by Maeve Haran
It was a door she hadn’t opened for years, and now the emotions came rushing in like freezing water into a lock. She had been on a ski-trip to Norway just after leaving school and, in a cliché to end all clichés, had fallen in love with her ski instructor, a philosophy student called Erik. The irony was, being a working-class girl from the North, no one had warned her about these Lotharios of the leisure industry. She thought Erik actually loved her. Until she got pregnant and gave him the good news. Sal could remember his face now, blank and cold as a glacier, blue eyes bright with dislike that she could have so misunderstood the rules, and all these years later she shivered involuntarily.
Erik had promptly left her when she refused to have an abortion. Would he have stayed if she had? Instead, she had found a job as an au pair and kept quiet about her pregnancy. Her condition hadn’t shown that much, given that she was so tall and slim. Luckily it was the era of baggy vintage clothes so, like an eighteenth-century servant girl who knew she’d lose her job, she’d kept the pregnancy to herself until it became blindingly obvious and she’d had to move into a hostel. And then, without fuss, she’d given birth alone in a charity hospital, handed the baby girl over, caught a plane and come home. Another life. Nothing to do with her. Sometimes she even forgot she’d lived in Norway and told people she’d never visited.
She went home without breathing a word to her family. It might have been the Sixties, but liberal morality hadn’t hit her small hometown. She took up her place at university and, afterwards, down in London, she’d got her first break almost at once – a junior job on Yes, a teenage magazine, where she’d written the problem page and always advised young women who got pregnant to go for termination or adoption, but never keep the baby. This trend became so fixed that her editor had called her in and said, ‘There must be some circumstances where girls should hang on to it’, but Sal always shook her head and said no, ‘Not fair to either of you.’
God, how many years ago was that?
She felt nothing but relief when the phone rang, rescuing her from all this useless reminiscence. Sal was one to look forward not back, although even she was finding that a challenge now.
‘Hello, is that Sally Grainger?’
Sal agreed that it was.
‘Good. Michael Williams here. MD of New Grey magazine.’
New Grey was a publication dedicated to the over-fifties. It had a vast circulation and was a big success story, yet was viewed with jokey disdain and secret envy by the rest of the media.
‘We really liked your piece in the Post about feeling on the scrapheap at sixty.’
Oh God, Sal could just imagine what was going to come next. They would ask her to write some gruesome diatribe about sex for the over-sixties or why every sexagenarian should take up skiing.
‘Actually, I’m calling about a job. Our editor is going on leave and we need someone to step in for six months. We’re talking to a number of people about taking over as Acting Editor and we’d like you to be one of them. We’d like it if you came in. Would that be agreeable? Say the day after tomorrow at three?’
Sal could have jumped for joy. A few months ago she would have died rather than have anything to do with New Grey. Now she was feeling distinctly third-agey herself; not to mention the fact that it would pay the rent. She might even be able to start a pension.
God clearly was an old man with a beard. He probably read New Grey. Maybe he was even a subscriber.
‘Sam,’ Laura knocked on her son’s bedroom door, ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’ It was hardly a wake-up cup in that it was now after two in the afternoon but she’d wanted to let him sleep today at least.
She knew she had to watch him, that, left alone, Sam would become entirely nocturnal, like a badger or a mole, and sleep all day, only getting up to play computer games at night or to go out. Ever since he’d left university he’d been trying to find a job, but found himself caught up in the Catch-22 common to so many young people: no job without experience, yet you couldn’t get experience unless you had a job.
She took the tea into the darkened still-teenage-smelling room, almost tripping over his laptop charging on the floor.
‘Sam?’
A grunt from under the duvet signified that he was at least semi-awake. Laura sat on the bed. ‘Come on, darling, wake up. It’ll be getting dark soon.’
Suddenly he emerged like a whale rising from the deep, bringing the duvet up with him. His face was pale and anguished.
‘I just don’t get why he’s doing it.’ Sam took the tea and sipped noisily. ‘I mean he’s so old. What’s the point? Why doesn’t he just stay with you?’
