by Anna Raverat
“It’s snowing!” shouted a small boy to his mother.
I looked up; it was. Snowflakes landed in cold, light dots on my cheeks. One fell in my eye; I blinked it out and stood up—I wanted to get home as soon as possible. Last winter, before all this trouble hit, there was a heavy snowfall and the girls and I joined in a snowball fight on the common that had a life of its own—strangers hurling snow at each other, laughing, forming loose, random, changing teams, and when they went on their way, new people came and played. We stayed for ages and arrived home cold and wet, but happy.
Dropping the bracelet and my wedding ring into the river was not right; I knew what I needed to do and it wasn’t this.
65
I arranged to meet Adam for a drink. It was hard to find somewhere locally that didn’t have memories and associations. I felt it needed to be a new place, though now I’m not sure why. There was one pub we’d never been to, on account of it being painted neon purple and bright green on the outside; possibly a message to anyone over the age of twenty-five to stay away. Inside, the pub was fairly normal; a pool table in the middle with four young guys having a game, some slot machines, a few other drinkers. Adam put his leather jacket over the chair and went to get the drinks.
Our problems seemed so particular to us—and they were—but at the same time they were so predictable. Just like our drinks. A pint of lager for him, a glass of dry white wine for her, they could have been drinks for couples all over London, up and down the country. I watched Adam at the bar. Everything about him was familiar: the wide-legged stance, calf muscles thrust back, most of his weight in his heels; the way he reached into his front pocket to scoop out loose change, examined it in his cupped palm before picking out the right money to hand over; the flat patch of hair on the back of his head that I used to comb up with my fingers.
Many times I’d regretted the nature and extent of Adam’s betrayal: if only he’d had the inappropriate friendship but not the affair, or if the affair had been shorter, or if he hadn’t carried on lying even after I’d found out. But the facts stood, and eventually I realized that it had to be that big and that bad. I wouldn’t have left him for anything less.
* * *
Waiting for him to come back to the table, I wondered, again, how I was going to tell him. I didn’t know how to say it, what words to use, but in fact I didn’t have to say anything. I took the jewelry box out of my handbag and when he sat down I slowly slid it over the table toward him and from that he knew.
Stricken, he paled. He rose immediately from his chair, looked at me while he put his wallet and keys back in his pocket and hauled on his jacket. He zipped it all the way up to his chin, snatched up the box, and crammed that in his pocket too. There were tears in his eyes, but he sounded angry when he said, “You were never going to, were you? You kept me hanging on, let me hope, but you were never going to.”
“I tried, Adam,” I said, but he’d already left.
66
Peter’s alley was filled with white flowers. Shelves, tables, and chairs covered in bunches of daisies, dahlias, and carnations still wrapped in cellophane and a day or two past their best—petals browning, heads drooping—a job lot from a garage forecourt. Nothing to sell that day; just flowers and Peggy Lee singing from the record player.
Peter was arranging and rearranging bunches, fag in mouth, whiskey in hand. “We start early today, darling,” he said, meaning the drink. “We are alcoholic today.”
But there was no “we.” Toto had been taken away from Peter for disturbing the peace. They put him in a vet’s surgery, but he scared the cats and dogs, so they moved him to an old-age pensioners’ home.
“As if old people don’t swear, darling! I’m an old-age pensioner and I’m terrible!”
“And where’s Ronnie?” I asked.
“He died.” Peter’s eyes filled with tears, which ran over his bony cheeks. I’d never noticed how deeply lined his skin was. “The flowers are for him. He had another stroke. This one killed him, so we say goodbye.”
“I’m so sorry to hear this, Peter,” I said, and I really was.
“Drink, darling?” He poured me one. I took it.
“To Ronnie,” said Peter.
“To Ronnie,” I said.
“Is that all there is?” sang Peggy.
“These flowers would look much nicer out of the wrapping. Can I help you?”
Peter and I shook the flowers loose, laid them criss-crossed to make a border either side of the alley, and blanketed the furniture. From deep inside the shop Peter dug out some stubby candle ends and a piece of chalk. He wrote on the wall RIP Ronnie; the thick white letters showed up well against the dark yellow bricks—old London stock, Ronnie once told me, like him.
“Guess how many children he had?” said Peter as we surveyed our work.
“I don’t know—three? Four?”
“Twenty-two,” said Peter. “Guess how many came to his funeral?”
“I don’t know.”
“One.”
67
After I told Adam that I wanted a divorce, he and I had meetings. Actual meetings with agendas, more formal than the ones I was used to having at work, and much, much more formal than the ones I started having with Branton.
* * *
Soon after our lunch, Branton asked me out for a drink; suggested a wine bar nowhere near either of our offices, which fact I duly noted. He was there waiting for me at 7:00, and by closing time we’d had several large glasses of red wine and some tapas, talked about lots of things that we never would have normally, but not actually made any physical contact; I hadn’t accidentally brushed past him on my way to the ladies’, his fingers didn’t touch mine when he set down my drink, not even our shoes bumped under the table. We were still work colleagues, out for a drink.
