Diary of an Unsmug Married

by Polly James

  ‘Wh-a-a?’ she says, before starting to snort again. Playing the innocent, like every mad constituent I’ve ever met.

  She carries on snorting while I glare at her, until I realise that she isn’t laughing. She’s crying, very messily – so I hand her some toilet roll, then wait for her to calm down and blow her nose.

  ‘He was going to propose, back in June, when we were in Germany,’ she says. ‘I know he was.’

  ‘Propose?’ I say, fighting another wave of nausea. ‘How the hell can he propose? He’s still married – at the moment.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ says Ellen. ‘He’s never been married. He’s far too young for that. Or that’s what he says now, anyway. That’s why he dumped me earlier on today. He wants children, and I’ve already got more than enough.’

  Max has, too, given that one of them is Josh, so I’m shaking my head in confusion, when Greg appears at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I’m still waiting for you to come back, Mol,’ he says. ‘I haven’t finished telling you about what happened with Vicky.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I say, stepping over Ellen, who’s still emitting the occasional sob. ‘I’m coming now. It’s time we all sang “Happy Birthday” to Max anyway, I suppose.’

  Max – who definitely isn’t too young to be married. And is, anyway – to me. God, I’m slow.

  I turn back towards Ellen, and bend down so that I can whisper in her ear. ‘By the way,’ I say, ‘who was it who was going to propose?’

  ‘Alex,’ she says, ‘of course. The one I met at salsa class. Who did you think it was?’

  ‘Oh, him,’ I say. ‘Alex, I mean. The salsa man – yes, obviously that’s who I thought you meant. I’m just no good with names, or sports. I thought you two met at kick-boxing.’

  I pat Ellen on the shoulder, as I like her a whole lot better all of a sudden – as well as the salsa-dancing Alex.

  ‘You joining us?’ I say to her.

  She nods, stands up and starts to follow me down the stairs, wobbling unnervingly. Greg raises his eyebrows as she finally reaches the bottom and walks straight into him.

  ‘Ah, Greg,’ I say, ‘have you met Ellen, by the way?’

  ‘No,’ says Greg, turning to face her. ‘But I feel as if I already know you very well.’

  Ellen stops crying, brushes away her tears and licks her lips, before giving him a beaming, perfectly veneered smile, which doesn’t move her eyebrows one iota.

  ‘You look like that guy in American Psycho,’ she says. ‘The one with the interesting sex-life, I mean.’

  ‘That’s me,’ says Greg, squaring his shoulders and sucking in his stomach. I feel sick again.

  ‘On that fascinating note, shall we go and join the others?’ I say, not a moment too soon as it turns out.

  Dinah’s already furious with me, when I find her in the kitchen.‘Where the bloody buggery have you been, Mol?’ she says, flicking ash all over the place while stabbing candle holders into the cake. You’d swear we didn’t have a rule about never smoking in the house, and God knows what Health and Safety would say.

  She throws her cigarette out of the back door when she sees my expression, then continues: ‘It’s about time we lit the candles on this beautiful cake that you asked me to make for Max, and that neither one of you has bothered to comment on. If Max can be arsed to get off the phone in time to blow them out, that is. He’s been talking to someone for hours and hours. God knows who.’

  If God does, I certainly don’t, but there’s no time to ask for divine guidance now, not when Dinah’s on the warpath, so I send Connie off to check on Max. When she comes back she says that he isn’t on the phone any longer, so then I light the candles and carry the cake through to the living room while everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’.

  Dinah’s put Josh in charge of the video camera, which she says will be safer than leaving him teaching Jake to skateboard in the garden. She’s even crosser about Jake’s newly missing second tooth than she is about the cake, even though Josh says the accident was entirely Jake’s fault for ‘failing to follow clear landing instructions’.

  ‘Smile, Dad,’ he says, zooming in.

  Max blows all the candles out in one fell swoop, then closes his eyes to make a wish. He doesn’t say what he wishes for, though he gives me a very peculiar look when he opens his eyes again.

  ‘Speech, speech!’ says Sam – so many times that Max eventually agrees to oblige.

  He begins by thanking everyone for coming, and says that he hopes his mid-life crisis is now over, rather than just beginning. Then he raises his glass, and says, ‘And now I have two very important people to thank. Number one – Mrs Bloom.’

  Oh, shit. Mrs Bloom. Who is she, if she isn’t Ellen? And why is she number one? Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong place, yet again. No wonder I can never find a thing.

  Max waits for ages before continuing with his speech, until someone yells at him to carry on. I don’t think it was me, though I suppose it could have been.

  ‘Mrs Bloom is my favourite ex-customer,’ he says. ‘She can’t be here tonight, as she’s in hospital, but she’s just phoned, to make me an offer.’

  Presumably to go and live with her. Now he’s going to say, ‘So I am leaving my incompetently faithless wife for someone she thought was a work of fiction.’ Argh. Why doesn’t he just hurry up?

  I nudge him as he takes a mouthful of wine, so that just delays things even further. Max is still wiping himself down with a towel when he says, ‘She has just offered to set me up in business, working for myself, effectively. So I am no longer middle-aged and redundant, just middle-aged.’

  Everyone claps and cheers again, apart from me. I am still processing what Max has just said, and what it means. He puts his arm around my shoulders and carries on with his speech.

  ‘And the other important person I need to thank is my lovely wife. She may be last on this occasion, but she’s never least, or not to me, anyway.’

  He turns to face me, and raises his now-empty glass.

  ‘Thanks for arranging this great party, Mol, and for – well, everything, really. Even though I take you for granted far too much.’

  ‘You do,’ says Sam, much to my surprise, though apparently not to Connie or Josh’s.

  They are both nodding at Max, in approval. Then he winks at them.

