Six Months to Get a Life

by Ben Adams

  How am I going to afford these extravagances? I have actually managed to squirrel a few quid away over the past couple of months, but don’t tell my ex. I was saving it for a rainy day but now seems like as good a time as any to break in to it.

  We went into Thomas Cook to have a look through a few brochures. I was thinking along the lines of the Isle of Wight. But as the morning progressed, the spec seemed to grow with the kids uttering phrases like ‘It has to be sunny’, ‘we have to have a swimming pool’, ‘it would be cool to be near a theme park’, ‘and a water park’, ‘a swim-up pool bar’ (OK, that was mine), ‘the Med not some cold sea’, and ‘they must do pizza’. Eventually I told the kids I got the idea and we agreed that I would book something. The mere fact that they got excited about the thought of going on holiday with me made my day.

  My mum and dad have gone to Eastbourne for the weekend so we had their house to ourselves. I took the opportunity to get in to their kitchen and dust off my culinary skills. I made the kids some home-made burgers and potato wedges with a home-made tomato salsa. I thought it was a pretty decent meal.

  Sean disagreed. ‘I would have preferred a McDonald’s,’ was his considered verdict.

  Sunday 27th April

  After a quick chat with Dave I decided to pay his mum a visit this morning. She was good to me when I was younger, so I wanted to at least let her know I was thinking about her.

  I knocked on Dave’s parents’ door with the prerequisite bunch of flowers in my hand.

  ‘Thanks for the flowers,’ Mrs Fazackerley said once Dave’s dad had shown me into the living room.

  When I was growing up I felt a bit starstruck when I was in a room with Dave’s mum and dad. Both of them were renowned musicians and great raconteurs and they loved to play to us and tell us stories of life in the 60s. Dave and I would play with them too, him on the keyboards and me on the drums. I had no talent but I would give them a bash and try and pretend that I knew what I was doing.

  Seeing Mrs F today though, I found it hard to believe that this was the same woman who had filled a room with the sound of her saxophone. She was sitting in her favourite chair by the window with a blanket wrapped around her legs. It took me a second to get over how frail she looked. She had always taken great pride in her appearance, but no amount of make-up or expensive clothing could hide the pallor of her skin.

  ‘You’ve just picked these up from the cemetery, haven’t you?’ she asked me, holding out the flowers.

  ‘Yes,’ I acknowledged sheepishly. Not literally off someone’s grave but from the flower seller who sets up a stall outside the cemetery gates on Sundays and religious holidays. ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Because they smell of death. I am not dead yet, you know,’ Mrs F pointed out with a wry smile and a glint in her eye as she passed the flowers to Dave’s dad.

  I apologised for the insensitivity of my purchase but she dismissed the matter with a wave of her hand.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asked me.

  Rather than giving her the glib response I so often seem to come up with when people ask me that question these days, I was fairly honest with Mrs F.

  ‘Oh, you know, I am trying my best to come to terms with being single and being a distant dad.’

  ‘So I hear,’ she responded. ‘But you’re lucky. You are young enough to start again. Imagine what that miserable old git is going to do when I die.’ She gestured to Dave’s dad who was searching through the dresser for an appropriate sized vase for the flowers.

  ‘I’m going to have a party,’ he said without turning around.

  ‘You are a good man, Graham. You will find someone that is right for you,’ she predicted, ignoring her husband.

  When Dave’s dad eventually found the right vase and headed for the kitchen to sort the flowers out, Dave’s mum noticeably made an effort to sit up. She gestured for me to come and sit next to her.

  ‘Graham, will you make this dying woman one promise?’ When I nodded, she went on, ‘When I have gone, Dave is going to need your help. Will you promise me you will stand by him and be there when he needs you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I responded. ‘That’s what friends are for after all.’

  ‘I am not going to go in to the details but I am not just talking about helping him grieve,’ she continued. ‘There’ll be a lot on his mind when I have gone. He’s going to find a few things out that will surprise him. You need to be there for him.’

  Becoming a little bit curious now, I repeated my assurance that I will be there for Dave. Just as Mr F was coming back into the room with the worst flower arrangement I had ever seen, Dave’s mum made me promise that I wouldn’t ever mention this part of our conversation to Dave.

  I haven’t got a clue what she could have been talking about, but I will be there for Dave if and when he needs me.

  I went back to my parents’ house doubly determined to sort my life out while I still can.

  Monday 28th April

  After work this evening I looked at a couple of properties. I had some real dilemmas about where to live. I need to find somewhere that is convenient for the kids – fairly near to their school, their friends and their various sports clubs. The more convenient the location, the more often they are likely to call in. But on the other hand I don’t want to be too near to the ex. Although there isn’t that much animosity between us most of the time, I don’t want to meet her when buying my groceries at the Co-op or, worse still, my condoms at the chemist. Still, none of this may be too much of an issue if she ups sticks and moves to Exeter.

  I settled on looking at properties in Morden.

