How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  So, thank God, now we’re here and it transpires that Em just glimpsed someone called Jess on the far side of the room whom she is friends with on Facebook, and has never actually met, but who is really great and probably like her favouritest person ever. So that’s a relief. Any port in a storm of adult sociability. Shrieks of uncontainable delight as Em and the girl greet one another like long-lost sisters, and I pray it’s some small salve to her pride after Lizzy’s cruel snub.

  Sally, meanwhile, is desperate to introduce me to her lot. I am presented to Will, then Oscar, then Antonia, all of whom are then required to meet Richard, then Ben, and at some point Emily, if she can be unpeeled from the company of Jess. That’s the downside of bringing one clan into contact with another: by the time that everyone has been introduced, it’s practically time to go home. Ben wanders off, parks himself at a side table, and crunches his way glumly through a bowl of Twiglets. (Later he will be found playing video games, quite cheerfully, with a group of boys in another room. Asked who they were, in the car on the way home, he says he didn’t get their names. They knew their way around a games console, and that was enough. Such are the callings cards of twenty-first-century youth.)

  It’s strange to meet Will and Oscar at last, for real, having seen them only in photographs; and especially strange to meet them in winter. Something about their hale blondness suggests that they should only be approached in summer, in cricket whites, lightly smudged with grass stains.

  ‘Will, you did remember to take the sausages out of the oven, didn’t you?’ Sally asks.

  ‘Oh Christ, bugger, sorry Mum, I was just about to—’

  ‘I only asked you three times. I even stuck a Post-It note on Oscar’s forehead an hour ago.’

  ‘Yup, right, on my way.’

  A thin, high, electric wail comes from the kitchen.

  ‘Smoke alarm,’ says Sally. ‘Too late.’ She doesn’t even seem that bothered. This sort of thing has obviously happened so often that it’s become a ritual. In the end, you despair of despair. I know I do.

  ‘Mum,’ says Oscar, appearing at her side, ‘I couldn’t just borrow your card, could I?’

  ‘What for now?’

  ‘These tickets. They’re for February, which is miles off, but right now you can get them online on special—’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Just a band. You won’t have heard of them or anything.’

  ‘Oscar, the tickets won’t go in the next two hours. Ask me later.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point. They might …’

  ‘How are we all doing?’ Mike to the rescue, brushing his son aside in his effusiveness, and, from his frown, urgently troubled by something. ‘Bloody hell, Richard, that’s an empty glass. Not something we put up with in this house. Mea bloody culpa. Quick, someone, all hands to the pump, give this man a drink! Here, better idea, come with me.’ And my husband, half protesting, is hauled away through the crowd as if he were a troublemaker instead of a guest.

  ‘So that’s Richard,’ says Sally.

  ‘So that’s Mike,’ I say.

  Sally puts an arm around me and squeezes, then leans in close. ‘Thank God for us, that’s what I say.’

  ‘Thank God.’ And I mean it.

  Antonia strolls by, a doting, dopey boy in tow.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘He wishes,’ Sally says. ‘I wish, I suppose. She’s still being bicurious or biconfusing; I can’t keep up. She agreed to go to the cinema with Jake just before Christmas, and he more or less wet himself.’

  ‘I can see why. She’s gorgeous.’

  ‘If only she were a little less gorgeous and a bit more confident, poor darling. That old cliché about beauty being a burden turns out to be true. Who knew?’

  ‘It’s true. The most beautiful girl in my year at college never married, ended up an alcoholic, as if she couldn’t bear it. Seems so wrong. All you ever want, ever, is for the children to be happy. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it matters even more than an A* in GCSE Geography.’

  Sally gasps. ‘I can’t believe you’re saying that either. I’m truly shocked. I mean, without the A* in Geography, where are you, Kate? How can you possibly hope to succeed in life, at anything? What would Churchill have done without his A* in bloody Geography? Or Gandhi?’

  We drink together, glasses raised.

  ‘Penélope Cruz.’ I’ve been meaning to tell Sally that Roy found the name of the actress her daughter reminds me of.

