by Carol Mason
She nods. ‘And that was true.’
‘Then how can you have any faith that he won’t get fed up one day and just leave, if he’s so commitment-phobic?’
She stares, unblinking, at a coaster on top of the table. After a long time, she says, ‘If you knew something about Joe – something he didn’t want anyone else knowing – would you tell your best friend? I mean, even if you knew the secret would stay with them?’
For a moment I think we have time-travelled back to last night and are three bottles of wine down and this is just some rather odd continuation of our heart-to-heart.
‘God,’ I say. ‘No. If he asked me not to tell anyone, I wouldn’t tell them.’ Ironic; I don’t even know if Joe has ever confided anything in me that would merit that level of secrecy.
‘What if you personally thought this secret of theirs really didn’t need to be a secret at all? That it mattered to them but would hardly matter to the rest of the world? Would that give it less sanctity? Would it make you change your mind?’
I think about this. What the hell has he done? But I comfort myself with the idea that, sadly, Charlie’s a little too straight to have done anything truly terrible. ‘If people want to keep things private, that’s their right,’ I say. ‘It’s not really for me to play judge and jury. So no, I wouldn’t tell anyone.’ And then I add, ‘Not even you.’
‘Well, then . . .’ she says, a little enigmatically. ‘You might have some idea of the position I’m in.’
Intriguing, I think.
TWENTY-TWO
Joe is thankfully out when I get back, so I nap, to make sure I’m fit for my late shift, then shower, change and head into work. When I come home early the next morning, he has left me breakfast and a note. Had to rush out. Dinner tonight at Alfonso’s? 8pm? Meet me there. I reserved.
I go into our bedroom after I’ve eaten and I lie there for ages staring out of the window instead of sleeping.
Alfonso’s. My mind can’t help going back to the first time he took me there, a couple of months after we’d begun dating. It was June. My twenty-ninth birthday.
Joe showed up with a bulky package under his arm. ‘Yours, I believe.’ He placed it in front of me.
‘What is it?’ I asked. It wasn’t a wrapped gift. In fact, it was still in its shipping packaging, and had his name and address on the label.
He just smiled.
Its origin was France.
I peeled my gaze away from his, tore into the parcel. There was a moment where I didn’t believe my eyes. ‘Oh my God! My bag!’
He was watching me like he was fixing every beat of this in his mind. ‘Of course. What else?’
Just a few weeks earlier I’d been mugged walking from work. Aside from the fact that I could have been hurt, and my credit card was stolen, what I was most upset about was losing the beautiful bag I’d bought in the south of France, from one of those charming little establishments that sells fabric and leather and jewellery.
‘How did you ever pull this off?’ I asked him. I couldn’t have even told him the name of the tiny little shop where I’d bought it, because I didn’t remember it.
I could see he was trying not to look too pleased with himself. ‘There aren’t that many artisan gift shops in Èze. It wasn’t that hard.’
Turned out he’d done some research into the town, then rung the shop and described it to the owner. As soon as he’d said jade green they knew exactly which one it was, and had an identical one custom-made and shipped over.
‘I truly can’t believe it!’ Tears filled my eyes. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me! So damned thoughtful!’
‘I’m a damned thoughtful kind of guy,’ he said, and it was cute how he seemed to bask in the compliment. ‘At least . . . I hope I am!’
‘Seriously. This makes me very happy!’
He smiled a big smile. ‘That’s good. Because the truth is . . . your happiness is all that matters to me.’
His words, the promise in them, just kept writing themselves in my mind.
‘That’s a powerful statement,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Just a true one.’
After our meal was finished I asked him, ‘What are we doing, Joe?’ There had been lengthy spells between eating where we had just sat there and stared at each other.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘I’m falling in love.’ He looked rather affected by his admission. ‘I think I felt it from the first words you ever spoke to me.’
‘What were the first words I ever spoke to you, by the way?’ I asked.
‘I think they were piss off.’
‘I would never, ever say that.’
‘You did. With your eyes at least. But it didn’t stop me. It was never going to stop me.’