  The rents of the places I looked at tonight were nearly half my salary. I am still paying a quarter of my salary to my ex to fund the mortgage on ‘her’ house and the upkeep of the kids. Which would leave me a quarter of my salary to live on. That would mean that on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday mornings I would be working to pay rent; Wednesday lunchtime through to my mid-afternoon tea on Thursday I would be working to fund my ex’s current life; and for the rest of the week I will be working to fund my new life. Best not to dwell on this, I reckon.

  The first flat I looked at didn’t look too bad. In estate agent language, the rooms were well apportioned, the flat had a south-facing aspect and all mod cons. Unfortunately it also had a sex-mad couple living in the flat directly above. If I could hear their grinding and groaning at six o’clock in the evening, imagine what noises they would be making after a few drinks on a Friday night. With me in the middle of the longest barren spell of my adult life, those sounds would very quickly drive me insane. As the noise from upstairs reached its climax, even the estate agent gave up trying to tell me the flat would support a lifestyle of domestic bliss.

  I knew the second flat was a no-hoper the moment I saw it from the outside. It was in a large block with staircases that reeked of piss and external corridors littered with abandoned sofas or bikes with their wheels missing. The graffiti-covered walls included words that I wouldn’t want my fairly broad-minded children to see. I didn’t even bother going inside.

  Call me a snob if you like but I told the estate agent in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t allow my kids to grow up in a piss-infested hell-hole. He promised to re-evaluate the list of properties he was planning to show me later in the week and we just about parted on civil terms.

  Wednesday 30th April

  Today was a red letter day in my post-divorce life. No, I didn’t have sex, but I did go out for a drink with a woman. And not a mum of a friend of the children either. I took Julia, aka Miss Putney, to the Wetherspoons pub in Wimbledon. I know it is not the top of Eiffel Tower or even an attractive bar on the Thames, but it was convenient for both of us.

  Despite me definitely being ‘over’ my ex, part of me was half-hoping that someone my ex knows would see me and Julia out together in Wimbledon and report back. We didn’t see a soul we knew all night.

  I don’t think I would be doing her a d
isservice when I say that if there was a Miss Putney contest, Julia wouldn’t win it. Nevertheless, she is a perfectly presentable, well turned out woman with curves in the right places. She may well be having a hairstyle crisis though because her mullet has been chopped off and she now has short, spiky hair. She looks a bit severe but when she smiles, her whole face lights up. I kept wanting to, but in the end I didn’t dare ask her about her hair.

  Julia is a civil servant working in the Home Office. She didn’t tell me exactly what she did, I suspect more because it is boring than because she is sworn to secrecy, but who knows, she might be some sort of spy. She hasn’t been married before, but she has fairly recently split from a long-term partner. She doesn’t have any kids of her own but she managed to muster up an appropriate level of interest when I talked about Jack and Sean.

  The drink graduated into dinner. She went for fish and chips, I went for burger, which I regretted when burger juice started dripping down my chin.

  We chatted warmly but again for the life of me I can’t remember what about. I wasn’t too nervous and for once in my life I didn’t make a fool of myself. We may meet up again, unless I misread the signs, which is entirely possible due to my lack of recent experience in this area.

  Saturday 3rd May

  Jack is off at a cadets’ trek in the Brecon Beacons this weekend so I spent the day with Sean.

  Sean and I had a chill-out. We watched ‘Back to the Future’ on DVD and ate too much junk food. Don’t mention the ‘getting fit’ thing. After the film, Sean asked me what I would do if I could travel through time.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe go back to 1966 and watch England win the World Cup. Or to 1969 and watch Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you go back to all the times you were horrible to mum and change them?’ my son asked me.

  I kicked myself for not realising it was a serious question. If I was living that part of my life again, I am still not sure I could change things too much for the better. Everyone does things wrong. I could certainly have been nicer to my wife at times. I could have done less drinking with my mates. I could have told the truth about knocking the garden wall down when reversing the car out of the drive. I could have made more effort to show an interest in her and her passions. A few different responses here and there might have prolonged our relationship a bit, but I really don’t think it would have changed anything in the long run.

  After considering my response to Sean’s question for a while I chose to duck it by asking him whether that is what he would do.

  ‘Yes. I would go back to all those times where she told me to tidy my bedroom and I didn’t do it and I would tidy it. And do you remember when I dropped my whole glass of milk on the sofa and didn’t tell anyone?’

  ‘I remember.’ I grimaced. We had gone on holiday that day and when we got back two weeks later the house absolutely stank of stale milk.

  ‘Well, I would go back in time and put that right,’ Sean told me. ‘Do you think we would all still live in the same house if I did that?’

  This was the first time that one of my boys had asked me, albeit indirectly, whether they shared any of the blame for our divorce. My kids never think they are to blame for anything. Ever. So I was surprised when Sean brought the subject up today.

  I did my best to reassure him.

  ‘Sean, you know the tidy bedroom thing wasn’t anything to do with why your mum and me split up. And nor was you spilling milk on the sofa. Mum blamed me for that anyway, not you. The reason we split up was because we had nothing in common in our lives other than you and Jack. When we weren’t talking about you, we had nothing good to say to each other. That’s why we split up.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you just talk about us all the time?’ Sean asked.

