by Jo Lovett
‘Yes, I did. I know that I’m letting you down. But this is huge. This is the biggest moment of my career other than making partner in the first place. And I’d love to take you two out on Saturday evening to celebrate with me.’
She ended the call while he was still saying ‘me’.
His phone pinged with a message from Barney. ‘Congratulations Dad.’ That was something. But not enough. He needed Liv to be onside too. Assuming Barney even meant it.
He knew he wasn’t going to enjoy the drinks this evening. He was going to spend the entire time worrying that Liv would think about running away again. Or worse.
* * *
Sam’s mother was the best. She forwarded a video of the presentation so that he could watch it on his way to the drinks, and she sent regular messages during the evening telling him that the twins were doing great. In the end, he did enjoy the evening.
On his way home in a cab, watching couples strolling home under the street lights, he suddenly really wanted to talk to Izzy. Screw it, even if they weren’t on the best of terms, he could send her an email. He wouldn’t talk to her about Liv – it didn’t feel like they were in the right place yet – but he could tell her about work.
It was late, middle of the night UK time, so Sam didn’t get a reply from Izzy until he woke up on Friday morning.
Hi Sam,
Congratulations!! I’m so pleased for you and so impressed.
Well done!
Izzy x
P.S. I have a confession: you were right… EMMA AND ROHAN ARE TOGETHER! And getting married! Seems I was the last to guess. Even Dominic suspected (or so he says)! X
So she was spending time with Dominic. Natural, probably, because he’d just lost his father and they’d had the funeral. It still felt a bit off, though. Kind of Izzy, anyway, to congratulate him and not to mention that his new role was blatantly the exact opposite of the better work-life balance that he’d admitted he needed.
Maybe he’d just ask how Dominic was when he replied to her.
Hey,
Thank you!
Your two best friends getting married—huge! When are they planning the wedding for?
Obviously, I’m not going to say “I told you so.” Although, I did.
How’s Dominic doing?
S x
By Friday evening, she’d replied and Sam had found out that she was going out for dinner with Dominic this weekend. Right. No reason that she shouldn’t, of course. But was it a good idea to go out with your ex?
Sam really didn’t like Dominic’s name. It sounded stupid. As did the man himself. If you were married to Izzy, why would you separate from her? Why would you move to Milan without her? Or behave in a way that caused her to want to separate from you? And that thought reminded him uncomfortably of his own behaviour.
Back to Izzy. Why had she told Sam that she was going for dinner with Dominic? Did she want him to comment? He was not going to do that.
Sam’s mood wasn’t improved by the fact that he was working late and Liv was ignoring him. His last message had received two blue ticks and she was online but she wasn’t replying. Your basic ‘If you’re busy, I’ll be busy too’ ploy. It was working. He wasn’t happy. And he was yet again WhatsApp stalking his daughter, not cool.
And then he got an email from Barney’s account. His own children had emailed him at work.
Hi.
We’d like to go and live with Granny and Gramps. They love us. You have no time for us.
We’d tell you in person except we never see you.
Liv and Barney
Sam dropped the slice of pizza he was holding back into the box. It was very difficult to swallow the mouthful that he was chewing.
It had to have been written by Liv. Damn, that girl would make a fine attorney. Clearly, he wasn’t a parenting expert. But he was sure that thirteen-year-olds didn’t normally write emails like this.
He was their only parent. And he wasn’t going to have any more children. He didn’t want to become that fifty-year-old who no longer recognised his own kids or sunlight.
His stomach and throat were pinching. He really couldn’t eat this pizza.
He called Liv’s number. She actually answered.
‘Liv. Hi. I got your email. I’m on my way home right now.’
‘Whatever.’ She ended the call.
When he strode into the kitchen twenty-five minutes later, Liv was leaning against the wall, her arms folded across her body and her lips clamped shut. Barney was lounging on the sofa at the end of the room.
‘Liv, Barney.’ Sam placed himself in the middle of the long wall behind the dining table, where he could see both of them. He’d thought and he’d planned during his journey home. This was a conversation that he really needed to get right. ‘I love you both so much. I’ve made vague promises of spending more time with you and I’ve let you down. Now I have a concrete suggestion for you and I’d like to discuss that with you.’
There was a long silence and then Liv said, ‘I don’t think we trust you.’
Sam waited but Barney continued to say nothing.
‘Understandable,’ Sam said eventually. ‘No reason that you should trust me, obviously. Actions do speak more loudly than words. But I’d be very grateful if you would listen.’
Neither of them spoke.
Sam looked at the table. ‘Shall we sit down?’
‘Nope.’ Liv still wasn’t looking at him. Barney still wasn’t speaking.
‘Okay. Alright. My suggestion is that from now on I block out in my diary one day a week, every week, to work from home. And in the evening on that day I will not do any work of any kind including important meetings or client dinners or drinks. Nothing. Non-negotiable. All my previous attempts at carving out time have failed because I haven’t been specific enough.’
Neither of them replied.