  ‘Sorry, no, I’m Sally.’

  ‘No, Antonia. That’s who she reminds me of. I knew it was someone famously lovely. Penélope Cruz. Lucky her.’ I drain my glass. ‘Must be a Spanish granny or something, tucked away in the family tree. Castanets and all.’

  The smile fades from Sally’s face like breath off a mirror. Without more ado, she reaches out past me, and pulls another couple into the frame.

  ‘Phyllida, Guy, have you met Kate? Kate, this is Phyllida and Guy, from all of three houses away. I so wanted you to meet them. Kate’s my friend from Women Returners, our dogs are best mates. Will you excuse me, I just have to pop into the kitchen and see if that boy has left us anything edible.’ And, with that, she’s gone.

  Four minutes to midnight: As the room quells and settles, seeming to take in a communal breath before the chimes of Big Ben, it’s a piercing reminder of what the past twelve months have been like for me and Richard. We’ve now rounded the lap of a full sex-free year. Oh, God, how did that happen? Are we really that old? I know that, since Perry, my body has felt like the scene of a pitched battle, and I haven’t much wanted anyone else invading it, but I wonder if Rich is having his own manopause. Who knows, he may have been feeling as bad as I have. Welcoming in the New Year has never felt more freighted with uncertainty, or more lonely. As everyone fills their glasses, or grabs a half-drunk one, instinctively I look around for my husband.

  ‘Dad’s on his phone in the kitchen,’ Emily says, suddenly by my side. ‘He’s so weird.’

  ‘Probably talking to Grandpa,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t think so judging by the soppy look on his face.’

  I am, it has to be faced, almost fifty years of age and, until Jack showed up at the office party, the most exciting, sensual thing in my life was the discovery of a new hyper-absorbent kitchen towel on Special Offer in the Co-op. Two for £3. You think I’m joking? I’ve got to do something about this. What ‘this’ is I don’t quite know, but something must be done.

  Emily puts her arms around me and I rest my head on her shoulder. I forget she’s taller than me, my baby, particularly in those heels. ‘You OK, darling?’

  She smiles, but her bottom lip is wobbling and I hold her tight. ‘This is going to be a great year for you, I promise. We’re going to get everything sorted, OK? Say, “Yes, I believe you.”’

  ‘Yes, I believe you, Mum.’

  ‘Good. Do you know how proud I am of you? Well, you should. I’ve got the best girl in the world. Lucky me. Now, where’s your brother? Do you think we could disconnect him from Mortal Kombat to say hi to the New Year?’

  At midnight precisely, as the room bursts into full-throated song, a ding announces a text on my phone:

  Jack to Kate

  The other night, you told me this was going to be Kate’s Year of Invisibility. But I will always see You. See only you. J XXO

  NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

  1. Prepare self emotionally and physically for fiftieth birthday. Apply oestrogen daily to avoid decrepitude and anxiety. Take Glucosamine for joints, Vitamin D3 for mood, Curcumin to ward off dementia and help Roy with forgetfulness.

  2. Make effort to spend more time with Mum and stop my sister hating me.

  3. Settle Barbara and Donald in nursing home.

  4. Enrol for ‘It’s Tough Parenting Teens’ course. Wean kids off technology and encourage them to spend more time IRL.

  5. Pluck up courage to tell work you are not really forty-two (maybe AFTER they’ve extended m
y contract).

  6. JACK???

  20

  THE MERE IDEA OF YOU

  JANUARY

  3.12 pm: So, here I am, lying in bed with my lover. Which is not something I ever expected to say again. Not in this lifetime, anyway. It’s a typical London afternoon for early in the year – rain in the air, people bumping into each other on the pavement, commuters getting cross, trains running late, lives going nowhere, dark on the way in – and the best thing about it is, I don’t care. I get fired for bunking off early from work? No sweat. Ben and Emily have nothing to eat and end up going to McDonald’s? Fine by me. Christ descends once more in glory, with flaming cherubim and all the heavenly host? Put them on hold. I’m lying in bed with my lover. That’s what matters.

