EX Files

by Jane Moore

  “What she means is, so malleable and so willing to do whatever Jean wants.” Kate had appeared at Mark’s side.

  “Unlike you, you mean.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She looked wistful. “Jean and I didn’t particularly get on at first, but I like to think we had a grudging respect for each other by the end.”

  Mark nodded slowly “She was gutted when we split up.”

  “I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “She wrote and told me.”

  He looked stunned. “My mother wrote to you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It seemed irrelevant. It was hardly going to change anything between you and me.” She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, hi, Mark. Kate here. Your mum reckons we should get back together, so do pop round later.”

  He stuck out his tongue. “What did it say?”

  She frowned. “Does it matter? It was all a long time ago.”

  “I’d still like to know.”

  Kate surveyed the room. “She seemed to be laboring under the misapprehension that I had dumped you.”

  “Really?” Mark did his best to look surprised.

  She shook her head slowly. “You know, if you ever decide to give up cooking, you’d make a great actor.”

  He grinned apologetically. “Well, perhaps I did mislead her a bit. But it wasn’t strictly untrue. I did want the relationship to carry on after I’d moved out, and you wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Hmmm, what a convenient perspective. Anyway, judging by her letter, your mother clearly fell for it.”

  “Was she terribly harsh?”

  “She basically said I’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to me and that my stupidity knew no bounds.”

  “Ouch. Sorry about that.”

  “She was partially right. I had lost the best thing that had ever happened to me. But it was your stupidity that knew no bounds.”

  “Mea culpa.” He held up his hands. “We had a great few years, though.” He nudged her playfully, and her champagne splashed over the side of her glass.

  “Christ, all those years.” Kate looked wistful then wrinkled her nose. “What a waste.”

  “Is that how you see it? A waste?”

  “Well, six of my prime years were spent with someone I had no future with, so yes, I’d call it a waste. It’s like putting all your money into a bank account for that long, only to find you don’t get any interest at the end of it.” She folded her arms and stared at him pointedly.

  “You see our relationship like a bank account?”

  “One that’s closed, yes.”

  “Well, you’re the one who closed it,” he muttered, anxious now that no one should hear their charged conversation.

  “Bollocks,” said Kate loudly. She apparently didn’t give a damn who heard. “You’re not talking to your mother now. I know what really happened.”

  They glared at each other until a voice broke into their battle.

  “Hello there. What are you two talking about?” It was Derek.

  “Long-term investments,” said Kate, quick as a flash.

  He nodded approval. “Oh, very wise.” It didn’t seem to strike him that this was an odd subject for his son to be discussing with an ex-girlfriend on the night before his marriage to someone else. “It’s something to which we should all give serious consideration.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Kate emphatically.

  “Kate!” It was Ted, trailing Alice in his wake. “I’ve been looking for you. Alice was just telling me all about her journey here.” He crossed his eyes.

  “Oh?” Kate turned away from Mark and Derek to smile at Alice.

  “Yes, proper little Attila the Hun she is,” said Ted. “Land and sea to get here.”

  “Didn’t you fly?” said Kate, opening the floodgates to tedium once again.

  “No, dear, that’s far too expensive. I got the train to . . .” Alice was off again, but Kate didn’t care. Although all the right expressions came to her face, her mind was elsewhere, whirring with the ins and outs of the conversation she’d just had with Mark. When Alice closed her eyes to try to remember a bus number, Kate took the opportunity to glance over her shoulder.

  He was still standing with his father, who was in the middle of a long story too, by the look of it. As she was about to turn back, Mark gave her a wistful smile.

  As Mark’s last year at university drew to a close, reality set in. With a 2:2, commonly known as “a drinker’s degree,” under his belt, he faced the sobering prospect of having to decide what he wanted to do with his life.

  Brian was sorted: he had already started at Chester to do a one-year CPE course in law, and Kate was determined to break into journalism. Using the scattershot approach, she had written dozens of letters to London-based magazines, and eventually landed a job as junior feature writer on a diet magazine.

  By September, she and Mark had moved into a rented studio flat on the wrong side of Kilburn in north London.

  Mark had decided he wanted to pursue his dream of becoming a chef and had made two unsuccessful applications, but got lucky with the third: he was taken on as a trainee chef at a restaurant in Wandsworth, south London.

  The hours were torturous and he was treated very much as the junior, but he adored it. He thrived in the highly charged atmosphere, and absorbed every little bit of information he could. At home, he practiced on the two-plate Baby Belling cooker. He had never felt so content, but he was scared witless of telling his parents about his job.

  “They won’t be pleased,” he said to Kate one night. “They think I’m applying to banks in the City.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she snapped. “It’s about time you stood up to your mother and stopped her trying to make you into another Tony. You’re your own person, stop being such a scaredy-cat.”

  He knew she was right. All his life he had lived in the shadow of Tony’s towering achievements. “Tsk, why can’t you be more like Tony?” was his mother’s battle cry as, yet again, she made it clear she was disappointed by something Mark had or hadn’t done. Over the years it had undeniably taken a toll on his confidence.

