Love Will Tear Us Apart

by Holly Seddon

  ‘That’s fine,’ I smiled. I didn’t know what to say, so I hugged her. And she hugged me back so tightly I gasped for air and nearly dropped the pencils.

  ‘Will Paul mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not, darling. You’re one of the family.’

  I smiled into her shoulder, burrowed into her neck. Breathing in the smell of the Comfort and the Anaïs Anaïs, clean washing, warmth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  November 2012 – Wednesday morning

  On the first day of this holiday, Paul’s phone had mostly stayed in his pocket as agreed, emails unchecked. In front of me, at least.

  He’d even left it charging in the bedroom on Monday evening, like it was no big thing – although he did do this small thing very visibly in front of me, waiting until I was going in to the bedroom to get something. I wanted to ask him, ‘What point are you trying to prove?’ I also wondered if I could work out his pin code when he went back downstairs but didn’t dare try.

  Yesterday, he started to stare at the screen more and more, thumb twitching, watching the number in his inbox climb.

  Today he’s been climbing the walls and furrowing his brow and staring at the screen all morning, so I say, ‘Maybe you should check it, it’s stopping you from relaxing.’

  He glares at me, like I’m forcing his hand. Then he softens a bit. ‘Cheers,’ he says, already in work mode, like he’s signing off an email.

  ‘Just work stuff?’ I ask softly, ten minutes into his busy thumb activity.

  ‘Mmn?’ he murmurs. ‘Of course.’

  ———

  When we’re at home in London, he glowers into his phone all evening. Occasionally huffing, the odd snort of laughter or derision. Foolishly I sometimes ask what’s so funny or raise my eyebrows to be included. ‘It’s just work stuff,’ he’ll say.

  I was lucky, I suppose. I left – ha, left sounds so decisive, like a choice – I left this world just as BlackBerrys were arriving. Little more than pagers, really, pagers telling you that you had an email. I didn’t see the appeal. Only the very top bods had one then and although it was a status symbol, I resisted. I always worked late in my time, we all did, but once I left the office I was gone. It took a phone call to pull me back in, and back then plenty of mobiles needed to be switched off to charge at night, including mine. There was a clear separation of work and home. For most people, anyway.

  Now, Paul’s working day starts with emails in bed. It fills both commutes, bleeds through most of the evening and trickles along until bedtime when he’ll huff and grab his phone on and off until he passes out. I read a book and worry about the effects of radiation from his phone. If it gives us both brain tumours, as absurd as that panic might be, who would take care of the children?

  Paul doesn’t read any more because he doesn’t have time. Now he collects books instead.

  I also have a mobile, obviously. I use it in a way that makes Paul cringe. I don’t update apps, I let unwanted emails from online shops rack up. I crack screens, I leave phones to go dead. And every time a new iPhone comes out I snap it up. I like shiny, new things.

  When I daydream about going back to work, picking up where I left off – or, ideally, about six months before where I left off – it’s often the mobile phones that stop the whimsy dead. The thought of being permanently on call, of being accountable twenty-four seven, chills me. Paul never relaxes. Ever. Even on holiday, he’s ticking off a bulleted list of relaxation goals. Lie in, check. Fall asleep on sofa, check. Long walk along the beach, check. All the while, his phone sits in his pocket like an anchor, tethering him to work. Even when he’s not checking his emails or making notes or talking on conference calls with blah blah blah from so-and-so or you-know-who from God-knows-where, it’s there, connecting him silently to that other place. To that other Paul.

  So much of Paul’s job I still feel, I still own it in my head a bit. I have never forgotten the lingo, the processes, the feeling of a winning pitch, although my job was very different to his. But I don’t understand this new way of working. I don’t understand how it delivers results when there’s no time to think. Cortisol just surging through data packets and decisions always made on the hoof, agreed or dissolved with a tap of the thumb. How can that be a job well done? And that way of thinking makes me a dinosaur. It makes me a laughing stock. It means I can never go back, even now that people have forgotten me and moved on. Even now that I could call my gap in service a career break to raise kids and try to inch my way back, a few rungs below. I just wouldn’t be able to work that way. Maybe I’m making excuses, or I’ve just listened to Paul for too long.

