Seeing Other People

by Gayle, Mike

  There was a long silence. Penny and Rob/Dad exchanged awkward glances. Clearly neither of them knew what to make of this. Was I joking or was I insane? Even I had to weigh the question up in the light of their reaction and the more horrified they became the more my confidence faltered. Did Rob/Dad really look like my own father? They had slightly similar features, but so had a million other old men. And yes, his voice had sounded familiar at first but now I thought about it I wasn’t so sure.

  I’d been so convinced of my own argument but now my words were out there all they served to do was make it clear just how bonkers an idea this was.

  The longer the silence went on, the more I doubted what I’d said. This was horrible. Truly horrible. If I continued to insist that the world wasn’t real, when it clearly was, Penny would have no choice but to get me hospitalised, maybe even sectioned, and who knew where that would end? Like Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys, babbling on about being from the future and locked up in a mental institution? Did Rob/Dad have a panic button hidden somewhere behind a box of tissues which he’d reach for at the next opportunity? I needed to think fast.

  They always say that the most straightforward answers are most likely to be true. How likely was it that my dead ex-girlfriend had attacked me to save me from cheating on my wife? Wasn’t it infinitely more plausible that I’d actually done it and was so overwhelmed with guilt that I’d blocked it out and the episodes with Fiona were my way of dealing with it? Surely this was a case of extreme stress and nothing more: the mind doing odd things to keep itself from short-circuiting. It didn’t mean that I was mad or in danger of losing my mind. It simply meant that I had to get out of here, grab a good night’s sleep and get back to being my old self. I needed to rest.

  I sat forward in my chair, the tension palpable, then I laughed and held my hands up in surrender. ‘Anyone would think you’d never heard a joke before.’

  Rob shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I think the most politic thing to say here, Joe, is that when it comes to humour context is everything.’

  Penny stood up, her face livid. ‘I can’t believe you, Joe! You begged me to work on our marriage, made me feel guilty for giving up on us and now this? Is this all just one big joke to you?’ She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t going to say this until the end of the session but seeing the way things are going I don’t see the point in keeping it to myself any longer: I want you to move out. I’m tired of lying to the kids every day, I’m tired of all the subterfuge. I’ve had enough.’

  Rob held up his hand. ‘Maybe we should take a break? In my experience decisions made in the heat of the moment aren’t always the most helpful.’

  ‘No,’ said Penny. ‘I want you out, Joe. I want you gone.’

  17

  Saturday. Mid-afternoon. The seventeenth floor of a high-rise block of flats not far from Lewisham station. A two-bed ex-council flat that had three things going for it: a bedroom each for Rosie and Jack (so long as I slept on the sofa), a living room large enough for me to imagine the kids and me spending a rainy afternoon playing games in without tripping over ourselves and most importantly the fact that I could just about afford it. On the other hand, of the several things it had going against it – being a high-rise, the lifts not working, and the smell of urine in the stairwell – the thing that was really putting me off right now was the sound of the couple in the flat next door hurling expletive-riddled abuse at each other.

  ‘How much for this place again?’

  The estate agent grimaced. ‘Let’s just say,’ he replied pointedly, ‘that the rent is definitely up for negotiation.’

  Despite days of me apologising Penny had absolutely refused to budge on her request that I moved out of the family home. I had explained away my attempt to tell her what I saw as the truth saying it was a stress response to the situation, a bit like laughing when someone dies. Following, I suspect, a phone call to the counsellor she had come to accept this, albeit begrudgingly, and even agreed to return to counselling. Not however with me still at home. From her point of view my moving out was the only way forward. How could we ever hope to return to normal when my being around the house did nothing but make the situation worse? Every morning we ate breakfast together like a normal family was just another reminder that we were pretending to be something now that Penny didn’t feel we were and she hated it. I couldn’t stand to see her so unhappy and so I agreed to start looking for somewhere to live.

  Desperate to stay close to my family but acutely aware of my meagre budget, my choices were seriously limited. Like most London couples Penny and I had mortgaged ourselves to the hilt in order to get the most for our money and with Penny working part-time there wasn’t a lot of spare cash floating around. That said, as relatively cheap as the B&B had been in the short term returning there in the long term wasn’t an option and so while Penny took the kids to her Mum and Tony’s for the weekend, I started my house search in earnest.

  The second place I saw that day was another ex-local authority flat, five minutes away from the first property. It was in the middle of a large council estate and the area reminded me of the kinds of places Penny and I had first looked at when we’d decided to move on from house shares to getting a place of our own. The overwhelming impression I had of the flat was that it stank, of cigarettes, grease and desperation. It seemed to be ingrained in the walls and the carpets, and sewn into the very fabric of the back street charity shop-style furniture. Seeing the disappointment on my face the estate agent had offered me a deal where the rent would be discounted significantly if I was prepared to spruce the place up a bit at my own expense but I think we both knew that little short of knocking the whole building down and starting again would make it habitable.

