by Fiona Neill
I had little idea what had become of Barney over the intervening years. He moved out of the area and bought a flat in Haggerston, where Rex and Ava lived with him and started new schools. I only knew this through Daisy and Max. After a lot of persuasion from me they eventually spent the odd weekend with Nick and Lisa, but they never crossed paths with Rex and Ava. There was too much history between them all. So all ties between Barney and me were severed.
Occasionally I was reminded of him. When I decided to eradicate all traces of my marriage to Nick, I found a postcard with a photo of flashing neon breasts by the artist Adele Röder in my bedside drawer. Saw this and thought of you, Barney. He always loved trying to shock me. When Amy Winehouse died, one of his old interviews was reprinted in Rolling Stone.
I see him as soon as I go into the pub, at a table in the corner. He’s left me the most comfortable space on the upholstered leather bench and bought me a Bloody Mary. I’m touched that he’s remembered it’s my favourite drink. He gets up to greet me.
‘Hi, Rosie.’
‘Hi, Bernardo.’
He smiles and goes in for a kiss on the cheek but I try to give him a hug and we end up awkwardly caught in a half-embrace with him nuzzling my right ear. We unfurl and there is a slightly uneasy moment where we step back and stare, gauging what is familiar and what has changed in that way people who haven’t seen each other for years make inventories of each other. Adjectives go through my head like ticker tape. Thinner, balder, more wrinkled. He speaks first.
‘Thinner, balder, more wrinkled,’ he says. ‘You were always very transparent.’
We both laugh.
‘You look great, Rosie. Better than ever.’
‘Thanks. So do you.’
‘Divorce suits us.’
‘There has to be some upside.’
There’s another silence. We’ve already run out of words. But it’s not uncomfortable. I notice he’s wearing an old white T-shirt with a faded picture of The Rolling Stones on the front. Nick bought the same one when he went to visit him in Tokyo, when Barney was covering the Bridges to Babylon tour. It billows around the area that used to be filled by his stomach. He sees I’ve noticed and pats his tummy.
‘It got so bad I ended up in hospital. They drained three litres of liquid from my stomach. It was like bursting a waterbed.’
‘Sometimes the liver can’t cope any more.’
I wonder if he got cirrhosis, and whether his liver has regenerated, but don’t want to end up embroiled in a doctor–patient type discussion. I check the whites of his eyes and his fingernails: neither looks yellow.
‘Rex and Ava came to the hospital with me. It was the lowest of all my low points. I checked in to rehab a couple of months later and haven’t touched a drop since. I still go every week, though. For maintenance. It never leaves you alone.’
‘Congratulations,’ I say. ‘That’s such a tough thing to do.’
‘I exercise a lot too. It’s probably another addiction but at least it doesn’t screw things up for other people. And it’s useful now I’m back in the dating game. Fit fortysomethings go down very well.’
‘So how’s that going?’
‘Knackering. It’s not how I imagined middle age would be. At least it’s not boring. But I find the choice overwhelming. It’s not great for someone as indecisive as me.’
‘Are you one of those men who secretly swipe right while you’re on a date?’
‘Guilty.’ I had forgotten how disarmingly open Barney is. ‘But I won’t do it when I’m with you.’
‘We’re not on a date,’ I remind him.
He asks me what I’m up to and I explain that we’re about to start the final phase of the clinical trial I was working on when we went on holiday together for the last time and that there are hopes of a real breakthrough.
‘It’s really something to decide to dedicate your life to the same thing for ten years,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure I could commit to anything so long term.’
‘People think making fundamental change is all about making one big decision but actually it’s all about the little decisions taken along the way.’
‘God, you were always so terrifyingly impressive, Rosie,’ he says.
‘But it didn’t make me irresistible, did it?’
‘They fell in love. Or rather they fell in love with the idea of each other. We didn’t stand a chance. And I was a mess, which didn’t help.’
