by Sue Watson
‘I just hope Tamsin’s hubby hasn’t done anything stupid,’ Gabe said, flicking his fag ash on the ground. I wrapped my cardigan around me, it was freezing cold, but I wanted to talk. ‘Do you mean...?’
‘I dunno. People do stupid stuff when they can’t see a way out.’
‘Simon’s too egotistical,’ Richard suddenly said into the smoke and the steam from our breaths. I had to agree, Richard had, along with me suffered a few of Tamsin’s dinner parties in the year we’d been together and said Simon seemed to look down on everyone. My brother-in-law was an ambitious man – he wanted to be the best and have the best – nothing was ever quite good enough for him. I think Tamsin felt at times that she wasn’t good enough for him either. I worried their relationship fed into her low self-esteem, because despite the bluster and the money and the talk – she was incredibly insecure.
‘Well, I just hope he’s still in one piece – ego or not,’ Gabe sighed, looking at Richard and taking another long curl of smoke.
As a reformed smoker I always wanted a cigarette and I couldn’t watch a second longer and asked Gabe for a fag. Richard looked at me with vague disapproval and I ignored him. I was a grown-up and I would smoke if I wanted to. No one controlled me – I’d had enough disapproval from Tamsin for a lifetime and I was damned if I was going to be made to feel guilty about having a cigarette.
Gabe rolled me one and I took it between my thumb and forefinger, breathing it in slowly, relishing the warm, soothing hit at the back of my throat.
We were all standing there contemplating unloading another black bin liner from Tamsin’s life when she appeared in the doorway, hair on end.
‘My Gaggia!’ she shrieked.
We all looked at her bemused.
‘Your whattia?’ Gabe joked, still leaning nonchalantly against his truck, his eyes half-closed through smoke.
‘My coffee maker... I left it behind.’
He smiled, gave a nod and slowly stubbing out his cigarette with his boot, climbed in the truck and drove off.
Richard and I both looked at her.
‘What? I may not have a home, a car or a husband... but I’m damned if I’m going to drop my standards... is that a cigarette in your mouth, madam?’ she asked. I felt fourteen again and was about to tell her to piss off but she went back inside.
‘Ha, you’re in trouble,’ Richard laughed.
‘I feel for her and I know she’s hurting. But I want to kill her and it’s only Day One,’ I said.
‘Well, I can’t stay around watching this comedy unfold. You have sanctuary in the form of keys to my place if you change your mind,’ he smiled.
I wrapped my arms around him. There was nothing I would have loved more than to take Jacob and go over to his place there and then. My heart wanted to snuggle down on his comfy old sofa and sleep in his big bed, but my head kept saying no.
I waved him off and once inside put the kettle on and made Tamsin some tea to calm her down until her Gaggia arrived.
‘I wonder if Simon’s okay?’ I said. I felt I should at least broach the possibility that he might be distressed somewhere and contemplating taking his own life.
‘He’s fine. I heard from the accountant when you went downstairs, didn’t want to say in front of the kids... the coward took his passport and is heading for the only home we have left – in France.’
6
Gabe, the Gaggia and Ghosts of Christmas Past
Tamsin
It was one of those wintry afternoons when we left The Rectory and headed for Sam’s place. It was as though everywhere had been painted in grey watercolours, and pulling out onto the main road, the cars and houses and trees all merged into one. I couldn’t look back at the house, and tried to look in front of me, my head held high. Everything had changed. My life wasn’t the same and the man I loved wasn’t who I thought he was – everything had dissolved like snowflakes landing on a warm hand. It had taken all morning to pack our stuff and Sam had been very annoying and bossy about what she thought I should take. I mean how could I possibly leave my collection of shoes behind? So by the time we’d argued about what should stay and go, we arrived at the bakery in a wintry dusk, the snow being the only source of light in the grey-white. Sam turned off the engine and we sat for a little while – the bakery looked almost ethereal glowing in the middle of the square – like an angel waiting for me. I had to give it to our Sam, she’d made The White Angel Bakery into something very special.
I got out of the car, almost ran inside and it welcomed me in. It looked like a sweet gingerbread house glittering from the inside, filled with bright, cinnamon warmth. It was only early December, but fairy lights were twinkling, the smell of Christmas baking filled the air, and I felt warm and safe for the first time in ages.
