The Time of Their Lives

by Maeve Haran

  Ella came and sat beside her and quietly began to stroke her hair.

  ‘Have you tried ringing him?’

  ‘His phone’s switched off.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s some explanation. I’m certain he was serious when he was here the other day.’

  Ella could hardly believe that she was actually trying to save their marriage. How many times had she loathed Neil and found herself wishing Julia would leave him? Now she had done so and Ella found herself pleading his case.

  But Neil really had seemed to love Julia and want their marriage to survive. Maybe she should just keep her opinions to herself and let Julia and her husband sort it out for themselves.

  ‘Why don’t we do something nice and cheering? A walk by the river and a pub lunch? Or a spa day somewhere, if you’d prefer?’

  ‘Mum,’ Julia lifted her tear-stained face from the table, ‘you can’t cure everything with a spa day.’

  Ella breathed in. She quite agreed and was just trying to be helpful, but she kept her mouth shut all the same. Neil was winning more of her sympathy with every moment that passed.

  Sal looked at the sofa beckoning to her. She was still feeling sick despite her anti-nausea pills, and a morning curled up with daytime TV or a box set of the latest Swedish crime series was infinitely alluring. But she had some figures she needed to put together that Rose had requested. Reluctantly, she made herself a cup of disgusting green tea, said to be packed with immune-boosting substances, and settled down with her laptop.

  An hour later she had finished and was able to turn to her printer with a sigh of satisfaction.

  She had reckoned without the well-known malice of inanimate objects. As soon as she pressed ‘Print’ an error message informed her ‘Printer Not Found’.

  ‘Look,’ yelled Sal, pointing straight at the printer, ‘it’s just there, right in front of you! Besides, you stupid fucking machine, don’t you know I’ve got fucking cancer?’

  Ella was wondering if she should take Julia a cup of tea or let her sleep when there was a knock on the front door. Still in her dressing gown, she opened it to find Harry, her eldest grandson, standing on the doorstep, holding a bunch of ‘Paper White’ narcissi.

  ‘Hello, Gran. Can I speak to Mum?’ He leaned in to kiss Ella, towering over her, seeming to take up half the hall. Ella had forgotten how very tall he was, much taller than his father. And at nearly sixteen he probably had more growing to do.

  ‘Hello, Harry darling, what a nice surprise! Your mum’s upstairs in bed. I’m not sure she’s awake yet. Are you starving? I’ve got some doughnuts in the kitchen.’

  Harry was hesitating, torn between his mother and the doughnuts, when Julia dashed down the stairs and flung herself into his arms. ‘Harry! What on earth are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?’ She hugged him so tight he couldn’t answer.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Harry flushed uneasily at all the unexpected emotion. There was clearly quite a lot of his father in him. ‘Dad and I have been looking at sixth form colleges.’

  Julia stood staring at him as the import of what he was saying finally got through to her.

  ‘There’s quite a good one in Chiswick, as a matter of fact; Dad and I really liked it.’

  ‘But Dad’s always been dead against you moving to day school for the sixth form.’

  Harry shrugged. The ways of parents were always a mystery. ‘He must have changed his mind. He was keener than me.’

  Julia bit her lip, overcome with sudden emotion. ‘Would you rather stay where you are?’

  ‘I thought I would, but then I saw what a great place this was, just near home. The kids are really cool, and they get pretty good results, not as good as my school, but my school is a bit of a sausage factory. As Dad said, it isn’t just about results.’

  ‘Your dad said that?’ Julia asked faintly.

  ‘Do you disagree?’ They turned to find Neil in the doorway.

  ‘I’d have liked to have been consulted at least.’ Julia’s face took on the mulish, slightly petulant look her mother knew could lead to trouble. ‘I mean, he is my son too.’

  Harry looked anxiously from one parent to the other.

  ‘Julia!’ Ella decided that, popular or not, it was time to interfere. ‘Stop it!’

  She shooed Harry into the kitchen in search of doughnuts and left them alone together. If her daughter hadn’t got the sense to accept this olive branch, then there was nothing more Ella could do. She just hoped for Julia’s sake, and her own, that she would give her marriage another chance.