‘But we have to be sensible.’
‘Do we? I vote we be anything but sensible.’
‘I thought you said you were a patient guy.’
‘I was. I am. And I still will be, if you tell me this is all too much too soon.’
I opened my mouth to tell him that it really had been no time at all, but then he said, ‘The thing is, Lauren . . . I don’t want to rush anything, but I don’t want to waste your time either . . .’
A change came over him. I wanted to stop him right here, have him not say anything that might ruin this moment.
He looked at me with serious eyes. ‘I’m more than aware that I can’t offer you what someone who’s never been married or had a family can. I’ve walked down the aisle already, bought my first house, seen my first kid born . . . All those special firsts, those special, priceless events that couples long to share. I’ve done them all with somebody else.’
Were we really tiptoeing around a life together? Already? I was almost delirious. ‘I don’t need to walk down an aisle,’ I said. ‘Marriage is about a life together, not just a day.’
I might have assumed I’d get married in a church, but I’d never whiled away the hours planning my wedding. It wasn’t my idea of the most romantic day of my life.
This was possibly the most romantic day of my life.
‘I don’t even need to have children!’ I said. ‘I’d be fine if we never had them.’
Was it true? I’d definitely assumed I’d have kids – rather than actively longed for them.
It felt true when I said it.
He looked at me tenderly, almost gratefully. But then he said, ‘Lauren, I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m in a compartment here with you, a bubble really . . . And fantastic though it is, it’s not my real life. It’s not the real me. And you’ll see that the moment you see me with my kids – you’ll see who I really am.’ Then he added, ‘In a way, I’m two people. I’m who I am with you, and I’m the product of all my other choices to date.’
I thought about this – the two Joes. Weren’t we all a product of our choices? Didn’t we all compartmentalise, to a certain degree? Offer up certain aspects of ourselves to certain people, and keep others hidden? Especially in the beginning.
Whatever it was he was saying, whatever reality he was putting forward, I had the strongest sense I was going to deny it anyway.
‘Call me crazy but I actually think this is the real you!’ I said, almost panicked that this was his roundabout way of saying he didn’t think we were a good idea anymore. Perhaps the wonderful gesture of the bag had been some sort of goodbye gift rather than a birthday one. I was flooded with emotion, a giddy sense of recognising that you don’t know how much you want something until you’re faced with its possible unattainability. ‘I like the real you. I really, really like him . . . and I would welcome every challenge that lay ahead.’ Then I added, ‘If we have an ahead.’
I can still hear the sound of my voice when I said that. My own intrepid faith. Also, that little voice of reason saying, How can you be so sure you’d welcome a life you know nothing about?
I watched him watch me, the tenderness in his eyes. I could almost see – almost feel –
his longing to believe it too.
Eventually he spoke, and I dreaded what was coming. ‘Lauren, I love that you’re saying all this . . . I love your conviction and your fearlessness . . . I’m just not convinced it’ll be as easy as you’re being gracious enough to think it will be.’ He looked sad suddenly. A little uncharacteristically defeated.
Everything was hanging in the balance. As much as I needed to believe in the romantic illusion of us, he needed to believe in the reality.
‘I’ll take my chances,’ I said.
As my Uber cuts through busy London traffic, every second of that conversation is still parked in my head and I can’t dislodge it.
Your happiness is all that matters to me.
How could it be? He had kids.
How could I not have seen that?
When I walk in, he’s sitting at a table – not the table where we sat that first time, though I can’t help but glance at it, as though to frequent, even just mentally, a happier time.
His head is down. He’s tinkering on his phone.
‘Hello,’ I say, and he looks momentarily startled out of deep concentration, then he stands and kisses me, his hand alighting briefly on my shoulder.
‘Our table was taken.’ He nods over towards the couple who are sitting where we sat that night.
I want to smile at his nostalgia, but all I feel is a little circumspect.
I sit and we exchange an update on one another’s day. Eventually, once we’ve been served our drinks, I say, ‘Why here, of all places?’
