What Now?

by Shari Low

  By nightfall, I was merrily tipsy and loving the background music coming from round the firepit. Benny had nipped home for his guitar and the blokes and kids, Toni now back in the fold, were murdering the Oasis back catalogue.

  Today had turned out to be absolutely nothing like I’d expected, but I’d loved every minute. At least, every minute since Val had wandered in the gate.

  The fairy lights around the perimeter fence were a perfect starry backdrop to Jess and Carol, who were holding up tealights and swaying in time to the music, adding their backing vocals to ‘Champagne Supernova’. If the Gallagher brothers heard my friends’ unintentionally skewed version of the lyrics there would definitely be tantrums. I don’t think Liam or Noel ever woke up the prawns to ask them why. There was a reason we never formed a band in high school and Val hit it right on the head.

  ‘Och, thank God you’re good-looking and you’re smart,’ she gestured, chuckling, to Carol and Jess in turn, ‘because you couldn’t get a song right or hold a tune in a bucket.’

  They both took it in the spirit it was intended: harmless fun with a definite grain of truth.

  More wine, more laughs, more chat, until the singing was temporarily suspended when Callum and Bruce broke out a football for a moonlit light kickabout, and Kate appeared with a bowl of marshmallows for the teenagers to roast over at the firepit. At our table, a tray of Irish coffees and a pile of thick, fluffy throws were delivered for those of a more advanced vintage and as we wrapped up against the night chill, we fell into a happy, contented silence.

  Val was the first to break it.

  ‘I’m just thinking…’ she announced.

  ‘That’s never a good thing,’ Jess teased. ‘It usually ends with one of us in trouble. It’s crazy how I’m a forty-something woman and one penetrating gaze from you makes me want to go to my room and listen to my Wham albums.’

  ‘Oh, I adored that George Michael,’ Val said, wistfully. ‘I’d have had his babies in a heartbeat.’ We left that one there as she went on, repeating, ‘I was thinking… What are you going to do when Mark takes the boys away? You’ll have a whole month to amuse yourself.’

  It was the second or third time today someone had asked me that and I still didn’t have an answer.

  I took a sip of my coffee, trying to buy time. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll need to think about it.’

  ‘There’s your problem,’ Val chided. The garden lights were reflecting off her hair now, making it look like she was sporting an iridescent halo. Saint Val of the Blessed Prosecco.

  ‘What is?’ Once again, I braced myself for a blunt truth. Sometimes I really wished I was related to people who humoured me and sugar coated everything.

  ‘You’ve started thinking about things. When did that happen? The Carly Cooper I knew never weighed up pros and cons in her life – she just jumped right in and took a chance on where she’d land. I mean, suffering mother, chucking in your job and your home to travel round the world looking for your ex-boyfriends, with nothing to fall back on? That was the most ridiculously, bloody brilliant thing I’d ever heard, and I admired you for it, pet.’

  There was a heat rising in my neck and I tried to tell myself it was the furry blanket, firepit and the whisky in the coffee, but I knew better. It was the pained acceptance that what she was saying was right. Just as, much as I preferred my little oasis of denial, I knew everything Carol, Kate and Jess said earlier was true too.

  ‘I don’t know… I guess life taught me a few lessons and somewhere along the line I started playing safe and got sensible.’ There was so much more I could say, so many more reasons I could give them, but I didn’t want to spoil the party.

  Kate grinned. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  ‘Okay, slightly more thoughtful and careful,’ I acknowledged. I could see that they weren’t going to let me off the hook, so I went with an explanation that had a grain of truth, without telling the full story. ‘I had to grow up a bit after I had the kids. I couldn’t be rash and do crazy things that would land me on my arse when I had the boys to look after. I think the time I took them to LA when they were still toddlers to try to sell my book to a movie company taught me a sore lesson. I ended up skint, nothing substantial came from it and I almost wrecked my marriage.’

  ‘Well, there you have it!’ Val said.

