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

by Fiona Perrin

  I rubbed my face furiously with the sleeve of my T-shirt. ‘I want you to go now.’ All I could think was that he was saying this now, and behaving like this now. It made all the pain we’d gone through seem so unnecessary. Overwhelmingly, though, I didn’t know whether it was too late.

  ‘Of course, if you want me to.’

  I waited until the door had slammed shut behind him before I let the tears roll like rain down a window.

  *

  Spring blossomed into summer in that English way that involves endless weeks of rain. Ben asked me for lunch one day promising that it wasn’t ‘anything more than business’.

  ‘Don’t worry, just want a bit more thinking about how we roll out in Europe,’ he said as we sat down in a corner of Dean Street Townhouse.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea being female and being seen with you in public.’

  He laughed. ‘You going on about Claudia? You shouldn’t believe gossip, Ami Fitch.’

  I eyed him with mock suspicion. ‘Did she help with the image change?’

  Today he was wearing another suit and shirt, but this time it looked as if it might have had something to do with a tailor: the dark grey fitted over his shoulders, slimming him so that it was clear it was all muscle beneath his clothes. He’d clearly shaved.

  ‘Scrub up all right, don’t I? But, no, this isn’t because of Claudia. The bosses at Campury dragged me in and told me to look like I was serious – apparently I was letting down the brand.’

  ‘Why do you choose to look so… well, so anti everything the fashion industry stands for?’

  ‘I suppose because I think most of it’s bollocks,’ he said. ‘In Italy, I could get away with it – they think the English are eccentric. But I’m not sure that me wearing the right suit is going to get more handbags sold.’

  ‘It worked in Milan?’

  ‘Not sure, but I was comfy.’ He grinned. ‘Claudia says you can still be comfy in a posh suit, so I’m giving it a try.’

  ‘Is she going to dump her MP?’

  Ben laughed. ‘For me? Of course not. There’s nothing going on. Now stop being so nosy, Ami, and talk to me seriously about European demand patterns.’

  So, I did. He was efficient and calm as I talked statistics, demographics and tried to sell him an enhanced media strategy, which meant more money for Brand New.

  But before committing to any of that, he ruined it all by saying, ‘And that’s quite enough of the boring – although very bright and professional – version of you,’ ordered champagne ‘to toast the alliance of our organisations’ – a small wink in my direction – and then demanded to know what I would like to eat.

  ‘Extremely bright and professional,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely extremely,’ he confirmed. ‘It’s just that now we’ve got the most important stuff out of the way, don’t you think we should concentrate on complete trivia?’

  ‘Are you ever serious?’

  ‘I’m serious all the time. Especially now, back here without my friends and the kids. It’s just nice to be able to chill out. I feel like I know you. Just a bit.’

  ‘Well, we have…’

  ‘Had some strange conversations?’ he finished and then continued in a bad mock French accent, ‘Now, would you care for Canard à la Hoh, Heh, Hoh, Heh, Hoh with sauce à l’orange and patata dauphinoise?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I’d like whatever is French for green salad.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Woman cannot live by lettuce alone.’

  ‘I was just trying to look like the sort of sophisticated woman who never eats before dark,’ I admitted. ‘Really I’d like a truly massive plate of whatever’s going.’ So, we had mince and potatoes and chatted about our children as we forked it into our mouths. Around us deals were being done, and relationships forged – but it felt good to simply share stories about how funny our kids were.

  He insisted we had another glass of champagne, ‘Because I feel relaxed with you, Amelia,’ and turned the conversation round to my divorce. ‘You all right now?’

  I told him that Lars was a reformed character. ‘All of a sudden he’s there all the time, just when I thought it was too late. We’re trying to see if we can be friends.’

  ‘Is that good or bad? You said you didn’t want to get divorced.’

  ‘I don’t. Well, I didn’t and then I thought it was inevitable.’ He had a way of making conversation quickly intimate.

  ‘You don’t trust him to carry on like this?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but he’s really trying.’ I tried to shift the conversation to him. ‘You seem to have a lot of fun, though, for a divorcee.’

