by Ali Mercer
‘Let’s worry about that when the time comes, all right? It’s still early days,’ Mum said.
‘Yeah, except you’ve known him since before Ellie was a baby, and you were pretty keen for us to make a good impression. You know what, Mum, it’s either serious or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways,’ I said.
And then I couldn’t take it any more – the confusion on Ellie’s face, and the way Mum was looking at me, almost pleadingly, wanting something from me that I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I could give. So I did what I always did when the emotional temperature of our little family of three got too hot for me to handle: I went into the bedroom I shared with Ellie and closed the door.
* * *
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay there listening to Ellie’s quiet breathing and thinking about Mum and Mark, and about what might happen if they really were serious about each other.
Mum being with someone would change things. However nice he was.
I’d always assumed that I would be the one who who’d rescue us. I had it all planned out. I would go to university and get a decent job and make some money, give Mum some security in her old age and help Ellie to get by in an adult world that wasn’t always kind to daydreamy, nightmare-prone girls. And now it seemed like Mark was going to be the one to do the rescuing.
After a while I went into the kitchen, so as not to wake Ellie, and started reading Macbeth again. I hadn’t said so to Mark, but I thought it was brilliant, probably the best thing I’d ever read. People always went on about marriage like it was something good, but Macbeth told you something different. It showed you that being together could bring out the worst in people, as well as the best.
I just hoped Mark wasn’t going to have that effect on Mum. She’d survived Dad, but it had been a struggle. Mark might look a whole lot better on paper, but if he turned out to be awful in some way that wasn’t currently obvious, I wasn’t at all sure that she’d be able to survive him.
Three
Jenny
Ava thought I was angry with her after the tea at that hotel in Kingston, but I wasn’t – I was upset. Upset for myself, a little, but mainly for Mark. He’d hadn’t expected all that much, to be fair, but he’d tried his best, and it meant so much for him. I’d tried to warn him… I’d told him that Ellie would be sweet and Ava might be all right but could be, well, unpredictable. But he hadn’t listened. He didn’t want to believe me; he’d hoped for so much more.
And Ava had a point. She could have made it more sensitively… but Mark hadn’t been paying Ellie proper attention. He couldn’t start off with them by playing favourites, even unintentionally. But how was he to know about the delicate balancing act of having two children – how you had to find it in yourself to give as much as you could to each of them, even if you felt like you were running on empty? Because otherwise, it wasn’t you they’d end up hating. It was each other.
Problem was, I couldn’t get Ava to go easy on him just by telling her to change her behaviour. She’d never been one for just doing what she was told. She had to understand why, or she’d resist all the way.
I’d always been in awe of my oldest daughter: she was so smart, so strong-willed. So unlike me. I had learned long ago to avoid confrontations with her. It just didn’t help. I shouldn’t have spoken sharply with her in the ladies’ after she’d snapped at Mark; she was as stubborn as anything, and I’d only got her back up.
It was just so frustrating, and it only made it worse that I understood how she felt. Because as far as she was concerned, why should she welcome this new man who’d suddenly walked into my life, and hers and Ellie’s by extension? And she’d always been protective of Ellie: yes, she was prickly with her, but the moment she thought someone else was doing Ellie down, that was it.
I had to speak to her. I’d have to watch what I said… but there had to be some way to make this easier for her.
But I was busy the next day – six appointments, scattered all around our part of the outskirts of London, with the usual mix of clients: kids, older ladies, new mums, working mums. And as usual, being with other people, talking, working, keeping busy, helped put it all out of my mind.
One thing no woman ever has enough of is time. So I’d always been in demand, right from when I started freelancing, back when Ava had just started school and Ellie was a baby, and I used to cart her round to the appointments with me. People knew they could slot me in for a cut and colour between one thing they had to do and the next.
Also, they trusted me – they knew they’d come out looking pretty much the same as before, just a bit neater and possibly less grey. And I had a reputation for being good with kids. I enjoyed the work, always had – it was really satisfying, all of it, the combing and cutting and drying, painting the colour onto the foils, the chatting, and afterwards, seeing them look pleased with what I’d done.
Just lately, though, it was giving me a few more aches and pains, which was an occupational hazard: all that stooping and twisting. I’d started to wonder what it would be like to still be doing this when I was fifty. Or sixty. And it had occurred to me that there might come a day when I might not be able to do it any more, and I had no idea what I would do then.
But then Mark had turned up, and suddenly figuring out a plan B didn’t seem quite so urgent any more.
Because there he was, so different to Sean, so keen, and so perfect.
No dating algorithm would have matched us – he ticked all kinds of boxes I didn’t tick, being well-educated, professional, a home-owner, and a higher-rate taxpayer, something I’d never managed to become however many hours I worked. But we had something even more important than all that in common. We both wanted a second chance, and we both had exactly the same ideas about what that might involve.
I was only thirty-six, not too old to have a different life. If he’d found me five or ten years later… then it might have been different. But as it was, I knew I could give him everything he wanted.