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘You’re still acting like you’ve got something to lose. You haven’t. Carly, growing up you were the boldest child I’d ever known. Then you became the boldest twenty-something. And thirty-something. So how come the forty-something Carly Cooper is too afraid to live her life?’ The words were harsh, but her voice oozed tenderness. We both knew that she was right and just doing that tough-love thing that aunts can get away with.

  Oh God, snot alert. I blinked back the tears that were forming again. Bloody hormones.

  The others, for once, were wide-eyed but silent, waiting for my reply.

  ‘You’re right. I know you are. I’m just not sure I’m ready to change it.’ I’d never prayed more than I did right then for someone to burst into song and take the heat off me. If they kept going, I’d crack and blurt out everything – my sadness, my sorrow, my guilt for the part I played in what happened to Sarah – and there would be no taking any of it back.

  Thankfully, Val rescued me with some words of wisdom.

  ‘There’s only one way to get back on that horse, love. When the boys are away, plan something for yourself, something that will enrich your life. If you could go anywhere and do anything, what would it be?’

  ‘Shag Tom Hardy on a beach in Bermuda,’ I answered glibly, hoping humour would divert the attention.

  ‘Yup, me too,’ Carol piped up, just as Jess quipped, ‘Count me in.’

  ‘Dear Lord, you lot are like nuns that all have their monthlies at the same time,’ Val chirped, exasperated. ‘Let’s try that again, but this time something a shade more realistic.’

  I was tempted to say ‘Shag Matt Damon on Blackpool beach,’ but I could see she was trying to help.

  ‘I don’t know. I was thinking maybe I’d go to the States this summer too, but I can’t do that, because I’ll look like a saddo who’s stalking my ex and my boys.’

  ‘I think you might manage to go to a country of 330 million people without bumping into them,’ Jess pointed out helpfully.

  ‘True,’ I conceded. She had a point. Could I really do that though? Did I really want to spend money I didn’t have, going somewhere on my lonesome? And was there any chance whatsoever that I’d fit into any of my summer holiday clothes, since I’d opted for the cinnamon bagel and Frosties separation diet? I’d gained at least a stone since Mark had moved out. Maybe two. I avoided the scales because I didn’t want to deal with them either. ‘Okay, I’ll think about it,’ I said for the second time, just to appease them.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Val challenged. ‘Decide right now. This minute. Because that’s what the Carly Cooper I used to know would have done and it’s time you clutched back some of her devil-may-careness.’ Her eyes flicked to Jess, who had taken a breath as if she were about to speak. Val cut her right off. ‘And I know that’s not a proper phrase, Miss Smarty Knickers, but we all know what I mean.’

  I knew. I absolutely knew. She was right. When I went off to live in Amsterdam and Shanghai and Hong Kong, in my teens and early twenties, I hadn’t given any of it a second thought. I’d fallen in love with giddy regularity, swept up in the moment. When I went back to find all my exes years later, it was a ludicrous plan to everyone except me. But the truth was, the chain of events I’d kicked off on that trip created a sliding door that set us on a collision course with heartbreak years later. It was the first domino in a twenty year chain and when the final one fell it caused so much pain and loss to people I loved. Sarah. Her family. Mark. Me. That loss had changed me. Now, somewhere deep inside, I was scared of seizing the day because that’s how people got hurt. It was better to play safe, to burrow down and do nothin
g.

  I could feel my throat start to tighten again and I feigned a sneeze to cover up the tears that were filling my eyes.

  ‘Aaargh, hay fever,’ I said, ignoring quizzical looks from Kate, who was the only one of the girls with the wherewithal to realise that I’d never had hay fever in my life, and even if I did, it was hardly likely to flare up at midnight in March.

  Countless Proseccos in, Val was not for deserting her mission. ‘What do you say then, my love? Are you doing it?’ she badgered excitedly, while everyone else stared at me expectantly.

  It was crazy. Mad. Ridiculous. And my stomach clenched at the very thought of it. I knew they were right, but I wasn’t ready.