He sets down his vodka soda, his gaze lingering on the glass. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, then he looks at me. ‘Hoping to breathe the rarefied air?’ He glances again in the couple’s direction. ‘I suppose what I’m saying is, it’s a heavy burden for you. All this . . .’ He briefly upturns his hands. ‘And I knew it would be. I knew. The fact of the matter is, I was so busy focusing on how you would handle it all – my pre-existing family – that I didn’t really think much about how I would.’ He frowns slightly. ‘And I’m not doing the best job of it, I don’t think.’ Then he adds, ‘Clearly.’
I don’t exactly rush to contradict him. And then I say, ‘I’m struggling with the situation at times, yes . . . I don’t always know where I stand with you. And that’s a very odd feeling for me to have about the man I’m married to.’
‘I realise,’ he says, as though he’s disinclined to admit it. ‘I get it.’ He hangs his head a little.
‘I sometimes get the impression you don’t trust me on some level.’
He continues to stare at the table, nods. ‘I know. I mean, I know why you feel like that. And it’s me . . . I’m not always the best communicator.’
I wait for him to expand on that, to open some sort of door, but the waiter comes over and asks if we’d like to order dinner. When he leaves, Joe says, ‘I’m going to try to do better, make more of an effort.’ He brings his eyes to meet mine. ‘I never – ever – want to have to live through another evening where my wife walks out of our home.’ He looks deeply disturbed by his own words. ‘I suppose, in bringing you here, I’d like you to try to remember that you did once have a lot of faith in me – in us. And I’m going to hope you’ll be able to feel that again.’
It occurs to me that instead of being informed by age and experience, Joe is the one sounding idealistic now.
I stare at his hands crossed on top of the table, his wedding ring, feel myself searching for this new-found faith he’s talking about. But my brain is a bit like sonar in a black ocean.
He cocks his head in a slightly cajoling manner. ‘What do you say? Can we try to do better?’
We?
TWENTY-THREE
‘Mummy got a fined ticket off the policeman because I was in the front seat and not in my booster seat!’ Toby rugby tackles me the instant I walk in the door.
He’s waving some sort of – ‘What is that?’ I say, staring at the long white gadget in his hand. Then, ‘Oh my gosh! Where did you get that?’ Somehow he’s found Joe’s electric toothbrush. He’s ripped the head off, exposing the sharp metal shaft. I snatch it from his fingers as he’s about to fence me with it. ‘That’s really dangerous. You could impale yourself!’
‘What’s a pale myself?’
I smile and gaze into his earnest little eyes. ‘You could hurt yourself, is what I mean. That’s not a toy.’
He chuckles.
‘Oh, he loves those things.’ Grace walks into the hallway and leans against the wall. I am intrigued by how every day is like a new slate for her – events of previous ones wiped clean. ‘He once tried to shove one in a wall socket and nearly electrocuted himself.’
‘Yikes!’ I say, and he mimics me – ‘Yi . . . kes!’ He flings his arms around my legs, and I almost lose my balance from the exuberance of his hug.
Joe comes out of the bedroom, his phone pressed to his ear; a business call, I can tell, by his terse tone, the hardness in his eyes. He stares unseeingly at the object in my hand. ‘Well, let’s circle back later today,’ I hear him say, and then he clicks off.
Toby tells him the same thing he just told me, about the ticket.
‘What do you mean, Tobes?’ Joe asks. We follow him into the kitchen where he goes to the pantry and pulls out a bag of coffee beans.
‘The policeman said I was in the wrong seat and Mummy said we’re in a hurry and we only live around the corner and the policeman said she had to calm down from swearing because unless she was calmed down from swearing she couldn’t drive home and he gave her a fined ticket anyway!’
Joe shakes his head. ‘Why were you not in the proper seat in the first place, Toby?’
‘Because I didn’t want to sit in it and Mummy tried to make me and then she finally said I could ride in the front if only I shut my trap and so I did.’
In lieu of the toothbrush, Toby has found one of my flip-flops and is tugging at the rubber joint.
