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

by Fiona Perrin

  ‘Thanks loads,’ I said, putting it onto the counter with an appreciative grunt. ‘Good weekend with the boys?’ He sat down at the table and told me how they’d spent most of the weekend setting up an epic Scalextric track that went into every room of his apartment, while I made tea and sat down opposite him.

  ‘Do you see your ex-wife when you go back?’

  ‘No, not much, aside from drop-off and pick-up,’ he said but smiled fondly. ‘She’s with someone else now.’

  ‘And is that good?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s a great bloke, older than her – a professor at the university, fabulous with the kids.’

  ‘Do you hate him for being perfect?’

  ‘Can’t stand the bastard.’

  I smiled. ‘Do you mind me asking what went wrong with your marriage?’

  Ben laughed. ‘Shall I start at the very beginning?’

  ‘It’s a very good place to start.’

  He told me how he’d met Patrizia shortly after he’d first moved to Italy, ten years ago, when he was twenty-eight and fighting for any kind of future in an industry that favoured camp over advertising acumen. ‘I used to go back to this tiny little flat – it had a window that opened up into the roof – and I’d climb out and sit there and dream.’ He was almost transported as he spoke. ‘I’d look out over the city and there were all these people – dressed to the nines. It was summer when I first went and every night the whole goddamn place would go and walk around in the streets, going to the gelateria, zooming around on those squeaky little mopeds. I was lonely as hell. Anyway…’ he smiled ‘… Patrizia used to come out of another flat across the street and sit on her roof terrace and there she’d be, twenty yards away, and we’d pretend, like people do in cities, that we were invisible to each other. And I would sit and stare down at the people and she would read books and smoke.’

  ‘So, did you ask her out?’

  ‘No way. That would have been batting out of my league. She was gorgeous.’

  ‘How gorgeous exactly?’

  ‘Incredibly gorgeous.’

  I was glad I’d painted my face and got dressed; but then he was probably used to being with effortless Europeans who woke up looking like a magazine spread. ‘Gorgeous like brunette and Italian and sultry?’

  ‘Long dark hair, cheekbones that look like you could balance something on them. And very unattainable.’

  ‘Unattainable like she might have been the favoured daughter of a Mafioso who would send you straight to the concrete wellies shop if he caught you messing with his girl?’

  ‘I would have been crab food in the harbour,’ he agreed. ‘Except Patrizia’s father is a farmer.’

  ‘What made you talk to one another?’

  ‘Oh, that came much later. She ignored me for a whole year – a year when for the winter she didn’t come out on the roof anyway. I was miserable and totally in love with this person who’d disappeared when it got chilly. I was the original lovesick bastard in the garret. Didn’t write poetry though. Or strum badly on a guitar. Or starve myself.’

  ‘You must have read Jean-Paul Sartre and contemplated methods of suicide,’ I said.

  ‘I was far too happy being miserable to die.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘Well, by the next summer, I felt a bit different – my job had got better by then and I’d stopped thinking that I’d never be cool enough…’

  ‘You loved yourself by then, you mean.’

  ‘I was Narcissus himself.’ He slurped his tea. ‘And I thought, go on, ask her out.’

  ‘And she said yes.’

  ‘No, she said no for at least another year, but then one day changed her mind. So, I thought I’d prove to her that I was different. She did this whole thing as if I was about the hundredth guy that minute to ask her out.’

  I wished I were continental and snooty with epic cheekbones.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I borrowed a friend’s car – a flash one with no roof – and I put champagne in the back in an icebox and lots of music in the stereo and I took her to Lake Como. No small journey, but I was determined.’

  I sighed.

  ‘And we talked deep stuff and walked around in the sunshine and sat down in this place straight out of Hemingway to have lunch…’

  ‘What did you have to eat?’

  ‘I think I had carpaccio.’

  ‘And what did she have?’

  ‘Again, I think she may have had the carpaccio,’ he said.

  ‘Good stuff. Do go on…’

  ‘Any other menu details needed at this point?’

  ‘No. Dead, raw cow, I’m there.’