When we left the bar I remarked how late it was and said I had better get home. There was a zebra crossing, and on the other side one of those old-fashioned street-lamps giving off a subdued yellow glow. We started crossing side by side—two work colleagues—but halfway over the road he took my hand and as we reached the other side, he bent down and kissed me under the streetlight. I was surprised, even though I’d been expecting something to happen. The surprise was that it actually did.
“Do you have to go?” he said after we’d kissed a bit longer.
The children were at Adam’s. That morning I’d put on my new Rigby & Peller underwear. I did not have to go.
In the cab on the way to his place, I had a rush of nerves. I hadn’t slept with anyone except Adam for fifteen years, and not even him for the last twelve months.
“I haven’t done this for a really long time,” I said quietly to Branton as the taxi chuntered along.
Branton was still holding my hand. He listened as I spoke, looked at me and nodded.
“OK,” he said. And it was.
* * *
I started doing what the breakup books recommended: living like a teenager, basically. On Wednesdays when Adam had the girls I would nip to Branton’s from work and go straight to the office the next day, after morning sex and breakfast. Branton bought me a toothbrush and I’d use his shower gel and shampoo and deodorant so that on Thursdays I’d catch his scent on my skin and hair. Once, I forgot to bring a top so he loaned me a shirt and that became the norm. It felt fantastic to leave the office on Wednesday afternoon with only a pair of knickers in my handbag.
Every other weekend, when Adam had the girls, I would see Branton either at my place or his. At my house, I liked to see his big shoes lolling in the hall, his jacket on the banisters, a jersey hanging over the back of a chair.
Sometimes he bought little presents for the girls: Matchbox cars, WWE figures that they held wrestling bouts with on the kitchen table—boy stuff. The girls loved these unexpected gifts, so different from anything I ever bought them, and when they asked where they came from, I said “a friend from work,” which wasn’t a lie. I didn’t tell them about Branton because I d
idn’t think it would help them to know that Mummy had a lover. Even the word was age-inappropriate and I couldn’t call him a boyfriend because he emphatically wasn’t.
He knew my circumstances, didn’t pry. Only once, in bed at his place, did he ask what happened with Adam. I choked up. Branton pulled me closer and said, “A really bad breakup, huh?” and kissed my hair.
* * *
The only thing that worried me was that I was much older than him. At a push, I thought he might possibly have been in his early thirties. We never spoke of this, but one night in the pub by his flat we saw a poster for a capoeira class and Branton couldn’t read what it said. He told me he was short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses. After that I worried: Had he even noticed that I was nearly forty? Did he only fancy me because he couldn’t see properly?
In the middle of the night, I asked him, “How old are you?”
“Guess,” he said.
“Thirty-one?” I said optimistically.
“Lower.”
“Thirty?”
He shook his head.
“Twenty-eight?”
“Nearly!”
“Twenty-seven?”
“Yep. How old are you?” he asked.
“Guess,” I said.
“Twenty-seven?” I almost fell in love with him just for that.
68
The Guest Experience conference was put off and reduced like a cut-price piece of meat. Instead of January, it was held at the end of March; instead of four days it was two; and the number of delegates went down from two hundred to seventy-five. We were still getting complaints about the Ambassade Central Park West, so the plan was that I would go out on the Monday to investigate; Trish and Don would fly out on the Tuesday to check everything before going on to Chicago to finalize their Hotel Village deal and would return to New York on Wednesday evening in time for the conference.
I arranged for my mother to come for the five days I would be away. Things with Adam were going through a very frosty patch, which my solicitor said was normal but felt awkward and sad. Adam didn’t make eye contact with me anymore, and shifted his glance to the floor whenever he addressed me. I knew from the girls that he was grumpier than usual, and prone to tears. On balance, I thought they’d be better off while I was away with a combination of my mother reinforced by Noreen, and I arranged it so that all Mum really had to do was breakfast and bedtime. Both the girls and my mother were enthusiastic about the idea, which I was pleased about but also slightly puzzled by until Hester let slip that Grandma had promised McDonald’s or KFC every night plus a bag of Haribo if they were good.
* * *
In order to acclimatize, my mother came for the weekend before I left. As soon as she arrived, she spied Raising Happy Children on top of the fridge.
“Why are you reading that? They’re perfectly all right,” my mother said rather unhelpfully in front of the girls, who giggled. I wished I hadn’t left it out, but then she added, “Really, darling—you’re managing very well. Much better than I did,” and squeezed my hand.
That evening, Mum restuffed and restitched Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet while the girls watched Diego and Rosita. When she’d finished she sat them on the kitchen table and we admired her handiwork—the toys looked much happier. I thanked her and openly admitted that I wasn’t very good at sewing.
“That’s OK, Mummy—you’re good at other things,” said Hester.
“You’re good at putting us to bed,” said Milla. “And Grandma’s good at that now too. She didn’t used to be, but she’s got better.”
My mother inclined her head gracefully to acknowledge the compliment.
