The Story After Us: A heartwarming tale of life and love for modern women everywhere

by Fiona Perrin

  ‘You’re the clever sod, aren’t you?’ Marti had boomed when he’d met me in the lift. I’d blushed with pleasure and said something about not being that clever really and he’d said, as the doors had opened in the Goldwyn foyer, ‘Take the praise when you get it. The right response is, “Thank you – what’s the next challenge?”’ I’d laughed nervously, loving every minute.

  In New York, when the lift door had opened and Lars had come out, I’d been praying to every god I’d never believed in that he’d got the deal. He’d given me a small smile that had been matched by his eyes but had waited until we’d gone out through the revolving door onto the pavement before he’d let out a whoop, picked me up and whirled me round.

  ‘Is it really real?’ I’d whispered.

  ‘For you and for me,’ he’d whispered back. ‘I love you, älskling.’ It had felt like a team effort, as if every sentence of that pitch had been scribed in my brain.

  We’d walked all the way downtown, twenty blocks in the odd slice of sunshine that had managed to land between the buildings into the New York street. As we’d walked he’d told me every detail of the pitch; how he was finally going to be able to buy some Apple Macs.

  ‘This is just the beginning. I’m so happy. I couldn’t have done this without you. And I’m doing this for us – we’re going to have a perfect family, Ami.’

  I’d clutched Lars’ hand and strode along beside him in the wide New York avenue. He was wearing his one and only suit – with no tie but a blue shirt that we’d hung in the disgusting hotel shower that morning so that the creases would fall out in the steam. He looked as tall as usual but somehow bigger in all ways. We’d finally decided that we could risk spending some money on a celebration lunch.

  ‘We’d better eat all the chips because I’m pretty sure we can’t afford pudding,’ I said now.

  ‘You’re very bossy,’ Lars said. As his English steadily improved and the sing-song lessened to a lilt, he still experimented with words; ‘bossy’ had been his word of the moment for a while now, always said with a big smile.

  When we’d drunk every last drop of fake champagne and eaten every chip, we went out into the dusk of Soho and started to walk again, down through Chinatown and towards the river. I’d heard that the view from the Brooklyn Bridge was the best there was of Manhattan. Eventually we could smell the Hudson. We climbed the walkway that led up to the big industrial arches across the river, dodging caricature artists and stalls selling plastic replicas of the Empire State Building.

  ‘You must not look back,’ I ordered, ‘until we’re at least halfway.’

  ‘See? You’re very bossy.’ Lars grinned and kissed me.

  Up and up we went. The steel wires of the bridge made a cage over us. Then finally, as the bridge flattened, I stopped for breath and put my hands over Lars’ eyes and gently turned him. As I came round myself I gasped. Below me, crammed into what appeared to be a tiny island, were thousands of glass steeples, looking as if they were jostling for every inch of space with each other. It was as if they had been dropped in, reshuffled and reshuffled again. And as I turned, there, in the speckled early evening light, was the green gleam of the Statue of Liberty.

  Lars pulled me to him and with one arm tucked around each other we pointed out all the shapes from the famous skyline that we thought we recognised.

  ‘All those dreams of all those people,’ Lars said as we finally went back down.

  As we walked, we talked about ours, and how they were only really just starting.

  13

  2017

  Ben rang while I was despairing about the lack of progress on the pitch. ‘Ah, Amelia,’ he said. ‘It’s very important to feed the working brain. I know you get all stressed and busy and that’s probably what keeps you so thin without exercise, which, incidentally, Liv thinks is a bit unfair because she tends to put weight on her bottom.’

  Quite how shit-faced must Liv have been to tell him all this drivel? ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

  ‘Manic. But as I was saying, it’s very important to take regular breaks in order not to restrict the creative mind, so I wondered if you wanted lunch? Don’t want to be a stalker or anything but…’

  Maybe this was how single people behaved. It’d been so long; how did I know what it was like in a world where everyone swiped left and right? ‘Sorry, I have a working lunch with the creative team.’ This was a lie.

