by Lisa Jewell
‘No, no, not at all,’ he reassured, ‘I suppose if he went away to find himself, he was probably hoping that you would do some soul-searching too.’
‘Yes,’ Jem nodded. ‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of that. You’re absolutely right. I suppose he did. I’ve been so busy being cross with him for going and then so busy unexpectedly enjoying him not being here that I hadn’t really considered the depths of my soul. I’ve just been kind of, well, waiting for him to come back, I suppose. Waiting to see what he’ll have to say for himself. Anyway,’ she continued over-brightly, ‘how are you with spicy food?’
‘Average,’ he said.
‘Average?’ she repeated.
‘Yes. For example, when I’m eating at Nando’s I tend to order it medium.’
‘You do not!’ she exclaimed.
‘I do!’ he laughed. ‘Why, what’s so funny about that?’
‘Nothing. I just never met anyone who ordered medium in Nando’s before! I always wondered why they even bothered making a medium sauce. I thought everyone had it extra hot.’
Joel folded his arms across his chest and eyed her defensively, but with a smile. ‘Well, now you know. It’s me! The phantom medium peri-peri eater of south London.’ He pretended to unmask himself and Jem laughed.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘in this house we like our food very, very hot. So, are you up for the challenge?’
He rubbed his hands together. ‘Bring it on,’ he said. ‘I will not be known as that wimp who came over for dinner and asked for it medium for the rest of my life!’
‘OK,’ Jem laughed, and fried the chicken in a wok with two mounds of dung-green paste until it released acrid smoke into the air. Then she added a can of coconut milk and a cup of water and let it all simmer for just long enough to give Blake his bedtime bottle and get him into his pyjamas.
Joel played with the girls while she dealt with the baby, and by the time Blake was in bed and the food was ready, the girls were installed in Scarlett’s bedroom, the sun had fully set and Jem was pleasantly drunk. She turned off the overhead halogen lights and set the table.
‘This all smells fantastic,’ said Joel, eyeing the green curry, the tomato and coriander salad and the pile of fluffy white rice enthusiastically. ‘Would it make me sound really quite pathetically tragic if I said that this was the first meal that has been cooked for me in about three years.’
‘What, not even your mum?’
‘No, not even my mum. She bought herself a microwave in 1990 and never used her cooker again. So this is a real, real treat. Thank you so much.’
‘It’s a pleasure. It’s nice to cook again. I haven’t really cooked a proper meal since I was pregnant.’
‘So Ralph doesn’t get this treatment then?’
Jem grimaced. ‘Poor bugger,’ she said. ‘No. I do try but I just got out of the habit of it because it was too painful for me to stand when I was heavily pregnant and then having a small baby demanding my attention put paid to it after he was born and then, I suppose I’ve just been lazy. But it’s just – I don’t know – I do so much already, I just resent having to add something else to my infinite to-do list. I suppose I would have to feel more warmly disposed towards him to want to make the effort and …’ she stopped. Two Tiger beers and her mouth had found a way of operating without her permission. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m doing it again. You must think I invited you over here just so I could moan about Ralph, but I really didn’t. Anyway. How’s the curry, not too hot?’
He was chewing and fanning his mouth the side of his hand. ‘Wooph,’ he said, ‘it is a bit hot. But no,’ he swallowed and reached for his Tiger,’ it’s fine. It’s delicious. Really. Not too hot at all.’
Jem looked at his red watering eyes and laughed out loud. ‘Are you sure?’ she said.
‘Yeah!’ he exhaled, breathlessly. ‘I love it. Honestly.’
Jem smiled at him. She thought about the packet of red-hot Thai bird’s-eye chillies in the vegetable drawer of the fridge. There were loads left. She thought about making a suggestion, about taking Joel on in a head-to-head chilli challenge, about recreating the madness and pandemonium of the night she and Ralph had first bonded together over spicy food but she couldn’t bring herself to. As distant as she was feeling from her partner of eleven years, and as many unresolved issues as they still had to deal with, that would not be right. That would, in some strange way, be worse than physical adultery. Instead she opened the lid on her third Tiger beer and changed the subject. ‘So, I hope you don’t think I’m being incredibly nosy, and just say if you’d rather not talk about it but – Jessica’s mum? What the deal with that?’
