Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  While Mr Frog read to Tadpole, I prowled around the apartment like a caged beast, my nerves jangling. I threw Lego blocks back into their plastic chest with a clatter, snapped the folding high chair closed, plumped the cushions on the sofa with my fists with more force than was necessary. Coming to a standstill in front of the fireplace in the bedroom, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I looked as nauseous as I felt, sick to my stomach at the thought of what I was about to say.

  Silently, I’d rehearsed my speech that afternoon in the office, and once again in a packed métro carriage on the way home. I’d even run through it one last time while Tadpole played in the bath by my side, blithely unaware of the treason I was plotting. All of this was futile, of course: I knew I would forget my lines once we were face to face. The most important moments of our lives are rarely scripted to perfection.

  If I couldn’t speak to James, maybe there was a message waiting in my inbox? I opened up my email and, sure enough, there was a new message. ‘I miss you so much,’ he had written while I must have been walking home through the park with Tadpole. ‘It’s like a huge earthquake has torn a hole in the path my life was taking, and I can’t get around it and carry on unless you’re with me. If you decide to do this, tonight, then I’ll understand if you can’t phone, but please, please, please find a way to tell me that you’re okay.’

  ‘Time for a cuddle, Mummy!’ shouted Tadpole, before I could type any reply.

  ‘Coming!’ I hollered, closing my email. I paused for a moment in the doorway of her room, watching my daughter as she hung around Mr Frog’s neck, showering his face, his neck, with kisses. My heart was a stone in my chest, heavy with the terrible knowledge that this would be the last time we would say goodnight to our daughter as a couple.

  Leaving a sleepy Tadpole chattering to the assortment of soft toys that shared her bed, I left her door ajar, just how she liked it, and followed Mr Frog through to our bedroom, the furthest point in the apartment from where Tadpole lay. He stood by the fireplace, on the spot where I’d been standing only moments before, his cigarette packet in his hand, patting his pockets for his lighter. When I pulled the door closed behind me, he turned and looked at me apprehensively. The closed door could signal only one thing: no doubt he was bracing himself for a fight.

  Moving past the computer desk, I sat on my side of our double bed, my back propped against the headboard for support, knees drawn defensively up to my chest. I studied a section of the mottled purple quilt cover for a moment, unable to raise my eyes to meet his. The bed creaked as Mr Frog took a seat at the opposite end, his knees on the duvet, his shoes, which he hadn’t yet removed, hanging over the edge.

  ‘I… I don’t know how to say this,’ I said, my voice unsteady, my eyes downcast. ‘But I don’t think being together is making either of us happy any more. We don’t want the same things. We have the same fights over and over again. We never touch… When we’re not arguing, we barely speak. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I want to try living apart.’ My eyes were filling with tears, distorting my vision, and I blinked them away, forcing myself to lift my head, even though it felt heavy as a newborn’s. I needed to see him, to see the effect my words were having.

  Mr Frog’s features were frozen in a mask of shock. Despite everything that was so obviously wrong, he clearly hadn’t seen this coming at all. Too stunned to speak, he stared at me uncomprehendingly, as though I were speaking a language he didn’t understand, instead of my mother tongue. ‘We’re not in love any more, are we?’ I continued, my eyes begging him to agree. ‘And I thought I could live with that but, now, well, I don’t think I can any more. Being together for the sake of our daughter isn’t a good enough reason.’

  My monologue exhausted, I fell silent, waiting for Mr Frog to speak. However fastidiously I’d chosen my words, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was trapped inside a scene from a badly written soap opera, serving up one spent cliché after another.

  Mr Frog’s mask finally slipped. His mouth trembled, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes, hard as flint, suddenly narrowed. ‘You’ve met someone, haven’t you?’ he said flatly. It was a statement, not a question. What a fool I’d been to think I could leave James out of my explanation. It didn’t take a genius to work out that something, or someone, must have brought things to a head. There had to be a trigger, a catalyst and, unerringly, Mr Frog had put his finger on the truth.