  ‘You wanted to be a creative yourself originally, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I did,’ I said. Did he know everything about me?

  ‘That’s right. That was about the time you had a boyfriend who worked in the British Museum – let me remember, was his name really Archibus?’

  I snorted half in amazement and half in outrage. Liv had not only told him about me, she’d given him an unadulterated biography.

  I sniffed and decided to fight back – prospective client or not. ‘You must have been really bored at your own work party to listen to all that crap from Liv.’

  ‘It’s true. I was really bored and then I met Liv, who tried to set me up with you, which made it much more entertaining.’

  ‘But it was all bollocks.’

  ‘If you’d only come for lunch with me then we could test how much of it is true.’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Not doing it.’

  There was a deep laugh at the end of the phone. ‘Nope, not doing it,’ he mimicked. ‘Not never.’

  ‘This is turning into a very childish conversation,’ I said, but couldn’t help smiling, ‘when I have a lot to do to show you the amazing work that Goldwyn can pull off. And when you know I can’t meet you socially as we have a competitive pitch on.’

  ‘All right, I’ll leave you alone,’ he said. ‘But amazing work, Amelia, that’s exactly what we need.’

  *

  The trouble was, so far, it was crap. And we had just a week to go. I’d sat through a frustrating meeting that morning after Bridget triumphantly informed me that she and the creative team ‘had had a breakthrough’.

  ‘We’ve done an all-nighter on it.’

  ‘You’ve been here all night?’

  ‘Yes, all night.’ Bridget was smug. ‘I’ll phone the boys and we’ll group in five?’

  The creatives – two twenty-somethings called Jake and Luis – came through the door looking grey with tiredness, their usually spiky hair flat and greasy. Jake was wearing a red T-shirt with white lettering that said, ‘Fuck you. Yes I will.’ I hoped they were going to present the work that I’d been struggling all week to see. My own ideas had been very lacking – it was as if I’d had some kind of creative block.

  Bridget led the way to the table in the corner and we all sat down. ‘It’s a strategy based entirely on the latest qualitative statistics of consumer diversity among the target A purchaser group in this country,’ she started.

  I blinked. ‘Really?’

  ‘We’re talking the renaissance of the handbag,’ Bridget continued, ‘as a work of art on a par with the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s David…’

  ‘Shall we just let the ideas speak for themselves? I might understand a little better then.’

  The two creatives shuffled.

  ‘Luis?’

  ‘Him,’ he said, indicating Jake with a shrug of his head.

  ‘Jake? Come on: get the boards out on the table.’

  ‘The thing is…’ Jake started.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The thing is, we’re not sure that this strategy works,’ he finished and refused to look at Bridget, who, turning puce, gasped and then started, her voice rising like an ill-thought crescendo.

  ‘But, you said you wouldn’t tell her. You said that you didn’t think it was that bad…’

  ‘It was six o’clock in the morning and we’d have said anything.’ Luis spoke straight to me.

  ‘And we’d had to stay all night because she wouldn’t agree with any of our work…’ Jake became braver. ‘And so, about four in the morning
, when we were just comatose, we came up with this really basic idea about works of art…’

  ‘And she loved it,’ Luis joined in.

  I raised my eyes to look at Bridget, who was mouthing nothings.

  ‘And we said we’d back her up because she was desperate… and we felt sorry for her,’ Jake continued.

  Bridget sank her head into her hands and clutched her temples.

  ‘…said don’t worry, she’d pull it off… she’d think of something and you’d buy it…’

  ‘Bridget,’ I said. Did she think I was so useless now that I would just go with a substandard idea?

  ‘And we said we’d go along with it, if she’d just bloody leave us alone to get a couple of hours of kip.’

  Bridget let out a low moan. I was angry and very sorry for her all at the same time.

  ‘Is this true, Bridget?’

  ‘And when we woke up just now on the sofa in the boardroom, I said to Luis, “We’re not the creative brains we want to be if we let that shit go through,”’ continued Jake.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘And I said, “We’ve got to go in there and say what we really think…”’

  ‘So sorry, Bridget,’ they chorused as a finale, ‘but it was our reputation or you.’

