The Dream Life I Never Had

by Terri Douglas

  Paul phoned again to ask how we all were and I reciprocated with asking after Tyler and Caitlin. I told him about our newest acquisitions and how sweet they were, and how much looking after they’d need, and that we were going to have to rig up some kind of outdoor run. I’d only told him for the sake of making conversation really but he straight away offered to come round and make a run out of an old pallet or two that he knew how to get hold of, but I said no; heaven knows what Martin would think or Paul himself come to that, and I would be back with the same old conundrum of giving both of them the wrong idea.

  Then Paul said the main reason he’d called was to see if the children and I would like to go to the Dunsfold Air Display next weekend. I said I’d never heard of it but Paul said it was a yearly event and that last year he’d taken Tyler and Caitlin, evidently they’d all had such a good time they were going again this year and would we like to join them, but I said no. For one thing I would be working all day on Saturday and would probably be too tired on Sunday for day trips out, but the real reason was the whole wrong idea thing again.

  Unnoticed by me while I’d been busy on the phone Ben and Kate had gone out in the back garden to play. I’d vaguely registered the fact that they’d gone and thought nothing of it as they always wandered in and out, but then it suddenly dawned on me that the guinea pigs were still out and that they might have followed. I looked round the kitchen and could see no sign of small furry animals anywhere. With the phone still in my hand I checked the hutch; the door was wide open and again there was no sign of Gordon or Gory.

  The awful possibilities sped through my head at the speed of light as I imagined the worst possible scenario which was next doors cat getting hold of them, or the slightly less macabre but still not good situation that they were lost outside or had run away, either of which Ben and Kate would be devastated about not to mention the guinea pigs themselves probably being none too happy.

  As I’d unwittingly been giving a running commentary for the last two minutes Paul was clued up as to what was going on and said a hasty goodbye, but made me promise to phone him back in about an hour with an update that hopefully would be good news. In a disturbed state of mind I said okay but traumatised by the horror of what I might find actually I had no idea what I was agreeing to and would have said okay to anything.

  Still clutching the phone, despite there now being no-one on the other end of it, I steeled myself to look through the kitchen window. There were no obvious signs of carnage which was good and Ben and Kate were kneeling down next to the paddling pool that I still hadn’t got around to emptying out and putting away. They were talking and laughing and clearly messing about with the rainwater that had collected and I breathed a small sigh of relief.

  Then the awful truth dawned on me. Ben and Kate had taken Gordon and Gory outside for a swim in the paddling pool. I practically threw the phone at the table and raced outside.

  With Ben holding Gory and Kate holding Gordon they were skimming their hands through the slightly murky water allowing the guinea pigs to be submerged up to their little shoulders. I have to say they were both being very gentle and were giving words of encouragement to their small charges but both guinea pigs looked totally scared to death. ‘What are you doing?’ I yelled before I could stop myself. Not the best tactics in the world under the circumstances as the effect of my instinctive bellowing was to make Ben drop Gory in the water and Kate to scream, although she did manage to hold on to Gordon.

  I quickly scooped Gory out of the man-made plastic pond and rushed her back indoors while shouting at Kate to bring Gordon. Once indoors I grabbed a tea towel and hastily wrapped the trembling Gory up in it like a little cocoon, and then I stuck the whole bundle in the large saucepan that was luckily out on the draining board while I carried out a similar operation on Gordon.

  I was pretty sure guinea pigs didn’t go swimming, not in the wild anyway, and my instinct was to get them warm and dry as soon as possible. I quickly wracked my brains trying to think of the best and fastest way to achieve this and decided using a hair dryer was probably the most sensible solution. I grabbed both of the swaddled pets and took them upstairs then placed them carefully in the empty bath relieving them of their shrouds and went to retrieve the hairdryer from the bedroom.

  Ten minutes later Gordon and Gory were almost dry and had stopped shivering as I wafted warm air over them from the edge of the bath; actually I think they quite enjoyed it now that they were safe from Ben and Kate’s ham-fisted ministrations.

