Between You and Me

by Carol Mason

  She latched on to my eyes in that serious way of hers again, and then I knew I was about to learn the real reason why I’d been invited here.

  ‘Joe’s a good person. I care about him. He’s the father of my kids. I’ve known him most of my adult life. But I don’t want him back.’ Her gaze held mine. ‘We didn’t work for a reason, but I bear him no ill will – or you for that matter.’

  I opened my mouth to cut in, but she pressed on. ‘If I’m honest, though, I’m feeling a little circumspect about all this. The fact is, I didn’t exactly see Joe getting together with someone this fast. I never imagined we’d be here, in this place, for a very long time. And while I accept you’re going to be in the lives of my children, I’ve never had to contemplate sharing them before – in any capacity, not even a purely practical one.’

  I wasn’t listening. I just kept thinking how odd it was that we were both talking like it was a foregone conclusion that Joe and I were going to be married – when Joe and I hadn’t even had the conversation yet.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is I hope you’ll remember that the kids don’t need a mother, because they have one already. And, as their mother, I will always have a voice. It might not agree with yours. But it can’t ever be undermined.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look, whatever happens going forward, I know you’ll always take Joe’s side, Lauren, because you’re young and you’re in love and that’s what any woman in your situation would do. But remember that if you haven’t heard something straight from me, then keep in mind that there are two sides to every story. Joe is a good person and he doesn’t bad-mouth people, but, well, he has his way of seeing things and I have mine.’

  She stopped there, finished off the dregs of her nth martini. My eyes dashed around her face, not sure what I was thinking or feeling any longer, or what I was supposed to say.

  ‘Anyway . . .’ she said with a note of finality, ‘I just hope that whatever arises, you will always come to me, talk to me. If there’s a problem, let’s hash it out. I say this to the people I work with, you know . . . don’t let it sit there and grow into something . . . into a big thing.’ She threw up her hands a little theatrically. ‘I can promise you I am not a perfect mother – as I’m sure Joe will have already told you – but I can assure you that ultimately, nothing and no one comes before my children, and they never will.’ She met my eyes again, her face a little slack from the booze. But the implicit warning sat there.

  I was about to speak but she held up the palm of her hand. ‘I think we’ve said all we need to say. But I’m glad we had the conversation.’

  With that, she swiftly asked for the bill. She pulled out her credit card and I scrambled to do the same.

  As we walked out, shoulder to shoulder – her so much taller than me – she turned and looked down at me. ‘I just think it’ll be easier for all of us if we don’t start out as enemies.’ Her mouth stretched into one of her slightly ghoulish smiles. And then she added, ‘Or become them.’

  EIGHT

  The Orange Public House is packed. I spot Sophie and Charlie at the end of the bar. There’s an empty seat next to them, saved for me.

  There is a moment, before they notice me, when I’m flooded with a memory I’d rather forget.

  The night I met up with them soon after I’d got back from Santa Monica.

  Same bar. Almost same seats.

  ‘So . . . !’ Sophie gave me that suspenseful, loaded look the minute I’d sat down, before my coat was even off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on then. Spill the beans.’ She rubbed her hands together, like she was trying to start a fire. ‘You’ve met someone!’

  I’m sure that my beaming from ear to ear was all the confirmation she needed.

  It was true I’d flitted through the week with nothing but Joe on my mind. I’d found myself staring into space and smiling, only paying scant attention to conversations. Little episodes of human interaction that would have annoyed me failed to penetrate my happiness. I had gone to bed thinking about him and woke up thinking about him, and I was thinking about him every minute in between. But she didn’t know any of this.

  I was dying to tell her. But her – my friend; not her husband too. Sophie and I have been close since the first year of medical school. And then, a couple of years ago, she met Charlie, who is also a junior doctor, on a work placement, and since then he always seemed to be there, tagging along. I have never fully understood, nor have I managed to bring myself to ask, why he doesn’t have mates of his own. Or is it a sign of possessiveness? Maybe he worries we’re going to sit there talking about him . . . I have nothing against him personally, but I miss the good old days when I could talk to someone who knows me well without it going through the filter of someone who doesn’t.