  Bridget burst into tears. ‘I was just trying to push you to see how innovative we could be.’

  I leant over to rub her back. I should’ve been more helpful, more present, more supportive; I should also have remembered what it was like to get your first big job to work on when you were in your mid-twenties and very ambitious.

  ‘Just how crap is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s absolutely crap.’ Luis turned round an image of the Sistine Chapel roof where his rough pen had drawn handbags attached to the naked hips of cherubs.

  It was truly awful. I shivered.

  Jake turned round another of the statue of David with a Campury bag tucked over his shoulder. It was more than an affront to this homage to man’s perfection – it was about the most basic advertising idea that was ever likely to be presented to a major European fashion company.

  ‘You’d be laughed out of the pitch,’ Jake said.

  Bridget let out another moan. ‘I just wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to prove myself like you did and I thought that with everything that’s going on with you…’

  ‘You mean my divorce?’ I pursed my lips and Luis and Jake looked at their knees again.

  ‘Well,’ whispered Bridget, ‘you know, just everything that’s been going on.’

  ‘I’m getting divorced from my husband, not my brain,’ I said as calmly as I could and tried to smile.

  ‘She going to cry too?’ Luis asked Jake in a whisper.

  ‘Not sure, mate, not sure at all.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, and then looked at the silent ticking of my watch showing the days falling away.

  If we didn’t think of something soon, I was going to face downright ritual humiliation at the hands of a man who probably knew the colour of every pair of knickers in my underwear drawer.

  But much more than this, I needed this account if I was going to save my career and help my children to have a consistent roof over their heads.

  ‘Right,’ I said. Jake, Luis and Bridget waited as if I were the Dalai Lama about to dispense eternal wisdom. ‘Any good ideas that Bridget threw out?’ I asked the two boys.

  ‘There was the one based on how glad the cow was to turn up as a handbag,’ said Luis.

  ‘Oh, God, no.’ I put my face in my hands like Bridget.

  ‘Or the one with the handbag in formaldehyde, very beautifully shot, suspended in time – you know, ripping off Hirst…’

  ‘Sounds better.’ I saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘But there were problems with the copyright.’ I saw the light extinguish so that I was left in claustrophobic darkness.

  The two boys looked despondent. Jake asked if they could go get some kip so they could think straight again. ‘We’ll come up with something, Ami,’ they said and shuffled off like zombies.

  ‘You’d better go home and sleep too,’ I told Bridget. I sent her off with a small stiff hug.

  Please, please go, I thought. I need to be alone to scream with stress.

  *

  Later that day I was heading to Selfridges to research Campury’s concession there and see how shoppers viewed the bags for myself, thinking it might lead to a divine moment of inspiration. I was striding down Oxford Street – still achingly cold – and glaring at all the foreign tourists. Why weren’t London pavements divided into lanes, like motorways or swimming pools, so that the people with places to go, things to do, could stride purposefully in line with their stress?

  My mobile rang. ‘Amelia? It’s Paul.’

  ‘Paul…?’

  ‘Paul Carter – from the school.’

  ‘Are Tess and Finn all right?’ Panic rose in me.

  ‘Yes, absolutely fine considering the circumstances. I was just wondering whether you’d noticed anything newly odd about Tessa’s behaviour at home?’

  I stood with my back to the window of H&M, where plastic mannequins promised that life would always be cheap and very cheerful.

  ‘No, well, not anything out of the ordinary, but then—’

  ‘She’s leading funeral processions in the playground, Amelia.’ He said this as if my daughter had been caught selling crack with a gang of hoodie-wearing criminals.

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘She is inveigling other children into joining in mock funerals at breaktimes,’ Mr Carter whispered. ‘So, you see, we need to think about an intervention here.’

  Interventions were for people who drank vodka like water, had children by their brothers and went on Jeremy Kyle, but I said, ‘Yes, I can see that that might be a little—’

  ‘Lining children up behind her and making the symbol of the cross, Amelia.’