He sounds more wistful than bitter and I am relieved, because of all the curdled emotions of divorce, bitterness is the worst. I ask him what he’s up to and he tells me that he gave up journalism and retrained as a piano teacher and has a part-time job in a secondary school close to where he lives. He’s also been asked by one of his former interviewees to ghostwrite an autobiography. His name won’t be on the cover but he’s going to get paid a lot of money and wants to take a six-month sabbatical to get it done.
‘That’s a lot of plans for someone who can’t make decisions,’ I tease.
‘It was a lot of decisions for someone who can’t make plans,’ he says, in between tiny sips of tonic water. He looks up and gives me a long, hard stare. ‘You know, Rosie, if someone had asked me who would be the person I would be least likely to find on Tinder, I would probably have placed you pretty close to the top of my list. I never had you down as a risk-taker. It’s like the Wild West out there.’
‘Maybe the alternative is riskier. I did a lot of being alone. Daisy was ill for a long time. And I have a first-class degree in coping with rejection.’
He arches his eyebrows questioningly. It is such a familiar gesture that it almost hurts. I remember an Easter egg hunt in Norfolk where Barney wanted to hide eggs in improbably tricky places. He climbed to the top of the copper beech that lost its branch in the storm, high enough that we couldn’t see him through the leaves, and then got such bad vertigo that we had to get a fire engine to bring him down. This in turn reminds me of a wedding where he was best man and got so drunk that he went to the loo with the microphone still attached to his lapel and Lisa went to find him and they didn’t realize everyone could hear them argue. He used to make me laugh so much. I’m suddenly overwhelmed by everything that has been lost. I feel old before my time, like my mum in the last years of her life when everyone she knew had died and she was only left with the memories. ‘Memories are good but the real thing is better,’ she always used to say.
‘What was wrong with Daisy, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘She was eventually diagnosed with OCD,’ I explain. ‘I knew something was wrong after Nick left, but didn’t understand what was going on for ages. I blame myself. I was too caught up in my own drama. By the time I found out, it had taken over. It’s an insidiously covert illness.’
‘God, that sounds awful.’
‘It gets worse. She didn’t get the right treatment at first and deteriorated so badly that I had to give up work. She’d lock herself in the toilet and refuse to go to school and lost so much weight the doctor thought she had anorexia. It felt as though on top of everything else I was losing my daughter too.’
‘It must have been so hard dealing with all that on your own, Rosie.’ He puts his hand on my forearm and leaves it there, tucking his thumb absent-mindedly beneath the sleeve of my sweater where it touches the soft flesh on the inside of my elbow. The best communication doesn’t involve words.
‘They were tough times. Max was great. He spent lots of time with Daisy but sometimes I think he lost his childhood in the process. Our GP got to the bottom of it eventually and Daisy got referred to someone who did cognitive behavioural therapy and taught her to manage her problems by changing the way she thought. It took almost two years but she turned things around for her.’
‘And Max?’
‘He’s into his second year at medical school. He’s great. Just the same.’
‘I miss your kids,’ he says. ‘I felt so bad for the way Ava treated Daisy, and Max was very sweet to me on that h
oliday in Norfolk. I wasn’t in a good place. I could feel Lisa slipping away from me but there was nothing I could do to stop it.’
‘He was born intuitive,’ I say.
His hand still rests on my arm. I notice that neither of us has taken more than a couple of sips from our drinks and wonder if he’s also trying to make his last as long as possible. His face is so familiar and the conversation so easy that it makes me smile. He grins back. I can’t imagine ever not knowing him again. But one thing I have learnt the hard way is never to make assumptions.
‘Nick called me up last week. Totally out of the blue,’ Barney says. ‘I didn’t recognize the number so I picked up.’
‘How long since you’ve seen him?’ I ask.
‘Not since he came over the night I got beaten up. I can’t even remember him being there so I don’t know if it qualifies. That whole period is a bit of a blur. I had a lot of blackouts.’ He gives a hollow laugh.
‘Maybe it’s good you can’t remember it all.’