  ‘There is someone,’ I confessed, wincing as Mr Frog’s face contorted into an ugly smile. ‘And that’s why I’m saying this now, you’re right.’ I bit my lip. ‘But I think we both know this has been brewing for a long time.’

  ‘So, that’s it. You’ve given up on us.’ Mr Frog shrank away from me, as though I were contaminated, almost losing his balance as he teetered on the edge of the bed. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and I stared at his thinning hair, his exposed scalp, horrified at how vulnerable he looked. Was I about to see him cry for the very first time, I wondered, curious to hear what noise he would make, if he did. But when he looked up, his cheeks were dry. ‘How can I live apart from my little girl?’ His voice was dazed and disbelieving, he spoke as though he were talking to himself. ‘How can this be happening to me?’ He pulled himself upright, grabbed his cigarettes, and backed away from me, towards the door. ‘I’m going out. I have to be alone. I have to get away from here. From you.’ Staring at the indentation he had left on the bedclothes, I made no move to stop him. I heard the creak of the door, the soft thudding of his feet crossing the living-room floor, then returning as he retraced his steps and paused in the doorway to deliver his parting shot. ‘You can call your new boyfriend now,’ he said bitterly. ‘Tell him the good news.’

  I flinched then as though I’d been struck. I had been planning to call James, of course I had, but now I wasn’t so sure. Not that we would have gloated, or celebrated as though this were some kind of victory, but giving James a blow-by-blow account didn’t feel right. Tonight was between Mr Frog and me, I said to myself, as the front door slammed closed behind him. James would keep.

  Tadpole was still awake. With the bedroom door open, I could hear her now, softly singing. I glanced at my watch in disbelief: less than ten minutes had elapsed since we’d put her to bed. In the time it would take to nip to the baker’s for a baguette, or for Mr Frog to smoke a cigarette on the balcony, I had laid to rest eight years of our lives and sentenced our daughter to a childhood spent flitting between separated parents. Rooted to the bed, I listened to my daughter’s sweet voice. My limbs felt leaden, anaesthetized. I was numb. Now that the deed was done, I didn’t know how I was supposed to behave.

  If Mr Frog had cried or shouted, lost his temper, lashed out at the furniture – or even me – it might have been easier. I think I’d hoped for fireworks; I felt I deserved them somehow. There I was, announcing I had finally found the strength to walk away from the empty husk of our relationship, confessing that I hadn’t come to take this decision without outside help, that there was another person involved, and the scene had been played out with scarcely a raised voice. Seeing Mr Frog’s anguish as he grappled with the idea of having to live apart from our daughter had brought home to me, all the more forcefully, that there hadn’t been a single moan or whimper on my account.

  Uncoiling like a spring, I suddenly leaped up from the bed and stepped through the open doors on to the balcony, trying to catch a glimpse of Mr Frog’s receding back. ‘What about me?’ I wanted to yell down melodramatically into the street. ‘You’re losing me too!’ But there was no sign of Mr Frog. The park gates were closed; most of the nearby shop windows were shuttered. Only the kosher sushi and bagel shop across the road – a black and red eyesore which had sprung up overnight where my dry cleaner’s used to be – was still open for business. I rested my arms on the wrought-iron balustrade for a moment, massaging my aching temples with my forefingers. A vein pulsed in my forehead and, when I pressed it, hard, it seemed to alleviate the pain. The sun was dip
ping slowly behind the buildings opposite, glinting off the metal covers on the chimney pots, the sky almost identical to the picture on my blog.

  I had long suspected Mr Frog and I were together by default; that we were carrying on for Tadpole’s sake, or out of inertia. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to see that where jagged emotions should have been there was only a gaping void. But a part of me felt sorely cheated. Our break-up had been a resounding anti-climax. I wanted to be wept over, bitterly. I wanted to be fought for. Mourned, or regretted just a little.

  I wanted to feel like I was someone who’d been worth having in the first place.

