-old, but he shouldn’t be, because I’ve gone into bossy, overbearing mother mode and he just happens to be in the way. “A Big Mac,” he says, somewhat bemused. “I’ll come with you.”
“No,” I say, or shriek. “You wait here. Get to know the children. I’ll be back in a minute.”
His face is horror-struck, but I can’t help it. He’ll have to cope. My nerves are shredding. I can feel them coming apart from my muscles and the little fibers are ripping away from each other, fraying like an overstretched rope. I need Valium. Lots of it. Not fucking hamburgers and synthetic milk shakes! I also need five minutes alone while I’m queuing up to get our food to think about the fact that even though I’ve only been gone a week, Ed has apparently managed to find someone else to take my place.
I tap my foot as I wait for the spotty teenager who is serving me to get our order right on the third attempt. Do they all have spots because they eat too many free hamburgers? My insides are seething quietly, and there is probably smoke exuding in comely drifts from my ears. No wonder my husband was standing there so smugly at our front door. I should have taken a bit more notice of this Orla-Orville woman. Perhaps I would then have realized just how many times Ed casually dropped her name into the conversation. Orla this. Orla that. And now Orla the other! My God, and he is trying to make out that I’m the villain of the piece. That I, alone, am responsible for this family’s breakdown when he too has been quietly contributing to it without my knowing. And I had been feeling terrible. Truly terrible. I was seriously thinking that this whole thing was just one big victory for the fuck-up fairy and was really, really going to sit down and decide what was the best thing to do. For me, for Ed, for the kids. And now I find I wasn’t in possession of all of the facts. Well, they say the wife is always the last to know. And I know that I shouldn’t feel righteous in my indignation, but I do. Despite the fact that I too have little dark sins lurking on my soul.
I hand over a second mortgage to the spotty young man, hoping that Thomas will be blessed with clear skin, take my tray of Happy Meals, fish burgers and Big Macs and turn to head back toward my family. They have another woman in their lives now, my children, and it occurs to me that they may well like her more than me. Will she be funnier, kinder, more tolerant than I am? For some reason, I feel as if I’m being edged out of my own life. I wonder if this Orla is young and beautiful too, and realize, with a pang of sharp emerald-green jealousy, that age as well as size really does matter.
An uneasy silence descends on us while we eat, and I’m trying not to be too aware that we’re all bunched together in a cartoon car. Why, oh why, did I think this had any hope of being a success? Christian smiles at me. He is trying to be understanding, but I can tell from the rod that appears to be holding his shoulders up that he’s not what you might term classically relaxed. I feel his hand squeeze my thigh under the child-size table.
“So,” Christian says confidently, “what do you want to be when you grow up, Thomas?”
Thomas looks vaguely surprised at being addressed like this, but is too polite to be dumbstruck. “A paleontologist,” he says quietly and disappears into his Happy Meal box again.
“Thomas loves dinosaurs, don’t you?” I say.
Thomas nods.
“And what about you, Elliott?” Christian is clearly feeling emboldened. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A burglar,” Elliott says with conviction, which pretty much ends the conversation. Christian returns shame-faced to his chips.
“I need to go to the toilet,” Elliott says through his burger.
“No, you do not, Elliott,” I say patiently. “You went for a wee five minutes ago. Eat your burger.”
Elliott wriggles pointedly in his chair.
“Sit. Still.”
“I need to go to the toilet,” he insists.
“You do not!”
“I do!” Elliott shouts. “I’m doing a poo! It’s peeping out of my bottom!”
The whole of McDonald’s turns round to look at us.
Elliott is now purple. “I’m having to try really hard to hold it all in!”
I know just how he feels. Christian puts down his hamburger. “Go to the toilet, Elliott,” I mumble. “Be quick.”
Elliott shoots off at breakneck speed. A steady hum of noise descends on McDonald’s again. We are all sitting in silence.
“Well,” I say cheerfully. “This is going well, isn’t it?”
Christian, Tanya and even Thomas look at me as if I am co
mpletely and utterly barking mad. I stare at my Happy Meal and want to weep. And I seriously contemplate whether it is possible to slit one’s wrists with the sharp edge of a chip.
CHAPTER 42
I am sitting in Jemma’s flat and we are both crying. Jemma is issuing tissues and chocolates, and I am consuming both in equal measure.
