How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  ‘It’s nice they do activities here,’ I soothed.

  ‘But Barbara wouldn’t want to play a tambourine,’ Donald said, gesturing helplessly at his wife as she raised and lowered her instrument without giving any sign she knew what she was doing or taking any pleasure in it. ‘You know she would have hated it, Kate, love.’

  He was right. Barbara would have absolutely loathed that stupid tambourine. She would have considered it to be beneath her dignity – that lofty, lifelong elegance of which Alzheimer’s had so cruelly robbed her.

  I was desperately sad as I watched Emily and Ben absorb the news – their first everlasting loss – but I was also glad my mother-in-law had gone to a place beyond humiliation, perfectly safe now from people who were simply not up to it.

  This morning, before the funeral, the kids climbed over the back fence of the old family house to cut some of Barbara’s flowers. There’s a ‘Sold’ sign out front, but the new owners haven’t moved in yet. What could be better, really, to lay beside the grave, as she is laid to rest, than the Bishop of Llandaff: vivid scarlet heads on black stems, picked by her beloved Emily and Ben?

  ‘No smoking by the Bishop of Llandaff!’ Roy reminded me and, despite everything, I smiled. Barbara had high standards, even for dahlias.

  Poor Em is in tears, gripping my hand, as the last words of the burial service are intoned. On my other side is Ben, so much taller now, comically so, as if every day were spring and he was sprouting; at this moment, though, he bears the lost and bewildered air of a much smaller boy.

  Relieved it’s still the holidays and we don’t have to rush back. I am on compassionate leave from EM Royal, and Alice has strict instructions that no calls or texts should be sent to me today. I fully expect them to start again at midnight.

  Over the other side of the grave are Richard and Joely, with Alder and Ash. (I know. I tried. ‘It’s our favourite tree, Kate. It has such resonance in mythology, too.’ ‘Richard, it’s what falls off the end of a cigarette. Or the leftover bits of a bonfire.’ No use.) Richard, to my immense satisfaction, appears not to have brushed his hair for six months and his eyes have almost disappeared into dark troughs. He has a small but definite pot belly. In short, he is the father of twins. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. On the other hand, after a series of tortured telephone conversations, and setting aside all sore feelings, he asked if I would please accompany the kids to his mother’s funeral. ‘Look, I know how unbelievably crap I was to you,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know and I’m really sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. Since Mum died, I realise that you’re still my family, Kate, and Dad, he really loves you. Can’t stop saying what a bloody fool I was to run off with that little hussy.’

  We both laughed and I offered my ex-husband the olive branch I could sense he craved. ‘Donald will come round to Joely, you’ll see, Rich. He’s potty about the twins. They’re so lovely.’

  Credit where credit is due, Joely defied the low expectations we all had of her. Putting her New Age gifts to good use, she became a blessed support to Barbara, giving the bewildered old lady a herbal brew to support memory, and aromatherapy massages, one of the few things she seemed to find calming in the last few months of her life. (Who knows, maybe the scent in the oils could bypass the desiccated brain cells and travel to a place where some essential part of Barbara lived on? I hope so.) Joely is still breastfeeding the twins, who sleep in the bed with her, and she’s announced her intention to continue until they start school. I reckon Richard has four years until he has sex again.

  Next to Richard’s fledgling second family stands a bevy of Barbara’s friends. All are immaculate in their mourning garb and, being of the last great Sunday School generation, word-perfect in the liturgy. All dab their eyes with lace handkerchiefs politely stored up their sleeves. All were told not to bring anything for the post-funeral tea, which is being held at Cheryl and Peter’s, and for which Cheryl has created a spreadsheet. All, I am quite certain, will have disobeyed the order. And all will follow my mother-in-law on her final journey, over the next ten years, fifteen at most. What on earth will this land be like when these good, amazingly strong women of the wartime generation are all gone? Well, my lot will have to take our seats in the front row, that’s all, and our daughters will be there right behind us, and their girls behind them before we know it. Granddaughters and – dizzying thought – great-granddaughters. The Sandwich Women go on, holding it together for generations to come. That’s what really matters, isn’t it? Love never dies; it just takes different human forms.

  Earth to earth. Handfuls are lightly tossed into the grave. Emily can’t bear it and buries her face in my shoulder. One last blessing and then, as a cloud passes mournfully overhead, we turn and walk back along the gravel path, among much older graves, towards the church. My heart is too crammed for any words, and my legs feel a little unsteady on the bumpy ground; knowing me as he does, however, and preserving his own wise silence, Jack offers me his arm, and then his whole self to lean on, before turning to offer Emily his other hand.