  I once asked him, ‘Would TMC take me back on do you think, if I applied?’ He stopped in his tracks and stared at me, his mouth wavering, I guessed, between a laugh and a scream. He was peeling sweet potatoes at the time, jagged strokes, a frustrating vegetable to work with. ‘I only meant theoretically,’ I blurted out, to save myself from his answer.

  I was good at something once. I’ve not found anything I’m good at since, not truly. Not purely. Not ‘good but. . .’ just good. Even drawing and working with textiles at uni felt partial. It was more of a hobby, like wine-tasting.

  As a result, I have a permanent itch, trying to find something else that I can truly own. Knowing there isn’t anything else. Knowing I can’t go back.

  And make no mistake, motherhood is not the thing. Motherhood is death by a thousand cuts. Nature’s cruellest curse. To make you love something so furiously, while at the same time telling you – through the billions of animals that have done it before you – that you’ve already lost them, you’re just killing time before they realise it.

  We can see Mousehole’s harbour from our bathroom window here. It sits grey and blue like a little watercolour, framed in white wood. Earlier, we went to collect seashells and find the ‘best pebble on the beach’.

  The best pebble on the beach was a game Viv started when Paul was little, and they shared it with me the first time we went to the beach together. We’d been maybe ten or eleven, and I knew Paul wanted to fight it and declare the game babyish but he couldn’t quite do it. It wasn’t complicated, it literally was a competition to find the best pebble on the beach. And after feeling the weight of hundreds of pebbles in our hands, touching the round edges, softened by the bashing of the sea, holding them up in the sunlight, squinting like we were on the Antiques Roadshow, we’d finally settle on one each. Our own perfect pebble, to remind us of the day. I took my collection of pebbles with me when I went to university but lost them somewhere in a later house move.

  I went to the beach with the Loxtons at least once each summer. Either Weston-Super-Mare or Weymouth, both equidistant from Little Babcombe. A lot of industry went into the day trips. Sandwiches made and packed first thing, bottles of Kia-Ora mixed in advance, packs of crisps from the multipack, pickled onions wrapped in cling film, Scotch eggs, Ski yoghurts and picnic spoons. The food was always tucked in the same old green coolbox, the blue ice blocks frozen for days in advance. We’d pack the Allegro’s boot with sun hats, towels, sun cream (factor two or factor four – it’s a miracle we weren’t cremated) a ball, a frisbee and a woven papery-plastic striped windbreaker. Paul and I would be in the back, Viv in the passenger seat with her feet up on the coolbox in the footwell, Mick driving and singing along to his Barron Knights tape or whatever was playing on Radio 2.

  I’d wear jelly shoes and a swimsuit under my dress, so I didn’t have to take my knickers off on the beach. Paul would wear his usual jeans and T-shirt, refusing to bring shorts and then regretting it and rolling his trouser legs up until they were rolled so tight he’d get deep wrinkly grooves in his skin.

  The smell of ozone would slap us as soon as we got out of the car and walked along the front. We’d stand still for a moment in the frenzied colourful blur of amusement arcades, with buckets, spades and lilos dangling from every shop. Every summer, one twenty-four shot roll of film would be slotted into Viv’s old
Instamatic and she always got them back with twenty-three grinning pictures, plus one photo of the dashboard and Viv’s thumb as she was loading the film.

  I imagine unwrapping sandwiches and pickled onions from home for our kids. Our artisan loaf kids. Our brasserie kids. Our farmers’ market kids. Our spoilt little kids.

  Sometimes, I think we had more fun than they do.

  ———

  I walk into the lounge and find the rest of my family in a state of catatonia. ‘Come on, let’s go for another walk on the beach,’ I say, with a manic jollity even though it’s spitting with rain.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ Harry moans plaintively, Izzy bucking her body silently like she’s about to launch into a huge moaning session.

  ‘No,’ I say to them both, more sharply than I mean. I soften my voice. ‘You can sit at home all day watching television in London. It’s such a waste to do the same thing here.’

  ‘Mummy’s right,’ Paul says from the armchair, keeping his eyes on the screen of his phone. ‘We’re by the beach, on holiday, it’s ridiculous to just lie around in front of a screen.’