  Now it was time for my two little ‘angels’ to shiver and tremble as I read the riot act at them. ‘What did you think you were doing? You can’t just dunk two poor little creatures in the water like that. They were terrified. If this is how you look after your pet’s maybe we’d better take them back to the shop’ I said.

  Kate started silently crying and Ben’s lower lip trembled, a sure sign he was going to let out a wail at any moment. ‘We were only letting them have a paddle’ Kate said.

  ‘A paddle! Guinea pigs don’t paddle and that water was so deep if you’d let go they would have drowned; I’m not sure if they can swim but how would you have felt then? What’s the point of rescuing Gordon from the shop because you felt so sorry for her if you’re not going to look after her properly?’

  ‘I’m sorry Mummy; I didn’t know they couldn’t swim. I just thought . . .’ Kate started to say.

  ‘Yes Kate I know you didn’t mean to hurt them, but you should have asked not waited until my back was turned and then do it anyway, and even if they could swim they’re just babies. And don’t you think Ben’s a bit too little to be helping guinea pigs to paddle even if they had liked it?’

  ‘Please don’t take them back to the shop’ Kate said.

  ‘No Mummy, no shop no-no-no’ Ben said fiercely.

  ‘You were lucky the pair of you, lucky I noticed when I did and lucky that Gordon and Gory don’t seem to have suffered too much. But if you ever do anything like that again I will take them straight back to the shop. This is why we had the no pets rule for so long. Your dad said all along that you weren’t old enough to be responsible and I’m beginning to think he was right’ I said righteously.

  ‘I will be responsible’ Kate said eagerly as she sensed my softening and that I wasn’t going to take the pets back.

  ‘I will be sponsible too’ Ben said earnestly.

  ‘Well you’d better be’ I said sternly. ‘Now we’re going to put Gordon and Gory back in their hutch so they can have a rest and I’m going to empty that paddling pool. Do not under any circumstances open the hutch for any reason at all while I’m in the garden okay?’

  ‘Okay Mummy’ Kate said.

  ‘Kay Mummy’ Ben said.

  The dream life vision of Kate becoming a vet one day slowly evaporated and I exhaled a despondent sigh as I tipped out the water from the paddling pool and squashed the air out of its sides.

  33

  On Monday morning it was back to the usual routine, at least it was what I guessed would become the new adapted usual routine; now it included a tearful goodbye to Gordon and Gory before leaving the house.

  Kate was excited about seeing Oliver again and worriedly wondered if Oliver had missed her or found another friend in her absence. I said ‘I’m sure he’s missed you as much as you’ve missed him’ but all she did when I said this was to agitatedly sigh.

  Now that I no longer had use of the car Julie had offered to pick Kate up and take her to the play scheme along with her own two boys. When she arrived Kate and Oliver shyly said hello and although they were squashed together in the back of Julie’s car with Oliver’s brother Max they barely acknowledged each other’s existence, but they did both go red and it was all very innocent and shy in front of their necessary audience. I surmised though that their friendship would be back to normal as soon as the rest of us were no longer watching.

  Once Kate had gone I walked Ben down to playgroup and after I’d dropped him off I waited f
or the bus to town. The plan was to go straight to Tesco’s for a few guinea pig treats as per the internet list, and to top up our own diminishing supplies.

  As I stepped off the bus I walked straight into Claire Farmer; of course she was no longer Claire Farmer but was now Claire Stebbings but to me she’d always be Claire Farmer from Thorpefield Secondary no matter how long she’d been married or who to. ‘Claire’ I said surprised. ‘I thought you’d gone back to Esher isn’t it, is your mum still unwell?’

  ‘Mum?’ She said distractedly.

  ‘Yes you said you were staying to look after your mum.’

  ‘Oh yes Mum’ Claire said seeming only to properly register half of what I was saying.

  ‘Are you alright Claire?’ I asked.

  ‘Me? Oh yes I’m fine. I’m brilliant, bloody fantastic’ she scoffed sneeringly.