  I spent what remained of my weekend and the week following looking at flat after flat and being so disappointed that I began to wonder if there was any decent rentable accommodation left in London. I saw flats that had chronic problems with damp, ones that overlooked railway lines and others with a full generational set of antisocial neighbours. It started to look like I was never going to find a home. Then at my boss’s suggestion I posted a request on the Correspondent’s online internal bulletin board, and as luck would have it by the end of that afternoon I received an offer from an ad sales executive from the fifth floor.

  ‘My fiancée and I have just bought the place,’ he explained over coffee at the local Starbucks – ever since my run-in with Bella I’d avoided Allegro’s like the plague. ‘It’s structurally sound but in need of updating and we can’t do the work until my flat in Enfield is sold which could take at least six months because we’re having problems with the lease extension. In the interim I’d be happy to let it to a fellow Correspondent employee for a reasonable rate just to keep it occupied. You’re more than welcome to come and take a look tonight if it sounds up your street though I must stress it isn’t in a great state.’

  He wasn’t joking. The house was a wreck. A deceased estate, previously owned by an elderly man who though obviously a keen gardener hadn’t exactly been an interior decorating wizard. The orange and green carpets, sludge coloured anaglypta walls and brick-built fireplace complete with fully functioning fake-log-effect gas fire made me feel as though I’d travelled back in time to the late seventies – and not in a good way – but the house’s one saving grace was that it was only ten minutes from Penny and the kids. It was a winner.

  The ad sales guy and I shook hands on the deal. A guaranteed six-month lease at minimal rent and given his plans to totally renovate the place I could decorate it any way I wanted in the meantime. As deals went it was the best I could hope for.

  ‘I feel bad charging you anything for this place,’ he said as we left the house. ‘It’s a total tip. You must really be up against it to want to live here.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I replied.

  At the end of our counselling session the following week I asked Penny if she had time for a coffee as I had some news I wanted
to share. She agreed and we went to a little place just around the corner. We ordered our drinks at the counter and then took up seats near the window. Penny must have sensed how difficult this conversation was going to be because for the first time in what felt like forever she made small talk.

  ‘How’s work?’ she asked.

  ‘OK,’ I replied. ‘Nothing much to report really; I interviewed quite an interesting guy at the start of the week. He’s a director who for the last year or so has been making a series of films about his family and posting them online. Fascinating stuff. How about you?’

  ‘Same as ever: too much to do, too little time to do it.’ She smiled awkwardly. ‘That was a good session wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was,’ I replied, even though for me it had been anything but. In the middle of the session Rob had asked us if, prior to the affair, we’d thought we were happy. I’d said yes straight away because I’d assumed that he meant happy as a couple which I had been because as far as I was concerned my problems had been with myself, not with my marriage. When Penny took her turn however she revealed that there had been times when she’d wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake getting married, which had completely been news to me.

  I looked at Penny. ‘Did you mean what you said?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About sometimes wishing you hadn’t married me?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. What I said was that sometimes I wished I’d never got married – not just to you – to anyone.’

  ‘Because . . . what? Marriage is a terrible institution?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she replied. ‘I loved being married, I loved our life together it’s just that . . . I don’t know, when you’re that close with another person it’s easy to lose sight of who you are . . . what you want . . . what you need.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Like work for instance, it was never my great ambition to be a social work team leader bogged down in paperwork. I wanted to have a career that meant something. We both did. You wanted to be a writer. I wanted . . . well I know at one point I talked about working for Greenpeace but the truth was I didn’t care all that much; I just wanted my career to be special. But then you compromise, don’t you? The book you write doesn’t sell well, or the dream job you wanted doesn’t materialise – and before you know it the job you took to pay your half of the rent has become your career. I think part of me always felt that if I’d been single I wouldn’t have compromised on my career just as you wouldn’t have either. We would have just ploughed on trying to make it work because we’d only have had ourselves to worry about. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial. I’m just saying that meeting the love of your life when you’re young changes things, doesn’t it? After graduating from university at twenty-one we made decisions that most people wouldn’t have to make until much later in life because we wanted to be together and it felt like the right thing to do.’ The waitress arrived with our coffees, interrupting the flow of conversation. By the time she’d put down the drinks and asked if we wanted anything else I could see from Penny’s face that the moment had passed and that I needed to get to the point of why I’d asked her here.

  I picked up a packet of sugar and poured the contents into my cup. I hated sugar in coffee but right now I needed the taste of something sweet in my mouth.

  I stirred in the sugar and looked at Penny. ‘I’ve found a place.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Crofton Road.’

  ‘Near the park?’

  ‘Just around the corner.’

  We sipped our coffees silently. I could tell Penny was thinking the same as me: how would we tell the kids? It was an impossible situation.

