‘Fucking hell,’ said Dave, the whites of his eyes widening in the moonlight.
I checked the dates of the emails against my diary and found out that the night he came home from ‘Van Gogh’s Provence’ and sat down at my computer typing furiously, he had sent the following email to Suzanne Dance:
‘Coucou,
Well it is not easy to return here. The next few days are going to be very difficult for me. This evening I ate my booring [sic] pizza and had to talk to her. It’s not very cool. But I send you big, big kisses and will try and call you tomorrow. E.
PS: Have you seen the full moon? When I saw it in the sky this evening, I wondered if you could see it too? And I told it to tell you I am thinking of you.’
At what point, I wondered, did he fall out of love with me enough to let this other woman in? What did I do that contributed to that decision? The discovery of his betrayal, even though it was a year later, left me devastated and mired in self-doubt. In my innocence I never imagined that he would cheat on me. I trusted him completely.
To be left alone in my mid-thirties, after being promised marriage, children and regular holidays on the Île de Ré, made me feel I had been cheated not just by Eric but by life. It was like I’d set out on a journey expecting a lush, beautiful country and had washed up on a rocky, barren shore. And then the anger turned to obsession. I thought about him hundreds of times a day and I yearned not just for him but for my old self, the light-hearted, happy-go-lucky person I used to be when I was with him. Above all, I had an overwhelming desire to know where he was and what he was up to.
At this point I turned to Dave, whose face was a picture of compassion and concern as he drove steadily through the darkness towards Villiers. ‘I know he behaved like a total bastard,’ I said by way of a summary. ‘I know I should be over him by now, but the sad fact is that I am not. I would take him back tomorrow.’
‘So he was a scumbag but you’re still in love with him,’ said Dave. ‘And you are not going to meet anyone else until you deal with that.’ Dave, to his credit, did not repeat any of the usual platitudes, such as ‘It was for the best’ or ‘You’re better off without him’. Instead, he told me a story about how he had become obsessed with a beautiful girl he had gone out with as a teenager and how he tracked her down and turned up on her doorstep ten years later. ‘She was fat and wearing fluffy pink carpet slippers,’ he recalled. ‘I had wasted ten years of my life being in love with a person who no longer existed, except in my mind.’
The story at least made me laugh – it was typically Dave – but I doubted Eric would be fat and I knew he wouldn’t be wearing pink carpet slippers. ‘But if I knew his address, I would turn up on his doorstep too,’ I admitted.
As we drove past Alençon, Dave became serious and said I had to really try and move on.
‘I am moving on,’ I said. ‘I’m moving to France.’
‘But you have to remember,’ said Dave, ‘that you can’t run from unhappiness. You just take it with you.’ I can’t remember all of Dave’s advice that night, but he did point out that living in the past I was blocking opportunities in the present. ‘There haven’t been any opportunities,’ I said.
‘There have definitely been opportunities,’ said Dave. ‘It’s just that you haven’t noticed them.’
I loved Dave as he drove us south in the moonlight that night. He had listened to every word of my story. I loved him for his empathy, his emotional intelligence, his honesty and his ability to take on another person’s problems when facing a barrage of his own. It was helpful for me to be able to talk about Eric with another man. After our French road trip, I added a new dream to my repertoire. In it, I was sinking up to my knees in quicksand while my friends watched from the shore. Only Dave waded in to try and rescue me, but unfortunately, before he could reach me, he ended up sinking more deeply into the mud than me.
It was 5.30 a.m. and still dark when we finally arrived in the village. Dave’s house was cold and damp and smelt faintly of cat urine but he lit a fire and we sat up talking until the darkness faded into the brittle grey light of morning. Then we unpacked the van in the freezing cold, the air scented with the smell of wood smoke and damp earth. There were, I noticed, some new purchases. Despite his financial problems, and the fact he was still off work, Dave had bought a bread maker, a chrome-plated pasta machine and a device called a ‘Flavour Shaker’ for making marinades. I watched as he unpacked a new pair of wooden candlesticks for his mantelpiece along with a selection of other decorative objects that he had recently bought from Laura Ashley. ‘Still spending then?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said sheepishly. ‘But it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have told me about Laura Ashley.’
Villiers seemed very austere in the winter light but my heart still jumped with joy at the house that lay waiting for me around the corner – even though I was months away from living there.
After a few hours’ sleep Dave set out in the late afternoon for the long drive back up to the ferry port with the empty van. When he returned the following afternoon by Ryanair, he opened another bottle of wine, sat down by the fire and we carried on talking, almost exactly where we had left off. He said that he had come to accept the Buddhist belief that we had no right to expect happiness in this life. Instead, it was best to view it as an endurance test, and the aim was to get through it while causing as little hurt as possible to other people. I had never seen him so down.
A few days later I had to fly back to London for a work assignment. I left Dave sitting by the log fire with a glass of sweet white wine, surrounded by Risk, Kerplunk, Operation and a vintage 1960s version of Monopoly. Only much later did I find out that he took the hire van out of the country illegally and, as a result, we were not insured for our road trip. But even then it was hard to be cross with him. Dave and I were two lost souls, swimming around in separate fish bowls.
