‘Yeah, it shouldn’t be like that,’ says Inge as though mind reading. Again.
‘But we have two children!’ I tell her, as though this is all the justification I need.
‘You’ll still have two children if you split up,’ says Inge, matter of factly. ‘You don’t have to be best friends after – I mean, you can be – but as long as you’re friendly enough to coexist in the Venn diagram of parenting, you’ll be fine. Whoever you choose to share your life with will drive you crazy, so you choose the best you can. But if you get it wrong, you get it wrong.’ She shrugs, then explains, ‘There’s no stigma to splitting up here. Viking wives could divorce husbands for reasons as small as “showing too much chest hair”.’
‘Hear, hear!’ Tricia slurs as Inge goes on.
‘We have this saying here: “you marry first for kids, second for love”.’
‘Oh, that’s tremendous!’ Tricia claps her hands. ‘I love a second wedding! Man looking nervous? Wife in a cream trouser suit? Teenage children looking on, sulking? Everyone drinking to overcompensate for the awkwardness? Lovely!’
Inge permits herself a smile, as though getting to grips with British humour.
‘So you and Magnus … ?’ Melissa stomps in with both feet.
Bloody hell, she’s brave …
‘Another couple of years, tops,’ is all Inge says, in a tone that is both calm and assured. As though this isn’t a disaster, it’s a plan. ‘And next time, I’ll choose a man who eats quietly and doesn’t feel the need to rearrange his genitals quite so often …’ she adds, as though these grievances have been the deal-breakers.
Tricia runs a tongue over her top teeth, before adding. ‘Oh, I hear you there – much better to split up than let things fester. My ex ex and I stuck it out until Ed left home – you know, separate bedrooms, conversations via email written entirely in caps lock. But if we’d broken up before we wanted to gouge each other’s eyes out, we could have moved on – gone from being a crappily married couple to two people with manageable part-time childrearing duties. Et voilà!’
I don’t know how to explain to Tricia in a tactful way that I don’t just want to ‘rear’ Thomas and Charlotte – I want to love them and be there for them. So instead, I try to convey how I don’t think I’d be much cop at the whole shared parenting lark.
‘I think I’d miss them too much.’ I shake my head.
The love I have for my children has only ever gone in one direction: up – throwing into relief anything that came before. I didn’t love Greg, I realise now. Ever. He was just there. Conveniently. Around about the time I’d had my fingers burned by the one before and my newly active ovaries were screaming at me to have babies, with someone. Anyone, really … But it’s been worth it, hasn’t it? For Charlotte and Thomas?
‘I love spending time with my kids,’ is the best way I can think of to communicate this, before adding the qualifier, ‘Mostly … except when they’re being little shits.’ I blush instantaneously at this admission. ‘Sorry.’
‘Never apologise!’ Inge commands. ‘It’s OK to feel like that.’
‘Course it is!’ Tricia stammers. ‘Can’t always be Mary bloody Poppins!’
‘I told you before: leave Poppins out of it!’ Melissa may share Tricia’s sentiments on Greg, but she’s not letting Julie Andrews hate-speak slide.
Tricia holds her hands up before continuing, ‘I just mean, parenting is hard!’ Inge nods. ‘And admitting this doesn’t make you a bad person. Before they can look after themselves – you know, switch the coffee machine on and vote and stuff – it’s knackering! Boring, too, a lot of the time. They take bloody ages to put their shoes on, their conversation is basic, at best, and standing there, watching a child on a swing?’ Tricia appeals to Melissa and Margot here. ‘Dull! No one ever tells you that, but it’s desperately dull! It’s either forward or back. Where’s the drama? Where’s the suspense?’
Melissa gives an ‘I hear you’ nod.
