Living With It

by Lizzie Enfield

  I didn’t undress myself then, not immediately. I wanted it to last as long as possible because, unless things changed, it was going to have to last me a long time – like, for ever.

  To this day, that is the only time I have ever come at the same time as the woman I’ve been with. She may have faked it, of course, but I don’t think she did. So yes, to this day, that time with Isobel, the time when we shouldn’t have slept together but we did because we both knew we were about to go our separate ways, has always been a sort of stupid benchmark.

  Afterwards, I wasn’t sure if I was glad to have had the experience or sad because she made it clear it wasn’t going to happen again.

  ‘Why?’ I asked her afterwards, as we lay together for a few minutes before she said she ought to go.

  ‘Because I ought to go home,’ she replied.

  ‘No, I mean why now, Bel? Why after all this time? Why when you and Eric seem so close?’

  ‘Because I do love you, Ben,’ she said. ‘Just not in the way you want me to. And I wanted to have something between us to hold on to.’

  ‘We had something before,’ I said.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she replied, sitting up and shifting to the edge of the bed, picking her clothes up off the floor. ‘You promise not to tell anyone else, ever?’

  ‘I promise,’ I promised, and I meant it.

  She knew what she wanted and it wasn’t me, but I was glad to have had that evening, even if it meant living with cheating on my friend; even if it meant knowing how it could have been, knowing that it could not be.

  But I began to resent her for it, soon enough.

  My phone beeps in my pocket and I take it out and see her name attached to a message in my Inbox.

  I’m so sorry to hear your news. Is there anything we can do? Please let me know. Bx.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ I say out loud, and feel a deep fury. Is that all she’s got to say? Sorry to hear… It’s not our fucking news. It’s news about something she fucking caused. Yes, Isobel Blake, there was something you could have done which would have avoided all this. But you never did it.

  I type FUCK YOU into my phone to vent some of the anger I feel, and save it to the Drafts folder. I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of any sort of reaction, until I hear what the solicitor has to say.

  Isobel, Tuesday evening

  I switch my phone off when we get home, to stop myself checking for a reply from Ben. I know that if I heard it vibrate I’d be tempted to pick it up immediately. But I need to concentrate on Gabriella, relay to her what her teachers have told us.

  Sometimes I hate the fact that we are all electronically tagged now, like offenders on probation. I remember when I was first asked to carry a pager for work and respond if someone paged me; it felt like a huge violation of my freedom. Now I could be contacted at the weekends and in the evenings. Even then, at least I could say I was nowhere near a phone, if I didn’t reply immediately. Now, I’ve got my mobile with me all the time and check it constantly, mostly in case one of the children needs me.

  ‘Where’s Vinnie?’ I asked when we got home.

  Harvey and Gabriella are playing Scrabble in the kitchen. ‘Watching TV,’ Gabs says. ‘We’re playing Scrabble.’

  ‘In French,’ Harvey says, looking up.

  ‘French?’ Eric asks.

  ‘I’ve got a test tomorrow,’ Gabs says. ‘I wanted to practise.’

  ‘I’m checking the words,’ Harvey says, patting a French/ English dictionary, an old one of Eric’s, which is on the table beside the board.

  ‘Is coït a word?’ Gabriella asks.

  ‘Yup.’ A smile crosses Harvey’s face as he flicks through the pages of the dictionary and finds the answer. ‘It means sex.’

  ‘Ha!’ Gabriella lays down her letters triumphantly. Only then does she ask, ‘What did my teachers say?’

  ‘They all say you are doing brilliantly,’ I tell her. ‘You work really hard. You are polite and you engage with the class.’

  Harvey snorts.

  ‘Mr Gill mentioned you too, Harvey,’ I tell him. ‘He was very impressed by a poem you wrote. I’d like to see it.’

  ‘It was just a stupid poem,’ Harvey says.

  ‘What did he say about me?’ Gabriella asks.

  ‘He said you were doing brilliantly too,’ I tell her. I don’t tell her that her English teacher mentioned she was distracted.

  ‘Can we stop playing now?’ Harvey asks, distracted himself now that we are home.