‘Sometimes stuff comes back to me, even now, but I’ve no idea if it’s real or not. That’s the worst part.’
‘Like what?’
‘Weird shit. I have this memory of being in a pub like this and some guy saying that he’d found my wallet and recognized me from the photo on my driving licence. But then I never carry my driving licence, so how could he have been sure the wallet belonged to me? I’ll never know. Last year I bumped into someone I used to work with and she said I’d once turned up at her flat at two in the morning and spent the night on the sofa, but I can’t remember any of it.’
‘Did you sleep with her?’
‘She didn’t mention it and I didn’t like to ask. But if I did it would have been crap. So you’re right, perhaps it’s best not to know.’
‘So what did Nick want?’
Barney laughs. We both understand Nick would only call if he needed something.
‘It was difficult to tell at first. He started talking about his research on people who have false memories about traumatic events in a way that made me think he was trying to ask me a question without being specific about what he wanted to ask. I’d forgotten how you always have to second-guess him. It means it takes twice as long to get to the point where you understand what it is he’s driving at. He’s the king of circumvention.’
‘Remember, I lived with him,’ I laugh.
‘He told me Lisa has been diagnosed with cancer. Did you know?’
I nod. Barney blinks back tears. I give him a serviette and he dabs his eyes and blows his nose. I see the barman shoot an anxious glance over at us because he doesn’t want a scene. He rings the last orders bell.
‘Even after everything that’s happened I still care about her. I thought he was calling out of a sense of respect for my history with Lisa. But when I asked if I could see her he said she doesn’t want anyone to know. He swore me to secrecy and said they are planning to tell Rex and Ava when they get back from their honeymoon. It’s crazy.’
‘Some people like to deal with illness on their own so it doesn’t define their life. I see it at work all the time,’ I try to reassure him.
‘It’s worse than that,’ says Barney. ‘She’s got involved with this organization that claims you can cure cancer with juicing and coffee enemas. It’s completely crazy. She has a healer who has basically insinuated himself into every area of her life. He’s the reason they’re going to Mexico on their honeymoon, and he’s even going to the wedding.’
I’m totally floored. We’ve all lost patients to the secret powers of alternative therapy but I can’t believe that someone as intelligent as Lisa could fall prey to a quack.
‘So what medical treatment is she having?’ I ask.
‘None. Apparently this guy has made her think that she got cancer because of all the negative energy around the start of their relationship.’
‘So why didn’t we get ill?’ I ask. ‘Or Nick?’
‘He says it’s impossible to reason with her. Gregorio has got into her head and she doesn’t even leave the house unless he’s approved the decision. He wanted my advice on how to persuade her to go back to the oncologist. He asked me how I got her to do things that she didn’t want to do when we were married.’
‘So what did you recommend?’
‘I told him you were the only person Lisa ever listened to.’
The barman comes over and tells us he’s closing up. I look around and see the chairs on all the other tables have been upended and we are the last people there. We go outside on to the pavement and stand shivering by the door, neither of us sure how to disentangle ourselves from the evening.
‘I’m sorry I never responded to your messages,’ I say.
‘I understood. I understand. It was probably for the best.’
‘I felt too fragile.’
‘It was a smart decision. I would probably have done something stupid and regrettable. I liked the symmetry of a revenge shag. I even thought about it when I came round that evening.’
We start walking down the street towards the tube. He has the same slightly shuffling gait. Our elbows nudge each other as we fall into step.
‘So what’s been your worst date?’ he asks.
I think for a moment.
‘There was a guy who wanted me to pee on him.’
‘I don’t understand why people aren’t up front about their kinks,’ says Barney. ‘It’s so unlikely that you would accidentally match with someone who happens to be into the same thing.’
‘It’s a bit public to confess to something so niche, isn’t it? Someone you know might see you. It’s not exactly like playing the ukulele.’
Barney laughs. ‘So how did you get out of it?’