‘They’re not like animals,’ Tricia says, addressing my sister. ‘With the dogs, I could go away for a couple of days, come back, give them a biscuit and they’d be delighted to see me, wagging their tails all over the place – but kids get sulky. My son was always going on about how he had to make his own packed lunch for school …’ Tricia shakes her head as if to say, kids, eh? ‘And the noise!’ she goes on. ‘They never warn you about the noise! And that was just with one – I don’t know how you do it with two!’ Here she looks at me. ‘Or three!’ she near-shrieks at Inge. ‘I spent the entirety of Ed’s sixth birthday party wearing industrial ear defenders I’d ‘liberated’ from Anneka Rice’s house.fn4 But for all of that, you do your best – and then they go. They’re not yours. Never have been. And if you’re stuck with someone you hate after that then, well, it’s pretty bloody miserable. My ex ex and I used to watch TV in evening to avoid rowing. But once it was just the two of us, we couldn’t even agree on what TV programmes to watch any more. So we divorced.’
I adopt my best ‘I’m so sorry’ look, but Tricia bursts out laughing. ‘No, no sad faces. I wish we’d done it earlier. Things might have been better with Ed if we had. Divorcing his father was the best twenty grand I’ve ever spent …’
‘Right. Good for you,’ I say, rearranging my features.
‘You’re in the eye of the storm right now – but you’ll be OK,’ Inge tells me.
But how do you know? I want to shout. I’m not like you! I can’t be single again … I’d have to wax, wouldn’t I? Or have I caught a break and the seventies bush is back?
Bigger than the bush problem is this: divorce would mean failure. And I don’t do failure …
‘Greg and I are fine,’ I insist, fooling precisely no one.
‘That’s my sister, always “fine”,’ slurs Melissa. ‘Even when she’s not. Just call her Robo-Alice.’
I choose to take this as a compliment.
‘Never let anyone in, never show a chink of weakness. Always keep up appearances – even when your husband pisses sitting down and leaves skid marks in his pants—’
‘Skid-what?’ Margot asks, puzzled.
‘Nothing!’ I fume, attempting to cut off this line of conversation.
But Melissa will not be stopped. ‘Robo-Alice, always the straight one, always doing the right thing.’
‘Not always!’ I correct her.
‘Oh yeah? When have you done anything wrong? Ever?’
I want to laugh out loud at this, because lately, it’s felt as though everything I do is wrong. As though I’m not succeeding at anything – parenting, work, being a good sister, friendship, ‘actual social interactions’, or even getting to grips with the basic tenets of Viking life. Whereas Melissa seems to be, in her words, ‘slamming it’, with a work-life balance I scarcely dare contemplate, people skills I can only dream of, and a positive outlook I’ve never really believed was possible without the aid of nitrous oxide (aka ‘laughing gas’ – the dental practitioner’s best friend).
‘I do things wrong!’ I protest. ‘I make a mess of things …’ I insist, adding lamely. ‘Loads!’
‘Like when?’
‘Like, recently …’
‘Really?’ Melissa challenges.
‘Really?’ Tricia echoes her, eyes widening in excitement. ‘Go on!’ she urges.
‘It is your turn,’ Inge confirms, with paired back Scandinavian logic.
By now, my muscles feel wonderfully slack and my head is all swimmy after the beer, so I do.
‘Well …’ I ramp up to my admission, extending the word for as long as possible to buy myself time. A stay of execution, if you will. Then I take the biggest breath that my lungs can manage and start. ‘You know when you picked me up from the Premier Inn after that dentistry conference last month—’
‘The one where you puked?’ Melissa clarifies.
‘Yes, thank you, the one where I puked. And you know how I told you I got drunk with a friend?’
‘Yes?’ Melissa still l
ooks sceptical at this.
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a friend. There was this dentist there—’
‘What? At a dentistry conference? You do surprise me …’ Melissa has another swig of beer, losing patience with my non-story.
‘And I think … maybe … I slept with him …’
As soon as I have unravelled myself, I immediately wish I could spool the confession back in.
There is silence, all around the table. Melissa’s expression shifts and I feel all my muscles tense up.
‘You did what?’ she says, finally. ‘Are you mental?’ She looks appalled.
‘No!’ I say, defensive, now. Maybe … Yes …
‘Well? How was it?’ Tricia wants details.
‘I … I …’ I falter. ‘I can’t remember …’
‘What were you thinking?’ Melissa demands.
‘I wasn’t! That’s the point …’ I glance around for support.
‘What is the matter with you?’ my sister continues.
This isn’t how I thought the conversation would go.
So Tricia is allowed to have a threesome and I’m not allowed one minor/medium indiscretion in twelve years of dutiful wifely service?