  Laura, on the other hand, had given her marriage all the chances she felt it deserved. Maybe it had been a mistake to try and get Simon to take Sam to Manchester, but she had not done it to set him up, as he had suggested. How much of an unpleasant bitch did he take her for? He was beginning to think like this Suki. And as for her, what kind of marriage breaker resents her partner for taking the son he’s abandoned for an interview? And now the whole plan to stay in the house for Sam’s sake was up the creek. Terrific.

  She was still fuming when she got to LateExpress.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Minchin, top of the morning to you,’ Mr A greeted her cheerily. Not eliciting the usual ‘And to you too’ response, he decided to give her a wide berth, a lesson he had learned from trying and failing to pacify Mrs A when she was in a tetchy mood and he was being bellowed at for his sins.

  The result was that Laura had a reasonably peaceful morning, part of which she spent trying to calm her temper in the stock room. This largely worked, and she was more herself by the time she emerged for the school rush at midday.

  Sadly, it didn’t last. Mr A had tried various strategies to manage the sudden invasion by several hundred hungry and boisterous children who, despite Jamie Oliver’s efforts to interest them in healthy fare, were boycotting school dinners for a Coke-and-chocolate-bar.

  Two-at-a-time in the shop was partly successful but resulted in a long queue of noisy teens shouting and skittering about on the pavement. For some reason, today the commotion was greater than usual.

  ‘Mrs Minchin, can you go outside to those children and reason with them?’ Mr A requested. ‘They only laugh at me and mock my funny accent.’

  Reluctantly, Laura agreed. She could already see that the kids at the back of the queue were deliberately blocking the way of an old lady who was attempting to get to the cash machine, which happened to be the other side of the threatening river of schoolchildren. Another group, whose ringleader was familiar to her, had stolen a cabbage from the greengrocer next door and was playing football with it.

  ‘Here, Tone, give us the ball!’ shouted his mate.

  Tone duly kicked the cabbage so hard it winded another spectator waiting peaceably in line.

  ‘OK,’ Laura took on the persona of her former headmistress, a bluestocking of the old school who inspired fear in every pupil, ‘that is enough! You may think you’re very clever but you may have noticed that this is the only shop within half a mile of your school – apart from the greengrocer next door, which only sells cabbages such as Tony here is kicking with such consummate lack of skill.’

  They all laughed slightly nervously, not sure who to support, Laura or her antagonist.

  ‘If we ban you all, which I can assure you we are seriously contemplating, you will be condemned to raw cabbage or school dinners. The choice is yours. But bhaji butties, Coke and Mars bars will be off the menu, so I suggest you start behaving in an orderly fashion.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Laura could see Tony get out a penknife and head towards Mr A’s shiny BMW, the pride of his universe and his main reason for living. Laura whipped out her phone and in an outbreak of tech-savvy that would have impressed her own children, took a video of him, penknife raised.

  She strode towards him. ‘Right, you little shit,’ she murmured so no one else could hear them, ‘I’ve got you on camera. If I catch you making trouble here again, I’m handing it to the police, OK?’

  To
ny stumped off, tossing his head like a camp prima donna. One or two of the more daring clapped.

  Laura, still disguised as her headmistress, decided on tactical withdrawal.

  ‘Very good, Mrs Minchin,’ congratulated Mr A, ‘were you ever teacher?’

  ‘To be honest, Mr A,’ confessed Laura, ‘I was always the naughty one at the back of the class.’

  Laura hid herself back in the stockroom until the queue outside had dispersed then emerged to choose herself a sandwich. She was just weighing the merits of falafel versus fajita when she became aware of a well-dressed woman standing just behind her. A quick glance informed her that at least she wasn’t from Simon’s office.

  ‘Hello,’ the woman greeted her. ‘I wondered if I could have a word?’

  Suddenly Laura panicked. Had this woman heard her threaten that horrible kid? Was she a lawyer claiming Laura had breached his human rights? Or someone from the school, sent to complain? Maybe Tony had gone back and made an allegation against her.

