by Carmen Reid
Nettie, wearing her short-sleeved plum party dress and matching velvet shoes, pushed her little chiffon cap sleeve up and revealed a small red welt.
‘I had a jection.’
‘Ow,’ Jo soothed and held Nettie close against her chest, feeling an unruly hammering starting up in there. She did not need to ask what this was. Blood burning in her cheeks, Jo registered that Simon must have picked Nettie up early from nursery today and taken her to the doctor’s for a Quintet shot on the quiet. Maybe he’d thought that in the busy fuss of the birthday party, it wouldn’t be noticed. Maybe he’d hoped he could get away without telling Jo at all, or only if he had to.
She had no recollection of ever before being so furious with Simon. And he was just standing there, a piece of mashed sausage in his hand, looking at her in a way she could only interpret as defiant. How dare he? How could he?
Jo glanced over her right shoulder and saw that Mel and her friends had retreated to the bedroom to play, then she did something she’d never done before in all the years she’d been married. She stood up – Nettie in one arm, chin hooked over her shoulder – and she slapped Simon so hard that his face swung round and a bright red palm print sprang up on his left cheek.
The loud ‘thwack’ drew both her parents’ and Gwen’s attention immediately, but the strange thing was, although there was a stunned moment’s silence as they realized what had happened, they quickly looked away and began talking to cover up.
Her father asked her mother loudly if her drink needed topping up and Gwen hurtled off in the direction of the kitchen.
Simon rubbed his cheek as he and Jo weighed up the pros and cons of screaming at each other, here at Mel’s eighth birthday party right in front of her grandparents . . . friends . . . little sister . . .
‘I don’t think our lawyers will like that,’ Simon said perfectly quietly and calmly to his former wife.
‘How dare you,’ Jo hissed back. ‘If you want to start a custody battle, you’re going the right way about it.’
Simon continued to rub his face: ‘This is not the time or the place to talk about it,’ he said.
‘No. I’m too angry to talk to you.’ Jo was actually shaking with rage. She was going to kill him, tear him limb from limb when she got the chance. How dare he?
‘Why don’t you get into your kitchen and let me try to calm down?’ she said in as low and controlled a voice as she could muster.
He turned on his heel and followed Gwen.
Jo felt totally rattled now. Although she might have liked a few moments to try to pull herself together, the opportunity was lost in a stampede of girls rushing to the table, back from whatever had been so urgent in the bedroom a few minutes ago, to demand cake . . . which meant candles, singing and all the adults grouped round the table catching each other’s eyes very uneasily.
Still, slicing forcefully through Barbie’s dress over and over again gave Jo the opportunity to vent some of her Simon rage, but the cake stuck in her throat and the party was well and truly spoiled for her.
The adults sat quietly at the table letting the children make the noise and conversation for them. Suddenly Jo was finding it an effort not to cry, because she was worried about Nettie and furious that Simon shared not one shred of the same anxiety. The other thought bringing tears to the back of her throat was that she was never going to be rid of him.
They had children together. If she wanted her girls to have a dad, she would always have to endure him, his input, his opinions, the fact that when they disagreed, he felt entitled to make the final decision . . . without even consulting her! Bastard!
She stabbed her fork hard through the heart of the pink, spongy slab in front of her and hoped Simon was watching.
Jo was the last guest to leave the party, by quite some time. The small guests left soon after tike cake, and her parents hung on for another half hour to help clear up and to be polite.
Once they’d gone, to avoid Simon and Gwen, Jo took her daughters to the bathroom – hi-spec, slate floored, yet somehow coldly bachelor and inappropriate – ran them a deep bath and washed cake icing, sweat, baby’s first blusher and all the rest of the day from them.
She towelled her children carefully, anointed dry cheeks, arms and legs with baby cream, put them into their sweet little matching pyjamas, supervised teeth cleaning, then brushed out their hair, all the while listening to chit-chat and a barrage of corny jokes.
‘What did the inflatable teacher say to the inflatable boy who brought a pin in to the inflatable school?’ Mel asked, head cocked to the side for an answer, eyes fixed on her mum, as if this was the most important question in the whole world.
