Sue smiled and flicked the butt out into the garden.
“Oh, sod this!” said Martha and turned back into the kitchen. She poured her coffee into the sink and opened the fridge. “This was for the new owners but, screw it, let’s have a proper drink.”
She took another chilled bottle of champagne out of the fridge and handed it to Sue who promptly ditched her own coffee and made her way back out into the dusky garden. Sue popped the cork and watched it bounce off the trellised wall and disappear into a flower-bed. She poured it into the two glasses Martha had set on the table.
“Of course I’m bitter and twisted!” said Martha. “I was with the same bloke for ten years for heaven’s sake – had it all, I thought – the wedding in the country manor, the big house in the suburbs, baby coming along two years later, like I’d planned it. Shame it wasn’t what Dan had planned in the slightest. His plans only extended to when he could next do the dirty with Paula Bloody Gooding!”
“Here,” said Sue, familiar with the routine of letting Martha rant since she had discovered her husband’s second relationship eight months previously. She topped up Martha’s glass and lit herself another cigarette. “To keep the midges away, of course,” she said, grinning at Martha.
Martha sipped her drink and inhaled Sue’s second-hand smoke deeply, wishing at that moment she had never given up. “You know what bugs me the most, Sue? It’s that he carried on with everything that we had planned and he’d have carried on forever if I hadn’t found out. If Tom Oakes hadn’t commiserated with me when he saw them at the Ad Awards, then I’d probably still be blissfully unaware my husband had a long-term girlfriend. It was only when he got caught that Dan actually grew the balls to admit that none of this was ‘his bag’.” She glanced back at the four-bedroomed terraced house that she had spent five years lovingly turning into a home for her family, then pointed at the window over the kitchen. “The only good thing that came out of that marriage is asleep in that room and her father doesn’t even want to know her. And I think that he loves Paula Gooding more than he ever loved me, and more than he’ll ever love Ruby, and that absolutely kills me. So yes – in answer to your question I think I am absolutely doing the right thing in selling up and getting out of Dodge. At least for six months or so to get my head straight, instead of just moping around here trying to . . . to catch a whiff of the nasty, leftover stink of my marriage.” There were tears in Martha’s eyes which she was trying her hardest to fight back. “You know what else kills me? That my little girl will never have a brother or sister who calls the same man ‘Daddy’, that she’ll always feel left out at nursery or at school when kids talk about their dads – and what does she do if, say, they’re making cards for Father’s Day?”
“Relax,” said Sue. “I don’t think they do that any more – there are plenty of kids like Ruby with no dad, or kids with two dads, or twenty ‘uncles’ or two mummies.”
“That’s true,” said Martha, comforted by this thought.
“Of course you’re doing the right thing,” said Sue reassuringly. “I’ll just miss you both so much. We’ve never lived more than ten miles apart since we were at university.” She rubbed Martha’s hand lightly with her own.
Martha drained her glass. “That’s another thing, Sue. I’ve got to do this writing thing as well, and everything in London is so tied up with the divorce that I can’t get down to it with a clear head. I mean, I’ve left my job to finally write the book I’ve been promising myself I’d write since I was a kid. I’ve got to give it a proper go, now that I can finance it with this . . .” she indicated the house which she would leave forever the following morning, “and with the maintenance, provided Mr Lover can remember to pay it. I’ve brought Ruby into a broken home – I have to be able to offer her the best, be a mum who is trying her hardest to fulfil her own potential if I’m to be any example to her. I can’t be someone who’s face down in a bottle of wine every night because I’m trying to blot out the thought of going to work in the morning. You know I hate advertising with a passion and this is my chance to get away, start afresh. My life’s just a great big bloody – toilet here in London.”
Sue smirked, recognising that a combination of champagne and tiredness was beginning to speak instead of Martha. “Albeit a very nice toilet with a new Audi and lovely clothes and tons of handbags and shoes!”
Martha grinned, glad that her friend was there to bring her back down to earth. “Okay, so it’s a gold-plated toilet with a thing that whirrs around to clean the seat for me!” she laughed. “But a toilet nonetheless, good madam! Seriously though, I’ve got to give this the best shot I can and if that means moving away then that’s what I’ve got to do.”
Sue nodded. “Pity Party over?”
Martha nodded. “Yes. Pity Party over. And please don’t use that phrase around me again. It’s going on the banned list along with ‘twenty-four seven’ and ‘do the math’. Oh, and another one – ‘so over it’!” She grinned. “I’m like totally so over that one!” she said, and the two laughed.
“To Martha and Ruby!” said Sue, raising her glass.
Martha followed suit.
“May your stint in the countryside be as fulfilling as you dream it can be,” continued Sue, addressing the trees and shrubs in the darkening garden. “And may you bloody well cheer up soon!”
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