  ‘Lots of fun but no one to just hang out with,’ he said. ‘I miss my kids and my mates and it does get lonely sometimes.’

  Later, when he was shaking my hand and saying he would see me at our review meeting the following Tuesday, he stopped for a minute. ‘You couldn’t do that, could you, Ami? Now we’re over all that stuff.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Could you just hang out with me? I don’t want to be needy but sometimes you just have to say it out loud.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll know how to just hang out? What with being work-freaks and everything?’ I smiled.

  ‘I expect we could try – go to the pictures or something. Then go home and work our arses off.’

  My first thought – still broke – was that going to the pictures didn’t sound too expensive. And it sounded fun and I needed fun. ‘All right. Nothing more than…’

  ‘I promise you, I will never behave like that to you again.’ He was sorry and sincere. ‘I’m just looking for a mate. No, that came out wrong… I mean…’

  We both giggled. He made more jokes. We left with plans to ‘hang out’.

  *

  Wednesday night and Lars had the kids at Ulrika’s. Ben and I met outside Muswell Hill cinema to watch a rerun of Casablanca. It felt like being a teenager again as we got popcorn and a bag of Revels, which, as soon as we were seated, Ben opened and threw into the box of popcorn, shaking it vigorously.

  ‘What?’ I said, looking at him with amazement. The adverts were on.

  ‘Makes it more surprising.’ He grinned. ‘Do this with the kids. You never know if you’re going to get a coffee cream – yuck, by the way – or, hurrah, a chocolate raisin.’

  ‘I like the toffee ones,’ I pointed out, ‘and now I have to rootle round in the popcorn to get them.’

  He grinned again. ‘But it will feel great when you find one, Ami Fitch.’

  I almost forgot who I was with as we joined the last hurrahs of those holed up in Morocco during the war. I was conscious, however, of how much of the seat he took up, so that his big shoulder was pressed against mine. Occasionally I dug into the popcorn box and found a chocolate. He found a toffee and prodded me to take it from him and I grinned back but then went back to the story. When Humphrey Bogart made the ultimate sacrifice of love on behalf of Ingrid Bergman, I felt tears slipping down my face and he wordlessly passed me a tissue and dabbed his own eyes.

  Outside, in the dark of the high street, we giggled. ‘Hanging out should come with a health alert,’ Ben said. ‘Turns you into a sniveller.’

  ‘You old romantic,’ I teased.

  ‘And you were dry-eyed when that plane took off?’

  I laughed and he indicated his car. ‘Lift down the hill?’

  As we drew up outside my house he said, ‘The other thing that people do when they hang out is go bowling. Next week any good for you?’

  I smiled. ‘All right, sounds good.’

  *

  I’d forgotten how unbelievably crap I was at bowling though. First the staff had to go and find a size twelve in shoes for Ben; as I put mine on I tried to forget about the disgustingness of other people’s feet. We were both in jeans and Ben looked much more at home in them than in his suit.

  My first bowl went straight down the side chute. I turned and Ben was clearly trying not t
o laugh. He raised his eyebrows, picked up a heavy bowl and hit an immediate strike.

  I clapped in appreciation and picked up a lighter bowl. I tried harder this time but it made it halfway down the lane and then also hit the side gulley. Ben gave up trying not to howl.

  ‘You been bowling before, ever?’ he said.

  ‘Not so often.’ I was sheepish.

  ‘Would you think I was a tosser if I gave you some tips?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t think you were a tosser because of that,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘So good for my ego, hanging out with you.’ He then very patiently explained how to pick up the bowl, how to get some momentum in the brief run up and how to launch it so that it actually hit a skittle. Mine still didn’t until the fourth go, when I managed to knock two down.

  ‘Great,’ said Ben, who by now had six strikes in a row.

  ‘You could have told me you were a bloody bowling champion,’ I grumbled, looking at our scoreboard.

  ‘Barnsley Boys League 1996,’ he admitted.