Both of us understood that. We’d talked about it, but we actually hadn’t needed to discuss it at any great length. It was all astoundingly clear, compared to how dating usually seemed to be, compared to the stories of hope and betrayal and confusion I heard as I cut people’s hair all day long.
But I couldn’t explain all that to Ava, or Ellie. Not yet anyway. He wouldn’t let me. That was one thing he was absolutely clear about.
I had to stay calm, to behave as if I was just letting things unfold rather than pushing them forward as quickly as possible. I had to carry on as if it wasn’t yet a done deal, as if I might opt out at any time if I decided I didn’t like him after all. As if it was casual. No commitment.
But nothing’s casual when you have children, in my opinion.
My last appointment of the day – a full head of highlights at half past four – got cancelled, and when I got back to the flat I bumped into Peter, my downstairs neighbour, coming into the lobby. Peter lived in the garden flat, which he owned; he lived alone, was in his fifties, and grew the most beautiful roses. My gaydar was pretty unreliable, but in one of our first conversations he’d made a passing reference to his husband having passed away. This had two immediate consequences for our relationship. Firstly, obviously, I was sorry for him – how rotten to find someone you could actually be happy with, only to have death snatch them from you. And secondly, I felt safe with him. I knew I could be friendly to him without being accused of leading him on.
Peter had the most beautiful silver hair, which he’d never let me anywhere near. He always had it done at an upmarket barber’s in the West End, and smelled of their pomade. He had a part-time job at one of the museums in London, and always dressed immaculately for work – wool suits in winter, linen in summer. From the outside his life looked calm and orderly and peaceful, but the snatches of heartrending opera that sometimes drifted upstairs to our flat suggested that from the inside, it sometimes felt very different.
Peter insisted on carrying my cas
e of hair colours up the stairs for me. I didn’t try very hard to stop him, as it was pretty heavy.
‘That was rather a swish ride you came home in the other day,’ he said.
‘Oh. It was, wasn’t it? You saw it?’
‘I certainly did. And I want to hear all about it. I’ve made some cake with courgettes from the allotment – pop down later and try some, if you want. It’s almost healthy. Bring the girls if they’d like some, though then we might not be able to talk quite so frankly. But of course, if you don’t want to tell me about the man with the Jag, we don’t have to speak frankly at all.’
He went off whistling down the stairs, and I wondered how he’d react if I told him everything about my history with Mark. Not that I was about to do that. A little bit of the truth would be quite enough, at least at this stage. It would be more than I’d told my daughters, anyway.
But the prospect of even a cautious chat with a sympathetic outsider was a huge relief. Suddenly I realised how anxious I was about the whole thing, however happy and hopeful I was about Mark. It was because I was happy and hopeful that I was anxious – I wanted so much for it to work. We both did.
We needed it to work. There wouldn’t be another chance.
The chance to offload even a little bit was too good to pass up. Peter wasn’t involved, he didn’t know Mark and he had no axe to grind. I had thought that I needed to talk to Ava… but actually, maybe what I really needed was to let off steam to someone else.
Ava was doing homework in the girls’ bedroom and Ellie was reading in the kitchen. We didn’t have all that many books in the house – I didn’t have a lot of time for reading – but I’d always taken the girls to the library when they were little, and Ava still took Ellie most Saturdays, while I was working. It was scary how quickly one phase succeeded another, without you realising it at the time. For years on end it had seemed as if Ellie read nothing but books about fairies, and now it was Harry Potter – great big books, but she chewed through them like nobody’s business. When she’d finished the series we’d need to find something else.
Neither of them liked the sound of courgette cake – either that, or they realised I wanted a chat with Peter on my own. Or maybe they were just happy doing what they were doing and didn’t fancy being dragged away from it and into social contact, particularly not with their mother and a neighbour who was getting on in years.
My girls weren’t ill-mannered, but they also didn’t go out of their way to find company. They were very different to me like that: I dreaded being alone – both of them seemed to quite like it. I sometimes wondered whether it was my fault, and if perhaps they would have been keener to go to people’s houses or have people round if we’d always lived somewhere that you’d feel comfortable inviting visitors to. Our current flat was fine – we’d been in grottier places – but the girls still didn’t have their own rooms, and when Ellie was a baby, after I’d broken up with Sean, we’d had just one bedroom for all three of us, with me and Ava sharing a double bed and Ellie in a cot to the side. Ava in particular seemed to have got into the mindset that home was out of bounds, and it was inevitable that Ellie would follow her example.
I told them I’d be back in half an hour and went downstairs to Peter’s. I liked being in his flat; it was so obviously a home, rather than somewhere that was rented – the furniture was old and solid, pieces that Peter had picked up at auctions down the years, there were carpets that weren’t the cheapest you could get, and there were lots of framed prints and pictures hanging on nails he’d put in the walls. Also, the place had an atmosphere of calm that must have been something to do with Peter living alone there.
When I was working I listened to people as much as they wanted me to, but when I was with Peter, I was the talker. We sat in his dining room and had tea the old-fashioned way, from a teapot, and ate the courgette cake – which didn’t taste all that much of courgettes, a good thing in my view – and looked at the daffodils coming up in the garden. Then I told the story of how I’d cut Mark’s hair years ago and then our paths had crossed again and we’d started seeing each other, and explained that I’d recently decided to take the big step of introducing him to the girls.
