The Starter Home

by Bryony Fraser

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Good. Because the deadline for the global teaching exchange programme is tomorrow. And I think you should apply.’

  ‘Teaching exchange?’

  She offered me a handful of print-outs. ‘They do them every year, all over the world – obviously – and they’ll get back to you fast if they want you. It’s normally a year-long placement; they only tell you your new school about a month in advance, but they’ll confirm whether you’ve been successful in time for you to hand in your notice before half-term. Ok?’

  I was stunned. ‘Benni? Are you trying to get rid of me?’

  She sat at the edge of her desk. ‘Darling, you know how bloody impossible it is to get Science teachers these days, particularly ones that I actually like. But they guarantee me a replacement teacher for the year – or two – that you’d be gone for, and they guarantee you a fresh new start, away from all of this stuff. And then, when you’re ready, you can come back here and show me alllllll the valuable skills you picked up in Beijing or Vancouver or Rome or New York or wherever.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. I’ve spoken to the Head, she’s all for it. Says it’ll raise our profile, attract more teachers to the school and so on. Or maybe she just can’t wait to get rid of your miserable face too.’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘Just kidding, darling. So what do you think?’

  I thought it was a brilliant idea. I spent my lunch hour filling in the paperwork, and was so engrossed in it that I didn’t hear Miks coming into the Science office and sitting down in his cubby beside mine. There was a loud thunk as he dropped a pile of textbooks on his desk, which made me jump guiltily. He nodded at the forms.

  ‘Teacher exchange?’

  I half covered them with my arms, before realising how much I looked like a pupil caught out, then laughed. ‘Yeah. Benni recommended it.’

  ‘I mean this in the nicest way,’ Miks said, ‘but I think you need it.’ I laughed again, but he carried on: ‘Seriously. My sister got divorced last year. It’s pretty shit. But she said the one thing that helped her the most was when someone said that sometimes, there’s just no one to blame. That sometimes, it’s just one of those things.’ I stared, open-mouthed. He shrugged. ‘I’m not saying that’s the case with you – I’m just saying it might help.’ Then he picked up a lab coat and a different pile of textbooks and headed out again.

  Three days later, I was still wondering at Miks’s unlikely pep talk. I wasn’t sure what I was more stunned by – that, or the Head’s swift sign-off of my application, and the subsequent acceptance form from the exchange programme which I now held in my hand.

  By Halloween half-term, I’d handed in my formal notice to leave Walker High School in January for a minimum twelve-month stretch. And so I semi-severed another tie to the life I had thought would be mine for years to come.

  Friday night blackjack at the pub, and Dad brought over three pints of cider to our table. Esther took a huge gulp of hers then slid mine over. I swallowed half of it in one go, needing some support against all the changes going on in my life right now. Kat still hadn’t responded to anything I’d sent her. I wondered if we’d ever speak again.

  ‘Ooh, cider really is the only thing to drink in this miserable weather,’ Dad said, taking a gulp to rival mine while Esther shuffled a deck of cards.

  ‘Right. Who’s in?’ We cleared our pints out of the way while Esther dealt, then each picked up.

  ‘How’s everything going at home, love?’ Dad asked, while we moved our cards around in our hands.

  ‘Besides Kat not responding to any of my texts? Pretty great.’ I sighed and took another sip. ‘Jack and I aren’t speaking at all at the moment.’

  ‘Good.’ He looked at me. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Esther raised an eyebrow. ‘Better than their previous death by a thousand cuts, I suspect.’

  ‘Thanks, Es.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad, was it?’ Dad looked worried.

  ‘It’s fine, now, honestly. Just have to get through these last couple of months, then we’re off on our separate ways.’

  I saw Dad look at Esther, then down at his hand. ‘Alright, love. As long as you’re ok. And Kat will be too, don’t you worry …’ He was getting distracted by his cards. ‘You girls will all be alright.’