  The woman was still speaking. ‘My name’s Helena Butler. I work for the FoodCo Group. I was really impressed with how you handled that group of children out there.’ Relief flooded through Laura. Thank God for that. ‘I just wanted to give you my card. We have a lot of problems with kids in our inner-city stores and if you ever felt like a chat, we could see where it led to. What do you do here?’

  ‘I’m an assistant.’

  ‘I’m surprised; you’re obviously management material.’

  Laura almost giggled. She’d been in much more exalted jobs before she married, but then that was years ago.

  ‘I only work part time. Family responsibilities.’

  ‘Quite. Well, call me if you ever feel like a change. I can’t promise anything but I’d do my best. The more women in management the better. Look, maybe I’ll take your number, if you don’t mind. You never know when something’ll come up.’ She smiled as Laura wrote it down, selected a sandwich with commendable decisiveness and said goodbye.

  Laura watched her go, pretending to straighten the card stand. She turned to find Mr A looking at her thoughtfully.

  Don and Claudia both stood on the platform at Minsley station waiting for Gaby to arrive. Minsley was looking its best; Claudia realized that she actually felt quite proud of it. There were snowdrops everywhere in the hedgerows and yesterday she had spotted the first primrose in the bank opposite their house. It was getting lighter and there was a sense of change in the air, of nature becoming busy and productive. That eternal, irresistible optimism was returning to the world.

  The train, packed with commuters rushing home for the weekend, actually arrived two minutes early.

  They looked out eagerly for Gaby’s face among the crowds, three deep, swarming towards them across the platform.

  They were beginning to wonder if, Gaby-like, she had missed it, when they saw her, at the very back of the crowd, walking along beside a tall, fair-haired young man. They were arm in arm.

  ‘Hi, Mum, hi, Dad,’ she sparkled at them, as fizzy as shaken champagne. ‘I’d like you to meet Douglas. As a matter of fact, we’ve just got engaged, so I suppose I ought to say, Mum and Dad, meet my fiancé.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Laura stuck Helena’s card up on the pin board in the kitchen, next to the reminders to buy cat food, and the one from the dental hygienist. She had to admit visits to the hygienist had joined waxing and massages as something that could be economized on. Pedicures and hairdresser’s appointments, on the other hand, struck her as inalienable rights which could not be abandoned until total penury set in.

  And now there was a letter from Simon’s solicitors to look forward to. Laura decided a stiff drink was needed first.

  Simon, it turned out, was as good, or as bad, as his word. His lawyers had lost no time in reminding her that as soon as the decree nisi was granted the house should be put on the market.

  Harbouring fantasies of nailing herself in and refusing to move, Laura sat at the kitchen table with a calculator and pad. She needed to know exactly what she had, which was about eight thousand pounds of her own money, plus the money she’d invested for each child by putting their Child Benefit into a savings account. They didn’t even know she had done this and she had intended to give it to each of them when they really needed it. In recent months the temptation to raid it had been severe, but so far she’d resisted. Apart from that she had a couple of savings plans of her own and a hundred premium bonds her dad had given her. Otherwise that was it. And out of that, plus whatever financial settlements they came to, she had to pay Rowley Robinson and meet any other costs.

  It was time she stopped avoiding asking exactly how much it would be. Steeling herself, she dialled his office. ‘Rowley, I’ve heard from Simon’s lawyers. They want the house to go on the market after the decree nisi. Can they do that?’

  ‘I’m afraid they can, yes,’ Rowley replied.

  ‘And when will the decree be?’

  ‘In six or eight weeks depending on how busy the court is.’

  Laura’s stomach lurched. It sounded so soon.

  ‘We need to get down to the financial settlement so I’ll need all your household incomings and outgoings, investments,’ Rowley explained.

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Earnings . . .’

  ‘Ha! Ha! I earn less than your cleaner, as you said. How does the court work it out?’

  ‘Roughly according to your need and his capacity to pay.’

  ‘Which he’s already saying is reduced because the Sperm-digger doesn’t want to work after the baby.’