“And you’re good at having baths,” said Hester.
“And practicing the piano.”
“And shopping at Sainsbury’s.”
“And she’s good at dejunking,” said my mother, which was also true, but I was done with that now. I gave Raising Happy Children to the charity shop and I dejunked the dejunking books and all of their self-help friends.
69
The driver who picked me up at JFK airport was called Gloria. She greeted me with my name on a board, shook my hand, introduced herself, and insisted on wheeling my case and carrying my hand luggage.
“I really think I should carry it myself,” I protested.
“Why—because we’re both women? But I am the driver and you are the client, so let me. OK?” she said.
On the drive to Manhattan, we talked about work and family. Gloria was married with two children; her husband was also a taxi driver and they’d come over to America from Colombia seven years ago, leaving behind six siblings, three aging parents, and an ancient grandmother between them. I told Gloria I was in the middle of a divorce.
“That’s tough, with two little kids to support. You’re doing OK with it though, right?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“Yeah, you are, you’re OK—you’re healthy, you got your children, you got a job, you got a home.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“I’ve got something for you,” Gloria said. She opened up the glove compartment and reached back with a £5 note. “I had a fare who tipped British. When you get back to London, go out and buy yourself a cup of coffee and some cake, OK?”
“I will, thank you—I love cake!”
Before she dropped me at the hotel, Gloria asked, “Would you marry again?”
“Maybe, if the right person came along.”
“Really? I wouldn’t. I’d be free.”
70
The hotel was sick. I felt this as soon as I walked through the front door. The doormat was curled up at the corners to reveal a rubber underbelly and the color had run out of the fake flowers at reception. They gave a lackluster welcome at the Ambassade Central Park West and they gave it several times over. Doorman, receptionist, lift operator, concierge, and porter all asked the same thing: “How was your flight?” I began to wonder if they knew something I didn’t.
There was confusion at breakfast—I asked for boiled eggs but the waitress, whose plastic name tag read Signia, misheard. “Wild eggs? What is that?” she said.
The restaurant area was at the back of the ground floor. There were no windows and the daylight coming in from the front of the building didn’t quite stretch that far, so the hotel had overcompensated with interrogation-strength lighting over the hot buffet. Signia was very young and very tall with straight blond hair in a long ponytail. I found out she was from Latvia and had only been at the Ambassade for two weeks.
A middle-aged couple were breakfasting at the neighboring table. The man’s admiration for Signia was evident—he couldn’t help eyeing up her slim legs, narrow hips, long neck. “I wonder what sport she does,” he wondered aloud. His wife ignored him, but when Signia returned with my wild eggs, he asked her.
“Basketball,” she told him. “When I was younger, I was good. I was selected for the national squad when I was thirteen and I went to the capital—alone, no mother, no father. It was still very Russian then and we had a coach who was very strict. We did exercises to make us grow taller—to stretch our bones. It was a very hard training. After some months I had a break—” She stopped mid-sentence. I think the word was going to be “breakdown,” but she censored herself and said, “I had health problems. I went home.”
* * *
I unpacked. The bedrooms weren’t too bad; a bit faded perhaps, a bit too close to the shabby end of the shabby-chic scale, but they were large with high ceilings, and mine had a big window overlooking Central Park and a very well-stocked minibar, so in fact I quite liked it.
When it came time to go down again, I decided to take the stairs. The landing between each floor was decorated with lots of tall vases containing thin branches sprayed white, a ghost of a forest. The lighting was dim—eco setting, no doubt. On the second-floor landing, amid the fake trees, was a small turd, such as could only have been laid by an animal.
* * *
I headed
straight for the general manager. I needed to see him anyway and now to report the turd in the stairwell, which I was really shocked about—in all my years working in hospitality I’d never seen anything like that. The receptionist took me back of house and pointed me in the right direction, but when I reached his office the door was open and he wasn’t there. I decided to look around—I’d been sent there as a kind of hotel doctor; I might as well examine the patient.
In the staff area an off-duty porter lounged on a dilapidated sofa, wearing headphones, eyes closed, moving his body in time to his music. A small square window giving onto an alley at the back of the hotel was propped open but the room reeked of stale cigarette smoke; there were yellow streaks on the walls and dark brown spots on the ceiling.
The kitchen was empty. Breakfast had long closed but someone must have been in the middle of preparing something because on one of the stainless-steel counters there was a pile of raw chopped meat and minced onion. Pale liquid streaked with blood was seeping out and running off the chopping board, collecting at the edge and bulging into a large, heavy drip.
Inside a freezer the size of a walk-in wardrobe were catering packs of plastic-wrapped bacon, butter the size of breeze blocks, and one shelf with nothing but single scoops of ice cream laid out in neat rows on greaseproof paper, ready for a rush on ice cream that I couldn’t help feeling would never come.
71
The next morning, there was a small dropping on the second floor in the same spot as before, amid the white twigs. I went to find the general manager; again he was not there. I looked for him back of house. One of the internal walls looked as though it were bleeding, but it was just condensation running over a rusty nail.