‘I love you both so much and I don’t want to fail you. I know that I could do more than what I’ve suggested, but I think it could be a good start.’ It would be very difficult to operate workwise, but he was going to do it. It felt like this was a last chance to develop a good relationship with his children.
Barney suddenly spoke out of the blue. ‘It should be Wednesday.’ Like Izzy. She worked from home on Wednesdays.
Liv nodded. ‘He’s right. Then we would only have two days in a row where we don’t see you. If you stick to it.’ Yes.
‘I promise you I will.’ Sam couldn’t remember ever being so serious about a promise. He was so serious that he wasn’t even slightly worried about how it would go down at work. It would just have to. Maybe he could sell it as their firm being trailblazers for modern working practices in the world of corporate law.
‘Let’s start blocking your diary out now,’ Liv said. She walked over to the table and sat down. ‘Come on.’ Yes. This felt like such a victory.
Sam took his phone out and flicked his calendar on and started the blocking. His secretary was going to be unimpressed by how many appointments were going to have to be switched around.
‘Keep going,’ Liv said. ‘For the entire next decade.’ And then she smiled at him. And so did Barney.
Such an enormous relief. Baby steps, but maybe he could pull this back.
For a mad moment, Sam considered talking to them about the accident. No. They were both still smiling at him. He didn’t want to ruin this evening.
* * *
The twins went to bed about ten thirty on Saturday evening and Sam poured himself a glass of Scotch and sat down on the sofa in the snug. All things considered, it had been a good day.
Barney was still pretty monosyllabic and Liv was still prickly, but Sam had devoted the entire time to them and they were definitely making progress as a family. Tomorrow they were going out to New Jersey for a family lunch and he was going to stay there all day. Sure, he’d need to stay up most of tomorrow night to catch up on work, but the twins were more important. This was the first time in a long time that he’d really acted in anything o
ther than a short-term, reactive way on putting them first, and it felt very right.
His mother had been right to nag him, and Izzy had been right in the pub. Maybe not completely right, because was he really going to sack off his whole career? But she was right about him improving his work-life balance. He should tell her. He would also like to ask her how her dinner with Dominic had been. And, if he could do it tactfully, ask her how close she and Dominic were getting. He’d email her now.
Izzy had replied by the time he woke up in the morning.
Hi Sam,
Great news that you’re having a good weekend with the twins and I’m sure that you’ll all enjoy your Wednesdays!
I did have an enjoyable dinner with Dominic, thank you. Yes, we have been spending more time together. We have a child together and he is still my husband, after all!
I hope that you enjoy your family day today.
Izzy
There was a nice symmetry to the fact that she was evidently annoyed with him, because he was annoyed with her, too.
‘Still my husband’? As in, she was planning to go back to him? Maybe already had last night? Was she insane?
Clearly, she didn’t love Dominic. No-one was in love with two people at once. And he was sure she loved Sam in the same way that he loved her. He knew this from their kiss and from her eyes and from a lot of small, indescribable, but absolutely definite, things. Which was to say, she loved Sam with a passion so strong it was physically stunning, a visceral passion that went right through you. He knew she did. He felt the same way.
And Sam knew, because he’d done it, that marrying someone you didn’t love like that wasn’t the best idea. But he also knew that he couldn’t tell Izzy that he loved her. Too risky. Even in five or ten years’ time when the twins were adults and could cope better emotionally if he met someone, and it might be feasible to manage a trans-Atlantic relationship or move, he’d never do it.
And he also knew that if he had his time again he wouldn’t change things with Lana. They’d had the twins together. And he had loved her; not in the ‘rug being pulled from under you’ kind of way he was experiencing with Izzy, but his feelings for her had grown into a genuine, steady love. Would he give the twins back their mother if he could? Yes. Of course he would. Would he still be with her? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure if the relationship would have lasted without the kind of passion he had for Izzy.
What he did know was that, if he’d got to know Izzy as well as he knew her now, while married to Lana, he’d have struggled.
But he wasn’t going to tell Izzy that. This was clearly one of those pivotal moments in a relationship, and he was going to pivot right away from her. Clearly, in retrospect, this had been going to happen once they’d locked eyes in the restaurant and both known that their kiss was going to happen at some point. You couldn’t, in fact, carry on being just good friends with someone you were deeply in love with. Of course you couldn’t.
Why had she called Dominic her husband in her email when they were separated? Was she trying to provoke a response? A declaration of love maybe?
He couldn’t do that, but he should say something. He’d do it right now, before he hopped in the shower.
Hi Izzy,
I’d call you a good friend.
And, as a good friend, I’d have to ask you if you think it’s the right move to get back together with someone just because you share a child. I think that most people would agree that a successful marriage needs a more solid foundation than co-parenting. It needs romance.
Sam x
He could have told her that he knew all that from experience, but he couldn’t be disloyal to Lana’s memory.
She’d replied before he was out of the shower.
Sam,
Marriage is real life.
Real life isn’t about romance.
Izzy
Well, yes, she was right there. When he thought about it now, he’d been in love with Izzy since pretty much the moment their eyes met in the café nearly fourteen years ago. That was romantic. And was he going to act on it? No. He didn’t want a relationship, and certainly not when he was finally making progress with the twins.