  However, right then and there, I’d have agreed to anything to get them off my case, so I decided to just play along. By tomorrow morning, everyone would have forgotten about it and I could go back to my plan to spend the month at home in my pyjamas, with Ben & Jerry providing daily consolation for the absence of my boys. I had to make it convincing, though, so I downed the last of my Irish coffee, slammed the glass mug on the table, gave silent thanks that it didn’t break and slapped on a beaming smile.

  ‘Yep, I’m doing it.’ I ignored the parts of my lie-detecting brain that were now holding their palms to their foreheads in horror. ‘But you lot might want to start saving the bail money, because if I get into trouble, I’ll be expecting you to be the cavalry.’

  The irony is that I was joking.

  Given how things turned out, the joke was definitely on me.

  4

  Sunday 28th July, 2019

  Wrecking Ball – Miley Cyrus

  After a sleepless night, I finally drifted off at dawn, then woke with that sick feeling in my stomach, the sadistic, non-specific kind that forces your mind to run through everything in your life to find the problem. It didn’t take long. This was the day I’d been dreading for the last four months, since Mark suggested taking the boys away. My hopes for a national flight ban, a plague of locusts, an alien invasion – anything that would derail Mark’s plan had come to nothing and in just a few hours they’d be leaving.

  My throat tightened as I reached for my phone, force of habit every morning. Last thing I remember was scrolling through old photos of the boys as kids and weeping pathetically at 5 a.m. The screen was black. Bugger, forgot to charge it.

  Sighing, I plugged it in to the pink wire on my bedside table and forced myself to leave the cosiness of the duvet. If I lay there, I’d just drive myself crazy. Much better to get up, get busy and…

  I heard the toilet flushing in the bathroom next door. Whoever that was, he knew how to twist the knife. Not only was this the day that they were leaving me FOR ALMOST A WHOLE MONTH (I could only think of that reality in capital letters – like my brain was screaming the words), but one of my sons had just reached that incredible teenage milestone – he’d managed to get out of bed on a weekend morning with no nagging, shouting or bribery from a parent. That had only ever happened on birthdays, Christmas and Mother’s Day.

  I padded out into the hall, determined to get eye-witness proof of this momentous occasion. I was just in time to meet Benny, in shorts and a Simpsons T-shirt, hair going in twenty-three different directions, coming out of the bathroom. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I went in for a hug, noticing that my head only reached his shoulders now that he was almost the same height as his brother. I was fairly sure I was either going to have to invest in a box to stand on or spend the rest of my life with a sore neck from gazing upwards. When did that even happen? It seemed like a heartbeat ago he was toddling around my knees, wearing a hard hat and wellies, planning a career as either Buzz Lightyear or Bob The Builder.

  ‘Morning, my love. Congratulations on getting yourself out of bed without intervention from your mother.’

  He gave me an affectionate squeeze and I glanced upwards to see a cheeky grin as he replied with, ‘Congratulations on managing to sleep past noon.’

  It took me a moment. ‘Past noon?’ For the first time since I woke, I checked the Fitbit on my wrist. I tended to avoid looking at it, as I couldn’t handle being step-shamed by an inanimate object. What I saw there forced my brain to ramp up the decibels again as it screamed, ‘HOLY CRAP, IT’S ONE O’CLOCK!’

  One o’clock. Mark would be there any minute and the boys would be leaving and all I’d be left with was my new trophy for being the worst mother of the fricking year. For over a decade I’d been doing that bloody school run every single morning and I hadn’t been late once. Okay, maybe a couple of times, but I’d claimed car trouble and tied it in with a life lesson that sometimes a little fudging of the truth was necessary. I did, however, stress that the only exception to that rule was when it came to confessing misbehaviour to their mother. Those blips of tardiness aside, I was on time for their sports practice, swimming galas and basketball games at the crack of dawn on Saturdays and Sundays. And today, the one day that an actual flight depended on it, I’d decided to audition for Sleeping bloody Beauty.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit – your dad will be here any minute.’

  Just at that, the doorbell rang. Damn his need for punctuality. That man needed to lighten up and be late for once in his life.

  ‘Benny, go get your brother up and for the love of all that’s holy, try to be downstairs in five minutes looking like you’ve been awake for hours and you’re totally organised.’