  Nevertheless, I told them about meeting Joe by the pool. Every detail, from first word to last.

  When I was done, there was a moment where they both just stared at me blankly.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  Sophie looked slightly bemused. ‘Well, you’re obviously not going to contact him, are you? I mean . . . he’s married.’ It wasn’t really a question, more a judgement that was a little out of character for her.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have no intention of contacting him. But that doesn’t mean I can’t think about him for a while – before I let him go and never think about him again. Does it?’

  They exchanged a look.

  ‘Well,’ Charlie said, ‘even if he’d been divorced, no one wants to get involved with an older man with two kids. So you had a lucky escape.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

  ‘Er . . .’ He looked at Sophie again. ‘Because that’s an absolutely humungous commitment. Other people’s children. You’re not just a wife, you’re a stepmother and we all know how the world loves a stepmother.’

  I knew Charlie had a bit of an issue with commitment, having somewhat mysteriously bailed out of his wedding to Sophie just a week before the big day. I also remembered meeting his stepmother at the registry office a month or so later when he changed his mind back again.

  ‘You loved yours,’ I pointed out.

  ‘It took years.’

  ‘I would have years,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s a non-issue, isn’t it? He’s gone and it’s hardly likely that I’ll ever see him again!’

  I expected that to be it. But then Charlie said, ‘But he left you his number. So he’s not entirely gone if you don’t want him to be . . .’ Then he added, ‘He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t want to have an affair with you.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Sophie said.

  ‘How do you make that out?’ I was slightly offended – how did they know what Joe did and didn’t want? ‘If he’d just been after sex, then why didn’t he ring my room after dinner? If he was determined to pursue an affair, why didn’t he ask for my number instead of just giving me his?’

  ‘Maybe he met someone else while he was out for the night!’ Charlie said.

  It was flippant. Just a bit of cheap Charlie humour. Said. Done with. Forgotten.

  Except that I didn’t forget it.

  As I approach them now, Sophie spots me and waves. With the enthusiasm of her gesture, there’s an instant again where I miss the good old days of our friendship, before Charlie came along.

  I remember on one of my first dates with Joe in London, asking him, ‘Why did you give me your phone number in Santa Monica?’ And him saying, after a lot of thought, ‘I don’t really know. I just think that, for the time it took me to write it down, I liked to imagine that we weren’t done.’

  I had loved that answer – but hated that I’d only asked the question because my friends had put doubts in my head.

  I shrug off my drenched raincoat and sit down.

  ‘Are you always this wet or are you just happy to see us?’ Charlie grins, raising his pint glass in a toast to his own wit.

  ‘Ha ha. Very funny.’ I try to pos
ition myself so I can see them both without having to turn my head back and forth. ‘Oh God, it’s been a nightmare of a day!’

  I tell them that a middle-aged woman came in with chest pain. I was the only doctor there at the time. I suspected a clot on her lung, popped a drip in her hand and took some blood. I stepped away to give her bloods to the lab only to then hear the piercing sound of the emergency buzzer. When I returned to the ward, I found her slumped forward, pale, eyes open, unresponsive. In my sudden panic I couldn’t find a pulse so I ordered the crash trolley and defibrillator. I was just about to start chest compressions when a consultant happened to be passing and intervened.

  ‘This woman has a pulse,’ he said, and then pointedly added, ‘Doctor.’ The patient had come to. She’d just fainted.

  ‘My God!’ Charlie slaps a hand to his forehead. ‘Don’t you just hate that!’ He then tells me how he had a similarly humiliating experience at the hands of a ‘bastard consultant’. ‘Let it go,’ he says. ‘Don’t let one prick like that shatter your confidence or your belief in yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘You’re right.’ I’m just ordering a white wine when my phone pings. ‘Ooh, it’s Meredith!’ I pretend to look daunted.

  Grace wants to return that shirt. You could go with her tomorrow night after school.