Another email pinged in. Izzy again.
Unless you can convince me otherwise?
Wow. From Izzy, that was huge. Was she encouraging him to tell her he loved her? Part of him – a big part of him – wanted to do it. Maybe say something along the lines of Real life should be about romance. I love you and I think you love me too and because we love each other we’ll make it work, so please don’t go back to him. Be with me.
He couldn’t do it. He could not tell her that he loved her. Even though he did. He knew that she’d be hurt, but he really couldn’t say it. Allowing yourself to love people was too high risk a strategy; there was too much pain involved when bad things happened to them.
Izzy,
Yeah. You’re right. Real life is not about romance. Personally, I gave up on it a long time ago.
My bad.
Sam x
Sam hoped the kiss would soften the blow of his rejection, but he knew it probably wouldn’t. He suspected this might be the end of their emails for a while.
Twenty-Eight
Izzy
There was only so much loved-up-ness you could happily be around when you yourself were not loved-up and were never going to be because the person you loved had basically ignored you when you put yourself right out there.
Bastard Sam for his bastarding email. ‘My bad.’ Arse.
Why had she said what she’d said? She might as well have written, ‘Tell me you love me and that it’s real.’ She might as well also have written, ‘I love you.’ And he hadn’t attempted to convince her. He might as well have written, ‘I do have some feelings for you but I will not act on them.’ Or maybe, ‘I have no feelings beyond friendship so please leave me alone, you deluded woman.’ She should have written him off the night of their disastrous non-date.
She shouldn’t be angry with him, not really. She was being unreasonable. If he didn’t love her, that was just the way it was. Her misfortune. He had probably never got over Lana. That was probably what he’d meant when he said he’d given up on romance a long time ago.
And it wasn’t as though they could actually have a relationship, given the kids and where they lived. But she’d have liked him to have told her he loved her, and he hadn’t. And it really, really hurt.
And now she was surrounded by love, love, love.
Last night, after climbing, Emma and Rohan had been so bloody smiley and cuddly and clearly desperate to get away from Izzy and into bed for a serious session. Izzy was so, so pleased for them, but not so keen on the gooseberry experience.
And now this evening, this.
Izzy took her seventh truffle arancino from a passing waiter and raised a big smile and her champagne glass in the direction of her mother and Veronique, who were standing holding hands on the stage at the end of the room. They were both fantastic adverts for ‘Life Begins at Sixty Plus’, both rocking their evening dresses, lots of good jewellery, great make-up and intricate hairstyles. They must both have been doing a lot of exercise recently. Surely it wasn’t normal to look so in shape at their age. They looked more toned than most women Izzy knew of her own age. And they obviously had a great hairdresser. Or hairdressers. It would probably be weird to go to the same one. Amazing colours.
Izzy was very happy for them both. It was a little bit galling, if she was honest, that she’d had to organise a sleepover with Dominic for Ruby, her mother’s granddaughter, while her half-brother Nat, her mother and Veronique’s younger son, had got to bring his five-year-old daughter Ella, also their granddaughter, with him to the party. His mothers were both ludicrously bad at hiding their pride in his Jack-the-lad-ness – neither of them had been remotely upset that he’d got someone pregnant at seventeen, where a lot of parents would have worried that it was far too young – but that was a very bad reason for all the fav
ouritism towards Ella.
Izzy’s mother had the mic.
‘Thank you so much, everyone, for coming today. We’re so pleased to have the opportunity to celebrate our love with you. As you know, this is our twenty-fifth anniversary party. It isn’t the twenty-fifth anniversary of our civil partnership or our marriage, because neither of those options were available to us when we got together. It is the twenty-fifth anniversary, a huge but wonderful quarter of a century, of our personal commitment to each other.’ She turned and gave Veronique a saucy smile. Veronique did a bit of eyebrow waggling and pouting.
Really? Really? Were they talking about that kind of commitment? Probably. No worse than giving your daughter a lot of sex presents for her birthday.
Izzy looked round at Nat. He was smiling and laughing like everyone else. Surely most normal people didn’t like listening to their parents making innuendos about sex?
‘My turn for the mic.’ Veronique planted a big smacker on Izzy’s mother’s lips and then turned to address everyone. ‘I just want to say how lucky I was to meet Deborah. She’s the love of my life. Funny, kind, beautiful.’
It was nice, of course it was, not just nice, truly wonderful, that they were still so in love after so long. And properly in love. On the occasions she saw them, Izzy always witnessed smaller signs of mutual affection, a bit of surreptitious shoulder-squeezing, and hugs, belly laughs at in-jokes that no-one else would find remotely funny, stolen kisses when they thought no-one was looking. It was lovely.
And Izzy was a bad, bad person, because she felt a tiny bit envious. She’d never had this kind of relationship, and she was never going to. If she got back together with Dominic, it would never be like this, because it never had been. There was only one person she thought she could have this with, and that was never going to happen.