* * *
All I wanted was my stuff, a hot drink and a good cry on my own, but within seconds, I realised to my sheer horror – I had forgotten my Gaggia. I simply couldn’t live without it and the fact I’d left behind something so vital was a testament to my fragility and disorientation. I was devastated and despatched Gabe immediately to go and fetch it. Meanwhile Sam made some strange supermarket tea in an attempt to make me feel better – but it upset me even more. I thought she knew I only ever drank Darjeeling.
We sat together in Sam’s tiny living room and drank the vile brew. Surprisingly, she asked if I thought Simon was okay, and I told her about the phone call I’d taken earlier from the accountant. I explained that whilst everyone had been unpacking, I’d lay down on Sam’s bed, trying to stop my head spinning. What on earth was going on? How were we all going to live together? Then my phone rang. At first I thought, hoped, it was Simon, to clear all this up and tell me it was after all a mistake and everything was now sorted, Christmas was back on and I could go home. But it wasn’t it was David Harris the accountant, who told me just how bad everything was and that Simon had known and was now in France.
‘He’s left us to the wolves,’ I said to Sam.
Better men, with bigger companies than Simon, had gone to the wall in the current financial climate... and in itself that wasn’t a shock. But his abandonment of us was like a betrayal, the worst betrayal.
‘What happened to sticking together through thick and thin? And if he didn’t care about me – what about the children?’
Sam shook her head. Then she said; ‘He’s always been... quite self-preserving though hasn’t he Tam?’
I was about to tell her she was wrong – my husband was perfect, but then I remembered, I didn’t have to defend him anymore. For years I’d pretended he was different, that he wasn’t selfish, self-obsessed and bullish – I’d said he was hard-working, distracted and proud of his own achievements, but I’d been lying to myself.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I sighed. ‘Self-preserving is a good way to describe Simon. Once, we were on holiday on one of Rosalind’s yachts and I fell overboard. I’d had a little too much vino and one minute I was Voguing on the poop deck to Madonna, the next I was inspecting the ocean floor at close range. As you know, I can’t swim and fortunately all the men leaped in immediately to rescue me. And when they dragged me out of the water sobbing and coughing up all kinds of canapé and sea urchin, I looked to see where Simon was.’
Sam looked at me. ‘Where was he?’
‘He was bloody waving from the lower deck, a glass of champagne in one hand and Rebecca Hartley-Brewer in the other. Later on I asked him why he hadn’t dived in to save me and he said, “Oh darling, I had my Armani shirt on and it’s dry-clean only.”’
Sam gasped.
‘At the time I thought it was a perfectly acceptable reason to watch your wife drown, but it’s stayed with me... Is it my fault?’ I asked suddenly. I’d spent so much of my childhood taking on blame and responsibility, I’d carried it on into adulthood.
‘No, and don’t you dare suggest it is,’ Sam admonished, like the school teacher she had once been. I wrapped my cashmere shawl around me and thought about how
different my childhood had been from what came later – but had it really?
Feeling the warm, pure white cashmere, like loving arms around me, the magical softness against my face, I was suddenly seven years old, sitting safe on Santa’s knee listing my Christmas desires. It never occurred to me then that the whole point of asking Santa for presents was to ultimately receive them on Christmas day. I never got to own any of the items on my list and, until I was much older, assumed no one else did either. Once or twice I was given some gifts on Christmas Day that I was able to keep, but often they’d disappeared to the pawn shop the day after Boxing Day. Visiting Father Christmas was never about the presents for me – it was about the safety, the cosiness of snuggling up to the red coat. I loved his impossibly thick, snow white beard, the soft, kind eyes. When Sam and I were kids, Lewis’s department store, fifth floor, was where Christmas lived all December. Sam and I loved it there so much we would get the bus into town, often being thrown off if we were caught, because we never had the fare, and would have to walk the four miles home. The department store was a free playground of space hoppers, dolls in boxes and Chopper bikes in flame orange. Sam and I would wander through that wonderland caressing and longing for the baby doll that cried real tears, the red roller skates, the toy post office with paper money, real envelopes and perforated stamps. One year Sam fell in love with a bright blue oven and stared longingly at it every time we visited the store. I told her it would burn her fingers if she touched it and she believed me. She never got to find out, and I never got to wipe the baby doll’s real tears or ride on those roller skates. I smiled, imagining myself as a little girl in Lewis’s department store asking for that baby doll off Santa. He was big and whiskery like my Dad, but that’s where the similarity ended. The man in the red coat with the white beard was softly spoken and gentle, he smelt of burnt candles, cedar wood and cinnamon, and I was safe on Santa’s knee.