  ‘Still got it going on.’ I stepped forward with my next bowl and managed to get four. It was only on the last throw that I got a more respectable seven.

  ‘See? You bowl me over, Ami Fitch,’ said Ben.

  I looked at him. ‘Winning is right up your alley, isn’t it?’

  We took off our stinky shoes. He dropped me home. ‘I reckon the next thing is an Indian in Brick Lane,’ he carried on. ‘We could take the creative teams?’

  I smiled as I went into my house. Hanging out had a lot going for it.

  *

  Liv said we were going for lunch one Saturday, when I didn’t have the kids, to ‘discuss this whole Lars thing’. She called it an ‘emergency summit’ and said there was no other place to go other than the Suicide Café. When she was in that sort of mood there wasn’t much point arguing with her.

  The café was less gloomy than usual in the early June sunshine. Shafts of light lit up the dust on the bell jar containing the canaries. The decrepit waiter shrugged when we came in and pointed at a table in the corner. At another table, a man with glasses that looked as if they were made from the bottom of two wine bottles was arguing loudly in Russian with a bald man. Every now and again they stopped shouting and slammed small glasses of vodka before starting all over again.

  I was on my second glass of wine, having not really touched my food. I’d so far managed to avoid the Lars conversation. Liv resolutely shovelled risotto into her mouth.

  ‘You never heard from that lovely posh guy again, then? Shame, you’re looking so much better than a few months back.’

  I wondered how awful I must have looked right when I was baring my everything to a bloke ten years my junior.

  ‘Cheers for making me feel so good about that,’ I said. ‘But no, heard nothing and that’s good; I told you, Lars and I are trying to be friends and parents.’

  ‘You do remember how much Lars hurt you, don’t you?’ Liv resumed eating.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I had a moment’s respite while the bearded Russian stood up and looked as if he was going to thump the bald man, but then they both sat down again and slammed another tumbler of vodka instead. ‘All that’s happening is that Lars comes round some nights and reads the kids stories and then he goes home. Every so often he says we should go back to counselling or go out for dinner, but I just tell him I need more time.’

  ‘You don’t want to get hurt again.’

  I won’t. Then I said out loud, ‘Sometimes it almost seems as if he loves the challenge.’

  ‘He always was a bit like that. You take your time.’

  ‘It’s not as if I have any space to think about it. The campaign goes live in July. Work has never been busier.’

  ‘And you’re still “hanging out” with Ben?’

  ‘We had a curry in Brick Lane with the creative team, does that count? He needs a mate in London, that’s all.’

  ‘Hmm. So, he’s not a complete arsehole after all?’

  ‘I think he’s just a guy who misses his children. He goes back to Italy most weekends to see his boys.’

  Liv pondered this and then said, ‘Phones you up a lot?’

  ‘About work and whatever. He’s actually all right, you know.’

  ‘You’ve changed your mind about him, then?’

  ‘He’s clever and good company.’

  ‘Doesn’t Lars ask lots of questions?’

  ‘Yes, but the truth is he’s my client and on his own in London.’

  Liv looked at me quizzically while I tried to avoid her eyes. ‘But you don’t tell Lars to stick around, get all married again?’

  ‘No,’ I said and it was true. Lars and I were civil to one another in the hours we crossed at the house; we talked about work and the children and I concentrated hard on not going near any subjects that would light the old touch papers. ‘He does tell me I look great all the time.’

  ‘Well, you do, but don’t trust him, Amelia. You’ve been there before and he’ll be all lovely and then he’ll disappear.’ Her voice rose. ‘And you were doing so well on your own.’ She signalled to the waiter for more wine but he was shuffling towards the Russians with another bottle of vodka. ‘You really believe it will last?’

  ‘I spent so long being angry with him it’s hard to stop. Ben says—’

  Liv visibly relaxed. ‘You want to go out with Ben now, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Even if he did turn out to be all right once, well… once he’d got over himself. He’s very apologetic about taking the piss out of me when we met. Which is still all your fault.’