  Mr Frog was gone for hours. For a while I was incapable of doing anything, slumping back on to the bed and burying my face in my pillow. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone –although I knew that I would need to call my mother and break the news to her soon – but the urge to write something slowly overtook me, and I surrendered to the feeling willingly. So while Mr Frog roamed around outside, I wrote a post. In essence, it was a letter to him: an apology, and an obituary to our relationship.

  When you walked into the bar, wearing your cuddly blue duffle coat, I found you irresistibly cute. I remember you kissing me gently on the cheek after our second meeting and bundling me into a taxi. I remember going to watch some obscure film at a cinema near where you lived, so I had a pretext to stop by. I remember listening to Portishead, lying on the bed in your tiny chambre de bonne, with its sloping floor, seeing only your grey-blue eyes.

  I remember the joy written all over your face when I told you we were having a baby. I remember holding on to you for dear life while I retreated far inside myself to deal with the pain of labour. I remember you giving Tadpole her first bath by my side, while I looked on, helpless, unable to move. I remember standing by her bed, by your side, many times, marvelling at our beautiful daughter as she slept, wondering how we came to create such a perfect creature.

  I feel dazed yet strangely calm inside. Tearful at times, but mostly just numb. I am profoundly sad and sorry that it has come to this. But I know, without the merest shadow of a doubt, that it is what is right.

  Emptying my head on to the blog, plucking the mots justes from the air which would do justice to something so earth-shattering was exhausting, yet satisfying. But going public with news so raw, so ‘hot off the press’ was a huge step, and not something I wanted to rush into on the spur of the moment. That I’d felt compelled to write the post at all brought home to me forcefully to what extent blogging had become almost a necessity. The more dramatic the events I lived through, the more keenly I felt the need to make sense of everything by distilling my tangled thoughts and emotions into neat sentences. Not that my audience was incidental of course: I wasn’t only writing for myself. I might not be ready to admit it yet – even to myself – but an unsavoury part of me secretly longed to see the ripples my cryptic announcement would send out across the internet.

  I would call my mother first, I decided, then re-read my words calmly one more time before I decided whether or not I should press ‘publish’.

  When Mr Frog finally returned from his prowl, deathly pale and smelling strongly of nicotine, a blanket of stunned calm fell over our household. We found ourselves discussing the practicalities of our separation in shell-shocked, subdued tones. We would do our utmost to make the transition as smooth as possible, for Tadpole’s sake, we agreed. Maybe she would never remember a time when Mummy and Daddy lived together under one roof but, if she did, neither of us wanted her last memories of family life to be of animosity, fighting and upheaval.

  ‘I suppose I ought to start looking for a place to live,’ said Mr Frog. ‘Somewhere near by. You should stay here, even if it’s a bit expensive for you on your own. We need to give our daughter some continuity.’

  I nodded, doing the mental arithmetic in my head. Things would be tight, but I would manage, I’d have to. It was comforting to focus on practicalities, and I was relieved that Mr Frog was not pressing me for details about the new man in my life, or indeed about how we met. When the time came to go to bed, Mr Frog disappeared into Tadpole’s bedroom and emerged clutching a spare duvet and pillows. He began to make a bed up for himself on the chaise longue in front of the arched window.

  ‘You really don’t have to do that,’ I said, gesturing at the sofa. ‘Not unless you really want to. There are no curtains in here, the window’s not double glazed… and how would we explain it in the morning?’ I was picturing Tadpole, who often padded through to join us for cuddles when she awoke.

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Mr Frog tore the sheet off the sofa and cast it aside, leaving the bedding in an untidy bundle on the floor. He disappeared outside, ostensibly to smoke a last cigarette, and I quickly undressed and cleaned my teeth so that I would be out of his way by the time he returned. When finally he eased himself into bed beside me, I kept my eyes tightly closed and slowed my breathing, pretending to sleep. I’d positioned myself as close to the edge of the bed as I could without falling out, and Mr Frog instinctively did the same.

  Neither of us slept a great deal that night, and there was much tossing and turning. But as though there were a tacit agreement between us, we did not speak, and not once did we lie face to face.

