by Rachel Marks
The more she focuses on my face, the hotter it seems to burn.
Mimi laughs, slapping me on the thigh. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not comparing your style to his.’
I cover my face with my hands. ‘Seriously. Stop. I cannot have this conversation sober.’
‘Ah, shy Noah. It’s actually quite cute.’
I try to ignore Mimi’s mocking, focus on looking straight ahead and wait for the heat in my cheeks to dissipate. After what feels like hours, the silverback is done and he strides away, hunts down a stray banana and starts eating.
‘Show’s over. Come on, let’s go and see what other animal porn we can find.’ Mimi takes my hand and pulls me towards the reptile house and I stumble along after her.
*
On the way home, we walk across the Downs. It’s a beautiful day. One of those rare days you sometimes get in March – when it’s warm enough not to need a jacket. We sit on a bench with take-out coffee and I turn my face to the sky, enjoying the feel of the sunshine on my skin. It’s weird, but during the winter you forget how good it feels, the warmth, and then when it returns it feels like a gift, a blessing.
Mimi points her coffee cup towards a family walking along, the parents storming off and leaving their little one crying and waving his arms around. ‘Poor little mite. Why would you treat your kid like that?’
‘Clearly said by someone who doesn’t have kids.’
Mimi turns her head to look at me. ‘Seriously? You treat your boys like that?’
I shrug. ‘When they deserve it, yeah. Perhaps he’s being a little brat.’
‘Oh, come on, look at that face. Does he look like a brat?’
He’s a cute kid, I’ll give her that. All big blue eyes and pouting lips. He looks a little bit like Gabe did when he was a toddler.
‘Yeah, just wait until that cute little face is waking you up at five a.m. and screaming at you because he wanted Shreddies, not cornflakes, you incompetent fool. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so cute.’
‘I don’t know. I think he’d always look cute to me. Look, even covered in snot and tears, he’s gorgeous.’
‘Your children would be hideous, though. Look at the gene pool.’
Mimi looks down at her hands and when she looks up all the earlier humour from her eyes has vanished.
‘What’s wrong? I was only joking.’
Mimi shakes her head. ‘I know. I’m fine.’
She looks anything but fine, but before I have a chance to delve any deeper, a dog comes hurtling over to us, immediately shoving its head into Mimi’s lap. She cowers towards me as if she’s just been approached by a tyrannosaurus rex rather than a sappy-eyed beagle, then crosses her legs and holds her coffee in the air. ‘Go away. Seriously, Noah, get it off me.’
I stroke the dog’s head and encourage it to come towards me, but it’s persistent in its pursuit of Mimi.
She scours the area for the owner, a cheery-looking middle-aged man heading towards us carrying a tennis-ball launcher in his hand.
‘Oh, don’t worry, he’s really friendly,’ the man says with a smile.
Mimi moves further towards me. ‘Yeah, a bit too friendly if you ask me.’
The man looks at her as if she just swore at him, and not just one of the tame ones like ‘bloody’ or ‘shit’, but one that, when you write it down, you have to use an asterisk to replace the vowel. Then he grabs his dog by the collar and storms off.
‘What is it with bloody dog owners? They think the whole world loves their four-legged friends as much as they do. How would he feel if I sauntered over to him and started sniffing his crotch?’
‘He’d probably be delighted.’
Mimi shoots a look my way and her anger softens into amusement.
‘Is this the wrong time to tell you I have a Great Dane hidden in the basement underneath the flat?’
‘Looks like I won’t be coming over to yours ever again then.’
I smile, but then it occurs to me that the day is nearly over and that soon Mimi will leave and I’ll have to go home alone, with nothing to look forward to, haunted by thoughts of Kate and the boys in their happy home. ‘In fact, do you want to come back to mine? Not in a dodgy way, of course. We could get take-out, watch a video or something?’
Mimi furrows her eyebrows. ‘How old actually are you, Noah? Even the DVD is pretty archaic now – a video?’