  Rowley ignored this jibe. ‘They’ll also consider your standard of living before the break-up, both your earning capacities, age, your right to a share of his pension, and come up with something fair.’

  ‘Thanks, Rowley. By the way, I need to have a clear idea of what I’ll be paying you.’

  ‘Of course. I can give you an idea of how much so far. It shouldn’t be much more after this.’

  She put the phone down. What had she been hoping? That he would magically say, ‘Laura, you’re a mate of Ella’s. No charge.’ This was a man oligarchs consulted, for God’s sake.

  Laura decided to do a little research of her own. She was amazed to find a free website for separating couples called Wikivorce and even the Huffington Post had a whole section on the subject. How had she not known quite what a tsunami of separation there was out there?

  Six to eight weeks.

  In six to eight weeks she would have to put her house on the market and show happy couples round her home. And where would she move to? What would she be able to afford until the sale of the house had gone through and maintenance from Simon had been agreed which, she suspected, he would find every way he could to reduce? The job at LateExpress had been enjoyable and good for her confidence, it had helped her get through the pain of Simon leaving, but it was barely above the minimum wage. The cruel thing about marriage break-up at her age was that it reduced your life to the bare minimum. All the little luxuries: decent clothes, eating out, weekends away, the odd taxi, were stripped away.

  For a wild moment she thought about starting a divorce blog, but she could hardly blackball Ella then do the same thing herself. The phone rang, jangling into her pleasant thoughts of revenge and ritual humiliation.

  It was her daughter Bella, but with none of her usual feisty confidence.

  ‘Mum?’ She sounded panicked. ‘Mum, I really don’t feel at all well.’

  Laura’s maternal instincts kicked in, just as if Bella were a small child again. ‘Where’s Nigel? Is he there with you?’

  ‘I can’t get hold of him. He’s got Parents Evening at his new school and his phone’s off.’

  ‘Tell me your symptoms.’

  ‘My head hurts and I feel dizzy. And it’s really weird, my hands are swollen. Mum, I just feel awful.’

  Laura thought fast. She had no idea what this was, just that her daughter never complained and here she was pregnant and needin
g her help. ‘Call an ambulance. I’ll be right round.’

  She grabbed her car keys and ran to the door. This was the first time, she realized as she drove to Bella’s, that she’d seen the baby as a reality, but it was her daughter she was most concerned about. Giving birth was still one of life’s most unpredictable experiences, no matter what the childcare gurus told you.

  The ambulance was outside Bella’s flat by the time she arrived. Bella, in grey jersey pyjamas, was being helped down the front steps. She looked terrifyingly young and vulnerable.

  ‘Mum!’ Laura almost wept at the touching relief in Bella’s voice. ‘Thank heavens you’re here. Can you come with me to the hospital?’

  To Laura’s immense relief they didn’t have to sit in A & E with the drunks, broken-limb victims and home improvers who’d chopped off half their thumbs, but were taken straight to the maternity area where Bella was given blood and urine tests.

  ‘Pre-eclampsia,’ pronounced the doctor when they finally got to see her. ‘I’m afraid it means you’ll have to stay in hospital so we can monitor you and the baby as well.’

  Ella waved them off: Julia, Neil and Harry all together. She had no idea if the marriage would work out, but she was relieved they were giving it a try.

  She also had to admit she felt partly responsible for some of its difficulties. She had recognized that streak of stubbornness in Julia, the inflexibility she’d had since childhood, and which Ella had always failed to confront because she was too busy. Neil might be difficult but Julia could be hard work too.

  She was impressed that Neil had made such a major compromise over their sons’ schooling, and even more than that he had worn the sacrifice lightly, with no hint of blackmail or blaming. He was hardly Mr Darcy, but then Ella suspected Mr Darcy would have been a complete pain to live with. Jane Austen had saddled the nation’s women with a fairly dodgy role model. All that stiff-necked pride and snooty superiority. Lovely Lizzie Bennet would have had her work cut out keeping him cheerful. Personally, she’d only have given them two years at Pemberley, one if her mother moved in.