  14. Judgement

  ‘Cath, I’m so relieved to hear from you this morning,’ wrote James. ‘I’m sure you feel partly numb and partly in a lot of pain. I imagine you can’t quite believe it’s really happening. What an utterly bewildering thing to have happened in ten short days. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt so certain about anything as when I saw you for the first time. And the second…’

  Mr Frog got up before me the next day, his face drawn. He took a long bath while Tadpole watched a video and I surfed the internet in my pyjamas. In addition to James’s message there was a long email from my mother – offering to pay for a flight to England if I needed to get away with Tadpole for a few days – and a shorter message from Amy, wondering whether I’d gone through with it. But what stopped me in my tracks when I opened my inbox was the number of emails awaiting me from complete strangers.

  I’d turned off the comment function the previous evening when I’d finished speaking to my mother and returned to the computer to press ‘publish’; the first time I’d ever done so. Putting the dramatic news out there was one thing; allowing strangers to react to it publicly quite another. But many people had been so saddened to read my words that they’d sent supportive messages by email instead, often prefacing their messages with shy disclaimers.

  ‘I’m not the sort of person who writes comments on blogs and I feel slightly odd emailing you…’ began one. ‘It is the first time in my life I have ever felt empathy with another internaute, someone I don’t know and am unlikely ever to know…’ began another. ‘Although I don’t know you,’ wrote a third, ‘it is almost as if you have become a friend.’

  Some messages were from fellow bloggers I felt close to, even though we’d never met. ‘Just read it… and don’t know what to say. But… y’know. xx,’ wrote Jonny Billericay, awkwardly. ‘That sounds like an ominous post,’ said Lucy Pepper. ‘You ok? Hope so.’ There was even a message from Anna of Little Red Boat, whose blog I had so admired before I decided to set up my own. ‘Hope you are okay, poppet,’ she wrote. ‘You write so awfully well when you are feeling sad.’

  Readers offered advice, a place to stay if I fancied getting away from it all, and one girl even offered to send me a care package of English food I’d written about missing on my blog. People genuinely seemed to care about our well-being: over time they’d grown fond of Tadpole, Mr Frog and petite anglaise. But although the messages touched me deeply, I felt twinges of shame as I read. I didn’t deserve these outpourings of cyber-sympathy. The victim here was Mr Frog, and since I hadn’t yet alluded to the reasons our time together had come to an end, my readers were making assumptions based on a woefully incomplete picture. How would they react, I fretted, when they knew the whole truth?<
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  I was sneaking a look at the visitor traffic graphs when Mr Frog walked into the bedroom. He was dressed now and wearing his jacket, his Vespa helmet swinging from his right hand. ‘What on earth is that?’ he said, gesturing at the jagged peaks of green and purple, leaning closer to get a better look at the graph. ‘Quoi? You’ve had all those extra visitors since last night?’

  I felt the colour rising to my cheeks. ‘Not extra visitors, no. I think it’s the usual suspects, but they’re checking in a few times a day to see if there’s any news.’

  ‘Any news? You mean they already know… about us?’ He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, his face incredulous. ‘What the hell have you written?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said hastily, realizing how incomprehensible my decision must appear to him, suddenly seeing it through his eyes. ‘It’s very dignified. In fact, I hope you’ll like it, when you can bear to read it. I wrote it for you…’

  ‘You’re repackaging our life into some sort of soap opera, and you expect me to approve?’ Mr Frog shook his head in disbelief. ‘I’m going out to see a friend,’ he said, pulling himself to his feet, seemingly keen to put as much distance between himself and my computer as possible. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back. But please think long and hard before you write anything else.’

  Although Mr Frog and I strove to behave normally in Tadpole’s presence over the next few days, on some unconscious level our daughter seemed to sense there was something going on.

  I knew, from what the childminder had told me, that Tadpole was going through a maternal phase – mothering Tata’s youngest charges and obsessed with pushing baby dolls around in miniature pushchairs – but was there more to it than that? Was she picking up on the invisible undercurrents at home, divining intuitively that Mummy and Daddy were both in need of extra cuddles and kisses?