‘A digital file, is that better? We could watch a digital file together.’
Mimi laughs. ‘OK, as long as I can choose.’
*
After we’ve eaten curry and watched a film, some pretentious art-house thing that Mimi kept trying to convince me was ‘actually really powerful’, I take our plates through to the kitchen and come back to the sofa with two glasses of wine.
‘Is that your mum?’ Mimi bows her head towards a framed photograph on my fireplace.
I nod and take a sip of my drink, hoping it signals the end of the conversation.
‘She was very pretty.’
Another nod.
‘How did she die, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Usually, I find Mimi’s inquisitiveness refreshing. But with this topic of conversation, I just want to shut her down. ‘Cancer.’
It’s an easy lie. Cancer is so often the cause of death that it tends not to even muster a ‘Which one?’ and when it does, again it’s an easy selection – breast, bowel, ovarian. No more questions asked.
‘Sorry.’
I shrug.
‘And is that your ex-wife and your children with you in that one there?’
I look at the photograph of the four of us in Sweden. We stayed in this little hut in the forest. We found it on Airbnb and, when we arrived, it felt like being in authentic Sweden. There wasn’t even a working toilet, just a hut in the garden with a hole in a bench and two buckets of earth to throw over what you’d produced (which the boys thought was hilarious, of course). It was so peaceful out there among the trees. The weather was unseasonably hot for May and we spent the days foraging in the forest and taking the neighbour’s boat out on the lake. It’s still my favourite-ever holiday.
‘Yeah. I suppose I should take it down really. I’m not sure you’re meant to have a photo of your ex-wife on your mantelpiece, but it just reminds me of a really happy time.’
‘I don’t think you’re breaking any divorcee laws,’ Mimi says with a smile, but I wonder what she really thinks – whether she thinks it’s a bit tragic. ‘She’s very beautiful, by the way. And your boys are gorgeous.’
‘Thanks. As you can see, they take after their mum.’
She gives me a knowing smile. ‘So I’m guessing your anger the other night about her marrying someone else – it wasn’t just a matter of respect?’
I scratch my scalp. ‘Do you want the honest answer or the “ I’m a bloke, nothing bothers me ” answer?’
‘Oh, why don’t you go crazy and hit me with a bit of honesty.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I feel like if she marries him, I’ll lose my family forever and my whole life will be over.’
‘Blimey, I didn’t mean that honest. So why did you split up anyway?’
In a way I wish one of us had had an affair, fallen for someone else, because then it would be easier to explain. It’s not so easy to convey the rationale behind the Houdini Great Escape moments that eventually caused the demise of my marriage.
The first time it happened was when I came to the realization that if I lost Kate, I would shrivel up into a ball and die. It seems a little dramatic now, but that’s how it felt at the time. So very young and so madly in love that we stayed on the phone to each other all night just so we could hear each other breathing. Mum nearly killed me when she saw the phone bill, but I don’t think it was really the money she was bothered about, more having to share me with someone else. I understand how she felt a little bit more now, but back then I couldn’t work out why I kept hurting her or how to stop.
On the day in question, Kate and
I had taken a picnic down by the weir and were perched on a rock with our feet dangling in the water. She started talking about when we were older and who we’d end up marrying and how many kids we’d both have. She joked she’d marry a bloke in a rock band and I’d probably marry a model, and I’m sure I had what can only be described as a panic attack. I started sweating. I felt dizzy. I thought I was going to pass out or throw up or both. I didn’t say anything, just chucked the remains of my sandwich into the water, watching it travel down the river with the current and ignoring Kate’s questions about whether I was OK. I dropped her home and made my excuses to leave. I called Mum and told her I was staying at Kate’s house, but instead I drove all the way to Exeter to see Ben. He took me out clubbing, we got wasted – well, he got sensibly drunk and I got completely off my face and spent the early hours throwing up in his dormitory sink. I blanked each and every one of Kate’s fifty-seven calls and didn’t reply to any of her numerous texts asking me what the hell was going on.