  ‘It’s just …’ I took a swig of my cider. ‘I don’t know why we had to get married in the first place. I honestly don’t know what we were thinking. You and Mum have got on fine all these years, not being married, and it’s never mattered to you one way or another. Why do people care so much?’

  I noticed Dad was sinking lower and lower into his cards.

  Esther put hers in her lap. ‘Dad.’

  ‘Yes, love?’ he said, from the depths of his bunched hands.

  ‘Dad,’ Esther said again. ‘There’s a reason we play blackjack and not poker with you, you know.’

  I gave him a hard stare. ‘Dad, what is it?’

  He was blushing a deep scarlet by now. ‘Nothing serious, girls, nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘It’s only … last year, your mum and I got married.’

  Esther and I screamed together, ‘What?’

  ‘Calm down, it’s not serious.’

  ‘Not serious?’ I gasped.

  ‘Dad, you and Mum got married without telling us! You got married! And you didn’t tell us!’

  ‘That’s pretty serious, Dad.’

  ‘Now come on, girls, it really isn’t. It was more for the paperwork. Sue at your mum’s old work had just lost her partner, and it turns out it’s a hell of a lot easier in the event of someone’s death, with wills and inheritance and things—’

  ‘You’re not going to die, neither of you are ever going to die.’

  ‘—if you’re married. That’s all it was. We didn’t want to make a big song and dance about it, because we didn’t think it was a big deal. Like I said, just paperwork. You didn’t ask to come and see us sign our wills, did you? We talked about it, and thought it was best to just get on with it and not mention it.’

  ‘But you did know we’d find out eventually, didn’t you? Like, when you died, and we couldn’t talk to you about it anymore?’ Esther said.

  ‘I thought I’d made it clear – neither of them are ever going to die,’ I insisted. ‘And seriously, what the hell is it with parents sneaking off and getting secretly married these days? Have they put something in the blood pressure medications?’

  ‘Esther, love, we didn’t think you girls would be so upset about this. We really did talk about it for a long time. We didn’t kick up a fuss when you said you’d be moving abroad in January, did we, Zoe? We understand that it’s your life, and we’re all happy for you, however much of a surprise it was. And we thought we’d raised you all to not care whether a couple was married or not. To look a bit deeper than whether or not they’d signed some bit of paper. To understand that marriage – or not marriage – was purely between the couple themselves, and nothing to do with anyone outside that relationship. Didn’t we raise you that way?’

  Esther and I looked at each other, shamed. ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  ‘It’s alright. We’ll say no more about it.’ We picked up our cards.

  Then Esther put hers down again. ‘Hang on a minute, Dad, that’s bullshit. You absolutely know you should have told us.’

  ‘I know, love, but it was worth a try, wasn’t it?’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Shall we get on with this game?’

  We didn’t talk about it any more that night, except when we were all going our separate ways outside the pub; Esther squeezed my hand after we hugged, and just said, ‘What the hell, right?’ I nodded, wide eyed, and knew the four of us had to get in touch, as soon as possible, to discuss this, take it apart, and put it back together, united and consoled, so that we could face Mum and Dad without this confusion and slight betrayal we were feeling. That’s if Kat would even speak
to me.

  I wondered if my feelings would be different to my sisters’: Kat and Ava hadn’t been married, and Esther, as far as I could tell, was happily hitched. It was only me who’d got sucked in and chewed out by the marriage myth, feeling that if my mother had been able to emigrate from her family and home, to later begin an interracial relationship, with four children born outside wedlock in the seventies and eighties, I was betraying them by going down the white frock and rings and legal certificate route.

  How different would I have felt about these last months if I’d known Mum and Dad had secretly married, too? God, how differently would I have felt on my wedding day? I thought back to Dad’s silences, his closed face, and I wondered if he hadn’t wanted to tell me, if he hadn’t recognised, or at least suspected, that the information might have some effect on me. That it might have made marriage seem something I could do, if I’d known they had done it too.