‘I don’t know,’ Jo complied.
‘You’ve let me down . . . you’ve let the school down, but worst of all you’ve let yourself down.’
Oh, that was good. Jo began to laugh and all the tension of the day began to bubble up into the laugh, until she was giggling uncontrollably. She had to stop: if she carried on laughing like this, Mel would tell her this joke twenty times a day from now on until. . . for ever.
Nettie held out a sparkly purple hairband: ‘Put this in, please,’ she asked.
‘For bed?’ Jo replied.
Nettie nodded solemnly and fished around in her little purple toilet bag for further accessories. She took out a raspberry lip salve and a compact mirror, then, with all the elegance of a mademoiselle on the Rive Gauche, she flipped open the mirror and dotted salve on with her pinkie.
‘All ready for bed,’ she said finally.
‘I love you,’ Jo said, squeezing her tight and pulling Mel in with her other arm, ‘I love you both so much. It’s time for me to say night-night. Daddy’s going to tuck you in.’ Jo managed to muster as much warmth for the word ‘Daddy’ as she could. ‘It’s time for Mummy to go off and do some work.’
She wondered why she was using work as an excuse. It just seemed less bald than saying ‘Mummy has to go, because she doesn’t live here.’ Mel looked fine with this, but Jo could already see Nettie’s face crumple. ‘I want you to stay,’ her youngest daughter said.
‘Nettie, it’s not for long,’ Jo said and put an arm round her.
‘It is, it’s for three sleeps.’ She held out three fingers to her mother. ‘I’ll miss you very much.’
‘I’ll miss you too. Will you promise to phone me?’ Jo picked her up and they headed out of the bathroom to find Simon.
‘Let’s see what Daddy’s going to read to you tonight, shall we?’ Jo soothed, ‘I bet he’s got some really good stories.’
But Nettie’s head was already buried in her shoulder and there wasn’t much doubt that it was going to be one of those terrible, screaming handovers that would make Jo want to wail and scream with guilt and distress herself.
Both she and Simon tried to manage it as kindly as they could, but still Jo’s last sight of Nettie as the bedroom door closed was of a distraught red face with tears streaming down the cheeks.
Once Jo had shut the door of Simon’s flat behind her, she let several of the tears she’d been trying to stop all evening slip out.
Bugger, bugger, bugger. But she had to do it this way. Surely her children would thank her in the end? Surely it was better to have two equally caring parents rather than one fed-up, full-time totally harassed one and one hazily distant unknown one?
She could not look after her girls all week. That was the simple truth. Her hours were far too long on Fridays and Saturdays, and also she feared sacrificing all her time off to childcare and domesticity.
She’d seen enough divorced mothers do this. They were always at home, they were always with the kids, they were imprisoned; once the children were in bed, they couldn’t even get out for a pint of milk. Whereas the dads swanned in on Sunday afternoons offering trips to the cinema, meals out and other treats and really it was so grossly unfair that it should be illegal.
Drudge Mum and Santa Dad was how it often went after the divorce. And hardly surprisingl
y, Santa Dad had so much time and freedom to himself – no washing-up, no laundry, no packed-lunch making, no school runs – that he was busy working out, going out, rediscovering himself, oh, and shagging half the secretarial support staff.
So no, although it was really hard saying goodnight and leaving the girls here, she had to stick to her guns and make sure Simon took just as much responsibility for his children as she did. Otherwise, how would she ever move forwards?
Simon bloody Dundas. On the walk to the car park and on the drive back home, she couldn’t stop raging about Simon Dundas.
What went wrong between Jo Randall and Dr Simon Dundas? A lot, that was for certain. Far too much.
From the medium-sized rows about housekeeping, appropriate levels of spending and working hours to the irritating, niggling annoyances. Nothing big, no grand operatic moments had ended their marriage: ‘She’s not your baby! La-la-la . . .’ ‘I love someone else! Tra-lah-ah-aaaah.’
No, it was slow death by the small and medium things, the everyday annoyances and the longstanding, grinding ones.