  The only thing stopping me from escalating to full panic was that I’d told them both to pack last night, before we ventured out to the dizzy heights of Taco Bell for a farewell dinner (sobbing into nachos is never a good look), so I knew they should be pretty much ready to just grab their luggage and go. Presuming I didn’t crack at the last minute and barricade the doors so they couldn’t leave. I’d watched enough Bruce Willis movies to recreate a fairly decent siege situation.

  Passing the hall mirror, I ruffled my hair and tried to make it look like it was deliberately messy as opposed to serious bedhead, wiped yesterday’s mascara flakes from under my eyes and then groaned as I saw the reflection of the T-shirt I’d worn in bed last night. It was a Christmas pressie from Kate, and said, ‘If it’s men or chocolate, pass the Crunchie.’ I clearly had to address my slogan T-shirt phase.

  ‘Please be the postman. Please be the postman,’ I prayed, as I slowly pulled the door open.

  ‘Hey,’ Mark said, and I could see the forced cheeriness in the tightness around his mouth. He’d probably been out there thinking, ‘Please let one of the boys answer the door.’ ‘I thought for a minute you guys had overslept,’ he scoffed, as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the world.

  ‘No, of course not. The boys are almost ready.’ My fingers were crossed behind my back. ‘Do you want to come in for a coffee?’ It was a year now since he’d moved out and into his own place and it still felt weird inviting him into the house we’d lived in together for almost twenty years.

  The mercury on the uncomfortable scale rose even further when his eyes went to my T-shirt. ‘Trying to tell me something?’ he asked, those gorgeous blue eyes going into a cynical frown that threatened to expose the chirpy act.

  That was one of the toughest things about this situation. The physical attraction to the first guy I ever snogged had never gone, although it irritated the life out of me that, let’s be honest, he’d aged way better than me. The flecks of grey around his temples just made his dark hair look more interesting, and he still had that cute grin that had always made me melt.

  And the body… Since we were teenagers, his answer to the daily stresses of life had been to run five or six times a week, whereas mine had always been to drink coffee or wine and eat biscuits with my pals. I felt the vein in my neck start to pulse as his finely toned torso and curvy biceps reminded me that for the last few years he didn’t have the energy to have a night of passion with his wife more than once a fortnight, but apparently he had no issue at all summoning up the motivation to do a 5K jog or to spend a couple of hours doing sweaty
stuff with weights down at the sports centre. The flat he’d moved into was in one of those service apartment blocks near his office in Bishopsgate, in the City, and the boys had reported back that there was a gym in the basement. I hoped Mark and his chest press would be very happy together. Not that I was in any way bitter. I’d always hold a little nugget of sadness that, just like my dad had put his chum, Jack Daniels, first, Mark had prioritised work over family. And sure, it stung that when Sarah died, and I fell down a well of pain and regret, he didn’t even try to lift me up. But in the end, I was the one who’d called it quits and I truly wanted him to find a life that worked for him.

  ‘Boys, your dad’s here,’ I shouted up the stairs. We both pretended we didn’t hear the loud thud, followed by a hissed ‘Shit on a stick!’ from Mac.

  My almost-former husband followed me into the kitchen, and I flicked on the coffee machine and pulled our cups out of the cupboard. His DAD mug still sat where it always had, front and centre on the bottom shelf of the cream cabinet above the Dolce Gusto. I slipped his favourite cappuccino pod into the machine, wondering if it was out of date. I was a straight-up, strong Americano drinker, so I hadn’t touched that box since the day he’d moved out. He’d been in the house a few times in the last year, but only when he needed to discuss the boys. It was never a social call or a comfy chat over a hot beverage. I’m not sure why. He would have been welcome, but perhaps it had been easier for both of us to take a step back and maybe – as long as out of date coffee didn’t give him an ulcer – this meant we were making progress on working towards some kind of new friendship frame for our relationship. I hoped so. I missed him. Not husband-missed him, but definitely friend-missed him. God, I was turning into Val and making up new terminology. I’d have a blonde bob the size of a wheelie bin before the month was out.