Practice Makes Perfect

by Penny Parkes

  It was the first time that Julia had considered that there was a place for her in that room too. Not just as the supportive daughter, but as someone who had spent their entire life reacting: reacting to opinion, to stress, to other people’s desires for her. And when she’d reached for balance, had she not over-compensated? The pendulum swinging wildly back towards compulsive and controlling behaviour?

  She swallowed hard. It was no wonder Dan had left. Living with Julia must have been like trying to keep your balance on a constantly shifting surface. She spread her fingers across the cold sheets on his side of the bed experimentally, waiting for the familiar shaft of pain through her chest. It never arrived.

  Instead, the words from the meeting scrolled through her mind: Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

  As her fingers tightened on the edge of Dan’s pillow, she felt the knot in her chest loosen another small notch. It had felt so good to apologise to Holly yesterday – at least, if one put aside the bone-gnawing discomfort that she had experienced at the time. It had been the right thing to do though, and the expression on Holly’s face had almost made the embarrassment worth it.

  Julia rolled over, initially as though to escape the feeling, but then surrendering to it, in all its awkwardness, and daring to consider where else in her life the same might apply.

  She buried her head into the pillow, the aroma of Dan’s aftershave still lingering despite changing the sheets. He’d done the right thing by her so many times, she realised. He’d stood by her in the last few weeks when she could tell that his heart was no longer in the relationship – not wanting to leave her high and dry, to cope with Candace alone. The realisation was overwhelming. Everyone around them must have seen it – but she’d been oblivious, pushing him further and further away.

  Maybe Holly wasn’t the only person to whom she owed amends?

  She just wanted to go to sleep at night, knowing she’d done the right thing; to look in the mirror and not flinch from her own gaze. She just –

  She screwed her face up into the pillow, Holly’s joking words in the doctors’ lounge popping into her head. How many times today had she used the word ‘just’ to qualify or soften her requests, her explanations, her excuses . . . It was never a word you would hear from Quentin, or even Dan or Taffy. When exactly had the sneaky shoulds gained a partner in crime?

  So, she thought, as she pummelled her pillow into submission, if we’re going to do this, then let’s do it properly. Over half an hour later, Julia was still murmuring her way through her mental stocktake. The number of people to whom she owed an apology was longer than she had even considered – not always for big stuff, but for the first time she could see clearly that sometimes the little indifferences actually cast a longer shadow.

  The meeting this evening had been a life-changing revelation – all she needed now was the courage to see it through – on her own, without anybody telling her she was doing the right thing. She couldn’t help but wonder whether her constant search for validation and approval might be a harder addiction to break than her go-to habit of instant judgement.

  Whatever she might think of her mother for her ‘weaknesses’, in that moment it was clear to Julia that she was really in no position to judge – if anything, she’d been incredibly lucky that her own particular affliction was more socially acceptable. Having said that, it still had the potential to be equally damaging to her relationships, as she’d so recently been reminded.

  In fact, as Julia went through her list of amends one more time, as her eyelids grew heavy with exhaustion and the sky outside her bedroom window grew pink with the haze of morning mist, she kept returning to the same notion time and time again. Was it actually possible that the person whom she had slighted and ignored the most – dismissing their ideals and wishes at every turn – was actually herself?

  ‘Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference,’ she murmured under her breath, as she finally succumbed to sleep.

  Chapter 40

  Holly watched as Taffy read the documents once again, checking that there wasn’t something they’d overlooked. He glanced up at Holly. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Holly replied, glad that they’d waited until they got home to open the envelope. Her hands clenched around her mug of tea as though it were the only thing keeping her functioning. ‘He must have his own reasons.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he does,’ Taffy said with feeling. ‘And it’s not as though there are any substantial marital assets to split, are there?’