  ‘Has something happened, is your mum worse?’ I said genuinely concerned and feeling a little bit guilty now at all the nasty thoughts I’d had the last time she came into the salon.

  ‘No Mum’s not worse, she’s fine.’

  ‘Oh . . . well that’s good. I guess you’ll be getting back to Robert now then, isn’t that what you said your husband’s name was?’

  ‘Ah yes my husband Robert, my ever-loving wonderfully successful cheating scumbag of a husband Robert’ Claire spat out.

  ‘Oh’ I said not quite sure what the right thing to say was after an outburst like that.

  ‘Tell me something Sophie; if you had to stay with your mum and help her after an operation would you trust your husband to behave himself while you were away? She said and then without waiting for an answer continued ‘of course you would, you with your perfect little life and your doting husband, and oh yes with your two perfect children, all living happily together in domesticated bliss totally oblivious of how utterly crap everything is for the rest of us less fortunate souls.’

  ‘Um . . . well it’s not all that . . .’ I burbled more than a little surprised at the amount of malice Claire had managed to convey in one little sentence. ‘Has something happened?’ I added rather stupidly when it was glaringly obvious something had most definitely happened.

  ‘Happened? Oh yes something’s happened alright’ Claire said, her eyes filling with tears despite the determined steely look she had about her.

  ‘Oh Claire’ I said putting my arm round her as her tears spilled over. ‘Come on let’s get a cup of tea somewhere shall we?’

  She didn’t answer but let me guide her to the nearby Costa on the corner of the high street. It wasn’t too busy at this time of a Monday morning and we chose the squashy settee seat in the corner at the back where it was fairly secluded. While I queued up for two skinny mocha’s Claire found a tissue in her bag and dabbed at her tears.

  Evidently Monday morning when it was relatively quiet was ‘training time’ at Costa, so it took a bit longer than usual for the coffee’s to be made but eventually I was able to carry our drinks back to the table.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes neither of us knowing quite what to say, then as she gazed into the distance Claire said ‘the bastard sent me a text message this morning to say he’s moving in with Annabelle. A text message can you believe it, a bloody text message?’

  ‘Oh Claire’ I said reaching out to hold her hand.

  ‘Yeah crap isn’t it, and that’s not the best bit, the best bit is she’s having his baby. For six years now, since the first year we were married I wanted to have a baby but he said no. It’s too soon he said. We have to get the house straight he said. Plenty of time for all that he said. And now . . . now she’s having his baby and he’s moving in with her. I’m sorry he said as if that makes it all alright. Sorry I’ve been having it off with my dental nurse all this time and now she’s pregnant, but I can’t let her down. Can’t let her down, what about letting me down! What about the baby I wanted to have? And do you know how he told me, in a text message, a bloody text message.’

  ‘Oh Claire that’s terrible’ I said as Claire’s tears started again.

  I went and grabbed a handful of paper napkins and bought them back to the table, and Claire silently took a couple from the pile to wipe her tears and blow her nose.

  ‘So how are you?’ She said a few minutes later with forced cheerfulness and back to the steely determination.

  ‘What will you do?’ I asked ignoring her question.

  ‘What I’d like to do is castrate the bastard. Six years of listening to him tell me how he wanted to build up the practise and be financially stable before we thought about having a family. Six years of watching all my friends have babies, while I convinced myself it was worth waiting so that we could give our child everything money could buy and that our friends must be stupid not to have planned things better. Six years of longing, six years of listening to that pompous bastard waffle on about how he wasn’t ready for children at this stage of his life, and all the time he was bonking his bloody nurse behind my back.’

  I put my hand on the back of her hand again and she let me. I didn’t know what to say, what can you say when someone tells you something like that?