Laura decided to ignore the unflattering implication of this comment. He didn’t mean to hurt her, she knew. It was just the insensitivity of youth.
Sex.
That was the blindingly obvious explanation for Simon’s behaviour but clearly Sam was still too innocent to imagine this could be his father’s motive. Age, or rather fear of ageing, was Laura’s second theory. She wasn’t even prepared to entertain a possible third. Love.
‘I suppose he doesn’t feel that old,’ Laura suggested.
‘Well, he is. He’s a stupid old man. And you know what’ll happen now, don’t you? I’ve seen it over and over with my friends. He’ll want to get divorced and we’ll have to sell the house. Billy had to leave that fantastic place with a swimming pool we all used to go to, and Ben moved to a flat where he didn’t even have a bedroom. Joe’s about the only one of my friends with two parents.’
Laura’s heart shrivelled at his words. She’d been so caught up with the moment that she hadn’t even imagined the future, losing the house she loved, a future alone when Sam and Bella left, which would be soon now, filled with nothing but a yawning emptiness.
They both heard the front door open and the sound of two people coming in, talking to each other. Bella and Nigel.
Bella ran up the stairs and burst into the room, her face still streaked with tramlines of pain and mascara. She threw herself onto the bed and hugged her brother.
‘God, I hate him! How can he be so selfish? He’s ruined our life. And what about trust? Does he think I’ll ever trust a man again? Or marriage. All this time he must have been pretending to be happy when our whole childhood was a sham.’
‘That’s not true.’ Laura was disputing this version as much for her own sake as for theirs. ‘We were happy. Your childhood wasn’t a sham. He just met this woman and things changed.’ The truth was Laura would have loved to join in slagging Simon off. Nothing would have given her more delight than to call him every name she could think of. But not to their children. She’d have to save the truth for her girlfriends.
‘Don’t be so saintly, Mum,’ flashed Bella. ‘You must hate the bitch too.’
‘Yes,’ conceded Laura. ‘I probably do. But I have to admit that even if she did deliberately seduce Dad—’
‘Euch! She must be blind as well as totally lacking in taste or judgement!’ Bella shuddered.
‘. . . Dad had to agree. But I know he loves you and feels totally terrible about the pain he’s causing.’
‘Come on, Mum,’ Bella retorted angrily, ‘let him hire his own violins.’
Laura crumbled. ‘OK, I think your dad is a selfish shit and I hope he will be deeply unhappy and regret leaving me and, if he has any children, I hope they will cry all night and turn out to be drop-outs and delinquents!’ Hardly had the words come out, and she saw the effect the reference to other children had on Sam, than she longed to unsay them.
‘He wouldn’t have another family though, would he?’ Sam’s voice begged for reassurance. ‘Not at his age.’
It’s her age that matters, Laura wanted to shout.
Of course he’d have another family.
Ella sat at the computer to write the very first instalment of MOAN FART DIE.
What was going to be the point of it? To try and tell some truths that she couldn’t tell any other way, with the kind of hone
sty that would be impossible if anyone knew it was her.
She thought of Laura and the pain she was going through in being abandoned by her husband after so long together and she tapped out:
WHY DO MEN LEAVE THEIR WIVES
AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS?
A quarter of an hour later she allowed herself a deep sigh of satisfaction.
She’d written her first blog!
It was only when Sal sat down in The Grecian Grove, the tatty wine bar that had somehow become their unofficial clubroom, that she realized how long it had been since her four best friends had actually physically been together, and how much had happened since they had.
Ella, always the reliable one, had organized the occasion and had arrived first. She and Sal had ordered the first bottle when Claudia arrived.
‘Is Laura coming?’ she asked them anxiously. ‘Maybe it’s too soon after the break-up?’
‘No it certainly is not!’
They turned to find Laura, thinner but as pretty as ever, wrapped up in fake fur against the chill winter night.
‘You look glamorous!’ Sal embraced her, surprised at the change of style direction. Laura usually went for ultra conservative.