  I gripped my fingers around the phone. If you weren’t Tessa’s teacher, I hissed to myself. ‘Thank you,’ I said instead. ‘I appreciate the call and will certainly do everything I can to ensure that Tess realises why it’s not the done thing in the playground.’

  I put my fist in front of my mouth to stop the anguish of my guilt. Then I turned around and stuck my hand out for the first cab with a yellow light that would take me to look after the broken-hearted children of a broken home.

  14

  2009

  It was midnight, dreamtime, when Lars insisted we got in his car – he’d bought an old orange Mini, the babiest car. I wanted to be warm in bed, wrapped around him, rather than being made to go out into the cold and drive. Still, he was tense with anticipation and excitement and that was hard to resist.

  ‘Just tell me where we’re going,’ I grumbled as we shot in and out of the snaking London traffic. But I didn’t moan too much. As i-patent.com got going, he was, more than ever, like a mountain goat that knows it’s on the path to a meadow full of grass.

  ‘Shush, bossy girl.’ He grinned.

  I snuggled down in the passenger seat and turned up the tinny stereo so that it played cheesy love songs even louder.

  When we arrived at Primrose Hill, he awkwardly pulled a wicker hamper from the tiny boot and, ordering me to ‘get going’, led the way up the smooth round shape of the hill. London started to lay itself out behind us, like a carpet of Swarovski.

  I huffed and puffed, wrapped up in my coat over my pyjamas. ‘I really love you,’ I told him, despite this, into the darkness.

  ‘I really love you too,’ he said.

  At the top he cracked open champagne and carefully spread out Tupperware boxes of strawberries, chicken and bread onto an old car blanket that he laid on top of the grass.

  The moon had decided to throw a single spotlight, just meant for a dancing couple. I pretended not to shiver with cold and smiled instead, even wider. Just for a moment, I dared to hope what might happen next. I’d, of course, dreamt and dreamt about
the moment when we would move our story forward, just as we’d described to one another.

  ‘I think we ought to get married, älskling,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I cried.

  ‘I love you SO much,’ he told me as we kissed.

  He had a ring: it was a diamond that was flawless rather than huge. Each facet seemed to find a star of its own in the sky. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ I whispered. People said hearts felt like bursting; mine felt as if it were going to sprinkle starlight when it popped.

  ‘I chose it for the cut and colour,’ he told me. ‘I researched it. Lots.’

  I knew that he had, because that was what he was like. I stood up on top of the hill in the middle of the freezing cold of the night and, putting my hands to my mouth to make a megaphone, started to shout: ‘LONDON? Are you LISTENING? I am going to marry the MAN I LOVE!’

  15

  2017

  ‘Tess, Finn,’ I called, pushing open the front door. ‘Darlings, Mummy’s home.’

  There was a clatter from the playroom and Tessa’s face appeared around the door. ‘Are you poorly again?’

  ‘No, darling, I just wanted to hang out with you.’

  Tessa smiled uncertainly.

  ‘Where’s Luba? And where’s Finn?’ I picked her up and planted kisses all over her face.

  ‘I’ve buried him,’ Tessa said.

  ‘You’ve done what?’ I put her down and strode towards the playroom door. Pushing it open, I was confronted with a vast pile of cushions – the coloured IKEA ones from the playroom sofa, the downy, decorative ones from the hall settle, the pillows from my bed and Tess and Finn’s beds – rising up from the centre of the room into a rectangular mountain and, on top of that, what appeared to be the dying daffodils that this morning had been in the middle of the kitchen table, now minus their vase.

  It was a macabre and naïve interpretation. It was also a grave.

  I shook with fear and gasped. ‘Tess, where’s Finn?’

  ‘In the grave.’ Tessa pointed to the bottom of the mountain of suffocating cushions.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ I dived towards the floor, throwing each cushion sideways, the daffodils to the left, my bed pillows to the right. ‘Finn! Are you all right? Oh, Finn.’