  Getting home and checking my phone once I was safely in bed, I saw that the group chat between my sisters was already thirty-four messages long. I’d read them all in the morning, even if the chain was four times the size by then. And I knew at least two of my sisters would be at my door, bringing food to share between us all for the invariable summit to follow.

  At 10 a.m., I poured a coffee for Es and herbal tea for Ava. I was amazed that the door had only buzzed at quarter to – I assumed there must have been some kind of bus strike to have prevented them from getting here before the sun was even up. Kat said she couldn’t come – work commitments. On a Saturday. Since Ava had told me, I couldn’t even bring myself to dig into the sourdough loaf Es had cooked as soon as she’d got home last night.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ Ava asked as we settled around the table.

  ‘Didn’t come home last night. I was up watching garbage until two, since I was on sofa shift last night. No sign of him by then, or now, for that matter.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Esther, carefully spreading butter onto her slice. ‘This is pretty massive.’

  Ava blew on her tea before taking a sip. ‘I don’t think it has to be,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Have you spoken to Kat?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘Just a text in reply to this, that’s all. She’s keeping us all in the dark, Zo.’

  ‘Look at it this way,’ Esther said. ‘At least we didn’t have to wear bridesmaids’ dresses.’ We were silent for a moment as we all considered the kind of thing Mum would have chosen for us.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Narrow escape.’

  ‘Plus,’ she went on, ‘I’ve been thinking about what Dad said last night. I know he was only chancing it, to try and get us off his back, but it was also true. It isn’t really our business.’

  ‘They’re our parents!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but they don’t owe us every single piece of information about their lives. Would you want to know everything? Everything?’

  ‘I think Es is right,’ Ava said. ‘They didn’t forget to mention it – it sounds like a conscious choice to not tell us. It’s been a really big part of their identity for so long – the couple who didn’t marry, in an age where that was basically like having horns on your head – that it must have been hard for Dad to tell you.’

  I looked at Ava again. ‘What did Kat actually say? Is she alright?’ Ava put an arm around me. I sighed. ‘It’s all made me think … how much knowing about Mum and Dad might have made all this stuff between me and Jack go – or at least feel – differently.’

  Ava stirred her tea with her free hand. ‘Do you mean you don’t think you’d be splitting up?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it that strongly. I think I’ve spent too long being brainwashed against marriage for it to turn things round entirely. On my wedding day I definitely felt like I was … letting Mum and Dad down by marrying.’

  Esther shrugged. ‘Marriage has been good for me.’

  I sighed again. ‘So I’m just the failure then.’

  ‘I’m serious. We were all programmed to be so impressed with Mum and Dad’s choices – they were brave, and I’m proud of them, it must have been really damn hard. But when I got together with Ethan, I knew immediately that I wanted us to be married. It didn’t feel wrong because that was my choice, and I was happy with it. Maybe it’s not about Mum and Dad not being married – maybe it’s just as you thought. That marrying Jack wasn’t right for you.’

  ‘So you don’t think I should have married Jack?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? I always thought you seemed like a great couple. You made each other happy. You had a great time together.’

  ‘We do! Or we did.’

  ‘But I’ve also seen how miserable you’ve been since the day you got married. I don’t know what that change was. Did you stop loving him?’

  Ava stopped stirring her tea.

  ‘No! Never. That’s what’s made this whole thing so fucking awful! I don’t feel any differently about him – it was just the relationship we were in. It went from free-range to battery farmed. I’d never wanted it. And I thought he felt the same. Then his parents divorced, and his mum died, and now we’re trapped in this flat, ricocheting from sofa to bed to kitchen, bickering and smashing bits off each other.’

  ‘But none of that would be any different if you’d known Mum and Dad had got married, would it?’ said Ava. ‘You loved him then, you love him now, but you just don’t love being married.’ She blew on her tea again. ‘Maybe divorce is the right thing to do.’

  ‘It definitely looks that way. It’s just so … miserable. I miss him so much. And I can’t understand how everything that was so good – so great – got so broken. We were never like this before we got married. We disagreed, but this? It’s … ridiculous.’