  Luckily, mine and Sean’s conversation was interrupted by a phone call. Totally out of the blue, Bryan Green (he of the dinner party) phoned and asked if the boys and I fancied coming on holiday with them. The Greens were supposed to be going with Katie’s sister’s family, the Browns (honestly) but the Browns have had to pull out because Katie’s sister has just realised she is five months pregnant (honestly again). They had booked a villa in Turkey large enough to accommodate eight people and are now keen not to have to foot the whole bill themselves.

  The holiday isn’t too expensive so I jumped at the chance of the Hopes coming off the substitutes’ bench and replacing the Browns. I am quite chuffed with this result as both families get along well. Jack and Sean will particularly enjoy having Josh and Theo, Katie and Bryan’s kids, to hang out with.

  Sunday 4th May

  In my pursuit of my ongoing quest to get a life I browsed through the large selection of self-help books on the shelves of my local bookshop after dropping Sean off at his mum’s. They all sounded a load of old bollocks to me. I reckon they should do an experiment. The next time two identical twins are born, make one read one self-help book a month for the whole of his life and don’t let the other read any. Then, on their 60th birthday, ask them who has had the best life. I bet it would be the one who didn’t spend half his life reading that self-righteous claptrap.

  When I was in the bookshop I saw our marriage guidance counsellor browsing in the ‘travel’ section.

  ‘Thinking of going somewhere?’ I asked her.

  ‘I am just looking really,’ she replied, struggling to find me in her memory bank.

  I introduced myself and a light went on in her eyes as she remembered me. She tried to scarper.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in the ‘health and fitness’ section?’ I hollered at her back as she hurried out of the shop. She is the largest woman I have ever met. I got some dirty looks from my fellow shoppers but that bit of cruelty at my counsellor’s expense made me feel good.

  As well as her being rather large, there are a couple of other things you should know about our marriage guidance counsellor. She has got a moustache that rivals Daley Thompson’s and Merv Hughes’s and, probably not unconnected, she has never been married. I found it hard to take advice on saving my marriage from a person who has no actual experience of the concept.

  I am surprised she couldn’t place me straight away today. The last time we met was pretty memorable.

  In our first session we had covered things like how much time my then wife and I spent talking to each other (none), our relationships with our parents (fine), our relationships with each other’s parents (hers with mine fine, mine with hers anything but fine), our hobbies (fine until she suggested my wife went with me) and our approach to parenthood (not bad). In the second – and as it turned out, last – session, we talked about our sex life.

  ‘When was the last time you made love?’

  ‘Last week,’ I replied.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ my wife said.

  ‘Do you engage in foreplay before sex?’

  ‘Yes,’ from me.

  ‘No,’ from my ex. Are we talking about the same sex?

  ‘Do you reach climax in your love-making?’

  A ‘Yes’ from me.

  A ‘No’ from my ex.

  ‘Is your sex loving and sensual or a routine you go through because you think you should?’ our relationship ‘expert’ asked.

  My wife went for ‘routine’. I went for the therapist. ‘What’s the point of dissecting our sex life like this? Isn’t it bloody obvious we hardly ever shag? We wouldn’t have come to see you if we did it every night, would we? Do you get off on watching other people talk about their sex lives? I bet you’ve never even had sex, have you? Have you ever been touched? Have you ever had an orgasm? Go on, tell us. We’ve got a right to know who we’re working with here.’

  At which point I was asked to leave. To my ex’s credit, she laughed and left with me. We actually had pretty good sex that night too, with foreplay and orgasms and everything.

  Tuesday 6th May

  Today’s good news is that we are having a ‘strategic review’ at work. I didn’t hav
e a clue what a strategic review was so I asked my boss Daniel (‘Don’t call me Dan, my name is Daniel’). Apparently it means they look at the purpose of the organisation, refine and narrow it, and then see what human resources they need to deliver it. I didn’t know what that meant either so I gave up trying to understand it.

  Thursday 8th May

  My ex phoned me today to tell me that her dad has got worse, she is going off to Exeter for a couple of days to be with him and would I have the kids? The best thing about my divorce was that my father-in-law became my ex-father-in-law. I suppose I wouldn’t wish illness on anyone, but if it gets me more time with the children then so be it. And the kids’ school is closed for teacher training too, so good news nearly all round.

  I have booked tomorrow off work and the three of us are going to go camping.

  My ex was never one for sleeping under canvas. She needed her home comforts and particularly couldn’t stand having to walk to the toilet block. We did try camping once. We went to a campsite by the sea in Devon. After a four hour drive in steaming hot sunshine, the heavens opened the minute we arrived at the camp site. We got soaked and had a row over how to put the tent up.

  The kids were young on that trip. The first and only morning we were there, the boys woke up at half past three and wouldn’t go back to sleep. They were told in no uncertain terms to shut up. Five minutes later they were chatting again. My then wife told them that if they didn’t shut up until at least six o’clock we would go straight home. They were too excited about the adventures that lay ahead. Within ten minutes they were talking again so their mum made me get up, pack our things back up and drive home. Needless to say, I didn’t bother suggesting we go camping again as a family.