  I think an ending is out of the question. The loose ends in a story get tied up only for another strand to unwind. After Barbara left us, I felt sure that Donald would follow soon after. Instead, having finally sold the house, he moved into a care home himself. A small, surprisingly magical place, it allowed residents to garden and keep pets. Donald formed a bond with a nervous refuge Collie called Alf who filled the vacancy left by Jem and grew unafraid in the old man’s hands. Every week, pupils from a nearby primary school came in to do reading and art with the residents. Donald told the children stories about being in the Royal Air Force during the war while they made a squadron of Airfix Lancaster bombers from kits he bought them; the ancient navigator issuing the instructions while nimble young hands stuck pieces together with glue. The planes would eventually go on display in the town library, with Donald’s memories of youthful peril alongside. He was a big hit on the local TV news when he ignored a patronizing old-git question and seized the chance to criticise cutbacks in the armed forces. ‘The price of peace is eternal vigilance, and let’s not forget it,’ he said. Donald fully intends to live to see his hundredth birthday, when he promises that he will come down to London and take me to the Savoy Grill for roast beef and – what else? – Yorkshire pudding.

  Donald wasn’t alone in getting a new lease of life. With her hip replacement, my mum was not only back on her feet, she started dancing again. Against my specific instructions, she purchased a new pair of black patent heels.

  ‘You’ll never change her now,’ Julie laughed. ‘I think Mum might have a boyfriend and all. How come she gets one not me?’ My sister was so much happier after Steven started work as a junior trader in the City and moved in with me and the kids until he had money for his own place. That immensely stressful job can shred the nerves of a brilliant university graduate, but not my nephew, who shrugged and said the cut-throat environment was just like school. ‘It’s only placing bets on whether a product is going up or down, Auntie Kath.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Steven, in the City we like to call that “taking a position”, not “betting”.’

  ‘Whatever. Fifty K a year plus bonus. Bloody brilliant, eh?’

  Yup, bloody brilliant. When Steven took Julie to Florida for her birthday at Easter, Emily volunteered to go up and stay in her aunt’s house. ‘I can do my revision in peace and keep an eye on Grandma, help her with the shopping, can’t I?’ This was a first. My child relieving me of a worry. I could hardly believe Emily was old enough to do such a thing, but she was.

  As for her brother, my shambolic boy recently came home with a red-haired goddess who answers to the name of Isabella. Ben – a girlfriend? How the hell did that happen? When Isabella sits at our kitchen table, with her charming conversation and her lovely manners, I think: does she actually know I still cut her boyfriend’s toenails? You should see the way Ben looks at her. Exactly the way he looked at me when he heaved himself
up in his cot after a nap. (The mother of a one-year-old boy is a movie star in a world without critics.) I’m not jealous, at least I hope I’m not, but this other female in my boy’s life brings with her a premonition of loss. Not ready to lose him just yet.

  Work went on getting better. After I outed myself as a senior citizen, in financial-service years at any rate, all the energy I’d spent lying about my age could be channelled more productively. Confirmed in a permanent senior position, I had a lot to prove. I swore to my team – my team! – that we would grow the fund back to where it was when I’d left my job all those years ago. I managed to talk Sir Geoffrey Palfreyman into starting a community bank in our mutual home county which made loans to families in difficulties at very low interest rates. Sir Geoffrey was delighted with his new role as celebrated philanthropist, but not nearly as a pleased as I was to put the bastard payday loan sharks who had almost destroyed Steven out of business.

  My dear Alice stayed by my side, growing in confidence and finally dumping the chronically uncommitted Max shortly before her birthday.

  ‘Catch-32,’ she said one morning.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kate, you said it’s the age by which you really should have signed up the prospective father of your children. So, I’ve given myself a year to find him. Hope it’s enough.’

  Soon after, Belshazzar Baring came in for work experience and promptly fell head over heels for Alice, offering her a life of stupendous ease as the wife of a rock-sprog. Luckily, Alice was too smart to fall for that and, as I write, her hoping goes on.

  As for my darling Jack, after the children had been through so much change, I wanted to introduce the concept of Mummy’s boyfriend very slowly. Jack flew back and forth to the States for a while and we met up on the occasional weekend at the house in Provence where we ate bread and pâté on old tin plates in the kitchen and made famished love in a four-poster bed festooned with cobwebs. There I was fretting about how to introduce him to the kids when, one Saturday, on the way to the supermarket, Emily casually said, ‘Your American guy sounds awesome.’

  I practically did an emergency stop, before pulling into a lay-by. ‘How do you know about him?’ I said, thus giving the game away.