  ‘With bits of parmesan on it, of course.’

  ‘Drizzled with olive oil?’

  ‘Yes, and shavings of five-year old parmesan, a coulis of ancient olive oil à la Roman. Sun-dried, Sardinian raisin focaccia with it, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’ I smiled.

  ‘Anyway… then we had an almighty row. And that was pretty much how it carried on. Madly in love with each other and completely outraged by each other at the same time.’

  ‘What did you row about?’

  ‘Absolutely everything,’ he said. ‘How to bring up the kids, whether we should have kids in the first place, jobs – we both had pretty demanding ones – where we should live, why I should grow up.’

  ‘Only the fundamentals, then.’

  ‘Yep. Only the really crucial stuff. But the trouble was, we were in love at the same time. She was passionate and very demanding – not just about me, about everything. All the things I liked about her were the same things that made it impossible for us to live together.’

  ‘In the end, what happened?’

  ‘In the end, she said enough. It was all too destructive, too boom and bust, too love and hate, too… well, just painful.’ A small raincloud floated across his face. ‘She said I should go and, in a rage one night, instead of fighting her back, I did. After that she lost faith in my desire to make it work – or that’s what she said. Then we tried being friends and that kind of works.’

  I said bleakly, ‘But that’s exactly it. Lars said he wanted to divorce me and I can’t believe he won’t want to again.’

  Ben stirred his tea. ‘What happened with me is not the same as what happened with you – that’s the problem with divorce war stories. What was it like for you guys in the beginning?’

  I sat back and felt the prick of tears in my eyes. Then, slowly, I told Ben how Lars and I had met in what seemed someone else’s story now, how sweet it had been, how full of hope, how determined we’d both been to create a beautiful future.

  As I finally stopped, Ben screwed his face into a sympathetic half-smile, half-grimace.

  ‘Change the subject?’ I said, trying not to let the tears come; I’d done such a good job at managing all my emotions for the last few weeks. But I was curious about one last thing. ‘Do you wish you’d stayed married?’

  He considered for a moment. ‘Yes, for the sake of the kids and because of the relationship we once had. But we just couldn’t make it work with all the will in the world.’

  ‘Do you want more tea?’

  He shook his head and got to his feet, pulling his jacket on. ‘I was just on my way home, but you know what, Oprah?’ He took on the hammed-up voice of an American TV pseudo-shrink that sounded nothing like Oprah. ‘This little dig down deep in my heart has been good for my soul.’

  I giggled and copied him, badly. ‘Now you go on home to your momma, boy, and you remember what you learned today.’

  He left with a quick kiss on my cheek that I found myself wishing had been longer. Was he really going straight home or was he off to see Claudia or someone else? I knew I shouldn’t wonder or care, but found that I did. I grimaced to shake the thought away but dreamt that night that Ben was being pulled away from me by a woman whose cheekbones stuck out from her face like bathroom shelves.

  *

  Lars came rou
nd to be with the children on the night Marti held a party to celebrate the launch of the advertising campaign in early July.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘You look fantastic.’ I was wearing a new Cos dress – I’d learned to love The Outnet and had got quite adept at shuffling credit limits between cards. I smiled and got into my Uber.

  The party was at a private members’ club in one of those Mayfair streets where all the squillion quid houses were actually offices for dodgy hedge funds. The only evidence that the club was actually a club was a discreet man in a non-ironic bowler hat, standing in front of a brass plaque beside the front door; the plaque simply said No. 7.

  Inside, it was all fleur-de-lys carpets and curtains. I made sure that the orange bag on my arm was hanging where all the guests could see it. My job that night was to get us an epic write-up in Campaign.

  I could see Ben – looking remarkably smart for someone who didn’t really do smart – talking away in a small group. He raised a glass of champagne to me, gave a small tilt of his head and a broad smile.

  I grabbed a coupe myself from a passing waiter and was quickly cornered by a hack from one of the fashion mags, who spent twenty minutes pretending to interview me while trying to get a free bag.