  They both looked around the tiny kitchen of the rented terraced house that Holly had called home for the last two years. Putting aside her beloved Golf, Milo’s pretentious Saab and more books than was reasonable, this whole divorce should have been signed and sealed months ago. Only Milo’s reluctance to commit to anything without a fight had slowed the process down – that and his erratic disregard to the interim Access Agreement that he had fought for and then ignored. Holly couldn’t actually remember the last time Milo had seen his sons and, if you discounted that weird text threatening a visit, he had shown little inclination to change that.

  If only Milo didn’t still have the ability to throw her life into a tailspin every time he raised his head, Holly was convinced she would be able to move on more easily. It hadn’t escaped her notice though, that the only person who could change that reaction was Holly herself.

  And that was where she hit the stumbling block every time. She’d realised lately that going through the motions of recovery was absolutely not the same as working through the emotions of recovery at all. Yet that’s what she’d been doing. Every time she was mistrustful of somebody else’s motives, she slipped into autopilot – being reactive, not proactive.

  Holly took a mouthful of tea and spluttered when she realised it was stone cold – she’d lost track of how long they had been staring at the divorce papers, all neatly signed by Milo and awaiting her own signature.

  ‘But why would he suddenly relent? It’s not as though he wants to make my life easier, is it?’ Holly asked, with little expectation of an answer – they were both too stunned. ‘He seemed to be out for as much money and heartache as he could muster five minutes ago.’

  ‘Did he ever really want custody, do you think, or was it just a power play?’ Taffy murmured.

  Holly spread the pages out on the kitchen table again, grateful that the twins were fast asleep, exhausted after a lengthy game of chasing Eric around the house and dressing him up. Eric himself was still sporting a Bath rugby shirt, which he inexplicably refused to part with, and was fast asleep on Holly’s feet. The house was quiet – free of distractions – but still Holly’s mind refused to engage.

  ‘We should go through these, line by line.’ she suggested in the end, her radar for suspicious motives pinging like a nuclear sub.

  Taffy pushed his chair back suddenly and stood up, as though he had no immediate control over the urge to move and the sheer effort of restraint was visible on his face. Holly frowned and returned to focus on the documents in front of her; she couldn’t deal with Taffy’s physical agitation right now. She was about to suggest he shake it off and let her concentrate, when he spoke and it became clear that he was actually trying to choose his words with such care, it was that which was making him stumble.

  ‘Don’t let him do this, Holly. Please don’t let him dictate the terms. You have to stand up and fight.’

  Holly stared, completely thrown by the coiled emotion in his every staccato sentence. ‘Why?’ she said tiredly. ‘Why does this have to be a fight? Surely you understand that I just want this to be over. Finished.’

  ‘But at what cost?’ asked Taffy in frustration.

  Holly gasped, blindsided. ‘I can’t believe you’re thinking about the money!’

  ‘I
am not thinking about the sodding money!’ Taffy shouted, stunning even himself with his own vehemence. Weeks of biting his tongue had only served to pent up his emotions on this particular topic. He sat down again and took her hand. ‘I’m thinking about the boys. That their dad is willing to just give up on them. What kind of message does that send?’

  Holly sighed. ‘Probably a similar message to upping and leaving in the first place? I can’t force him to be a father to them, Taffy.’ She looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m not that naïve.’

  It was true. It didn’t matter that the waves of emotion surrounding this divorce still took her by surprise at the strangest of times, but when she wept now, she didn’t weep for Milo, or her marriage, or her mistakes – she wept for her loss of innocence – her absolute sense of certainty that the world would just keep turning until the happy endings settled into place.

  These days, Holly knew better – she knew that an ill-chosen phrase or a choice in a moment of anger could cause ripples of collateral damage. And every choice Milo had been making for the last few years had been with one goal in mind – his own happiness and his own successes.

  She couldn’t force Milo to be a father to his children.

  She couldn’t make him behave like the man she’d known him to be at the beginning.

  But on some level she still desperately wanted him to, if only to prove that she hadn’t been entirely mistaken in her original estimation of him, in believing him to be so much more.