  ‘You know I used to envy you so much when we were at school’ Claire said. ‘I so wanted to be like you and then when we got our exam results and you’d done so badly and were so upset a little bit of me was glad. I know it was wrong of me but I couldn’t help it and I couldn’t help thinking it was about time you failed at something; somehow without even trying everything always seemed to work out alright for you. Now’s my chance I thought, now I’m going to do all the things you’d said you wanted do when we wrote that silly dream life plan but now you couldn’t do any of it, not now you’d failed your exams. And I did, I did do them and quite successfully too.’

  ‘I didn’t know you felt like that’ I said.

  ‘No, well you wouldn’t would you, but I did.’

  ‘Oh Claire, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘For a while just knowing that I was at Uni while you were back here sweeping up in a hairdressers as a junior was enough, it made me feel like a success where you’d failed for once. And then later when I got a bank loan to open my own flower shop I was even more pleased with myself, and when I met Robert and he was all the things you’d wished for I triumphed even more’ Claire admitted with a hint of remorse.

  ‘But it was just a stupid teenage daydream’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what I was talking about, hadn’t got a clue. We were only fifteen what the hell did we know about anything?’

  ‘Yeah I know. I sort of knew that even then, but you were so confident like if you wanted it enough anything was possible and I really envied that.’

  ‘But I wasn’t confident. I did want all those things well I thought I did, but it was just wishful thinking you know like hoping that one day you’re going to win the lottery or something’ I said.

  ‘And what happened when I came back and saw you again after all these years? I’ll tell you shall I?’ Claire said in mocking tones of self-pity. ‘There you were, same old Sophie Mallons, same old confidence, same old total unawareness of everything you’ve got going for you just taking it all for granted as always. While I was slaving my guts out trying to make a success out of my life, a thriving business, married to the perfect partner or so I thought, living the dream . . . you on the other hand had changed tack and without even trying had got what we’re all really looking for . . . a man who loved you, a happy marriage, children . . . love.’

  ‘Oh Claire, you couldn’t be more wrong’ I said. ‘I was so envious when you came to get your hair done that day. You’d done it, you’d achieved the dream, your own business, a big posh house, happily married . . . you had everything.’

  We looked at each other for a moment taking in all that we’d both just said, and then we started laughing. ‘Oh my God’ Claire said. ‘D’you know that all this time ever since I saw you again I’ve been so mad with you, and when I got Robert’s text this morning you were the last person I wanted to see,
in fact dreaded seeing.’

  ‘And I so haven’t got the perfect life. I’m separated from Martin and up to my eyes in debt and I’ve been thinking you were gloating at how much of a failure I was.’

  ‘We’ve been a bit stupid haven’t we?’

  ‘I missed you so much when you went off to Uni and I was so jealous of you’ I said.

  ‘I missed you, and I was jealous that you had children and a husband that loved you.’

  ‘So what will you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Move back in with Mum maybe. Make life as difficult for Robert as I can . . . I don’t know’ Claire said shaking her head.

  ‘Well at least you’re not in debt and you’ve got a few choices.’

  ‘No not really. I’m still paying back the loan on the shop, and there’s no way I can afford the mortgage on the house on my own so we’ll probably have to sell that.’

  ‘Why don’t you sell it all and start again somewhere else, you’d get enough for a deposit at least wouldn’t you if you sold up?’ I suggested.

  Claire laughed and said ‘same old Sophie, you haven’t changed a bit. Yes I might do that.’

  We carried on talking for a while about what idiot’s we’d been and how we’d got it all wrong, and we talked about how crap men were and what we were going to do next now that we were single. Eventually Claire said she should get back to her mum as she’d be worrying, and I said I should get on with my shopping. We made a date to meet up the following Monday and maybe go for a proper lunch instead of just coffee and we swapped phone numbers so that we could keep in touch, and then we hugged a lot and said goodbye.

  It felt good not to hate Claire anymore, I was glad that we’d had this chance to clear the air and make it up. Of course I wasn’t glad that her husband had turned out to be a first class arse, you wouldn’t wish that on anyone especially not the text message thing that was really out of order, but in one way I was sort of glad, at least it meant that Claire and I were friends again.