Simon had been softly spoken and gentle too when we’d met. He was my rescuer – I married him to escape my father and my childhood, and for twenty four years, I’d thought his love and our money had kept me safe.
Simon had taken me away from the pain and the poverty and by his side I’d been able to fly – but now I realised we’d been in a hot air balloon bobbing along on nothing but air. And in the end he hadn’t loved me enough to stick around. Perhaps he wasn’t so different from my father after all?
Sam was threatening to make another cup of vile tea, so I asked for something stronger and she produced a bottle of wine and two glasses. I pointed out it was New World wine, which wasn’t ideal, but she said it was all she had, and it had to be better than her disgusting tea.
‘You might have to get used to cheap plonk, love,’ she said, pouring two large glasses. We talked for a while, and halfway through the bottle I began to relax.
Looking around the tiny flat it wasn’t all I’d have to get used to – I felt like I was in a cave, it was so dark and small with no window-scapes and just one sofa! I hadn’t been for a while – I often popped into the bakery to order something fabulous for a coffee morning or a dinner party, but I’d rarely been upstairs. I had to admit though despite its complete lack of colour-co-ordination, artwork or style – I felt surprisingly at home.
Sam and I talked for a while, drank a little wine and halfway through the bottle I began to relax.
‘It wasn’t a happy marriage, Sam,’ I said out loud, like I was hearing it for myself the first time.
She nodded, she didn’t seem surprised.
‘After the children were born, Simon abandoned me emotionally. Oh, he continued to provide and paid lip service to our marriage with sex once a fortnight and a weekend away at anniversaries, but that was all.'
‘I reckon you filled up the gap he’d left by spending money,’ she said, emptying the dregs of the bottle equally into our glasses.
‘Yes, but it could have been worse, it could have been drink or drugs or – God forbid – food.’ I shuddered, pulling the sparkling cashmere throw around me, contemplating the sheer vulgarity of excess weight.
‘Tamsin. Don’t be so shallow, it doesn’t matter about a few extra pounds...’
‘Oh that’s where you’re wrong. Imagine the scenes if I’d allowed myself to become addicted to food? No designer clothes, no front row at fashion shows, other women sniggering behind manicured hands at my burgeoning hips.’
Sam shook her head in disbelief. ‘Oh yes, it would have been absolutely terrible, dahling!’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Sam,’ I said, seriously. I sometimes felt Sam didn’t understand me, and my life was a joke to her.
She put her hand out to me and held mine. ‘I’m not laughing at you love... I just think your idea of what’s important in life is different from mine.’
‘I must sound so shallow and superficial to you. I know you’re a much better role model than I am, you’re a woman who lives by her own rules and you aren’t influenced by others –I must be weak, Sam.’
She shook her head vigorously.
‘You’ll hate me for saying this,’ I went on, ‘but I’d wanted to look good, stay slim and young for Simon. In the early days he’d always seemed so proud to have me on his arm, but then he changed and didn’t seem to “see” me anymore. I’d come downstairs in something sexy and fabulous and I’d have to ask him what he thought – he’d never volunteer it – and if pushed he’d say “You look nice.” Nice?’
But now my world had shifted on its axis and I was beginning to see it wasn’t me – it was him. Perhaps the friends who’d laughed behind their hands as he reeled off his list of possessions and achievements had a point? They’d seen the ruthless Simon I’d chosen to ignore. When your heart is broken by your daddy as a little girl, you can’t put yourself through it all again, so you lie to yourself to make your husband your hero.
I hated him for what he’d done. I thought he was strong, but strength wasn’t running away – it was staying and fighting, standing your ground and facing the consequences. Heroes didn’t abandon their families.