  ‘I could write about it weekly in my column,’ she said desperately in the end.

  ‘Diary of a handbag?’ I raised an eyebrow and then felt sorry for her. ‘Look, we don’t even give them out to Vogue editors, except under guard for shoots.’

  ‘Worth a go though, eh?’ she said and slunk off.

  For the next hour or so, Ben and I were both imprisoned at separate tables being interviewed by journalists, fêted by colleagues and shareholders, occasionally stopping mid-sentence to gesture in each other’s direction about the madness around us.

  I met Marti as I was coming back from the loo a little while later. He was holding a glass of wine in one hand and booming to one of the Goldwyn non-execs, Lord Haydon, about the sheer prestige of working with Campury.

  ‘B’stards still won’t give me a bag for my daughter,’ he added. ‘Now here’s the only woman to actually get one on account, so to speak.’ He looked at the soft leather hanging from my arm.

  I smiled at Marti and silently wished we could go back to the way we were before that disastrous dinner and almost losing the agency.

  ‘Haydon, you know Ami here, don’t you?’ he went on now. ‘Can we get you a drink?’

  I shook my head. I still didn’t know whether I was free from journalists’ questions. Lord Haydon grasped my hand. ‘In my day, girls with looks like yours pretended they didn’t have brains.’

  ‘There are still a few around who do that,’ I said, spotting Liv arriving through the door, hours late and, I hoped, not three sheets to the wind. I waved and she stepped forward, dressed in cowboy boots and a floral-print seventies frock. Behind her a boy with large horn-rimmed glasses gave up the chase and sank himself into a seat near the doorway.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I said, going forward to kiss her.

  ‘I told you about him. Dominic.’ Liv’s breath smelt of champagne; I made a mental note to make sure she behaved. ‘You look gorgeous.’ We gave each other kisses where our lips actually touched each other’s faces.

  ‘You’d better come and say hello to Marti,’ I said. ‘And Lord Haydon of Humberside.’

  ‘What happened to peers being attached to glamorous places?’ said Liv, going forward and dimpling her cheeks at both men, so that they immediately started spluttering about getting her a drink.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for ages. Ami tells me you’ve got even more powerful,’ Liv said to Marti.

  ‘Hmmphh,’ said Marti. ‘Not like old whatsit here.’

  ‘Old whatsit? I’ll thank you to remember the name of a director of your company.’

  ‘Ooh, I do like a fight,’ said Liv.

  ‘Shooters at dawn for you, my dear.’ Haydon bowed.

  ‘But I’d never be awake to watch it,’ Liv pointed out.

  ‘You an old friend of Ami’s?’

  ‘We met on a French exchange when we were fourteen,’ Liv said. ‘All we did was flirt with the boys.’ She grabbed her skirts Tiller Girl style and raised her eyebrows. ‘Ooh la la!’

  I dragged her away. As I went I could hear Haydon saying, ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Goldwyn, you have the best parties… girl was flashing her knickers at me, dammit.’

  I put a protective arm under Liv’s elbow and hissed in her ear to ‘behave’. We moved towards the more sober corner where Ben was refusing to give free handbags to two of Elle’s associate editors.

  ‘It’s our new corporate motto,’ he told me, steering Liv towards a red velvet banquette, where she sank like a ballerina who’s finally reached the last scene of Swan Lake. ‘Just Say No.’

  ‘People keep wanting to know what I did to deserve one,’ I said.

  Liv was soon joined by the boy in the horn-rimmed spectacles and was snogging away with complete abandon. Dominic’s hand was well advanced up her bare legs; her dress rucked up so that, any moment, she was in danger of flashing her pants again.

  I stood in front of them trying to block them from the room and reminded myself to bollock Liv for turning up to my work party off her tits. ‘I guess I’d better get her in a cab,’ I said.

  Ben joined me and smiled briefly. ‘Or a room.’ Just for a moment, I smiled back but he quickly looked away and moved towards the door where he set about getting Liv and her new man into a waiting Addy Lee.