I realise too late that I have misjudged the tone of this ‘girly chat’.
This is why you don’t do ‘girly chats’, I censure myself. Idiot! You’re out of your depth!
‘Big? Was he?’ Tricia goes on, oblivious to the simmering undercurrent of sibling disharmony.
‘I-I don’t know …’
‘Of all the—’ Melissa stops herself and shakes her head instead. ‘I just can’t believe it.’ I hadn’t expected Melissa to take it this hard. Or to have the jagged seams of our relationship exposed quite so publically. ‘Since when did you become such a prude?’ I retaliate, moving into unfamiliar territory. ‘You never liked Greg anyway—’
‘Oh Greg.’ She makes the name sound as though it’s a made-up word. ‘Greg. No one likes Greg.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Dad doesn’t.’
‘Oh really …’
‘Called him a prick last Christmas.’
‘Did he now? How very gentlemanly …’
‘Greg is a prick.’
‘That’s not the point!’ I yell, now.
‘No, Greg’s not the point!’
‘Is Greg her husband?’ Inge frowns trying to keep up.
‘I think so,’ Margot whispers, too loudly to really qualify as a whisper.
‘Yes,’ Melissa confirms. ‘And he’s a bell hop …’
‘At a hotel?’ Margot asks – convinced by now, I am sure, that the rest of us are mere serfs. Stagehands and servants in the lives of her and her kinsfolk, I muse, bitterly.
‘No!’ Melissa clarifies. ‘I’m using the phrase as a term of abuse. His idea of a good time is sitting in a darkened room with only Fiona Bruce and some stones for company. He thinks childcare means parking kids in front of an iPad.’
‘You don’t get to judge his parenting skills!’ I am doubly outraged at this because a) it’s not her place to criticise and b) she’s right. Which I hate.
‘I told you! Greg’s not the point!’ Melissa fires back.
‘Well, if it’s not about Greg, then what’s your problem?’ I ask, baffled. ‘Why are you being so judgey?’
‘Me judgey?’ Melissa looks disbelieving. ‘Coming from you, Judge Judy?’fn5
‘That’s not my name—’
‘It should be—’
‘Now now, let’s save the handbags until dawn.’ Tricia attempts to broker peace but fails.
‘You talk about family life,’ Melissa persists, ‘but never make any effort to see Dad …’
‘Were you very drunk? At the dentistry conference?’ Margot asks, not knowing quite how to pitch the tone of her enquiry, or whose side she’s on, but keen to join in.
‘What?’ I turn to her, feeling confused now and shaking my head slightly. ‘No. I mean, yes.’
‘Hypocrite.’ Melissa relishes the word, annunciating every consonant.
I’m open-mouthed in shock for a second. ‘Why do you care so much?’
Melissa narrows her eyes at me before she speaks. ‘I “care” because you’ve spent years – for as long as I can remember – on this huge, enormous, horse—’
‘Do you mean a high horse?’ Margot asks, helpfully.
‘That’s what I said!’ Melissa raises her voice now. ‘And I’ve been scared to tell you stuff in case you went all Judgey Mc Judge Face—’
‘Again: not my name—’
‘And all along, you criticise and give everyone those looks—’
‘What looks?’
‘That one! You’re doing it right now! Isn’t she?’ Melissa appeals to Tricia.
‘You do have a pretty fierce face on you,’ Tricia admits carefully. I rotate my body to give her the full benefit of my fierce face. ‘Yep, that’s the one.’ Tricia nods, shielding her eyes theatrically. ‘Ooh, I can feel it! It’s the look of a woman who could kill. Again …’ She turns to Melissa. ‘Is this the gale force ten you warned me about?’ My sister sucks her teeth and nods.
‘You’ve been talking about me?’
I’m hurt. I’d thought that Tricia was my ally here. My comrade in crap Viking skills. And all the while, she’s been Judas-ing me with Melissa? ‘The two of you have been discussing my “faces”?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself …’ Melissa starts, at the same time as Tricia says, ‘Only briefly …’
‘They haven’t with me—’ Margot adds, by way of consolation.
‘Oh, SOD OFF MARGOT!’ I intended to convey this with a facial expression but find that the words have slipped out of my mouth.