She looked up at him, to gauge his reaction.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘yes, well, that’s some story.’
‘I mean, you don’t have to, if you don’t want to …’
‘No, it’s fine. It’s just, it’s a bit messy, a bit depressing. If you’re OK with messy and depressing?’
‘I am,’ she nodded.
‘Well,’ he put down his spoon for a moment and picked up his beer, ‘Paulette and I, God, we were a car crash. I met her in 1996, so I suppose around the same time that you met your Ralph. She was working as a nanny when I met her, living in this nice little house in Dulwich so I had no external clues as to what she was really like. But, ha! Turns out she was a junkie, turns out she’d been on smack since she was thirteen years old and was down to methadone then, when she was nannying. I mean – a nanny! Who the hell employs some ex-user junkie from Bristol to look after their kids? By the time I found out, I was in love with her and, bleeding-heart arsehole that I am, I thought I could save her. You know, that’s my work, saving youth from the folly of themselves. That’s what I’m trained to do. Not that she was young – she was, you know, nearly thirty by the time I really knew the score. And once I knew she kind of let it all hang out, lost her job, quit the methadone, back on the smack and expected me to keep the whole act hanging together, and I was this close,’ he measured a smudge of space between his thumb and his index finger, ‘this close to ending it when she got pregnant. And I thought, yes! Yes, a baby, you know, that’s exactly what she needs, exactly what we need, and she was brilliant. Cleaned herself up the minute she found out, did everything you’re supposed to do when you’re carrying a baby, didn’t even have a drink or a can of Coke. I mean, you can see it in that photo, that’s why I keep it; it’s the only photo I’ve got of her when she looks like a real human being. Her hair, her skin, her figure. That’s the person she would have been if it hadn’t been for the smack. And then, well, Jessica came and we did the whole happy family thing for a few months, and then I knew, I just knew, she was back on it. And I would look at our girl, that,’ he pointed at the ceiling, indicating the rooms above, ‘that girl and I just could not understand how anyone with that in their lives could possibly want anything else. Especially, something so, you know, dirty, something evil. Why? It didn’t make any sense. Anyway. I kicked her out in the end. I didn’t want that for our girl. I didn’t want that for me. And now she’s kind of cut herself off from us. She’ll never forgive me for kicking her out and uses that as an excuse not to see her daughter.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It’s pathetic really. A grown woman. A woman who had everything. And she’d rather have that. She’ll end up dead before she’s forty.’
Jem gazed at him unblinkingly. ‘That’s terrible,’ she said, somewhat inadequately, she felt.
‘It’s a nightmare,’ he said, his jaw set tight with suppressed anger.
‘And there’s nothing anyone can do? Nothing to help her?’
‘No,’ he said, decisively. ‘No. It’s very simple. You either want to help yourself. Or you don’t. Paulette doesn’t. It’s easier for her to live the way she does than to change. As hard as it is to imagine, she’s taken the easy option.’ He shrugged. Jem watched him with interest. The cool, soft façade had slipped a bit and she could see someone underneath that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. T
here was something there in the hardness of his jaw when he talked about his ex, something more than just anger or resentment, it was more like hatred. It unnerved her slightly and she cleared her throat.
‘Sorry,’ he smiled. ‘Sorry. I told you. A bad story. Anyway, moving swiftly on …’
‘No, it’s not that, it’s fine, it’s just really, really sad.’
Joel’s face had lost its cruel angles and he looked serene again, gentle and calm. ‘Yes,’ he smiled, ‘really, really sad.’
‘And there’s been no one else?’
‘Nope. Just me. And Jessie. Just us.’
‘And you’ve done it all yourself, all the parenting?’