A few days later, when we were lying on Kate’s bed, my fingers twiddling her long, wavy hair, I told her everything and she explained she’d only said all that stuff about marrying someone else to test the water, to see if I was feeling what she was feeling, which it turned out I was. I think she thought once we got married, once I had the security of the ring on my finger, the running away would stop, but it was never that simple for me. And then when Mum died, the feelings, the fear, it all just intensified, and the blowouts got more extreme, longer, their effect more damaging. Until Kate seemed to grow immune to it all. She didn’t bother to keep calling. She barely batted an eyelid when I returned, stinking and bruised. I guess I knew deep down that was the beginning of the end.
‘I wasn’t a good enough husband. Or father, for that matter.’
I get the sense Mimi wants to ask me more but she seems to brush it off, like an insect that lands on her shoulder.
‘And you’re sure there’s no chance of getting her back?’
‘She’s marrying someone else, isn’t she?’
Mimi shrugs.
‘I mean, we’ve had breaks in the past,’ I continue. ‘But never for this long and there was never anyone else. I don’t think Jerry’s right for her, not by a long shot, and we have the kids, but …’
‘So why don’t you fight for her?’ Mimi says, looking suddenly animated. ‘If she means that much to you?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m pretty sure she knows how I feel. Besides, she knows where I am.’
‘I’m sure the alcoholism and sleeping around is really appealing.’
I roll my eyes.
‘Look, I don’t know exactly why your marriage failed,’ she powers on, ‘but you said you should’ve been a better husband. A better father. So why don’t you show her how you’ve changed? Make her see what she’s throwing away? Looking at that photo of you guys, you obviously had something pretty special.’
I thought so.
‘Oh, I don’t know. She probably is better off without me.’
‘So make yourself better. So that the best thing for her is to be with you. You’ve got two kids together. You were obviously very happy once upon a time. It’s got to be worth a try.’
It feels like she’s drip-feeding me steroids, slowly making me feel more pumped up. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should fight for Kate. I was the one she chose all those years ago. Not Jerry. I was her first love. Maybe things could be different this time.
But then I have a thought that’s accompanied by a sort of nausea, slowly rising in my throat.
‘What if I make myself better and she still chooses him?’
Mimi looks at me as if I’m a child first discovering that the world isn’t quite the wonderful place I thought it was. ‘Then you move on with no regrets.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘OK, with fewer regrets.’
‘So what do I need to change?’
Mimi’s face forms a what-don’t-you-need-to-change expression but she says, ‘Well, what did you do that makes you think you weren’t a good husband?’
It’s hard to look back on a relationship, particularly one that lasted eleven years, and be objective about it. It’s always the really big highs and the crashing lows that you remember, not the humdrum day-to-day stuff. When I wasn’t buggering off for the night, or the weekend, I think I was an OK husband, maybe even better than OK. I could be grumpy sometimes, after a tough day at work when I’d come home to find her cuddled up in her pyjamas watching a film with the boys – the house a complete mess around them – piles of washing-up by the sink, toys on every surface, various garments scattered across the floor. Sometimes I’d say things like, ‘You’re at home all day, surely you could do something?’ or ‘Why are you so tired when you’ve just been sitting around having coffee mornings with your friends?’ But I’d always apologize before the day was out. I’d tell her that I recognized how hard it was to look after the boys, how she was doing an amazing job, how proud I was of her.
I think I was quite romantic. I’d write her heartfelt or cheeky notes and leave them in various places in the house, like in the fridge or in the little pot where she kept her car keys, so she would find them throughout the day. Once, I made the mistake of putting one in the toaster. In my defence, it was sticking out a mile, but she must have been half-asleep or distracted by the boys, as she put a piece of toast in the other slot and pressed the lever down, then wondered why the hell the toaster was suddenly on fire.