There is another tremor as the pressure builds and I feel the tectonic plates shift.
I try to laugh this off but it comes out flat. Nobody speaks – or even breathes, it seems – for a beat.
‘You know, for someone who cares so much about being liked, you’d think you’d have worked out a way of being less of a cow by now.’ Melissa shakes her head and looks genuinely disappointed in me. Some crisps have magically materialised on the table, so I stuff them in my mouth to keep from saying anything else I might later regret. But Melissa persists. ‘Well? Aren’t you going to apologise?’
I’m so tired. And drunk. And full of crisps …
‘We’re waiting …’ Melissa is still talking.
‘You can bog off, too!’ I splutter through a mouthful of semi-masticated potato.
‘I rest my case,’ says Melissa, leaning back in her chair, before deciding that her ‘case’ has a second wind. ‘Do you know—’ she pitches forward, finger jabbing, ‘—I knew something was up when I collected you from that conference and you smelled like a dead badger … And you gave me a hard time for … well … everything. As usual. Unbelievable! Do you ever think about how other people feel?’
‘Are you serious?’ I near splutter. ‘I’m always thinking about other people!’ I wonder whether now might be an apposite time to mention the four bags-for-life. Not to mention the spare dental masks I usually keep with me to distribute to patients/supermarket workers/teachers/other parents at the children’s school if they have a cold … ‘I look after everyone! I have a direct debit to Dentaid! “Improving the world’s oral health one smile at a time”! I run the PTA! I always pay and display! I’m never late! If anything, I’m usually early—’
‘You’re not early for everything because you care!’ Melissa fires back. ‘Your timekeeping is an act of military aggression! You just want the upper hand. You have to have the upper hand!’
I look around for support. Is this happening? Are we having a row? Like on reality TV shows? I wonder, hazily. I don’t know how to do rows. Never have. Melissa would shout and rage as a child (and kick, too, as I recall now …) while Dad would occasionally raise his voice at the cricket. Mum and I stayed silent and observed. Melissa always used to say this was worse – why couldn’t’ we just ‘
let it all out’ and then get on with things? But that was never our style. Bottle it. Zip it up. Concede nothing. Even with Greg, even at our worst, we’ve always maintained a sort of quiet loathing. A sanitised, simmering resentment. But losing it? Never. Because if you lose it, you might not get it back, I remind myself. And yet here I am, gesticulating wildly and hurling abuse like some sort of batshit banshee.
‘It’s the quiet ones you want to look out for,’ Tricia is joking now, trying, I suspect, to make light of the situation. But I’m not in the mood.
‘That coming from a lush who bangs on about gin and tonic all the time!’ It comes out of me, from nowhere, and I clasp a hand over my mouth to try to stuff it back in.
Tricia bristles for a moment and there is a sudden intake of breath from Melissa. A look passes between them before my sister shakes her head slightly. At this, Tricia relaxes and shrugs. ‘I’m very worried about malaria …’
Does Melissa know something I don’t?
A feeling that I’m being ganged up on – or at least left out of something – grows and gnaws at me. This escalates with each wave of now-drunken paranoia.
Margot is still giggling at the malaria comment, so I turn on her next. ‘And you, with your perfect cat-face, and plastic mannequin-hands that have never done a day’s work in their life – whereas I’ve been removing stubborn plaque for decades!’ This isn’t strictly true – one and a half decades would be more accurate but it doesn’t have the same ring to it.
‘That’s enough!’ Melissa demands.
‘Says you!’ I blurt in response.
‘Just shut it!’ she tells me.
But I don’t.
Instead, I fight back.
‘You don’t get to tell me what to do! What do you know about anything? Your life’s a fucking teddy bear’s tea party! We can’t all fanny about playing toy farms all day – some of us have to work in the real world to earn money and keep things going. Like a grown-up …’
Even as I’m speaking, I’m aware that I’m making a mess of things.
‘Relax’, everyone tells me. ‘Let your hair down once in a while,’ they say.
Well, I have. And what’s happened? My sister is currently incandescent with rage and on the verge of tears. I’m behaving like a cornered animal and yet, curiously, I can’t seem to stop myself.
Gone Viking Page 19