* * *
That first morning at Sam’s, I woke up and reached for Simon, then I remembered, and my heart clanged shut. Eventually I climbed out of bed, dressed, donned my dark glasses and went down into the bakery to see Sam. She was busy serving customers, this was her world and I was the intruder and completely out of place in black Prada trousers and YSL blouse. I needn’t have bothered with dark glasses because Mrs J spotted me from across the shop and announced my arrival to all and sundry. So much for discretion.
‘Oh here she is... here’s our Tamsin. Are you alright, love? I was just saying,’ she gestured to a couple of ladies drinking coffee, ‘after what's happened, you’ll be cooking your own teas from now on...’ To my abject horror, these women were nodding, she’d clearly filled them in on everything. ‘Nice stews, big pea soups, that’s what you need, none of that fancy schmancy stuff... you need to build yourself up, I’ve always thought you was too skinny.’
Great, so Mrs J was now ‘helping’ at the bakery and keen to educate me in the culinary delights I had in store as a homeless, moneyless person. I really didn’t need her to go on and on... but she did, and at the risk of a migraine (the vibrant green image of ‘big pea soup’ lodged in my head and stomach), I grimaced, turned round and went straight back upstairs.
I made myself some coffee (thanking God for Gaggia and Gabe) and tried to read one of the magazines I’d packed. Leafing through Cheshire Life I felt a stabbing pain at the sight of Anouska in scarlet draped around a Nordic pine Christmas Tree like an anorexic Red Riding Hood. I couldn’t bear to turn the page and threw it to the floor, it was all so painful. Last year it was me with my Nordic pine splashed across the society pages. How I hated being out of the loop, stuck in the flat above the bakery – I wanted to go home and get ready for the season but had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t mine any more. The kids had already gone to their friends’ houses where there were spare rooms, flat screen TVs a
nd plenty of light and heat. It was freezing in Sam’s flat and I was just glad I’d packed my cashmere shawl – I gathered it around me as I sipped my coffee. Pure Sumatra Wahana, one of the few luxuries I had left in the world, and who knew how long for? I sipped sparingly at the rich roast of my old life and turned on the TV. One of those awful trailer trash daytime things sprang up – where people accuse strangers of being the father of one of their ten kids. A rotund man was arguing with the host about how much he drank and how he didn’t beat his wife – and my insides shrivelled. The air was blue and the man was spitting at his wife as he spoke: his face scarlet with burst blood vessels, beer and rage, her face pale with the kind of fear only a woman in her situation knows. I couldn’t watch any more so turned it off, wishing it were that easy to turn off my memories. The red faces, the spittle of anger, the hurt, all the damage. In adulthood, money had soothed me, cocooned me in perfumed interiors and luxury fabrics. I had wrapped myself in love and cashmere... but had I ever been really happy?
I suddenly remembered it was Tuesday. Anouska, Phaedra and I always lunched at Puccini’s on a Tuesday. Oh how wonderful to have pumpkin ravioli again, I suddenly longed for the crunch of garlic croutons in rich, hot minestrone, and my mouth watered at the prospect of a liberal sprinkling of tangy Parmesan. The girls must have been wondering where I was and why I hadn’t yet turned up for our usual pre-lunch Prosecco. Recalling the delicious prickle of those cold bubbles, I dug my phone out of my handbag surprised to see there were no missed calls or texts so called Phaedra. She would be so upset when I told her what had happened she’d insist on collecting me and paying for my lunch herself. It rang out for a while, but she didn’t answer, she must have been late and missed the pre-lunch Prosecco. Yes she would still be driving to the restaurant – so I texted her. She’d get back to me when she arrived. In the meantime I called Anouska. I was slightly more reluctant to speak to Anouska; I had an uneasy feeling she might get a little thrill from my total devastation, but her phone kept ringing out too. She’d be straight on the phone when she saw my missed call so I made some more coffee and checked my phone. Surely they had arrived at the restaurant by now? I sent them both another text and settled down to watch This Morning and a lovely item on Christmas Cocktails. I wrote down some of the recipes thinking how cranberry juice and champagne would be fabulous to serve at my Christmas charity supper for Alcoholics Anonymous. Then I remembered – I wasn’t hosting any charity Christmas suppers this year. I was the charity now.