‘In my Marks and Spencer fake leopard? I needed something to make me feel brave.’ She peered at the hideous mural of satyrs chasing tarty-looking nymphs. ‘Is it just me or does that hairy lech look a bit like my husband?’
They all laughed from relief that Laura could crack jokes.
‘God, I hate men sometimes,’ Sal announced.
‘Isn’t that a bit sweeping?’ asked Ella, laughing.
‘No,’ was Sal’s serious reply. ‘I honestly don’t think it is.’
‘What about nice Don?’ Laura reminded them, raising her glass to Claudia.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Claudia informed them, ‘nice Don has been driving me to distraction. He’s had a bee in his bonnet for months about us downsizing and moving to Surrey.’
‘He should meet my daughter Julia. They’d get on like peaches and cream,’ Ella commented.
‘Poor Don,’ Sal shook her head in sympathy, ‘doesn’t he know you’re the most urban woman on the planet? More than twenty minutes from John Lewis and you start needing oxygen.’
‘I know,’ Claudia sighed. ‘Dr Johnson had it on the nose. If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life. All the same, believe it or not, I’ve agreed. We saw a house down there last Saturday. I’m about to put ours on the market.’
The silence was so profound that Claudia could have just announced she’d murdered someone.
‘Claudia, you can’t! What about your job?’
‘I’m putting in for retirement. I think they’ll agree because they want to get rid of me.’
‘Claudia!’ Sal blocked her ears. ‘Don’t use words like that in front of me!’
‘You’re not old enough. Look at you!’
Claudia grinned. In her oversized sweater and jeans tucked into boots, her brown hair shining and fashionably cut, she could pass for forty-five on a good day.
‘Well, sometimes I feel old. But once Drooly Dooley had made such an arse of himself I felt I could leave with my head held high.’
‘But you loathe Surrey!’ Ella protested. ‘You always say it’s pure gin and Jaguar!’
‘How will we get to see you?’ demanded Sal.
‘Well, actually,’ Claudia reassured them, ‘one of its saving graces is that it’s only half an hour from Victoria.’
‘But why are you going at all?’ Laura was still mystified.
‘Life, my darlings, has caught up with me. Funny, I’d been rather jealous of my parents. They’re the ones who’re in their eighties and they seemed to have a better time than me. Then my father had a fall and I got called in by the doctors because they wanted to warn me about my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
‘They think she’s suffering from some form of bi-polar.’
‘Like Catherine Zeta-Jones,’ Sal could never resist a celebrity reference.
‘So both my parents, hale and hearty five minutes ago, suddenly need looking after and Don’s desperate to downsize . . .’
‘So it’s Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to Surrey you go.’
‘You poor thing.’
‘How dreadful.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Ella pointed out, ‘it’s only Surrey, not the Outer Hebrides.’
Sal picked up her knife and plinked the bottle of Greek wine. ‘Since we all need cheering up, I’ve actually got some good news. A job interview!’
‘What for?’
‘Well, that’s the best bit. New Grey, you know, the magazine for oldies, so I won’t even have to try and pretend to be young any more! I can chuck out my Spanx and my hellish high heels and start wearing elasticated waists and shoes from Clarks! And now that I’ve got you all here, let’s have some ideas about what I can do with the magazine. I’ll need them at the interview!’
The only trouble with this scheme was that none of them had actually read New Grey.
‘I’d be ashamed to be seen reading it,’ Laura confessed. ‘What does that say about me?’
‘It says more about the magazine,’ Sal snapped, a messianic look appearing in her eye.
‘Why don’t you do an article on men leaving their wives for younger women when they should have more sense and dignity!’ suggested Laura.
Ella jumped guiltily. Had Laura read her blog? But surely she couldn’t have? No one even knew about it yet.
‘Yes,’ agreed Claudia, ‘I once read a really sweet quote from Paul Newman that he would never leave his wife because it would be disrespectful and rude.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Sal pointed out, ‘he seems to have been about the only man on the planet who thinks so. And he’s dead,’ she added glumly. She turned to Laura. ‘So how are the kids coping?’