  There was a thump in the bedroom, and we all leapt from our seats.

  ‘What the HELL was that?’ hissed Esther.

  The door opened slowly and a sleepy Jack stepped out.

  I stared at him. ‘I thought you were out!’

  ‘I got back really late.’

  ‘But I’ve been into the bedroom this morning. There was just balled-up duvet at one end. You weren’t in there!’

  Jack ruffled his hair. ‘I think I had a few too many last night. I think I climbed inside the duvet and fell asleep in it at the pillow end. Hey, everyone.’

  My sisters gave him a shocked wave, all of us looking at each other. It had been a long time since they’d seen Jack.

  He rubbed his beard, looked around the table and said, ‘Sorry, I’ve only just woken up – my head’s not in one piece yet. Does anyone want more coffee?’

  The three of us must have been quieter than he’d ever seen us before. My sisters left minutes later, Esther mouthing ‘OMFG’, Ava giving me hugs and telling me to call whenever.

  Jack and I had been ignoring each other since our big argument, but his surprise appearance had kicked me completely off balance. Back in the kitchen, I said to Jack, as innocently as I could, ‘How come you were so tired? It’s not like you to sleep through me stomping through the bedroom.’

  With his back to me, in the same anodyne tone we used for most conversation now, he said, ‘Just a lot on at work. A few late nights. Didn’t realise, you know, how tired you can get and not even notice. I think I fell asleep trying to read the paper at some point – check it out.’ He turned and lifted his chin; along one side of his jaw was a huge smudge of black, and half a headline about Scotland. I smiled at him with genuine warmth and offered him some of the sourdough loaf.

  ‘Esther’s been baking? What emergency caused that, and the council meeting I interrupted?’

  I told him about Mum and Dad.

  ‘Seriously? Jesus.’ He chuckled. ‘We’ve clearly done it the wrong way round. Should’ve taken some tips from the experts. And why do our parents keep sneaking off for their weddings?’

  I laughed a little. ‘I know. I said the same when Dad told us. He didn’t even want to tell us, you know. Could have
been years before we found out.’

  Jack was laughing too. ‘People are crackers, aren’t they? All of us. Just …’ He paused and looked right at me. ‘ridiculous.’

  Suddenly, neither of us was even smiling. I could feel my pulse pounding in my throat. I put my hand on the worktop, next to him. He turned to look at me, straight on.

  Then his phone rang. Both of us jumped – too much excitement for a Saturday morning, I thought – but he saw who was calling, lifted it with an apologetic look at me, then took it into the bedroom, shutting the door again.

  He came out ten minutes later, with a half-guilty, half-relieved expression on his face. ‘It was Gillett.’

  ‘Must be serious to be calling at the weekend.’

  ‘They want to open another branch.’ He looked at me.

  ‘In London?’

  ‘No. In New York.’

  ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’

  ‘They want me to run it, Zo. And be a manager to the other store managers. It’s a big step up.’

  ‘Is that how it works? They just call you up and offer you a job in New York on a Saturday morning, out of the blue?’

  ‘No. I’ve been interviewing for months. I had to write up a whole business plan, talk to the US staff. That’s why I went there in May.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I didn’t know when the right time to talk to you about any of this stuff was. I didn’t know how solid it all was, whether it would even happen. And, well, it’s nearly the end of the year. I thought maybe you wouldn’t care what I’d be doing.’

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘I can’t make any claims on you anymore, can I? We’re just ticking off the days until we can legally be free of each other, right? I mean … You know what I mean, Zo. That’s where we are now, isn’t it?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Zoe? Isn’t it?’

  Eventually I nodded, grabbed my bag, and headed out.

  I collected the orders and brought them back to our table, where Liz was sitting, looking fantastic. Even at 7 p.m., she was still wearing yesterday’s make-up and a ratty old cardigan, not a hint of Henry’s trophy wife about her anymore.