  ‘As is me getting you the best advertising account you could ever want.’

  ‘Touché.’ I smiled. ‘Anyway, he’ll be going back to Italy. And if rumours are to be believed, he’s shagging practically every other woman in Soho.’

  ‘You do know that when you talk about someone shagging someone else it’s just because you actually want to shag them yourself?’

  I stuck my tongue out at her.

  ‘How long’s it been now?’

  ‘How long has what been?’

  ‘You know. You’ve started to get one of those pinched expressions that old ladies have.’

  ‘Well, unless you count the Hon Peter…’

  ‘Few times, was it, in one night?’

  ‘It was more the morning really,’ I said, ‘but if you don’t count the Hon Peter, then I guess six months – and then not very often actually, at the end of my marriage.’

  ‘Bloody hell, no wonder you’re all uptight. So, the choices are getting back with Lars or going out with Ben.’

  ‘I’m not going to go out with Ben.’

  ‘Who are all these other women he’s having sex with?’

  ‘He won’t admit any of it, but rumours include a woman he works with called Claudia – about twenty-five, posh, good hair.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘And then there seems to be a whole bunch of women’s names that just crop up. One girl back in Milan that he said he went to dinner with when he was over there seeing his kids a few weeks ago.’

  ‘You think he puts it about a bit?’

  ‘Pot, kettle, black.’ I took a glug of my wine and passed the glass to Liv.

  Liv ignored the dig and took a gulp. ‘Does it make you a bit jealous?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t.’

  ‘But you like him now?’

  ‘Well, it helped that he saved my agency.’

  ‘No, you saved your agency.’ Then she changed the subject. ‘Is your pa any better?’

  ‘Mum says he’s started writing again. She says we need to come and visit. It’s been ages.’

  ‘That poor woman, married to such a miserable sod.’

  ‘He’s not always miserable and when he isn’t he’s lovely. And you have to feel sorry for her, stuck with him in those endless downtimes.’

  Liv nodded. She’d listened to me over the years, first angrily, then resignedly talking about
my parents. As a teenager, she’d worked extra hard to include me in her family occasions; later, she’d wordlessly poured me a bucket of wine when I came back from visiting them.

  ‘What will you tell him about you and Lars?’

  ‘I don’t know, Liv. I really don’t.’

  *

  Hanging out with Ben continued, with long joking conversations, and meetings that turned into lunch. He would drop by sometimes, too, when the kids were in bed, and sit on the sofa with me, watching movies. I kept a couple of feet between us but soon relaxed. He said my house felt like being ‘at home’, and talked a lot about his own kids and how much he missed them. Then he leapt up to go home to call them.

  The next day, the same room, but Lars playing with his children instead. And he was properly playing with them: long games building all the plastic Lego kits that Finn had got for his birthday; listening to Tessa reading, her head half engaged, the other half somewhere considering Life’s Big Questions. She’d stopped talking about death though and the kids both seemed to like knowing exactly what time their dad would turn up; they’d stopped asking questions about whether we were going to stay married.

  Lars would come and sit at the kitchen table and talk to me and we’d laugh at what the kids had said; I felt then that it was a bit like what being married might have been like if we’d managed to make it work. Except the husband didn’t normally get up and go to sleep at his mother’s.

  32

  Sunday evening. A text from Ben.

  On my way back from Stansted – fancy hanging out with a cup of tea?

  How lonely he must feel landing in London after leaving his kids in Italy; and after a weekend conversing only with people the size of Oompa-Loompas, I could do with some adult conversation. I was wearing a pair of Lars’ pyjama trousers rolled up at the bottom, and an old festival T-shirt with Access All Areas emblazoned across the front, and sighed, because I’d have to get dressed. I texted him back, put my jeans and a jumper back on and painted my face with the surprising amount of make-up it took to look as if I had none on at all.

  He arrived twenty minutes later, looking slightly jaded from the journey, in jeans, a white shirt and a blue jacket, which he took off and hung on the back of the kitchen chair. He thrust a bottle of limoncello at me.