  Spurred on by Kate’s scaredy-cat remark, Mark went alone to Southampton to tell his parents that he had no intention of following Tony into banking. He offered to help his mother with dinner and was peeling potatoes while his father sat reading the local paper at the kitchen table, when he broached the subject.

  “By the way, you two,” he said, with as much cheer as he could muster, “I’ve got a job.”

  “That’s fantastic, son!” Derek laid down the paper. “Which bank?”

  Mark refrained from answering as Jean enveloped him in a congratulatory hug. Then he said, “Don’t get too excited. It’s nothing to do with banking.”

  “Oh.” Derek looked disappointed, then gave his son an encouraging smile. “So what is it, then?”

  Mark looked at his parents’ expectant faces and swallowed hard. “I’ve just started as a trainee chef.”

  The silence was deafening. Jean looked at Derek as though her world had just caved in.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” his father’s tone was low and measured, “that you’ve completed three years at university to take on a job you could have got straight out of school?”

  Mark raised his eyebrows. “You could look at it like that, I suppose, but I choose to see university as a positive experience that makes me better equipped to deal with the pressures of the restaurant business.” He wasn’t sure what he’d just said, but it sounded good.

  Clearly Derek didn’t view it like that. “What pressures, Mark?” His voice was harder. “Is it whether to put beef or lamb on the dinner menu? Or whether to order more Chablis than chardonnay?”

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic, Dad.” Mark was seething at his father’s dismissive tone, although he remained calm. “Just because I don’t want to follow in Tony’s footsteps doesn’t make me a failur
e.”

  Jean touched his forearm. “Of course you’re not a failure, darling. It’s just that we wanted so much more for you than sweating in a kitchen all year round for peanuts. It’s a tough profession.”

  “I know that, Mum. Grant me some intelligence. I haven’t gone into it lightly.”

  “So why have you gone into it?” Derek’s tone was softer, but his expression was still tense.

  “Because it’s what I want to do. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but I was just too scared to tell you. Little wonder, considering your reaction.”

  “So you only went to university to please us?” said Derek.

  “Sort of, yes. But in retrospect I’m really glad I did. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  As his parents began grudgingly to ask more questions, Mark told them it was a small but prestigious restaurant in south London, known for its excellent French cuisine. The plan was for him to do a year learning the basics, then attend one of the famous chefs’ Cordon Bleu courses part-time, juggling it with his job.

  The next morning, he set off back to London with a lighter heart. He knew he’d disappointed them, but at least he no longer had to live a lie.

  The downside of Mark’s having “come out” was that he felt even more obliged to make an unqualified success of the path he had chosen.

  After eighteen months in the job, his tenacity and dedication paid off and his boss moved him from lunches to dinners, but this meant that he and Kate became “grumpy shits that pass in the night,” as she put it. Her hours at the magazine were nine to six, while his were five to midnight. She had every weekend off, he had Sundays. After an exhausted Mark had enjoyed a lie in, they had one afternoon a week in which to cram their relationship. Inevitably, their conversations became stilted, as if an aged aunt had asked them to recap on the week they’d had. Their feelings on important matters had to be aired on Sunday, or held over until the next, and were inevitably stifled or forgotten.

  Their social lives went separate ways, with Kate often going out to product launches or dinner with friends, while Mark sometimes hung around the restaurant for after-hours drinks just to wind down.

  Soon, Sunday became argument day and the gulf between them widened. Kate would complain that he didn’t show enough interest in her job, and Mark would retort that he was too “bloody exhausted” to think of anything but sleep. It went on for a year, until one particular Sunday in August.

  They were sitting at the kitchen table having yet another row because Kate had just discovered he hadn’t managed to get time off to attend her magazine’s annual summer ball. “I told you ages ago to take the night off,” she snapped. “I can’t believe you’ve let me down like this.”

  Mark sighed wearily. “I’m sorry, but I’m still pretty junior and I don’t call the shots. I put the request in, but they came back yesterday and said no.”

  “I might as well be single,” muttered Kate. She poured herself some more coffee from the filter jug.

  Mark waited for her to put the potential weapon down. He’d been mulling over their problems for some time, and had hatched a plan he thought might alleviate the situation. This was the perfect opportunity to bring it up. “This isn’t working, is it?” he said softly.

  She nodded. “You’re damned right it isn’t.”

  “In which case, I have a solution.”

  “Oh?” Her expression was mocking.

  Feeling the faint tickle of nerves in his chest, he paused. “Brian’s new job is in Croydon . . . and I thought I might rent a flat with him.”

  Kate blinked a few times, clearly absorbing what he’d said. Then her face crumpled, the bravado gone. “Have you been planning this behind my back?”

  In fact, Mark had been telling Brian for some time that he and Kate weren’t getting on. So when Brian suggested sharing a flat, he’d given it some serious thought and concluded it was probably a good idea for a short while at least. “No, no,” he said hastily. “Not at all. He suggested it the other day and I thought it might be a good idea. You know, give us some space.”