‘Well, next time you’ve got to do as you’re told!’ Joe wags a finger at him. ‘And hey, don’t do that to Lauren’s shoes.’ He takes the flip-flop away. ‘You’re going to trash them.’
I smile. But I can’t help thinking that if it had been me who’d let him sit in the front seat and not his booster seat no one would see the amusing side.
‘I should probably get on my way,’ I say, going into our bedroom to find the shoes I’m actually going to wear. I’ve agreed to meet Sophie and Charlie at our pub off the King’s Road.
Joe follows close behind. ‘We were wondering . . . How about for today you don’t meet your friends and you come with us to brunch? I really hate this Sunday policy of you going off . . .’
I turn to face him. The way he says it almost implies that the motive behind my Sunday gesture of self-erasure has been a selfish one.
‘Can you?’ he says. ‘Grace is going to meet her friend for an hour and I thought we could take Toby for a swim at the lido then head out around one.’
I’m suddenly aware that Grace is hanging by the door, taking all this in. Then Joe notices her, and says, ‘Grace. Why don’t you tell Lauren you’d love it if she’d ditch her friends and come for brunch with us?’ For some odd reason it takes me back to the day at the Cenotaph; that sense of being strong-armed.
Grace gawks at him for a second as though to say, You have got to be kidding me! Then, when his expression remains stoic, she says, ‘Okay. Yeah . . . Lauren, why don’t you come with us for brunch today? That would be great.’
Joe’s face is full of so much expectation that I find myself reluctantly saying, ‘Sure. I can call them and tell them I’m not coming.’ I suppose I did just see them recently, and, besides, the one positive of Sophie and Charlie being joined at the hip is at least they’ll have each other to eat with.
‘Great,’ he says. And then he adds, ‘It’s just as well I took the liberty of making a reservation at Kenwood House. For four.’
I am off Thursday and Friday. Joe has to go on a business trip to Edinburgh so he sugges
ts I go with him. He has a function with some of his clients on Wednesday night, then on Thursday he has meetings all day.
After we check in and he dresses to go off to his dinner, I order room service, have a bath, then pull out my Kindle. He doesn’t come back until late, and smells of Scotch and cigars. He’s buzzed and looks handsome. Flushed but sexy, the top two buttons of his white dress shirt undone. We have sex. Then he swiftly falls asleep.
Next morning, I watch him get ready for his meetings. The perfect application of shirt, cufflinks, suit and shiny shoes. We arrange to meet back at the hotel around five with him promising to text me should plans change.
I start out with a list of things I’d like to do and see – a host of great intentions – but the second he leaves I stretch out in a patch of sunshine on the bed and am still there three hours later. Eventually, when the hunger pangs kick in, I order room service coffee and croissants, devour three of them, then FaceTime my parents. Since they moved to Spain I’ve tried not to focus on this nagging sense of abandonment that follows me around. Perhaps Only Child Syndrome brought on a more pronounced reaction to them giving up England in favour of permanent sunshine and sangria. Retiring to a better life is their right, of course. But I sometimes inwardly baulk at this idea they seem to have – that because I’m on a good career path and I’m married now, I’m ‘all right’, that I don’t need to feel I’m their priority any longer, that I don’t require the comfort of knowing that, if all else fails, my folks will always be firmly planted in my corner.
I tune out for some of the call: my dad’s latest rant about Brexit, the stories about their vibrant social calendar, their ever-increasing circle of ex-pat friends who have moved to their complex. Some upsetting incident about a dog drowning in a swimming pool and my dad harping on about how everyone should just be grateful it wasn’t a kid. When, finally, they get around to asking how I am, it feels like a bit of an afterthought, so I say the usual, ‘I’m fine,’ tell them a bit about work, then make some excuse about how my phone is almost dying.
After I shower and dress, I take myself for a wander down Princes Street. It’s a beautiful day, and I discard my jacket and mostly settle for staring into shop windows. In the late afternoon, I find a beer garden down a back street and have half a lager and a ploughman’s lunch. I’m just trying to decide whether it’s worth attempting to visit the castle when Joe texts.