  We even have the trimmings. The ice bucket containing an empty bottle of wine. The artless strewing of clothes about the room, on which no set-decorator could improve. The sign hung outside saying ‘Do Not Disturb’, to which I had to be forcibly dissuaded from adding, in felt-tip pen, ‘Until Next Xmas. And the Xmas after that. Thanx’, as if I were twenty years old or something. As if the past eight years, since I met Jack, have simply been folded up and put aside. Think of all the time we wasted not doing this, all the hours and minutes and seconds we could have been doing this. Everything, as ever, comes back to time.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Jack asks, as we sprawl and laze. When sprawling becomes an Olympic sport, I’ll be ready.

  ‘About twenty minutes ago. You mean you didn’t notice?’

  ‘Now, who would have thought a nice girl like you could have a mind like that? Is it a British thing? I say again: when did you last eat? Think before you answer.’

  ‘Sorry, no thinking allowed. Not today. I’m having a think-down Thursday. No thoughts. No lists. Feelings and doings only.’

  ‘OK, could you feel your way into room service?’

  ‘But that would mean getting up and going all the way to the bathroom and going through the whole palaver of putting on a towelling robe. And then,’ I say, turning over to make my point, and looking at him, at that wonderful face, ‘there’s all that business of holding a fork and bringing the food to my mouth. I simply haven’t got the energy. Or I have got it, but I want to conserve it. I can eat food anytime.’

  ‘So that’s a no.’

  ‘So that’s a whatever. Or whatevs, as my children would say. You see, they haven’t got the energy for three whole consonants. They must get it from me.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Look, Jack. Kind of you to ask, and, if you really want an answer to that question, I will give it to you. But it’s now January, and I have a meeting I really have to get to in mid-March. And I would need at least from now until July to talk about Emily. That’s before I even start on Ben. And … look, I do want to talk to you about them, I really do, just not at this precise moment, OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ he says, and I feel his hand on me. Hands. ‘And your marriage?’

  The sound I make is not to be found in any dictionary. You would need a word that combines sigh, snort, laugh, and groan, with a hint of withering chuckle. ‘Oh, that’s much easier. We could order room service right now, and I’d have given you my marital woes before Gianfranco turned up with my lukewarm cheeseburger and limp fries.’

  ‘This is a five-star hotel, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Sorry, but any fries served in any hotel, anywhere in the world, by the time they get brought up to the room, are sad and cold and limp. Unlike,’ I say, using my own hands in return, ‘the people in the rooms.’

  ‘The not being limp, it’s a tribute to you.’

  He stretches out. All the better to enjoy me with. So much unwinding to be done, for the both of us, since life wound us up and pulled us apart. I’m not making any excuses for being here. Jack was waiting for me outside the office; he said we were going to lunch, but, when we got to Claridge’s, he walked me straight up the main staircase and, when we got to the room, this time the key card worked. ‘It’s a sign,’ he said. I didn’t argue. I was fed up of fighting myself.

  Now, he says, as if mentioning yesterday’s weather: ‘I got married.’

  I stop right there. Hands, arms, mouth, me: everything comes to a halt. I sit up.

  ‘I didn’t know. Thanks for telling me.’

  ‘If I’d told you before, would we be here now?’ he asks.

  ‘I—’ Pause. Careful now. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘So what is?’

  ‘The point is you’re married.’

  ‘Was. Was married. As in not any more.’

  ‘As in divorced or just separated?’ I’m finding it hard to take this in. Jack got married since I last saw him?

  ‘Divorced, don’t worry.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since about a year and two months after I married her. Which was five years ago, more or less. I think we can safely set the whole thing down as a mistake.’

  ‘Would she say that?’

  ‘She would. Even more than me. No hard feelings.’

  ‘All feelings are hard, you know that.’

  ‘Mmm, talking of which …’

  ‘No, Jack, come on.’ I sit there on the bed, sheet drawn up over my breasts, knees pulled up to my chin. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Didn’t work out.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Cross your heart?’

  ‘Hope to die.’