She saw now that while they had rowed and ranted – up until a year or so ago – they had still cared about each other, still hoped they might be able to make it better. But gradually the rows had stopped, an uneasy truce had been called. It became easier to ignore the annoying things because they’d begun to ignore each other.
In the last six months or so of married life, Jo and her husband hadn’t spoken more than was necessary, they’d eaten meals with the radio on, and they did separate things on Sunday, their only day off together. They didn’t care about each other any more. They became strangers leading a married life. It was too weird, how someone you got into bed with every night could become so unknown to you. Could have vast acres of thought you once had daily access to, but was now territory unknown.
Of course, she and Simon could have tried counselling. Her parents never seemed to tire of telling her this . . . even now. ‘You have two young children, you can’t just give up like this,’ had been a common refrain of both her mother and her father. ‘What about counselling?’
But they’d left it way too late for counselling. Counselling! She and Simon could barely agree on which kind of bread to buy. How the hell were they going to agree on seeing a counsellor, and anyway, the thought of being psychoanalysed in front of Simon was more than Jo could bear. She didn’t want him to know what was going on in her head. By the end of Christmas, she was absolutely certain that she wanted him out of her life.
When Simon moved out, he took two suitcases to his tiny rental place, as if this was just a temporary glitch – something that might yet be resolved. But her first reaction had been to purge the house from top to bottom of all his things – well, all that she could get away with, he was still Daddy, the girls were still allowed to keep photographs and presents and reminders of him wherever they wanted – but all the shared crap. All the things he’d accumulated that she didn’t want any more.
She’d had to hire a small van in the end, to dump it all at his place.
‘I don’t need this stuff,’ he’d protested.
‘Well, neither do I. I’ll get rid of it then, shall I?’ She knew he would never say yes, not without at least looking through it.
‘You can’t throw out that clock.’ He’d gone to the first item on top of one of the boxes. ‘But I don’t need it, I’ve already got one,’ he’d added.
‘Oh sorry, but it was a present from your auntie, so if you don’t want it, you decide where to dump it.’
Being without him meant the chance to just be. She didn’t have to be the untidy person, or the tidy one. Some weeks, she house-cleaned fastidiously; some weeks, she slobbed out. She didn’t have to be ‘the sociable one’ or ‘the bossy one’ or all the one thousand little roles they had assigned to each other during their years together.
Then there was all this free time, when he had the children. Hours and hours of it. No child-centred timetable to work to. Free to stay at work all night if she wanted to, free to drink until she was drunk. She did this on occasion. Sometimes out with people, sometimes at home with red wine and whatever spirits were lurking in the back of the drinks cupboard. Free to spend hours on the telephone, hours reading, hours trying on old rubbish from the back of the wardrobe and wondering why she had ever bought it, let alone kept it. Hours trying to fashion a new life for herself. . . a new image . . . a new soon-to-be divorced, separated . . . separate person.
‘Don’t rush at it all at once,’ Bella had warned her., ‘You’re not allowed to do the whole “I’ve just left my husband and I’m going wild” thing. We have to have some guidelines – some ground rules: no drastic hairstyle changes, you’ll just regret them. Dramatic wardrobe changes to be limited to cheap clothes only. OK? You are banned from any designer shopping whatsoever until your life has returned to some kind of normal. Now, shagging: same rule as clothes. Cheap, throwaway shags only, which you are not allowed to regret. No expensive mistakes, no marriage-wrecking, overly emotional entanglements of too serious a nature.’
Jo had laughed hard at this advice.
‘Cheap throwaway shags? How will I recognize them? Do they come with a price tag? A sell-by date?’
‘Oh that is such a good idea,’ Bella had decided. ‘Keep refrigerated, once shagged, dump within three weeks. Why do the right kind of shags not have this printed on their bottoms?’
Marcus was undoubtedly exactly the kind of shag Bella had had in mind. Young, carefree, fun, a casual involvement. Bella had given it her blessing.
But then why had Jo not thrown him away yet?