For New Year’s Eve, I suggested that Dave come over to mine for a few drinks and crash in my spare room. It made sense since he lived in Kent and we were both booked on the same Ryanair flight to Poitiers on New Year’s Day. That way we could share a taxi to the airport together. I had invited my friend Charlotte, one of London’s top libel lawyers, over to join us for drinks. Since Dave was newly divorced and Charlotte was also attractive and single, I thought they might hit it off.
Charlotte arrived at 7.00 p.m. with a bottle of champagne, looking fabulous in jeans and a black sparkly top. ‘This is such a great idea,’ she said. ‘Low-key but much better than staying home alone.’ (She was about to be proved wrong on both counts.) Dave showed up almost two hours later than advertised, unshaven and crumpled. I put this down to the pressure of his recent divorce, in which his wife, he claimed, had taken almost everything (including, by the looks of it, his clothes). He had just about managed to hold on to the house in France. He arrived accompanied by a friend called Matt, an architect, and his sulky teenage son Jason, who loped straight into the flat without saying hello, head down and earphones the size of saucers clamped over his ears. Still, it was gratifying to see that his acne had worsened and he had more spots than a Dalmatian.
‘I know this is a bit unexpected,’ said Dave, nodding in the direction of his son. ‘But Linda and that new bloke of hers suddenly decided to go to Lanzarote at the last minute and there was nowhere else for him to go.’
‘That’s OK,’ I lied. ‘The more the merrier! Who would like a glass of champagne?’
‘Yes please!’ said Dave.
‘Why not?’ said Matt, with so little enthusiasm it was as if I’d just suggested a nice cup of cocoa and a game of Monopoly. (Neither he nor Dave had brought a bottle of any kind, I noticed.)
‘Can he have a drink?’ I asked, nodding at Dave’s objectionable son, who was sitting on the sofa, legs apart and arms crossed defiantly, staring straight ahead. His presence dominated the room. I knew I should have felt sorry for him –
after all, his world had no doubt been torn apart by the break-up of his parents’ marriage – but it was hard to have sympathy with someone so charmless.
‘Nothing alcoholic,’ said Dave.
‘Jason,’ I shouted, so that he could hear me above the violent rap music that he was listening to. ‘What would you like to drink?’
He shot me a look of contempt. ‘Nothing.’
Determined not to let a surly teenager ruin the final few hours of the year, I went into the kitchen to take the canapés that I had made earlier out of the oven. And in a sudden rush of goodwill towards Jason I made him a special non-alcoholic cocktail – Angostura bitters, lime juice cordial and soda water. After all, it wasn’t his fault that his cocaine-snorting mother had dumped him on his father on New Year’s Eve. In fact, I was even tempted to add a secret shot of vodka. The poor kid probably needed it: abandoned by his mother and forced to spend New Year’s Eve with his father and his friends rather than his own mates.
Dave was asking Charlotte about her job when I returned to the sitting room – ‘Bloody hell, I bet that pays well, doesn’t it?’ – while Matt and Jason sat on the sofa next to each other in silence. I handed Jason the cocktail, which, served in a tall glass with ice, a slice of lemon and a stirrer, at least looked like an adult drink. ‘Here you go. I made you a special cocktail,’ I said.
He took it reluctantly, as if I was offering him rat poison, and put it straight down, without trying it. He didn’t say thank you. Charlotte gave me a meaningful look, while Dave – who was gulping back expensive champagne as if it were Diet Coke – appeared not to notice his son’s rudeness.
‘There’s a really good gastro pub on Brook Green – about a fifteen-minute walk away from here,’ I said, after a while. ‘We could go over and get some food.’
‘I’m in,’ said Dave, beaming.
Matt shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal way. All my attempts to make conversation with him had ended in a cul-de-sac. He was, I quickly realised, a clear-cut case of PGL (pointless good looks). He had decided to come to France with us at the last minute, which made me wonder what New Year’s Eve tragedy had befallen him. Divorce seemed like the most likely scenario, since Dave, embittered by his own split, had told me that many of his friends were also in the process of getting divorced or being ‘taken to the cleaners’ by their wives. Matt, like Jason, looked like he would rather be anywhere than in my flat. But, on the bright side, his ex-wife obviously hadn’t taken his Porsche, which was parked outside, and he was going to give us a lift to the airport tomorrow, though I wasn’t sure how the four of us were going to fit into it.
The pub wasn’t exactly rocking when we got there and it had stopped serving food. There was a forlorn banner saying ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’ above the bar. The residents of west London clearly had better things to do. As Matt and Charlotte went to the bar to order the drinks, I asked Dave what he thought of Charlotte. ‘Yeah, she seems quite nice,’ he said, and then guessing the real meaning behind the question added, ‘but not my type. I don’t fancy her, if that’s what you mean.’ He turned pink and looked annoyed that I had even suggested it.