  Hmm . . . We don’t have the kids on Thursdays. Tomorrow is also my one day off after six straight shifts. I think my way around a tactful reply. Happy to! Should we wait until next week when she’s staying with us, perhaps?

  She fires back, I have a function tmw night. Sitter for Toby, but thought Grace might rather be with her dad than endless hrs on her own.

  Hmm . . . Not you and her dad. Not, do you mind if she comes over on one of your free nights? Not, do you have any other plans?

  I don’t, as it happens. So in the spirit of cooperation, I say: Okay, can meet at Oxford Circus after school. Will text her tmw to arrange.

  She sends a thumbs up, and for some odd reason that little icon makes me pleased with myself.

  When I click off, two pairs of eyes are fixed on me.

  ‘What’s Manifesto Meredith want then?’ Charlie asks.

  Hmm . . . This joke has got a little stale now. ‘I suppose you’re never going to stop calling her that, are you?’ Sometimes I regret telling them all about that night when I met Meredith for a drink, shortly before Joe proposed. What is it with friends, alcohol and the urge to overshare?

  ‘Probably not.’

  I stare at his overfed, cherubic face, the cupid’s bow top lip. Charlie has a certain Downton Abbey public schoolboy charm and a certain endearing pompousness that goes with it – at least, sometimes it’s endearing. I tell them about the text.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit annoying?’ Sophie says. ‘Expecting you to drop everything because she’s got somewhere else to be – when it’s not even your night to have them?’

  ‘Yeah, can’t Grace take the shirt back herself?’ Charlie chimes in. ‘Why do you have to be involved?’

  ‘Maybe Meredith thought it could be bonding for us to go together.’

  Charlie sends me a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Ah . . . I can see that, I suppose,’ Sophie says. ‘Nothing like a girls’ expedition to Topshop to right the wrongs of the world.’

  ‘Well, I can understand why she’d rather Grace isn’t just hanging out by herself all night at home,’ I say.

  ‘She’s not by herself!’ Charlie says. ‘She’s with her brother! And the hired help!’

  ‘She’s fourteen. He’s four. They’ve hardly got oodles in common.’

  ‘Well, maybe her parents should have thought of that before they had them so far apart.’ He says it in passing, like an aside. Then he adds, ‘Why did they have them so far apart, by the way? Do you know? Toby was obviously an accident. Don’t have to be a rocket scientist there.’

  ‘Actually,’ I say. ‘I’ve never asked.’ I take a sip of my wine. ‘I didn’t really think it was any of my business.’ So it’s certainly none of yours . . .

  Sophie must sense I’m turning a little defensive because she says, ‘Where’s Joe tonight?’

  I smile. I wonder if she ever feels eclipsed by Charlie’s enormous shadow. ‘At a client dinner.’

  ‘So he says,’ Charlie says darkly to his wife – as though I am not there.

  I’m just about to take another drink but my hand goes still. ‘Sorry, er . . . what’s that supposed to mean?’ I stare at him a little too hard.

  ‘He’s only pulling your leg,’ Sophie pats my arm. And then she says, ‘Char . . . lie!’ The drawn-out syllables being her version of a telling-off, I assume.

  To try to get past the awkwardness, I click through my camera roll and show them an adorable picture of Toby I snapped when he’d stepped out of the bath and I’d wrapped him in a fluffy pink towel.

  ‘Cute!’ Sophie’s face lights up. ‘Ah! He’s handsome! Looks so much like his dad, doesn’t he? Same chin. Same eyes.’

  ‘Handsome?’ Charlie scowls. ‘Joe? Hmm . . . Maybe for a geriatric.’

  Hearing that word, I think of all the other times they’ve brought up his age like it’s a thing. Always conveniently getting it wrong – despite them both being highly numerate, with good enough memories to get them through medical school.

  What is he? Forty-five now?

  How many years between you? Fifteen, is it?

  When you’re a generation apart . . .

  They have called him old, older, senior, silver fox (despite his hair being nowhere near silver), ‘getting on’, ‘middle-aged’, and ‘almost over the hill’.