‘I told him very politely that, contrary to popular opinion, urine isn’t sterile and while bacteria are healthy for your own biological ecosystem they aren’t necessarily meant to be shared with others.’
‘He might have thought you were doing role play as a doctor.’
‘What about you?’
‘A woman was sick going down on me. I had to wash my pubic hair with shampoo for a week afterwards to get it back into peak condition. But my friend had his car stolen, which is worse.’
We’ve reached the bus stop.
‘Do you want to come back to mine for another tonic water?’ Barney suggests. ‘I promise I won’t ask you to piss on me.’
I set off before first light to avoid awkward questions from Daisy about where I’ve been or where I’m going and reach Norfolk as dawn is breaking. The veil of fog that swaddles me for most of the journey lifts as I reach the coast to reveal frost-bleached hedgerows and sugar beet that stand as stiff as meringues. It is a landscape imprinted on me since childhood and its familiarity encourages me to keep faith with the decision I made in the early hours of the morning.
For the umpteenth time I feel for my bag on the passenger seat to check the manila envelope is still there. The letter inside has been folded and unfolded so many times that the ink has faded on the creases and there are words missing. I don’t know why I’ve brought it with me because I can recite it word for word. But like a talisman it quells my nerves and strengthens my resolve.
On the other side of the sugar-beet field, I catch sight of Winterton Beach. The sea is a hyperactive froth of cross-currents and eddies. I open the car window to hear its roar, remembering how Daisy used to wake up in the night begging us to turn down the volume of the waves and Nick would lie beside her with his hands over her ears until she went back to sleep.
The summer after Daisy and Ava were born Lisa and I came to this beach every day for six weeks. We breastfed our babies and swam in the sea as part of what Lisa dubbed The Scorched Nipple Policy. Rex was just three and we helped him construct ambitious marine zoos with seaweed walls to contain crabs and tiny molluscs he found in rock pools. We read trashy magazines and giggled over their advice for getting rid of pregnancy bellies and kick-starting post-partum sex so our husbands didn’t s
tray. Why do they assume men stray and women don’t? Lisa would ask in outrage.
She bought half-bottles of Prosecco and we invented ever more absurd excuses to celebrate – me squeezing into my pre-pregnancy jeans, Daisy learning to sit up on her own, Lisa getting chatted up by the lifeguard. Mum was still alive and only too happy to help cook and wash clothes while we wallowed in our new babies. Truly, it was one of the happiest periods of my life.
As I drive through the gate where Barney clipped the wing mirror of our car, to park outside my old home, the memories come in waves, buffeting me so relentlessly that I feel almost seasick. I try to float across them like Daisy learnt to drift over her thoughts. I see the garden shed and recall my dad, who died when I was seven, sitting in a green-and-white striped deck chair, listening to cricket and shouting out scores to Mum, as she pricked out vegetables at the table. And I remember the last meal we ate at that table, the day the ladybird epidemic ended, and how everything felt louder, brighter and edgier than it should, for reasons I never really understood.
It is eight years and six months since I was last here. I walk slowly towards the front door, sniffing the air like a dog recognizing its old hunting ground, and lick my lips, knowing they will taste of salt. I turn the door handle and find it isn’t locked. Losing this house was a self-inflicted wound. I was the one who suggested to Nick that he keep it in exchange for our home in Putney, to reduce the upheaval for Daisy and Max, and he readily agreed. He was hyper-emollient in those early days, alert to any opportunity to build bridges with his children. The fug of lust had clouded his judgement and he hadn’t realized how Daisy and Max would view his departure as a double betrayal. For a long while they refused to see him and it took months before I could persuade them to spend a weekend with him and Lisa.
It was the right decision, given what happened to Daisy later that spring. She went back to school in April after Nick left but she didn’t stand a chance. She was exhausted all the time so I took her to the doctor and he thought she might have glandular fever. When tests came back negative he wondered if she had an eating disorder. She had lost a lot of weight and spent mealtimes fiddling with her food rather than eating. But the weeping sores on her collar bones were more indicative of self-harm.