He nodded.
‘Well,’ she raised her beer bottle to his, ‘in that case, a toast, to you, to Superdad.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, but yes, to me, why not?’ He grinned at her and they brought their bottles together and as they did so their knuckles whispered against each other, just a touch. Jem waited for her body to process the touch, to react in some way, but it didn’t. Joel on the other hand flushed and glanced at her in surprise. And it was then that Jem knew, in that tiny, barely perceptible pinch of time, that she had him. And the moment she knew she had him, it was immediately clear to her that she didn’t want him.
She did not want to stand naked in front of him. She did not want his hand against her cheek, her bare flesh. She did not want him to stare at her with longing in a shadowy room. She just wanted to have a nice evening with him. And then she just wanted to go to bed alone, with a clear conscience, and see Ralph tomorrow morning and maybe stand naked in front of him.
But it seemed as though the flimsy, lacy, silly narrative she’d written in the air with the dull ache of her loneliness and the giddiness of her confusion had developed its own momentum. This, she would think when she looked back at this moment as she would a thousand times over the next few months, was the moment at which her baby should have awoken, should have shredded the mounting tension with a plaintive cry through the winking monitor on the kitchen counter. This should have been the moment when the girls came careering helter-skelter into the kitchen all breathless anecdotes or complaining dissonance. This should have been the moment when the phone rang, when the doorbell went, when the roof blew off the house in a freak tornado, when in fact anything at all had happened that might have ended the silence and broken the spell and prevented Joel from opening his mouth and saying: ‘And a toast to you too, for this amazing meal, and for making me feel special for the first time in a very, very long time. I’m really blown away by this,’ he indicated his food, then he stopped and stared at Jem, meaningfully, ‘and by you.’
Jem caught her breath. She smiled. ‘Oh, honestly. It’s nothing. It’s just nice to have some company.’
Joel’s face fell into serious lines. ‘No, seriously. It’s been a long time since I met someone like you, someone so genuine, someone so real. I was starting to get a bit cynical about, well, people in general, but women especially. But you – you’re different.’
The smile on Jem’s face had frozen. There it was. The declaration. She hadn’t heard it for many years now: You’re not like other girls. You’re different from anyone I’ve ever met before. As a young woman this had been the pattern to Jem’s relationships. She would meet a boy. She would like a boy. But the boy would very quickly like her more than she liked him and she would be too polite and too soft to pull out as quickly as she needed to, and then the boy would fall stupidly in love and become very clingy and very needy and she would stick it out until the last possible moment before ending it, usually in a scenario involving tears and, on two separate occasions, threats of suicide. Then she’d met Ralph and Ralph had said: ‘You’re not like other girls. You’re different from anyone I’ve ever met before.’ And Jem had breathed a sigh of relief and thought that it was the first time it had been said to her and not made her feel like she was sinking in emotional quicksand.
But something had happened over the years, and it was clear to Jem that Ralph felt cheated. She was no longer ‘different from the other girls’ she was just like them. ‘You mums,’ he would say disparagingly, lumping her into a pot of nagging, shouting, preoccupied women. ‘What is it with you mums?’
So, Jem had been primed and ready for someone to see the girl she used to be. And now someone had, and, in a way, she felt pleased: See, Ralph, it’s you that’s changed, not me, I am still delightful, I am still special, you just can’t see it any more. But in another way, she was unnerved. She felt transparent, she felt naked. She felt vulnerable and stupid. And more than that, she felt guilty.
She had brought this man into her life, through curiosity, through loneliness, through vanity and yes, through boredom. He was here because she had wanted him to come here and make her feel like the sort of woman that men painted pictures of again. She felt slightly ashamed of herself for using this man to discover what she had already known deep down inside: that there was no other man for her than Ralph. There never had been and there never would be. It was not destiny that had brought this man into her kitchen, it was her, Jem, plain and simple. And now she wanted him gone from it.