  Geriatric takes the biscuit.

  I should tell Charlie, ‘Joe said you were “on track for a heart attack”!’ I am sure that would wipe the smile off his face. But I can’t bring myself to come down to his level.

  So instead of dignifying it, I show them Grace’s latest vlog.

  ‘Oh. My God,’ Charlie says, slapping a hand to his mouth. ‘She’s beautiful, self-possessed and fourteen! Fancy giving birth to that!’

  One day, I’ve a feeling I’m going to have it out with them. There’s a need in me to say, Why are you two always so negative? Why is it that from the minute I met Joe you seemed to be unable to do anything but distrust and disparage? But for now I tell them about the charity bag comment and the glass yourself dig. Predictably, they dissolve into hysterics.

  ‘Anyway . . .’ I feel bad. Joe would think I was very disloyal for getting a laugh at his kids’ expense. ‘She’s young and she’s probably still just getting used to her mum and dad not being together, without the addition of me in her life. It can’t be easy,’ I say.

  ‘She’s not that young, you know,’ Sophie says, carefully. ‘Fourteen is old enough to know you have to treat people with respect.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Charlie chimes in. ‘I was younger than Grace when I got that drilled into me by my stepmother.’ Then he adds, ‘Unless her parents never taught her the R word.’

  ‘You’re quite an expert on parenting,’ I tell him. ‘You know – for a childless gastroenterologist.’

  Sophie chuckles but then seems to stiffen and turn a violent red. After a long pause she says, ‘Well, it sounds like you’re coping with everything, so that’s the main thing.’

  She doesn’t exactly sound like she’s applauding me or cheering me on. I find myself looking at her and feeling like you do when two people are at opposite ends of a divide, and at least one of them just longs to be back on the same side.

  ‘I don’t think I could do it,’ she adds. ‘Someone else’s children . . . It’s a testament to your love for him, I suppose.’ For an instant she looks downhearted. She glances at Charlie and he briefly lowers his eyes and turns very still – a bit like the last person sitting on the bench who didn’t get picked for the sports team. An uncomfortable silence falls over us again. I make an excuse about feeling exhausted so I don’t have to stay for a second drink.

  Neither of them trie
s to twist my arm.

  When I get home, Joe is hanging up his suit jacket in the walk-in.

  ‘I just got in a minute ago!’ he says. ‘Good night? You’re early.’

  I kick off my shoes, go and give him a kiss, then perch on the end of the bed, pulling my feet up and clutching them. ‘Not particularly.’ I watch as he carefully places his jacket back among the dozen or so other suits he owns – all Italian, and all in various shades of blue. And I hear an echo of Sophie’s words right after she first met him: He really cares about his appearance, doesn’t he?

  He glances over his shoulder. ‘Why? What happened? You seem flat.’

  I stare into a blank space for a second or two. ‘I don’t know, really . . . Nothing exactly happened . . .’ I try to think what it is. ‘I suppose I don’t always feel connected to Sophie like I used to, and at times it can be a bit sad.’

  He stops what he’s doing, tilts his head. ‘Since the husband came along you feel you’ve lost a friend.’

  I smile. Joe is impressively intuitive for a guy. ‘Yeah. In some respects.’ Is that how Sophie feels since I met Joe?

  He resumes undressing. ‘So what vacation are they not going on this time?’

  This makes me chuckle. Since they’ve had to pay back Sophie’s parents for the cost of the wedding, they’ve had to cancel all their holidays. ‘Ha. They don’t really talk about themselves very much anymore, actually.’

  ‘So what do they talk about then?’

  I can hardly say Mostly you, and how wrong they seem to think you are for me. ‘Work. That’s pretty much it.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like fun.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not fun at all. So how was your night?’

  He reaches for another hanger. ‘Oh, it was okay. Wasn’t really into it. Sometimes those events get a bit like a frat party.’ He turns and smiles. ‘Drank more than I’d intended. I’d much rather have stayed home with you, to be honest.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I tell him, though I don’t really know what a frat party is like.