Recently Jo had spent more time than she probably should have analysing the other relationships she’d had in her life before Simon. Where did they all go wrong? Was there a common theme? Was there a character flaw she would have to cure in herself before she could move on? Had there been someone in the past she’d have been better off marrying? Well. . . apart from Dr Roddy, obviously. She would have loved to marry him . . . but there we go . . . que será, será and all that.
When Simon had begun work at Jo’s hospital, she was already in love. Maybe make that, she had thought she was in love . . . with Dr Roddy Carlisle.
Dr Roddy who was funny, roguish, clever, daring and . . . er, unfortunately, most unfortunately indeed . . . in love with her then best friend, Christine.
Oh, the knife-twisting cruelty, when she finally looked back with understanding and figured out what all the phone calls and offers to meet ‘the two of you’ had been about.
He’d been madly in love with Christine, so much so that he’d been unable to summon up the courage to ask her out on a date alone for months. He’d always invited Jo and some of his other friends, including Simon, and made it a group event.
Until finally, he’d pulled Jo aside and told her there was something he wanted to talk to her about.
‘Yes!?’ She’d hardly been able to stand so close to him, knees actually trembling with emotion, knowing he was going to ask her out, ask to kiss her, ask . . . well anything but: ‘If I invited Christine out for dinner, do you think she would say yes?’
What!!!
Her knees had almost given way, but somehow through the blushing, mounting confusion, she’d managed to bumble out a ‘Not sure . . . she’s never said anything . . . will ask. . .’ kind of answer. But oh God! The pain. The realization. The burning smart of hindsight. All the times his face had lit up at what Christine had said – at what Christine had done – at Christine being there. Jo had got caught in a love crossfire, misinterpreted the Christine afterglow as his interest in her.
You were supposed to get over this stuff. Time heals, blah, blah . . . But she was beginning to think that maybe you never did. It was like scar tissue. The wound was healed, but there was a mark, a difference, a weakness that wasn’t there before.
Little tastes of it, little reminders could still make her cry. Sometimes you meet ‘the one’, only to watch them meet someone else.
Maybe that was too playground an excuse. She was a grown-up, she’d chosen to marry Simon with her eyes wide open. If she hadn’t wanted to, she could have waited for someone else to show up.
Roddy and Christine had married within six months of their first dinner date. Jo had gone to the wedding in something too pale, too slutty and far too expensive, and tall, blond, handsome and dangerously charming Simon had been her consolation prize. They’d snogged outside the marquee, so passionately that he’d spilled red wine over her dress, ruining it for ever.
Looking back, she wished she’d seen that as an omen and run (although she was too drunk and her heels were too high) but at the time, it had seemed sexy and reckless.
And what began as reckless and sexy ended with her married almost exactly one year later. Why? Maybe one half because he wanted to, one third because she did, and a pinch of: because everyone else was doing it too. Hadn’t something of a marital panic broken out on the wards of the Royal?
Wasn’t there just a little too much talk of shelves and being left on . . . Baby bootie fever? There was a rash of proposals, engagement parties, weddings . . . and so, on yet another damp lawn, off their faces on imitation champagne, Simon had suggested they ‘give it a whirl’ as well.
They’d rung his parents from the hotel reception’s phone – so there was no laughing it off in the morning.
Had she been happy? Yes, very happy at first. Simon had felt like an old-fashioned ‘catch’: a hunky lifesaver, a charming surgeon, the kind of lovely boy who made your mother happy and kept you rushing back to bed.
Everything about the Mel pregnancy, birth and babyhood was lovely, she did remember that. But by the time Annette was conceived there must have been flaws. Looking back, maybe Annette was something of a marriage rescue plan. Was that fair? Was that true? Wasn’t Annette also about Jo’s overwhelming wish to give Mel a sibling?
Oh God knows. Sometimes the whirl of colliding thoughts gave her a headache.
Her overriding question wasn’t so much: where did we go wrong? But how does anyone get this right? How do people stay together, happily ever after, without dying of boredom? This was what Jo kept asking Bella, in the acute anxiety of the first week, in the coming and going, the agonizing, the long debates: shall I patch it up with this-estranged-man-formerly-known-as-my-husband? Or shall I cut myself loose?