Peter showed no obvious sign of smelling a rat. He said, ‘So what did they make of him?’
I shrugged. I couldn’t bring myself to pretend it had been an out-and-out success and anyway, when you’re lying, you’re meant to stick to the truth as far as possible.
‘Ava was frosty and Ellie overcompensated,’ I said. ‘And then Mark tried to draw Ava out and she accused him of ignoring Ellie.’
‘Oh dear. Was he?’
‘Not really. I mean, not consciously. He’s just feeling his way, you know? It’s a big thing for him.’
‘He doesn’t have kids, then?’
‘No. And before you ask, he’s divorced.’
‘I would have assumed that he was single and that you’re serious about each other,’ Peter said. ‘Given that you’ve introduced him to the girls. I hope he appreciates what a token of faith that is.’
‘Oh, I think he does,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’m sure they’ll like him once they’ve had the chance to get to know him a bit better.’
‘So they don’t like him now?’
He said this with one eyebrow raised, as if to suggest that the whole situation was absurd and faintly comical. As if there wasn’t really that much at stake, and everything would sooner or later magically resolve itself.
‘They don’t like the idea of him,’ I said. ‘They’re not used to me having a man in my life. They’re used to Sean, basically. They think what men do is go away for longer and longer periods until they just show up once in a blue moon to take you out for dinner, and then promptly disappear again. But this is completely different. This is someone who wants to get closer. So naturally, the girls find it a bit strange. Also, you know, Mark’s very different to Sean. Solvent and sober, for a start.’
I usually sounded bitter when I talked about Sean, which I resented – there was something demeaning about being the critical ex-wife. Also, it made the girls feel sorry for him, which was sympathy he didn’t deserve. It sounded so much better when I had Mark to compare him to. Not so much as if I was down on Sean because things hadn’t worked out, but more as if I was being matter-of-fact.
That was one of the amazing things about having been found by someone who actually wanted me. All the stuff that had happened before, during the years of my failed marriage, seemed less my fault: the rows and the humiliation, the lack of money, the being left to manage alone. The rejection. You might have expected it to be the other way round, but Sean was the one who had finally called time on our marriage.
Peter said, ‘Does Sean know?’
‘Last I heard he was working in a bar in Cologne, but that was a while ago. Right now, I don’t even know what continent he’s on.’
‘How do you think he’d feel about it?’
I sighed. ‘Why should I care? He has no right to know, and no right to object, either.’
Peter raised his eyebrows and waited for me to respond to the question. Sometimes there was something rather schoolteacherish about him.
‘I think he probably won’t like it at all,’ I admitted.
‘I suppose no one likes to feel that they can be replaced,’ Peter said. ‘Especially if the replacement is such an obvious improvement.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘He’s bound to take it as a slap in the face.’ That really was true. Truer than Peter had any way of knowing. ‘I mean, they’re so different. Like chalk and cheese. Sean’s chaotic. No impulse control. If he goes past somewhere that looks like a good place to eat, or wants a drink or sees a woman he likes… or gets an idea about where he wants to take off to next… off he goes. Mark has a plan for everything. He’s always thinking ahead, whereas Sean carries on like the nuclear bomb’s going to land the next day. Like there’s almost no future at all.’
‘But Mark’s been rather impul
sive where you’re concerned, hasn’t he?’
‘Impulsive?’
‘I mean, it’s all moved rather fast.’
‘I think you get to a stage in life where you don’t feel the need to mess around. He’s a bit older than me, so that’s even more true for him.’
Then – before Peter could ask anything about Mark’s ex-wife, and what had gone wrong, and if he was still on friendly terms with her and all of that – I said I had to be getting back.
Peter kissed me drily on the cheek and showed me out. I could tell he wanted to say more and was biting his tongue, and I was glad that he’d kept his thoughts to himself.
That’s one of the things about being a single woman in your mid-thirties, whether you have children already or not. People tend to assume that what you really want is a baby, and any new romance is a means to an end… or that, even if it’s not on the cards just yet, you’re at least mulling over the possibility.
If Peter had asked me whether I wanted another child, I might even have told him the truth. Because I did. It was driving me crazy how much I wanted it. And this made me very different with Mark to the woman I had become in the dying days of my marriage to Sean. It had turned me into a sex demon, to be frank. I’d never been like that before.
And Mark wanted it, too. Not just the sex. If it had only been sex for the sake of it, it wouldn’t have been like that. There wouldn’t have been as much need in it.
We hadn’t discussed it, as such. We hadn’t needed to. Our bodies had done the talking for us, much more explicitly than we could ever have managed with words. In the first of the hotel rooms we’d shared, with daylight seeping round the edges of the curtains, we’d made love with most of our clothes still on – it had been fast and desperate, as if the other person might vanish at any moment, as if this was a chance that had to be seized.
We hadn’t used contraception. I’d told him not to worry about it, and he hadn’t. Afterwards, when I was lying in his arms, he’d said, ‘What if something happens?’