“You look dreadful, Ali,” she says. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
“I’m living with a sexually rampant twenty-three-year-old whose hormones are currently on lust overdrive and who is constantly, for some inexplicable reason, mad for my body,” I sniff. “Of course I’m not getting enough sleep.”
“Bitch,” Jemma hisses, and we laugh through our tears. “And you’ve lost weight.” She passes me another chocolate and I oblige. “Cow.”
“I’m not eating,” I say, stuffing a chocolate into my mouth. I wipe my snot away again and drag my hair back from my forehead, which feels hot and feverish. “The children were all so horrid today. They were like…like…like…”
“Children,” Jemma supplies.
“Christian hated them. They hated him. They were deliberately obnoxious.”
“Elliott is always obnoxious. With a modicum of training, he could be the next Macaulay Culkin.”
“Except for Thomas, who sat there quietly like he was dying from the inside out.” I start to cry again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I hate to see you so unhappy,” Jemma sniffed. “Can’t you just go back to Ed and sort this all out?”
“He’s got someone else,” I point out. “That’s why I’m sitting here sniveling.”
“At least you still have feelings for him.”
“You can’t just turn your back on years of marriage. Of course I still l-love him.” I stutter slightly on the word “love,” as if it’s something that’s now an alien concept to me. And I must say that my traditional perception of that giddy state we loosely term love has shifted somewhat recently.
“And he still loves you. He can’t have found someone else.”
“My children are a fairly reliable source of information.”
“They are not. You give them far too much credit. You should know what children are like. They put two and two together and come up with four million.”
“I should have had my suspicions about this Orville woman. Ed’s been talking about her a lot recently. That’s a sure sign of adultery.”
“He’s probably doing it deliberately to make you jealous,” Jemma says.
That makes me brighten considerably. “Do you think so?”
“Oh, Alicia,” Jemma sighs. “You are such a fucking idiot.”
That’s what I like about my sister. She is so supportive.
“It may have escaped your attention, but you’ve just run off with a hunky young toy boy. How do you think that will make Ed feel?”
I can feel my lip pouting involuntarily. “I don’t know.”
“Then try, Alicia. Try. Try thinking about someone other than yourself for once.”
I think that’s very unfair. That’s what I think. It is a little-known fact that solicitors can charge clients for “thinking time” on a case. Two hundred pounds an hour for just thinking. Great work if you can get it. Those of us who have to think on our own time probably do considerably less of it. No one thinks about anything anymore. I don’t. I don’t have time. I don’t have the time to think whether my bum looks big in anything or whether I’m getting the right balance of vitamins in my diet. I don’t have time to think if I’m too tired and emotionally weary to go on. I don’t have time to think about what to wear in the morning, I just open the wardrobe and grab what’s nearest to hand and fling it on. I didn’t even think about this. “This” being my life. And “this” is a fairly big thing to go through without giving it due thinking time.
I think if I did have time to think, there might not actually be anything there that’s remotely useful to think about anymore, and that frightens me more than you’d care to know. I think it’s because all my good thoughts fall off the back of my brain like lemmings as I fill up the space in the front with shopping lists and borderline nutritious menus. I think my brain is frozen. All that is between my ears is Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. I am taking the lurch-about-from-one-crisis-to-another approach to my life, and there’s no need for you, my sister or anyone else to point it out to me, I know that it isn’t working. What shall I do? I’ll have to think about it. When I get time.
“I reckon this is all down to the fact that you’ve always suffered from unrequited-love syndrome,” says Jemma, who clearly has more time to think than is good for her. This is because she dates married men and spends most of her time alone waiting for them to sprinkle their company on her, but I don’t feel anywhere near brave enough to voice this thought. You wouldn’t think I was the older, wiser sister who has suffered the pain of three children and has a bag full of worldly experiences to her name, would you? “You’ve always had crushes on younger, unattainable men,” she continues blithely, unaware that my jaw is setting. “Now that you’ve actually attained one, you’re not quite sure how to handle it.”
“Lots of women have younger men these days,” I protest.
“Who?”
“Joan Collins, Tina Turner. Probably Ivana Trump. And undoubtedly Cher. They all have younger men.”
Jemma tuts.