  ‘OK, Gabriella agrees. ‘Thanks for the game, Harves.’

  ‘S’OK,’ he mutters, getting up and leaving the room.

  ‘Did you see Mr Coles?’ Gabriella asks me.

  ‘Yes, of course. He said you’re on course for an A-star in music. He thinks you might even get into Cambridge if you keep up at the level you’re at. All your teachers said that if you keep up the good work you should do really well in all your subjects.’

  I know it is important for Gabriella to hear this. It’s the thing that will make all the hours she’s going to have to put in over the coming months worthwhile – knowing her teachers and Eric and I are pleased with her.

  ‘You’re the model pupil, Gabs,’ Eric reinforces this.

  ‘And thanks for looking after the boys,’ I add. ‘Was everything OK.’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ Gabs says. ‘There’s some pasta left over in the pan.’

  Later, when the boys and Eric have all gone to bed and Gabs is up in her room, I switch my phone back on again.

  I have one new message.

  But it’s not from Ben.

  How are you doing? It is from Sally. Hope all OK. Give me a call some time. Xx.

  Is it too late to call now? I reply.

  No, Sally pings back. Paddy’s staying in London tonight. I am watching rubbish TV.

  I press the Call Sender button and wait a few seconds before Sally answers.

  ‘Hello. Hang on a sec. Just going to switch the TV off.’

  There’s a pause and then I hear my friend’s voice again.

  ‘Hi, Bel. How are you?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ I say, wearily. ‘The last few days have been a bit difficult.’

  ‘I did wonder. Have you been in touch with Ben?’ Sally asks.

  ‘No. I’ve texted him but he hasn’t replied.’

  I realise how lame this sounds, when I say it.

  ‘Have you tried calling him?’

  ‘No. I thought… I don’t know if he’ll want to talk to me. I thought I’d wait and see if he responds. And I don’t really know what to say, either. What can I say?’

  ‘Maybe you’d know if you spoke to him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve just got no idea what he’s thinking. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened and I feel responsible, naturally. But I don’t know what Ben thinks. Does he blame me? Does he hate me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sally says. ‘Yasmin spoke to him, before the party, and she said he was just very matter-of-fact. He told her they’d had some bad news, what it was, and said that they couldn’t face seeing people, not just yet.’

  ‘People, or me?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t suppose they can face seeing many people just now. Yasmin said she found it hard, after they had the diagnosis with Conrad. You probably remember?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I say.

  I remember Yasmin telling me and feeling a mixture of sympathy and relief. Sympathy for her and Anton because it was such a terrible thing for them to have to cope with, but relief because at the time, having so little experience of children, I’d wondered if all children behaved like Conrad as they got older. He was alternately sullen and withdrawn or violent and angry, throwing tantrums which I knew went with his age but which seemed so extreme. ‘Terrible twos,’ Yasmin used to say, and shrug, when he threw himself down on the floor, burying his face in the carpet and howling. Something he still does even now.

  I used to laugh it off with her, but when I looked at my sunny
, smiley Gabby I couldn’t quite believe that hitting two would bring about such a total character change. When they found out that Conrad was autistic, it made sense. His behaviour wasn’t normal. Conrad was different – and there was the horrible possibility that something had made him like that.

  ‘What else did Yasmin say?’ I ask Sally.

  ‘Just that, really. I think she only had a very brief conversation with him.’

  ‘No, I mean about me,’ I say, though I realise I am putting Sally in an awkward position. ‘It’s just, at the party, when I’d just found out, she seemed…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know really. She didn’t really say anything. I just sort of expected…’

  I pause because I don’t really know what I expected. I could hardly deserve sympathy for my predicament when both Ben’s and hers are so much worse.

  ‘I tried to call Ben earlier myself,’ Sally changes the subject. ‘But he didn’t pick up and I didn’t leave a message.’

  ‘When was this?’ I know I have no right, but I feel a bit put out. I’d thought when Sally texted me she was concerned for me, for how I was feeling. I know she probably is, but now I think she’s playing go-between.