  She sighed and took Taffy’s hand in hers. It was touching how protective he was about the boys, but did he really have the full picture? And what was she trying to prove? The Milo she had first fallen in love with, before his ego crept out and insidiously sequestered his soul, would have cared about his sons and been invested in their future. She just needed to be sure that that Milo was long gone before she closed the door for good.

  But however worthy her desire to rebuild the twins’ relationship with their father, rather than this absolute rejection, Holly couldn’t even begin to envisage how that conversation might go. She could remember all too vividly the helplessness of trying to have a rational conversation with an irrational person, caught in Milo’s web of controlling behaviour.

  ‘Let me explain,’ Holly said softly, as she leaned her head against Taffy’s shoulder, relieved to finally have the opportunity to discuss this.

  Hours later, the papers still unsigned and halfway down a bottle of rosé, a loud knock at the door made them both jump and Eric leapt to his feet, barrelling through the hall in his Bath shirt like a rugby forward. ‘Coo-ee,’ cried Elsie through the letterbox. ‘It’s only me!’

  Taffy opened the door and Elsie marched into the kitchen. ‘Dear Lord, who died?’ she said tactlessly, throwing herself into a chair. She gently pushed Eric aside as he took rather a liking to her leg and propped her feet up out of harm’s way. She topped up Taffy’s glass of wine and then appropriated it for herself without even missing a beat. ‘If you’d told me how wonderful steroids were, Holly, I’d have been on board with this anti-inflammatory business much sooner you know. I’ve been full of beans for hours . . .’

  Holly managed to smile despite herself – there was something almost contagious about Elsie’s good mood that Holly was only too willing to embrace this evening. Hours of stressful back and forth had achieved nothing and the very relief of a distraction was almost intoxicating. ‘Your consultant sent me an e-mail earlier. He said you had the whole neurology suite joining in a sing-along at one point. And he’s pleased with your progress, so don’t get too used to your steroid high; it’s only a temporary trial to see if it helps with some of the swelling.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I wish you’d let me go with you.’

  ‘Pish tosh, you’ve got better things to do with your time. Besides, I like to have a little wallow about the unfairness of life and how bad things happen to good people while I’m there – it takes my mind off seeing all the me-in-a-few-years’-time patients. Such a thrill to look forward to. Becoming a dribbling, piddling liability.’

  ‘Elsie . . .’ interrupted Taffy warningly.

  She scowled at him. ‘Okay, maybe not everyone’s the poster-patient for utter dependency, but do let a girl have a little artistic licence, why don’t you?’ She shoved Eric away again. ‘What the hell is going on with this dog?’

  Holly and Taffy exchanged glances. ‘He appears to be going through a little phase,’ said Holly delicately. Elsie smirked and looked over at Taffy for clarification.

  ‘He’s shagging anything that isn’t nailed down, okay? And actually, sometimes, things that are.’ Taffy reached out and summoned Eric away from the sofa cushions with a click of his tongue. ‘Lizzie has decreed it’s time for him to visit the V-E-T but I’m trying to persuade her out of it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Holly matter-of-factly, ‘I think it’s high time he had a little snip or there’ll be mini Erics running all round Larkford in no time. At least, once he figures out what it’s all about.’

  Taffy squirmed and crossed his legs uncomfortably. ‘How can you be so cold? This is his manhood you’re discussing. Dan and I think you two need to be more patient while he works through his issues.’

  ‘And half the canine population in Larkford,’ Holly remonstrated. ‘Poor Coco’s thinking of taking out a restraining order and I’ve washed Winnie the Pooh three times this week!’ At the very thought, Holly couldn’t maintain her poise and snorted with laughter.

  Elsie chortled contentedly. ‘Glad to see nothing’s really changed around here then. I rather miss a bit of chaos.’

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place then,’ Taffy said, the fatigue of the last few hours laced into his every syllable.