  ‘I was thinking we’d tell them it was just a temporary thing,’ said Penny as though reading my mind. ‘That yes, we are having some problems but that we are trying our best to sort them out. Then we can ask if they have any questions.’

  I felt sick. This was really happening. Despite Fiona’s assertions to the contrary this wasn’t a dream, this was my life, and it was disintegrating for real. ‘I can’t imagine telling them, can you? Penny, please, I’m begging you, let’s sort this out between us.’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to do isn’t it?’

  ‘But do we have to tell the kids?’

  ‘What should we do instead? Carry on deceiving them? Rosie’s not stupid Joe, she knows you’ve been sleeping downstairs.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She asked me why we weren’t putting the burglar alarm on at night any more but she did it in that way where I knew she was asking something more. She’s a bright kid, Joe. Treating her like she’s not does us all a disservice.’

  I could barely get the words out. ‘When would we do it?’

  ‘The sooner the better,’ said Penny. ‘The longer we leave it the worse it’ll be.’

  18

  As much as I needed to say goodbye to my family, I think Penny did too, and the idea of a reprieve seemed too good to turn down. So for the week that followed both of us put aside our differences and played happy families for all we were worth: the kind that went to Nando’s on a weekday, let their kids stay up late when they had school next day and spent a small fortune on a last-minute two-night break to Center Parcs. Rosie and Jack loved every minute of it and Penny and I would have too if we hadn’t known the truth. But as it was even as we laughed and joked with the kids all I could think was that I was witnessing nothing less than the end of their innocence.

  On the following Friday night, just as Penny and I had arranged, I left work early, picked the kids up from school and brought them home to a feast of takeaway pizzas ordered by Penny that we ate huddled together on the sofa in front of the TV. Towards the end of the evening as Jack was requesting just one more episode of Scooby Doo I switched off the TV and announced that I had something important to tell them.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jack. ‘Are we getting a PlayStation?’

  ‘No, son,’ I replied. ‘It’s about Mum and me.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Well, the thing is we’ve been having some problems.’

  Rosie’s brow furrowed. ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘Grown-up problems,’ I replied.

  ‘Daddy and I still love each other very much,’ added Penny. ‘And we love you guys more than the world and we’re doing everything we can to make things right. But while we do that Daddy’s going to be living somewhere else.’

  Jack looked stricken. ‘But Daddy can’t live on his own. It’s not right.’

  Rosie looked me straight in the eye. ‘Are you and Mum getting divorced?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said quickly and to my relief Penny backed me up.

  ‘We just need some time apart, that’s all,’ said Penny. ‘You’ll see Dad all the time. He’ll pick you up some days and cook you tea, it’ll be like he’s still here.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Jack.

  ‘I don’t like it either,’ said Rosie.

  ‘I know my lovelies,’ said Penny her eyes brimming with tears, ‘but right now it’s just the way it’s got to be.’

  I moved out the following afternoon while the kids were still at school. Penny had said that I should feel free to take whatever I wanted but when it came to it I didn’t want very much of anything at all. I took my clothes of course; two silver-framed pictures of the kids, some bedding and a couple of box files filled with bank and credit card statements but that was it. Partly I didn’t take any more because I couldn’t fit it into the car but mostly I left stuff behind because I wanted to send a clear message to the kids that this was temporary; one day sooner or later I was coming back.

  At Penny’s request I stayed away from the house for a while to give the kids a chance to settle into the new routine; wanting to keep the peace I agreed to make do with daily chats on the phone. Rosie barely said a word during these calls. I’d ask her question after question abou
t her day and got nothing in return other than one-word answers punctuated with long sullen silences but as awful as they were they paled in comparison to the conversations with Jack. Every call was pretty much the same: he’d demand through angry, snotty tears that I should return home immediately and when I told him I couldn’t he’d just sob his heart out. I normally had my first drink of the day after I had spoken to the kids in the evening in the vain hope that the alcohol would make life bearable.

  Finally however Penny called to suggest that I should spend some time with the kids so the following evening I left work as early as I could and headed over to the house of the childminder who picked up the kids after school whenever Penny was working.

  Jane Cairns was a hippyish but harmless woman who had been childminding on and off for Penny and me ever since Rosie was born. Jane loved the kids like they were her own and even Rosie, who frankly found most interactions with adults something of a chore, would happily chat to her for hours without ever resorting to sarcasm.

  ‘I can’t begin to tell you how devastated I am for you both,’ said Jane, smothering me in a tight hug. ‘It’s such a terrible thing, the end of a marriage. Penny didn’t go into details, and I don’t really want to know them either, I just wanted to say that if you need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here for you.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s really kind of you,’ I replied as Jane finally released me from her grip, ‘but would you mind if I went and saw the kids now?’

  Rosie and Jack were watching TV in the living room along with two of Jane’s other charges. Like that day in the playground, the moment Jack realised that it was me in the room and not the parent of one of the other kids he leaped to his feet squealing with delight and showering me with kisses.