She rubbed her elbows with the palms of her lightly sweating hands and stretched the frozen smile a little further. ‘Oh, hardly,’ she managed. ‘Just a mum, just like all the other mums.’
‘No,’ said Joel, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Not like all the other mums. Better than the other mums.’
Jem flushed and she let her gaze fall to the tabletop. No babies cried. No three-year-old girls appeared. The silence drew out. ‘Well, that’s very, very nice of you to say. Thank you.’
‘No,’ said Joel, ‘thank you.’
This time Joel looked away first and the moment vaporised gently between them. The clatter of cutlery against crockery filled the air again, the creak of the cat flap, the claws of the cat, click-click-clicking against the wooden floors. Time resumed. Things returned to normal. They could carry on being two parents killing some time together.
It was over.
For now.
Chapter 15
Ralph appraised his front door in the early morning light. His street slept for it was a Saturday morning. Spring had come to his home while he’d been gone. Bead-like buds of pearly white and green adorned the tips of bushes and the trees were starting to show their new leaves. Glancing up he could see that the curtains in his bedroom were open wide. No lie-ins with small children. He imagined the kitchen, Jem in her vest and shorts, her black hair around her face. He imagined Scarlett, chocolate spread around her mouth, her feet in pink slippers. He imagined Blake, in his night-time babygro, bouncing in his chair on the kitchen counter. The TV would be on, they would be watching milkshake! Nine o’clock, what would it be, Jane and the Dragon? Maybe Little Princess? The sounds of a Saturday morning in his home.
He put his key to the lock and he turned it silently. He wanted his return to be a surprise. The air smelled of toast. And of something else, something much more subtle and indescribable, the nuanced and unique smell of home.
‘Daddy!’ Scarlett saw him first and threw herself around his legs and then into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his torso and her arms around the back of his neck and screamed ‘Daddy!’ again. Ralph carried her into the kitchen, triumphantly. Jem looked up from the kitchen table where she’d been reading the paper and smiled at him. ‘Well, look at you,’ she said.
‘What?’ he said, moving Scarlett on to his hip.
‘You’re so brown!’
‘Am I?’ he said, reaching to view himself in the mirror behind the table. ‘I didn’t think I’d picked up any colour.’
‘God, you really have, you look amazing.’
Jem got to her feet and came towards him. She had Blake over her shoulder, where he gnawed pensively on the side of his balled-up fist. Ralph glanced at him tenderly and then at Jem. ‘God, I missed you,’ he said.
Jem reacted as he’d ho
ped she would to his words and came to embrace him. Scarlett pulled Jem towards them with her other arm and the four of them stood like that for a moment, smelling each other’s forgotten smells, feeling each other’s warm breath, absorbing their togetherness. Ralph kissed the top of Jem’s head and Jem looked up at him and smiled. ‘I missed you too,’ she said.
‘Did you miss me, Daddy?’
Ralph looked into the dark serious eyes of his daughter and said: ‘Every minute of every day. And you,’ he said, passing his daughter towards Jem and holding out his hands for his baby boy, ‘I missed you too.’ He plucked Blake from Jem’s shoulder and turned him to face him. He looked different, his skin was less blotchy, his features were more defined and he felt heavier and more solid in his arms. Blake blinked at him in surprise. Ralph laughed and blinked back. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘Who is this strange man? Well, I am your daddy and I know you think you managed to get rid of me, but I’m afraid I’m back and you’re going to have to share your mummy with me again.’ Blake blinked again and then slowly his face collapsed into a grimace of sheer terror and he started to wail, but instead of taking this as yet another sign that his son was not really a part of him, that his son belonged to his mother, Ralph brought his baby towards his body and held him there, held him chest to chest, whispered soothing words into his ear, rocked him gently, whispered in his tiny ear, ‘It’s OK, little man, it’s OK, little man. You don’t need to cry, Daddy’s here, Daddy’s here.’ He held the back of his head in the palm of his hand and he let the baby go floppy against his body. ‘There,’ he said, ‘there.’