  ‘Says you,’ I say and he looks up, opens his mouth like he’s about to rebuke me and then stops. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t still be using it but they’re fu—’ He looks at the kids and softens his voice. ‘They’re screwing up the Amnesty pitch and it’s the only one I bloody care about.’

  I shrug. What can I say? We’re on holiday, but it’s a holiday his job pays for.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ I offer eventually.

  It’s really not so rainy now we’re out and the puddles are shimmering with rainbows. I’m glad I pushed us back out of the house. The place is deserted, the fish all caught and sold for the day and no holidaymakers with bright buckets and spades. It’s November, I remind myself, hardly a peak season.

  The boats are tied up like dogs on leads, sitting at the edge of the water, waiting for the tide. I look around furtively, then get Harry and Izzy to perch on the edge of a particularly pretty white-boarded boat and take a rapid round of bad pictures.

  ‘Get in this one too,’ I say to Paul, who stuffs his phone guiltily in his pocket and strides over to stand awkwardly next to the kids, leaning on a boat that belongs to someone else.

  ‘Come on, Captain, smile!’ I laugh, and he laughs then too, despite himself.

  We carry on walking, the kids skittering like crabs, running in front, behind, to the side. Harry takes delight in daring the shallow water to get him.

  ‘Don’t get your socks wet, Harry,’ I shout.

  ‘Maybe it’ll stop him dicking about,’ Paul says to me, lifting an eyebrow.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I laugh. ‘He’ll just dick about with wet socks on.’

  We look back just as Izzy tries to similarly goad the sea and ends up ankles-deep.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I say.

  As I start to walk over, Harry helps his sister back to dry land and they laugh together and run behind us again.

  ‘Well, that was a freebie,’ I say to Paul but he doesn’t look my way or answer.

  ‘Amnesty?’ I ask.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yeah. Bloody Amnesty,’ he says.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  He doesn’t generally talk to me about work and for years I actually couldn’t talk about his work. I just couldn’t let myself. But I think he’s at the end of his rope because he starts talking cautiously and soon it’s a tidal wave. I let him get on with it, chipping in occasionally, but mostly just acting as a sounding board. As we talk, I notice his shoulders drop and he looks looser. I want to ask who else is on the account, any new (female) creatives. But there’s no subtle way to segue into the subject.

  ‘Mum!’

  I spin around. Harry is running towards me at full pelt, his jeans soaking.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘What is it?’

  We both start to run to him.

  ‘Izzy!’ he says, bending over like he’s going to be sick.

  ‘What? Where is she?’ I’m looking around as I ask, a montage of terrible images rushing through my head. Kidnappers. News reports. Graveyards.

  ‘Where is she, Harry?’ Paul shouts angrily now.

  ‘I think she fell in!’ Harry says, and he bursts into tears.

  Paul starts to run to the water’s edge, but he doesn’t know where to look and runs around uselessly.

  ‘Where was she when you last saw her?’ I ask, my heart pumping panic around my body so hard I can hardly see straight.

  ‘We were playing hide and seek,’ Harry says through his wild tears, the kind I’ve barely ever seen from him.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the boats,’ he wails.

  ‘Paul!’ I shout, running to him. ‘Check the boats.’

  He doesn’t argue, just starts to frantically look under tarpaulins and around the ropes tethering them in place.

  The boats are bobbing about now. When did the tide start to come in?

  ‘Why do you think she fell in, Harry?’

  Even as I’m asking, I’m aware of time ticking past. Images of little lungs, bubbles, I rub my eyes to make them go away.

  ‘I heard a big splash.’

  I feel sick. I leave him crying on the beach and wade in and start to check the freezing water around each boat. I’m looking for a flash of her coat under the surface, berating myself for not starting swimming classes yet. Harry was in the water as a newborn.

  ‘I’ve got her!’ Paul cries and suddenly I’m too scared to look. If I see her, limp, grey, I’ll never see her any other way.

  ‘I won!’ I hear her shout and I finally look at them, shaking all the worst-case scenarios away.