I’d buy her gifts from the supermarket on my way home from work on a Friday. It was only little stuff: a book she’d been looking at, a mug, a magazine, a cupcake with a heart on top, that sort of thing. She knew when she married me there were never going to be trips to the Bahamas or meals at those fancy restaurants where they don’t even put the prices on the menu. But I tried my best to make her feel special.
We managed to laugh at most things. Not always, of course. But often. Like when one of the boys was having a huge tantrum – I’d stand behind him and imitate his behaviour and Kate would struggle to maintain her cross-parent face. Or when we were blaming each other for forgetting to put the recycling out and we’d stop mid-argument and say, ‘Are we seriously arguing about the recycling?’ and then she’d wrap her hands around my neck and kiss me.
So maybe I shouldn’t say goodbye to my marriage so easily. Because, to me at least, a lot of the time it seemed like such a good one.
‘She felt she couldn’t trust me.’
‘Why? Did you cheat on her?’
‘Oh, God, no. Never. It wasn’t that she couldn’t trust me with other women. She couldn’t trust me not to bugger off for the weekend when things got too much. Or to miss parents’ evening because I was a drunken mess somewhere. Or to not come home after work some days.’
Mimi looks confused. ‘So why did you do those things?’
I shake my head. ‘If I knew that, Mimi, I wouldn’t be here, regretting losing the love of my life.’
Mimi nods slowly and I get the sense she feels like she’s signed up to more than she bargained for, like agreeing to a bank card that gives you free insurance and cinema tickets and then realizing you have to pay a monthly fee.
‘Well, I think you need to show her she can trust you, then. That you’re dependable. Start small – get the flat straight, cut down on the drinking, help the boys with their homework, that sort of thing.’
That doesn’t feel very small, but I nod enthusiastically. ‘Will you help me? I could be your improvement project.’
Mimi looks me up and down. ‘I do love a project, I suppose. But I usually like to go for something more achievable.’
I shoot her a look.
‘OK then. I can’t promise it’s going to work though, Noah. But it’s got to be worth a try, right?’
‘I guess.’
‘So how long have we got? When’s she getting married?’
‘May the fifth.’
Mimi pulls out her phone and starts scrolling
through the calendar. ‘OK. So we’ve got six weeks. That’s achievable, I think.’
I’m not entirely convinced but, after Mimi’s gone, I lie in bed and think about what she said – the thought of getting my family back like a lottery win, the odds solidly stacked against me. But in the same irrational way you feel a burst of excitement at filling out your numbers, I automatically feel better at the thought of at least holding a ticket.
CHAPTER TEN
‘What do you mean, you’ve bought him a bike? Why didn’t you ask me? It could’ve been a joint present.’
I tuck my phone between my shoulder and my ear so that my hands are free to open another beer. I am going to cut down on the drinking but right at this moment I need beer number two.
‘It was all a bit last minute. He went over to one of his school friends and had a go on his bike and became obsessed with it. Jerry chose him one at the weekend. He’s good with that sort of thing. I guessed you’d already got him something.’
Come off it. She knows I wouldn’t be that organized.
‘Well, I’ve got a few ideas, but I was going to pick something up after school tomorrow.’
‘Noah, it’s our little family party for him after school tomorrow. You have remembered, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have. I’m going to get it on the way.’
‘Nothing like leaving it until the last minute.’ Kate lets out a somewhat derisive snort.
I can almost hear Mimi whispering in my ear to let it go, rise above it, be understanding, but I’m not sure I’m capable. I don’t want her making these sorts of decisions without me. It just makes me feel like I’m being pushed further out.
‘You could always get him a bell for it or something?’ Kate continues.
Now it’s my turn to snort. ‘Great. What did Mummy get you? A bike. What about Daddy? Oh, he got a bell.’
Kate laughs. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to piss you off. Get him whatever you want.’