  ‘Don’t knock it, until you’ve tried the alternative,’ said Elsie with feeling. ‘A calm, restful home is just another way of saying boring and lonely. Why do you think I’ve come round here this evening?’

  Taffy fetched Elsie some apple juice before she could sneak another sip of wine. ‘I assumed it was because you were high on steroids and looking for mischief?’

  Elsie twinkled at him contentedly. ‘I knew I liked you.’ She drew him down to her level and kissed him on the cheek, making him blush.

  Holly scowled. ‘What are you two whispering about? You look very suspicious over there.’

  Elsie smiled as though butter wouldn’t melt. ‘Just telling Taffy that I was on his side, when it comes to protecting young Eric’s crown jewels. You never know when he might need them.’

  Holly nodded but she wasn’t convinced.

  Elsie, her lack of boundaries now almost legendary, leaned forward and picked up Holly’s divorce papers. She’d barely scanned the first two lines when she looked up sharply. ‘What’s the little shit up to now?’

  ‘Elsie,’ protested Holly, unwilling to be drawn back on to the farcical merry-go-round of debate.

  ‘Well,’ said Elsie, ‘I call it as I see it. Holding up the divorce for months and suddenly he’s all peachy keen?’ She rootled in her enormous vintage Birkin bag and incongruously pulled out her shiny new MacBook. Within moments she was typing away furiously. Elsie’s MacBook may have been a recent acquisition, but she’d wasted no time in mastering the basics. This last may have been almost entirely due to Ewan from the local computer store who popped round to give her one-to-one tuition and the fact that Ewan looked almost exactly like a young Sean Connery.

  ‘Erm, Elsie?’ interrupted Holly after a moment, having waited in vain for Elsie to explain herself. There was a hint of the feverish in Elsie’s activity this evening that even her prescription cocktail could not explain. Elsie held up a hand, flashing Taffy a glance as she did so.

  ‘Give me a moment, darling girl . . . Can’t rush genius, you know . . . That Grace is a dark horse – she’s taught me all sorts of tricks on the social meed-yah.’ In a final flurry of typing, during which time Holly had unloaded the dishwasher and made yet another pot of tea, Elsie ground to a ha
lt.

  When Holly turned around, there seemed to be an unspoken conversation going on across the kitchen table and Taffy’s eyes were fixed on Elsie with an odd intensity.

  ‘What?’ Holly said eloquently, plonking down the steaming pot on the kitchen table and barely missing a Play Doh model of a diplodocus.

  Elsie slowly turned the screen of her wafer-thin laptop until Holly could see it.

  ‘Twitter?’ she asked in confusion. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  Elsie clicked on a link and the screen blossomed into an American trade publication. ‘You can’t keep secrets these days, Holly. Not without somebody knowing about them . . .’

  Holly’s eyes darted back and forth across the screen. Firstly trying to work out who @LoveBunny64 might be and also why they were so keen to help Elsie at a moment’s notice.

  ‘Twitter’s wonderful for casting a net,’ Elsie was saying to Taffy as Holly continued to read. ‘You can just ask a question and throw it out there.’

  Holly sat back in her chair and poured some tea as though on autopilot. ‘So Milo’s making a movie, is he? And a fortune into the bargain.’ She sipped at the tea and her unfocused gaze seemed to reach beyond the windows of her tiny kitchen for a moment.

  Elsie leaned forward. ‘There’s no way he pulled together a deal like this overnight, you know. These things take ages.’ She typed a few words quickly and hit ‘send’ with as much force as a pissed-off Octogenarian could muster. ‘That horrid text was just designed to scare you senseless, so you’d be ripe and willing to sign these the minute they arrived.’

  Taffy nodded. ‘Typical Milo, trying to coerce you into playing by his agenda. Holly, let’s get some advice – please? These papers may look like the Holy Grail, giving you full and uncontested custody of the boys, but you’d be missing out on a huge financial settlement too. After all, he wrote that bloody book while he was married to you and it looks like he’s signed the film rights away before the divorce is finalised . . .’