  ‘Please don’t. Where is she now?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And –’ this needs to be done ‘– what was she like?’

  ‘Is, not was. I hope. Well, she’s in her forties, British, married but not happily, two great kids, works in finance, smart as a whip, funny as hell, too hard on herself, very polite and well-behaved in that British way until you get her into room 286, at which point you realise she’s basically a jungle cat. My type.’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘C’mon, it’s not an interrogation. She reminded me strongly of a woman I was in love with. I thought it was a good start. She was twenty-nine when we met.’

  ‘Why are you telling me her age? Why is her age what matters? Why is it always age? Stone age, bronze age, right age, wrong age, twenty-nine, forty-nine …’

  ‘Her age was a problem.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’d never seen Bewitched.’

  Even I can’t help smiling. ‘Oh, well, in that case …’

  ‘Right. If you’re too young to have seen Samantha making Darrin do exactly what she wants, even though she loves him and looks like the perfect American wife—’

  ‘Which Darrin?’

  ‘Right again. You see, that is the correct response. Which Dick? York or Sargent?’

  ‘York, obviously.’

  ‘Of course. But Sargent was a good guy. Gay, you know.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Isn’t it? He was a Grand Marshal in a Gay Pride parade in LA. And you know who else was there with him? Samantha.’

  ‘No! Seriously?’

  ‘In person. The divine Miss M. If you want to pick a parade, that’s the one to go for.’

  ‘Excuse me, but aren’t we straying from the issue here?’

  ‘Excuse me back, but no.’ Jack looks at me. ‘That is the issue. What matters is not who you go to bed with, but who you can talk to – I mean, really talk to – when you’re lying around afterwards.’

  ‘Like now.’

  ‘Well, now’s OK—’

  ‘Hey, thanks.’

  ‘But the afterwards has to go on for a bit longer if you want to be really sure.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  He takes a damp tendril of hair on my face and curls it behind my ear. ‘Oh, you know, forever and ever, world without end. No more than that. Let’s not get carried away here.’

  There is a moment of reflection. I put my hand to his cheek.

  ‘Do you still miss h
er? Do you call her? Straight answer, please.’

  ‘No, and no. Damn straight.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘Kate, I married her.’

  ‘Not the same thing.’

  ‘What there was … what I felt for Morgan was …’

  ‘Morgan? You married a woman called Morgan? Hang on, are you sure she was a woman? Could that be the problem here? Are you sure she wasn’t a Welsh rugby player? Or an open-top sports car?’

  ‘Or a library.’

  ‘Well, that would be fine, but honestly: Morgan?’

  ‘I know. Anyway, how can I put it? I felt as much as you can feel for someone who didn’t know who McEnroe’s doubles partner was. Or even care.’

  ‘Peter Fleming. How many Grand Slams?’ I mean it.

  ‘Seven. Marry me.’

  ‘You cannot be SERIOUS. The ball was OUT.’

  ‘Marry me. Kate. Please. I’m serious.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m already married.’

  ‘People can get unmarried. Or demarried.’

  ‘Because the person they married doesn’t know the name of McEnroe’s doubles partner?’

  ‘Well, that mainly,’ Jack says, with a shrug. ‘But then there are all the minor reasons. Like, you know, the thought of being happy for the rest of your life because you’re making the other person happy. Giving them a chance to prove that they can do the same for you. Peace on earth. Justice for all. The little things.’

  ‘How do you know you can make me happy?’

  ‘I don’t. But I should tell you now, I have a lot of money riding on this. At extremely favourable odds.’

  ‘Oh, I’m just a wager for you?’

  ‘Sure. Just playing the markets. Like any other day.’ He swings round, and over, and on top of me. And I say:

  ‘Oh, I get it. Spread betting.’

  And that makes him laugh, and the laugh makes him shake, and I tell him to stop. He seems surprised.

  ‘Are you done?’ he says.

  ‘Nope, sorry, I’m just getting started. Watch me.’

  ‘No, are you done with the interrogation? For now?’

  I reach out and bring him close, whisper into his ear. ‘No further questions, Your Honour.’