  She’s holding Paul’s hand and marching triumphantly towards us. Harry and I look at each other. Embarrassment sweeps his face. I reach to squeeze his hand but he’s already storming off to her.

  ‘Where were you?’ Harry demands of his sister. ‘I thought you fell in.’

  ‘Hey,’ says Paul, looking about a hundred years old. ‘That’s enough.’

  They start to run off again but I stop them.

  ‘Daddy and I are soaked,’ I say. ‘We need to go and get dried off.’

  They complain a little as we leave the beach and we waddle like wet cowboys, looking at each other with wild eyes, teeth chattering.

  ‘Jesus,’ Paul says.

  As we leave the harbour, Izzy comes up and holds my hand. ‘I threw a big stone in the water,’ she says proudly. ‘I distracted Harry so I won.’

  I don’t know whether to laugh or berate her but in the end, I just enjoy the fact that she’s confided in me. I kiss her on her head and tell her quietly to keep that a secret.

  ‘Okay,’ she whispers.

  ———

  Just as we reach the front door, the rain starts to come down in wild sheets.

  We get in and race upstairs to shower and get into our comfy clothes: joggers and age-softened T-shirts. My legs are so cold from the seawater that they glow pink, smarting when the shower strikes.

  Back in the lounge, the kids rummage through the DVD and video basket while Paul and I make coffee and tea. My hair is still damp, I pull it up into a hair band and think about how used to it I am, but how strange it actually is to be the only person who looks like me in my family.

  We sit heavily on the sofa, collapsing into it with a happy weariness that could have been so different. A weariness from which we’d never recover. I pull the fluffiest blanket over me, tossing it so it covers Paul’s feet too.

  I look across at him. He wriggles his feet further under the blanket and blows on his coffee, both hands on the mug, phone nowhere to be seen. He hasn’t mentioned the Amnesty pitch or work in general or even what happened on the beach. No dissection of what we did wrong, of how we could have prevented it. Of whose fault it is. There’s no need. But how differently this day could have ended. I think guiltily of the mad zoetrope of worst-case scenarios that had spun unbidden through my head, and w
onder if Paul experienced the same thing. I think too, of all those terrible family tragedies played out in the national press that serve as safety reminders and touchstones of relief for those of us lucky enough not to get caught in fate’s storm. I think of the epilogues we often hear third hand, years later.

  ‘Did you hear about that little girl’s father?’

  ‘That poor mother killed herself afterwards.’

  ‘They broke up, you know, very soon after.’

  I wonder what our epilogue would have been. How big our buffer is. Whether we have any buffer at all, and if there’s any hope of it covering us on Saturday. I wonder if Paul has been slowly rubbing the buffer away right under my nose. And then I stop myself, focus on the screen and gasp a little as I realise the kids have chosen Ghostbusters. I haven’t seen this film in such a long time. A very long time. I sit up and reach for Paul’s hand and find his fingers are already reaching for mine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1986

  With Paul at school, I spent the rest of that January week after the funeral curled up on the green sofa in the Loxtons’ watching daytime TV and eating toast.

  When it was just me, and the TV had been taken over by schools programming or Take the High Road, I’d often get the sketchpad out that Viv had got me. I drew everything, and nothing. Crinkled packets from the cupboard, bottles, pictures of Paul in his school uniform from the cardboard framed photos.

  Viv worked split shifts that week so sometimes sat with me to watch TV and I lay with my feet across her knees and she’d rest her hands on my ankles. We took it in turns to make tea or switch the channel over.

  A couple of times, I almost started to talk about my mum. I would open my mouth a little, and try to think of the first word, the first sound, that would let it out. I thought about the Christmas I spent with her alone. Both of us in our pyjamas, eating toast and giggling at the naughtiness of not doing the proper thing. The hysteria when the Queen’s speech came and went and we hadn’t watched a word of it. I wanted to tell Viv about that, I wanted to say out loud how much it meant that my mum had let me see her like that, just for a bit. Totally relaxed. That I knew she didn’t know how to be with me. She didn’t know how to be an adult at all, let alone a mum. That she would swing from acting like a wild babysitter to an older sister to a casual acquaintance. But despite that, I knew she loved me. I opened my mouth to say something like that but never found that first sound.