  ‘Earlier this evening…’ Sally paused. ‘Listen, Bel. I know this must be difficult for you and I just wanted to say, I don’t blame you. I know how hard it is making decisions that affect or might affect your children. But I can see that from Ben’s point of view…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, just that his child is deaf. He might not be feeling very forgiving. Not yet, anyway.’

  So maybe she’s not the go-between.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ I ask. ‘I just keep going over things in my head and I don’t get anywhere. Eric is being very distant and won’t really talk. Gabs seems upset but she won’t talk either. I don’t know how Ben is and I’m worried about him, obviously. But I don’t know what I can actually do.’

  ‘Maybe you should try to call Maggie?’ Sally suggested. ‘Maybe during the day, while Ben’s at school.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  But I think about it later, after I’ve finished talking to Sally, as I’m plugging my mobile phone into the charger and find a Post-it note tacked to the socket.

  Cheer up, Mum Vincent has written on it, and I smile.

  At least it’s not critical, not like the one he stuck to the metal headboard of the bed in the room Eric and I were sharing with Gabriella at the house in France. She said she was too old to camp out with the boys in the hut in the garden, but I was surprised she preferred to share with us. It meant she had very little privacy and neither did we.

  As it turned out, it probably spared the boys from getting ill too.

  Why are you being so mean to me and Maggie? Vince had written in thick black felt tip, which somehow made the note look more menacing and less friendly than his usual sticky notes.

  I wondered if Gabs had seen Vinnie come in with the note, before she’d finally and fitfully fallen asleep. Her breathing sounded so laboured, I could hardly bear to listen to it.

  And I wondered if anyone else had noticed that my relationship with Maggie was difficult. I tried to cover it up, hide my feelings towards her as best I could. But if Vinnie had noticed, then surely everyone else had too?

  I shouldn’t have shouted at him earlier in the evening, but by then I was really quite worried about Gabby, and the incessant drone of his remote control car was beginning to get to me. He was playing with it on the terrace below our bedroom window, motoring to and fro across the terracotta stones, manoeuvring around and occasionally bumping into flowerpots. Gabs had been trying to sleep, but had woken when I went to see how she was. She was hot and coughing a lot, and what had been a slight concern was becoming a distinct possibility.

  I knew Sam had measles. I knew she’d been in close contact with him before we left. And I could see a feverish flush, which could easily be the beginnings of a rash, starting to spread across her body.

  ‘I’ve got a terrible headache,’ she told me, and I was beginning to get one too, from the anxiety. I was worried about Gabs, worried that the boys might get ill. And, of course, I knew Gabby had spent the previous day in close proximity to Iris. If I was worried about Gabriella, who was a fairly robust fifteen-year-old, God knew how Maggie would feel if Iris got ill.

  ‘I feel like everything is pressing in on me, Mum,’ Gabriella moaned. ‘It really hurts.’

  ‘Where does it hurt?’

  ‘Everywhere. I just want to sleep but I can’t.’

  I felt completely powerless, and guilty too, seeing her lying there in pain, unable to do anything to alleviate it.

  That was when I’d shouted at Vincent, opening the window and letting my anxiety out with some of the heat. ‘Vincent, will you stop that now!’

  He had looked up, surprised, at my voice, not knowing it was anxiety not anger and not directed at him.

  ‘Switch that car off now.’

  He hadn’t argued. He’d just shrunk before me. He’d picked the car up and flicked the off switch and stood there, staring up at me, confused and unsure.

  I could understand why Vince had felt aggrieved, but I wondered what had made him say I was being mean to Maggie too, and whether the others had noticed. If they had, did they think it was because I was jealous of her and Ben?

  I’d asked myself the question because it took me by surprise, the feeling of suppressed anger I’d started to feel around Maggie. Was I, after all these years, jealous that Ben had finally found someone he seemed really happy with? There had been a time when I’d been flattered that he still seemed a bit hung up on me. I’d liked having Ben around. He was like the brother I never had. Maybe I’d have felt jealous if a doting brother suddenly had had his attention diverted by a new partner and baby.

  But I liked to think I was not quite that petty or mean-spirited.

  So why, every time Ben and Maggie came down to breakfast together, cooing over their baby as if they were the only people ever to have one, did I feel so resentful?