  ‘Steven. He told me and Ben like how Jack helped him get out of big trouble and found a job for him. Steven said he’s so cool.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose he is …’ How could I begin to explain to this person I loved what the other person I loved meant to me? I was nervous so I settled for plain facts. ‘Sweetheart, I got to know Jack through work when I sent him this embarrassing cheeky email that was meant for Candy.’

  ‘Could have been worse, Mum,’ said Emily, placing her hand on mine. ‘Could have sent him a photo of your bum by mistake.’ And we laughed, my daughter and I. Then I started the car and drove on.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m never sure about sequels. In I Don’t Know How She Does It, I thought I’d said everything I wanted to say about combining work and motherhood. Then I got older. My family moved into a new phase of life, as did my body, and I found myself wondering, ‘How on earth is Kate coping with this?’ I thought she might help me laugh at all the craziness of mid-life, so I wrote it down.

  It wouldn’t have happened without Sharon Dizenhuz, hilarious sage of Scarsdale and wise-cracking Candy to my doubting Kate. Nor without the most incredible moral support from Louise Swarbrick. Thanks also to my top team of financial advisors, Miranda Richards, Penny Lovell and Sasha Speed, who made sure the work stuff was spot on, especially the black stallion.

  I am incredibly blessed in my agent, Caroline Michel, who has enough optimism for both of us, even if she will keep insisting that I write novels. Thank you to my brilliant editor, Hope Dellon, of St Martin’s Press, who presided with fierce, kindly vigilance. I can’t thank her enough, nor Kate Elton and Charlotte Cray at HarperCollins UK who made such invaluable suggestions. And Sara Kinsella, most eagle-eyed copy-editor and my publicist extraordinarie, Ann Bissell.

  Not many novels feature the menopause, although half the human race will go through it. With the help of Dr Louise Newson, I tried to tell the bloody truth. An expert in hormone replacement therapy, Dr Newson believes that no woman should have to suffer Kate’s debilitating symptoms. I agree. Let’s break that taboo for good.

  My gratitude to my first readers, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Sally Richardson, Amanda Craig, Awen Lobbett, Kathryn Lloyd, Hilary Rosen, Sophie Hannah, Amanda de Lisle, Gillian Stern, Anne Garvey, Claire Vane, Angela Young and Janelle Andrew. Their encouragement and good advice kept me on track. Thank you to Emma Robarts for suggesting Women Returners and for years of wise counsel and lovely dog-walks (Biggles RIP). Special thanks to Michael Maxtone-Smith, the first male guinea pig to be exposed to this book and claim to love it. He should be fine again in a couple of years.

  Early episodes of ‘Sandwich Woman’ were published in the Daily Telegraph where Fiona Hardcastle was the best midwife a girl could wish for. Thank you to my marvellous editors, Jane Bruton, Victoria Harper and Paul Clements. Your support means the world to me.

  A book which is so much about mothers and daughters owes a great deal to Ruchi Sinnatamby and Jane McCann, who lost their mums while it was being written. Remembering always Selvi Sinnatamby and Janet Marsh, both wonderful mothers and grandmothers. Their lovely granddaughters, Charlotte Petter and Chloe McCann, are the next layer of the Sandwich. And, in that way, the love will never die.

  Most of all, I thank my family. Evie Rose Lane and Tom Lane are remarkably patient with their mother and her stupid questions about which button you press and, ‘What is a dick pic?’ Yes, my loves, I am ‘from the Past’, but the future is yours. I’m so lucky to have you.

  Without Anthony Lane, there would be no book and no me either. I thank him for his peerless literary criticism, for the meals on a tray and the intravenous jelly babies as I staggered towards the finishing line. If you go to bed every night with a man reading P.G. Wodehouse, eventually those blissful comic rhythms will get into your head. For some reason, he often likes to read aloud the bit about the lady novelist. ‘The Adams woman told us for an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.’

  Sorry, darling.

  Allison Pearson

  June 2017

  About the Author

  Allison Pearson was born in South Wales. She is a columnist and feature writer for the Daily Telegraph. Allison’s first novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, was an international bestseller; translated into 32 languages and made into a movie of the same name. Oprah Winfrey called the book ‘A Bible for the working mother’. Allison lives in Cambridge with her family and two poodles.

  You can find her on Twitter

  @allisonpearson

  Also by Allison Pearson

  I Don’t Know How She Does It

  I Think I Love You

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London, SE1 9GF

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  195 Broadway

  New York, NY 10007

  http://www.harpercollins.com

  rd Can It Be?