So I’m at the cutting edge as far as soap stars, aging rockers and has-been film stars are concerned. Great. And it is a mixed blessing going to bed with someone as acutely young and beautiful as Christian. It makes me feel utterly powerful and sexy and much more aware that my body is falling to bits.
My sister is right, in some ways, although it grieves me to admit it. And, anyway, she prefers the fat stomach and even fatter wallet look in a man, so there’s really no need to throw stones. But I have always mooned over pop stars and movie stars, although not in the bare-bottom “moon” sense. And I’m not talking about the clammy-handed crushes that saw me through my teens either. I’m talking about now. I still do it. Perhaps this is really why I have no time to think about serious things. Set me off musing on what might be up Russell Crowe’s little leather skirt and I am lost in an entirely adult clammy-handed reverie. Am I alone in hoping that Brad and Jennifer won’t last? Robbie Williams has a lot to answer for with his chubby romper suit, biteable bottom and “Angels.” At least I have the pretense of buying teen CDs and magazines with free glitter nail varnish taped to the front for my daughter, who is, for some reason, uninterested in any of Robbie Williams’s anatomy. I hope she’s not a lesbian.
Perhaps there is something deeply unfulfilling about my life that makes me desire these elusive men. I have no idea. Add it to the list of things to think about. Eventually.
“God,” Jemma says. “I’m going to open some fizz—otherwise we’ll both be depressed. Bubbles are just as good in times of crisis as they are for celebrations. In fact, they’re probably better.”
“I have to be getting back.” I think I want to cry again. “I’ve got to face Christian,” I say weakly and reach for my handbag.
“Not yet,” she says. “Not until you’re happy again. Or, at least, drunk.” And she snatches the bag from my reach.
My copy of How To Be a Sex Kitten at Any Age falls to the white ash laminate floor with an embarrassed clonk. I can feel a rash coming up on my neck. Jemma picks my book up and scowls at the title. “Oh, Alicia!”
I sit on my hands and lower my head.
My sister waves the book at me. “Since when have you been reading this brain mush?”
“I’ve only flicked through it.”
“And what useful advice, if any, does it contain?”
“It says I should scatter frozen rose petals on the bed every night to create a sensual ambience,” I mutter into my chest.
“Oh, that’ll make a world of difference!”
She could be right. I have to say that when I pictured rose petals scattered on Christian’s comba
t camouflage duvet beneath the warring, bleeding soldiers, I thought better of it.
Jemma has opened the book. “‘Drape an item of perfumed lingerie over the table during an intimate lunch.’” Her eyes are wide with horror. “Ali!”
“I wasn’t going to do it!” McDonald’s was hardly the right setting for Estée Lauder–soaked knickers.
“You are not the sister I know and love,” she says sternly.
I wish Jemma’s sofa would eat me.
“Would you be reading this sort of crap if you were still with Ed?”
“No,” I mumble guiltily. Jemma would have made a great headmistress.
“You are clearly not confident in this new relationship,” she pronounces. “It is damaging your self-esteem. I can’t understand you, Alicia. You and Ed are so perfectly suited. I was saying to Neil…”
“Neil?” I look up. Jemma has blushed. Which is a very rare sight, as nothing makes my sister shame-faced. She buries her face in How To Be a Sex Kitten at Any Age. “Ed’s Neil? My brother-in-law Neil?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing with Neil?”
“We had supper together.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s nice.”
“Did he ask you?”
“No. I asked him. It’s not unusual these days.”
I look at her suspiciously. “Did you have a good time?”
“Yes,” she says. “And we’re going to do it again.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.” This is all very interesting. “So. What were you saying to Neil?”
“Nothing,” she says, and her pink-tinged face deepens to strawberries, beetroot and tomato ketchup mashed together.
I think I like the sound of this. Or do I?
CHAPTER 43
Robbie dumped his backpack on the table. “You are looking particularly ragged, my friend.” He opened the fridge door and grabbed a beer. The fridge now smelled of Mr. Muscle rather than fungi and rotting vegetation because Ali was cleaning up for them, but it still contained nothing remotely healthy, unless you counted Budweiser and Toblerone. Oh, and one corner reserved for Rebecca’s fat-free yogurt that was strictly out of bounds to them. Robbie flopped down next to Christian on the sofa.