  I kept asking myself that, and I think I know why.

  I was jealous of Maggie. But not because of the way she was with Ben. Because of the way she was with the baby. In fact I was jealous of everyone there, and the way their lives had turned out.

  Everyone else seemed to find it all so simple. Even Yasmin with her big unruly autistic teen, lashing out and screaming and refusing to co-operate, seemed to find it easier than I ever had.

  And Maggie, who had had her first child aged forty-five, was a completely natural mother.

  ‘Will you go back to work, Maggie?’ someone asked her at dinner one evening.

  ‘Yes, I’m planning to, when Iris is a year old,’ she replied. ‘Maybe just a bit of teaching at first. I’m not sure how easy it will be to tour, and I still get the odd bit of session work.’

  ‘Did you know it’s Maggie playing that trumpet that they play when a Ryanair flight arrives on time?’ Gabriella asked everyone excitedly.

  ‘Really?’ Eric was suitably impressed.

  ‘Yes. Da da, da da! That’s me!’ Maggie laughed. ‘I played Brückner with the European Symphony Orchestra, which is very difficult, but what impresses everyone most is the Ryanair trumpet!’

  ‘Babies don’t get any easier just because they’re a year old. If anything they need their mother more as they get older,’ I said, creating an awkward hush which made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Isobel just says that because every time there’s a chance she might go back to work she decides to have another baby!’ Eric joked.

  Another time I might have taken issue with him about how looking after children full-time was not exactly a piece of cake, but on this occasion I kept quiet.

  ‘Why did you say that about kids not getting easier?’ Eric asked, angrily, as we cleaned our teeth and undressed for bed later that evening.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ I s
aid, avoiding Eric’s look in the mirror.

  ‘You keep having little digs at Maggie, Isobel.’ Eric only ever calls me Isobel if he’s angry. ‘I just don’t get it. What have you got against her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I protested. ‘And I don’t keep having digs at her.’

  ‘You do.’ Eric runs the tap and wets his toothbrush before smearing it with paste. ‘It was like the breastfeeding thing you said earlier.’

  I knew exactly what he was referring to. Paddy had been going into the village and I’d asked him to pick up some paracetamol at the chemist for Gabs. Maggie had asked if he could get some more formula milk too. ‘Did you not breastfeed at all?’ My remark had been unnecessary and laden with the horrible self-righteousness of someone who had fed all her children for over a year.

  ‘Why did you say that?’ Eric asked, holding his toothbrush in mid-air.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just asking.’

  ‘Just asking, the implication being that she’d somehow failed for not breastfeeding.’

  ‘No,’ I said to Eric. ‘The implication being that at least I managed to do that.’ I know it’s not important in the great scheme of things, but when you are a full-time mother it becomes more so. I wasn’t achieving anything outside of the home. Feeding my kids, to me, felt like a major achievement. Why should Maggie, with her career as a professional musician and her perfect baby, with whom she seems so at ease, also be successful at breastfeeding? Why can’t I at least have that?

  I said nothing and I brushed my teeth in silence, humiliated that my irrational feelings towards Maggie were so obvious. Eric had noticed, and Vincent. He was right, when he’d scrawled his message on a Post-it and left it for me to find before I went to bed.

  Ben, Tuesday evening

  Maggie has gone to bed early. She’s exhausted and so am I. Parents’ evening usually takes it out of me. But I sit on the sofa, watching rubbish TV, staring at my phone, looking at Isobel’s message again and noting that I have a missed call from Sally.

  It’s probably too late to return it now. I wonder if she’s spoken to Bel. They’ve always been close, but Paddy is more ‘my’ friend. We were on the same drama course, although Paddy couldn’t act, a fact which served him well in later life. He began writing instead, and took a play he’d written to the Edinburgh Fringe. It sparked interest from Channel 4, which commissioned him to write a drama series; Paddy, the son of a miner from Sheffield, set up his own production company to make the programme and he’s never looked back. He made a fortune. The boy done good. Their kids went to private school. They lived in a huge house in Highgate until they sold that and moved to a slightly smaller one in the country, not far from Brighton, and bought their French place with the leftover dosh.