Surveying the depressing surroundings, I thought back to my best ever New Year’s Eve – spent in a ski resort in the Italian Alps with Eric and a group of friends. Still, I forced myself to cheer up as Matt and Charlotte returned with the drinks. After all, I would be living in France before the year was out. I was on the brink of a new and exciting life.
Dave, at least, was in a jocular mood, asking everyone what their goals were for the coming year.
‘To become a partner at my law firm,’ said Charlotte. ‘And have more fun.’
‘So, Karen, what about you?’
‘Huh?’
‘What are your goals for this year?’
‘Move to France. And finish renovating my house.’
‘That’s all?’
‘You don’t think that’s enough?’
‘What about personal stuff?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like find a bloke?’
Before I could reply, Jason beat me to it, with a comment that was gratuitously nasty – even for him.
‘What did you just say?’ I asked, thinking I must have misheard.
‘I said, they’d have to be dead or drugged,’ he repeated, his scrawny rodent features contorted with malice.
I bit my lip and did not react. Instead, I tried to put myself in his shoes and feel sympathy for him. I said nothing, but gave Dave a very pointed look, waiting for him to make his son apologise. He didn’t. Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
‘I couldn’t believe what that obnoxious brat said to you,’ she said a little later when Dave had gone to the bar. ‘Or that his father didn’t pull him up on it.’
‘Well, I guess he’s going through a tough time,’ I said. But I had already decided that there was no way the toxic teenager was spending the night in my flat. I thought back to the axe he once left on my bed when I was staying at Dave’s house in France. He had obviously identified me as the enemy. Fortunately, I had a solution since I had the keys to the rental flat below, which was vacant. (My American banker neighbour Kim was in New York for Christmas and had given me the keys, saying I could use the spare room over the festive season if I had guests.)
I was pleased when midnight finally chimed and Charlotte suggested that we go home.
‘We’ll follow you out,’ said Dave. But they didn’t. Charlotte and I stood outside in the rain on Brook Green for about twenty minutes. ‘Let’s just go,’ she said, finally. ‘They can find their own way back.’
We waited up. I called several times to ask if they needed directions back to the flat. But Dave’s mobile was switched off. Two hours later we were still waiting. ‘How rude,’ said Charlotte. ‘Especially since you have an early flight tomorrow.’
‘Look, there’s no point in you staying up half the night too,’ I said. ‘Let me call you a cab.’
But Charlotte, loyally, refused to leave.
Four hours into the New Year (and three hours before we were due to leave for the airport) the doorbell rang. I buzzed it open and Jason came running up the stairs and tried to push past me into the flat, without so much as a hello. There was no sign of his father or Matt.
‘Hold on a minute! Where do you think you’re going?’ I asked. ‘You wait here while I get the keys to the flat below.’
‘What?’ He looked at me blankly.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I know you’re going through a tough time with your parents’ divorce and everything but you insulted me in the pub tonight and I don’t want you in my flat. There’s another flat downstairs. I’ll give you a sleeping bag and you can sleep there.’
Jason looked for a second like he was going to spit at me. Instead, he said, ‘Fuck you. I didn’t want to stay in your poxy flat anyway.’ He ran back downstairs and slammed the door. Charlotte went after him and found him sitting on the doorstep in the rain, hood pulled up, earphones on. She spent half an hour trying to persuade him to come in, but despite her best efforts, he wouldn’t.
It was another hour before Dave and Matt returned. I buzzed them in. Dave was drunk and very angry. ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted. ‘What’s my son doing on the doorstep in the rain at four a.m.?’
‘He chose to sit there.’
‘He said you wouldn’t let him into your flat. That you left him outside.’
‘Let’s not talk about this now.’
‘We will talk about it now,’ he said, slurring his words. ‘This concerns my son.’
‘Dave, you’re drunk. I am not discussing it now. I have keys to my neighbour’s flat. You can all sleep in there.’
‘So, come on then, what’s he done that’s offended you so badly that you won’t let him into your flat?’ sneered Dave as he lurched unsteadily towards me. Fortunately Charlotte, hav
ing heard the commotion, appeared in the doorway.
‘Hey, come on,’ she said, in her even, lawyerly voice. ‘Let’s all calm down here.’
‘Yeah, come on, Dave mate, just chill,’ said Matt, who looked like he was struggling to stand upright.
‘You can shut up,’ shouted Dave, at Charlotte. ‘It’s her (he jabbed his finger in my direction) that I’m speaking to. I want to know exactly what her problem is with my son.’
‘Your son refused to come in. He said he wanted to sit on the doorstep,’ said Charlotte.
‘That’s not true, Dad. She wouldn’t let me in.’ He pointed his finger at me.
‘How could you let the poor kid sit shivering on the doorstep in the rain?’
‘That’s not what happened.’
‘Are you calling my son a liar?’
‘I am not discussing this now.’ Behind his father, Jason was now snivelling.
‘He’s just a kid. I can’t believe that you left him out in the rain.’
‘I told you. I didn’t! But you’re not exactly a model of responsible parenting, sending him back here on his own.’
I regretted this almost before I’d finished saying it. Questioning Dave’s parenting skills was bound to prove a flashpoint and it did.
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