‘The way they do about everything. Bella’s angry and Sam’s withdrawn. I could have kicked myself when I said this bloody Suki would probably want more children. How could I have been so stupid and tactless? That was what upset Sam more than anything.’
‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing, though,’ Sal reassured her. ‘I recognized the type. They treat some poor old saddo like Simon as if he’s Brad Pitt, when all they want is his sperm. She’ll be pregnant before you can say maternity leave.’
Laura put down her glass. ‘What do you mean, you recognized the type? You’ve never even met the woman.’
An ominous silence filled The Grecian Grove. Even the nymphs and satyrs seemed to be suddenly watchful.
‘Well, actually,’ Sal confessed, ‘I did see Simon out with a woman at The Ivy.’
‘The Ivy!’ Laura repeated incredulously. ‘How did you know it wasn’t just a meeting?’
‘They weren’t behaving as if it were a meeting.’
‘Meaning?’
Sal was determined to spare her friend the gorier details. ‘They were holding hands.’
‘You saw my husband out with another woman, holding hands in The Ivy, and you didn’t tell me?’
Sal looked miserable. ‘It might not have meant anything. I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘You sound like Simon.’ Laura stood up and grabbed her coat and handbag. ‘I thought when marriage let you down you could at least rely on friendship. It looks like I was wrong about that too.’
She ran out of the wine bar, pushing aside startled diners as they tucked into their platters of meze.
‘I’ll go.’ Ella got up. ‘She’s really raw about how Bella and Sam are taking it. Good luck with the job interview.’
‘Oh God,’ Sal dropped her head onto Claudia’s shoulder, ‘I really screwed that up!’
‘It feels tough to be the last to know.’ Claudia patted her.
‘That’s why I didn’t tell her! Would you have wanted me to tell you? Of course, with Don, that’s a stupid question.’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Don’t beat yourself up. She’ll come round and
realize you were actually trying to protect her.’
‘Will she? At the moment I just feel I’ve made things worse.’
‘Maybe she just needs someone to be angry with. Simon’s the obvious candidate but she can’t lose it with him because she thinks it’ll hurt the kids. Laura’s a very decent human being.’
‘Unlike me, you mean? Sorry, I didn’t mean to be touchy. You’re very wise, Claudia.’
‘Thank you. I don’t feel it. I feel helpless. I didn’t realize how much I relied on my parents somehow looking after me. Now I suddenly have to look after them, I’m not sure I’m up to the task.’
‘Of course you are!’
‘We’re getting old, Sal. I never thought I’d say it but we are.’
‘Look, we can afford a glass of this terrible wine and we’ve still got our marbles. Anyway, look at you, moving to leafy Surrey. Next time I see you you’ll be deep in seed catalogues and joining the WI.’
‘That’s just what I’m afraid of.’
Claudia sighed. She gestured at the nymphs and satyrs. ‘God, I’m going to miss all this.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll just have to meet earlier, that’s all.’
‘So I can get back to Surrey for my cocoa?’
CHAPTER 8
Ella had just had a wicked but very enjoyable idea for her next blog when there was a loud rap of the big brass knocker on her front door. She opened the door to find Julia on the doorstep. Unlike her usual outdoor style of practical parka and man’s tweed cap, presumably borrowed from Neil, she was wearing a rather fetching navy-blue velvet confection, vaguely Edwardian in design, which gave her face an unusual softness, plus a pretty coat in lavender and purple tweed which Ella had never seen before. She seemed remarkably dressed up for a soggy winter Tuesday.
‘What a fabulous hat!’ Ella embraced her.
‘Yes, and it’s waterproof!’ How like Julia to point out the hat’s practicality. She was so different from her dreamier sister Cory, whom Julia regularly accused of being too fanciful for her own good. Cory would have chosen the hat because she’d imagine herself as a character from Henry James or one of the ladies from Downton Abbey.