  Kate shook her head slowly in disbelief. “What utter rubbish. Christ, Mark, you must think I’m really stupid.” She stared at him defiantly, but he didn’t respond. “So when are you going? This afternoon?” she asked sarcastically, tapping her watch.

  He decided honesty was the best policy. “It won’t be until the end of next week,” he said quietly. “But if you want me to go before then, I can find temporary accommodation.”

  “If I want you to go before then?” she spluttered, a solitary tear running down her cheek. “Mark, I don’t want you to go at all. I thought this was forever.”

  “Kate, I’m not saying it’s over, just that we should live separately for a while because we seem to be arguing so much.”

  She looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “And when will we be seeing each other, Mark? Between midnight and two a.m. on Wednesdays and maybe a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons—provided, of course, the bus from Croydon runs on time?”

  They fell into a sullen silence, which was punctured by a distant car alarm. Mark picked up a ballpoint pen and started drawing glasses on a magazine cover picture of Jude Law.

  Wiping her eyes, Kate cleared her throat. “I’m not one for ultimatums, as you know, but I just don’t think this is a healthy way to deal with a bad patch. You’re running away from me, which doesn’t solve anything. If you move out of here to live with Brian, it’s over. I don’t want half measures.”

  They went to sleep that night, two people in the same five-square-foot bed, without touching. Mark knew the ball was firmly in his court, and slept barely a wink.

  In the morning, as Kate got ready for work, he pretended to be asleep. When he heard the front door click, he got up, made himself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table to write a letter.

  Dear Kate,

  We both know we haven’t been getting on for some time now, and I put it down purely to our circumstances.

  We are both working long hours, trying to get a foothold in our respective professions, and it means we have little time for each other. Added to that, we live in a very cramped space and seem to be getting on each other’s nerves. That’s why I thought it would be better for me to move out for a while, to give us some space from each other. I felt it would be a bonus to regard it almost as dating again, seeing each other as a treat, rather than late at night or early in the morning when we are both feeling tetchy. I felt that if I changed our circumstances for a while, then the pressure would be off and we could slowly get things back on track. Yet you seem to think this is a bad idea, that I am somehow running away from our problems. That was never my intention.

  The last thing on my mind was for us to finish. I love you very much and thought we had a future together, but I still feel strongly that we would benefit from living separately for a while. If you don’t feel the same, then obviously it’s your right to say so.

  Tonight I am going to check into a B&B until the other flat is ready, basically because I don’t want either of us to suffer several days of tension.

  Please, please reconsider what you said, as I would like us to continue going out together.

  I will call you in a couple of days when you’ve had time to think, and see whether you have changed your mind.

  All my love, Mark XX

  He knew he had twisted things and made it look as though any split would be all her doing, but he genuinely wanted to carry on with the relationship. He just couldn’t stand the close-quarters arguing anymore, and longed for the simplicity of life with Brian.

  He left the note on the table, went into the bedroom, and started to pack.

  In terms of cleanliness and location, it was certainly a comedown from the studio flat Mark had shared with Kate. But he preferred it because there were no more arguments or disapproving looks, just a best mate who never judged or criticized him and who could talk about the four-four-two for
mation long into the night. Male heaven.

  In an ideal world, Mark would have lived with Brian and carried on dating Kate, just as he’d done at university. But she had stuck to her decision that if he moved out it was over for good.

  Mark found a B & B quite easily and had left it three days before he plucked up the courage to call Kate at home one evening. After a stilted conversation in which he inquired several times if she was OK and she answered, “Fine,” stiffly, he had suggested they meet for dinner.

  “What for?” she said tersely.

  “To talk things over.”

  “What’s to say? Are you coming back to live here?”

  “No, Kate. But I don’t understand why we can’t go on seeing each other.”

  “You don’t understand much at all, Mark, do you?” Her voice was cold. “You feel you can’t live with me, and I don’t see the point of going back to the beginning again and dating. All that means is that you want to get laid without any commitment.” She made a small sobbing noise. “I’m not interested in being your friend. You’ve broken my heart, and the easiest way for me to get over it is to have no contact with you. So, if you care about me at all, you’ll leave me alone.” The phone went dead.

  Mark had felt sick for several days, wondering if he’d done the right thing. He’d thought Kate would come round to his way of thinking, and it was a huge shock when she didn’t. They had shared so much over the past few years that he felt lost without her.

  Three months later, when he was rewarded with a small promotion at work, it took all his strength not to pick up the phone and tell her. He wanted to hear her tell him how much he deserved it, how it was just the beginning of the dizzy heights he was going to scale. Instead, he told Brian.

  “That’s amazing, mate,” Brian said, his eyes fixed on the television.

  Mark went to his room for a self-indulgent cry. Life just wasn’t the same without her, but he knew he didn’t want to move back in with Kate. Not yet, anyway.

  As only men can, he and Brian had spoken about his split from Kate just once, when the shattered relationship had been referred to fleetingly in football terms. “I always thought you two were playing the long game, mate,” said Brian, after Mark had relayed an old story that involved Kate, as most of his anecdotes did.