  33

  Thor was ‘passing through London for a meeting for one night only’. This wasn’t unusual – he came every year or so – but I knew he’d added us to his route this time. He was the only person other than his mother that Lars talked to about anything emotional and he was coming to check up on us.

  ‘Of course, he’ll stay here,’ I said. Lars was sitting at the kitchen table after putting the kids to bed.

  ‘We’ll try and make it as normal as possible?’ Lars gestured around him.

  ‘I don’t feel up to having a whole “state of the marital nation” discussion though.’

  ‘Shall we get Liv round?’ Lars asked. ‘Have a dinner like the old days?’

  ‘Great idea,’ I said. That would definitely take the pressure off. ‘You can stay too…’

  He looked at me with comic hope in his eyes and I had to laugh. ‘On the sofa. Thor can have the spare room.’ Still, it felt novel to have a little flirt with my own husband. Lars got up to leave, giving me a kiss on the cheek this time.

  *

  Thor was as burly and hairy as ever, and pulled me into a giant hug. He’d weathered a bit, but not much.

  ‘You’re looking great…’ he said when he let me go.

  ‘Considering what’s been going on?’ I smiled. We had one of those shorthand relationships where we skipped small talk.

  ‘Going to be all good now though?’ he said. Lars came through the door then, having dumped his friend’s bag upstairs. Thor changed the subject, rubbing his hands together: ‘So, are we going to get Liv round and get shit-faced?’

  ‘She’s on her way.’ Lars smiled at him.

  *

  We got through a few bottles while we outdid each other with stories of being young in Bloomsbury. Thor made oblique references to the shack-ups Liv and he’d enjoyed back then; she met him flirt for flirt but made it clear that, while being exactly his age, she’d moved on to younger models. Lars joined in with the stories, laughing like a drain. He didn’t mention work once, but did meet my eyes several times at particular memories. He handed out drinks and helped clear up, slipping easily back into being a host in his own house. After a while it felt like any dinner over the years when Thor was in town – as if the last few months had never happened.

  ‘Better bloody spaghetti than that shit we used to have.’ Thor was one of those satisfying men who look as if they want to rub their bellies after you’ve fed them. I’d knocked up a bolognese and salad and w
e all waved slices of garlic bread around while we talked over each other.

  It was as Thor reached for bottle number four that he started to talk about our wedding. ‘Remember Ami’s parents’ faces when Liv made that speech?’ He looked as if he was going to cry laughing at the memory.

  ‘It was very subtle,’ Liv said.

  ‘It was SO not subtle.’ Lars laughed. I watched Liv and him have their first close moment in what seemed like years.

  Thor did some elegant grunting that was supposed to be Liv impersonating me.

  ‘And this was Lars…’ Liv started a loud crescendo to passionate sex with a Swedish intonation that went up and down even as it got louder.

  It was impossible not to laugh. I didn’t look at Lars though – it was too close to the bone to hear even an impression of the sex we used to have, but didn’t any more. But it was great to be with old friends who shared our history – a history that would be broken in two if we didn’t make it.

  When Thor stopped chuckling he started to pour more wine. ‘What about this big meeting tomorrow?’ I said and cocked my head to one side.

  ‘Oh, it’s in the afternoon now,’ he said airily. I raised my eyebrows, he shrugged as if to say, ‘So I lied? So, what?’ poured more wine into my glass and went back to telling stories.

  *

  Liv left about midnight and I got up to go to bed. I hugged Thor and then Lars lightly – they looked as if they were going to be at the kitchen table for a while. I locked the front door, switched off some lights and went up the stairs noticing they were now automatically talking Swedish.

  It was as I climbed I heard Thor saying my name: ‘Ami’ a few times, a little more urgently and soberly than he’d sounded a while back. Even with a few glasses of wine in me, I slowed on the stair tread and craned my neck towards the open kitchen door.

  Lars said the Swedish word for family: familj and children: barn.

  I shouldn’t listen to their conversation. Still, their tone made me. Thor sounded angry at Lars – it was clear that he was talking about me and then there was the word for happy: lycklig.