  ‘I may not buy you enough roses, Mol,’ he says, as he moves in for a kiss, ‘but you know you mean everything to me. You always will.’

  I kiss him back, despite a sudden bout of hiccups. Then several times more when I spot Greg and Ellen sneaking out of the back door, hand in hand.

  SUNDAY, 31 OCTOBER

  I don’t even have a hangover this morning, and Max and I have earned two gold stars! We might be about to earn another one, too, if only my phone would stop beeping for long enough.

  ‘Who is it who keeps trying to contact you?’ says Max. ‘Your phone kept making noises half the night. Nearly put me off more than your hiccups did.’

  ‘It’s probably The Boss,’ I say. ‘Who I’m ignoring, since he fired me. Or at least since I think he did.’

  ‘What?’ says Max; I forgot I hadn’t got round to telling him I might be unemployed – though he doesn’t seem too bothered, once I’ve finished explaining.

  ‘Well, it’s probably a good thing,’ he says, ‘if Andrew’s so stupid that he trusts that woman over you. And, anyway, you’ll get a better job, easily.’

  I don’t know why he thinks that, when there aren’t exactly hundreds of Labour MPs needing caseworkers since the election. Maybe I should find out what Andrew’s got to say for himself.

  ‘No need,’ says Max, as I pick up my phone to check my texts. ‘Have you forgotten Mrs Bloom’s investment? When I set myself up in business, I’m going to need a good PA.’

  Now my phone’s ringing, not just beeping. It’s only Greg, though, so I decline the call. I am being interviewed for a job, which is much more important – if quite unusual, when
in the nude.

  ‘So,’ says Max, ‘that means that you can tell Andrew to shove his job, if you want to, even if he didn’t mean to fire you. I couldn’t possibly be a worse boss than he is … could I?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I say, ‘though I’m pretty sure he’d wouldn’t ask me important questions while naked. I’ll think about it.’

  There’s a crash outside our room, on the landing, and then Connie and Josh start yelling at each other. Some things never change – like casual sexism, now I come to think of it.

  ‘Why do you have to be the boss?’ I say to Max. ‘Why can’t I be in charge, for a change?’

  He laughs, then says, ‘You can’t spank your boss. I was planning on you playing the Maggie Gyllenhaal role in Secretary, if you really want to know.’

  ‘Ah,’ I say. ‘Well, that sounds a lot more interesting. Want to have a test run now?’

  Max nods, then there’s another crash, this time right outside our door, and Josh yells, ‘Ow!’

  ‘Later, I think,’ says Max, getting out of bed. ‘When I’ve taken Connie to the train station, and found a way to evict our beloved son.’

  He manages the first, but not the second, so we leave Josh at home when we go out for a late lunch, just the two of us.

  ‘Are you sure Josh hasn’t broken his foot?’ I say. ‘He did kick the banister rail ever so hard.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Max. ‘Though he’s going to have a hell of a bruise. When will he learn that Connie always ducks?’ He leans across the table and takes my hands. ‘Now let’s stop talking about our bloody kids,’ he says, ‘and talk about us, for once. Are we going to be okay, d’you think?’

  I look at him – at the lines around his eyes that I’ve watched develop over years of wincing at Josh, at the glint of the few grey strands that are starting to appear in his hair – and I think about what he’s just said. No one else would know that Connie always ducks. Johnny wouldn’t, and nor would Ellen.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think we’re going to be okay. Do you?’

  ‘I hope so,’ he says, ‘though I dread to think what you’ve been writing about me in that diary of yours. Maybe I should take a look? To see what your over-active imagination has been conjuring up.’

  ‘Oh, nothing important,’ I say, my fingers firmly crossed. ‘Just a record of the daily grind. And that’s going to change now, anyway – isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Max, though I’m not sure either of us knows what changes I’m referring to. All I know is that I’m going to burn my diary as soon as I get the chance.

  With that in mind, I light a fire as soon as we get home, using a whole box of firelighters in an attempt to get it going as quickly as possible. It’s excessive, but it works, and Max and I are just snuggling down together on the sofa, admiring the flames, when the bloody doorbell rings. Neither of us wants to move, so we both look imploringly at Josh, who shakes his head and pleads his latest ‘disability’.

  When the doorbell rings again, for a very long time, I groan, then admit defeat.

  ‘Hurry up,’ says someone, silhouetted against the glass of the door. ‘Let me in. I’m bloody freezing.’

  It’s Greg, who looks even more like Patrick Bateman than usual.

  ‘You’ll never guess where I’ve just been,’ he says, heading into the kitchen and turning the kettle on.

  I raise my eyebrows but don’t make any attempt to guess. I already know, given that Greg’s still wearing the same clothes that he had on last night: at Ellen’s house. If I encourage him, he’ll probably tell me her favourite sexual position, or what she’s saying when she yells like that, and I am trying not to feed my imagination any more.

  ‘The police station,’ says Greg. ‘To collect The Boss. He was arrested in the early hours.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, once I’ve got over the shock. ‘So that’s why you phoned me this morning.’

  ‘Yes, you idiot, but you didn’t answer. As usual, these days. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’

  ‘I don’t want to know stuff about a job I no longer have,’ I say. ‘Is that so unreasonable? Anyway, you’re here now, so you may as well tell me – what did Andrew do?’

  ‘What did who do?’ says Josh, who’s just come hopping into the kitchen to get more ice to put on his foot.

  ‘No one did anything,’ says Greg, before turning his back on Josh and mouthing, ‘Tell you in a minute’, at me. ‘When we’re in private.’

  Then he makes himself a coffee, and scatters sweeteners into it, like confetti.

  He’s on his second cup by the time Josh has finished telling him about how annoying sisters are, as well as how unsympathetic girlfriends can be to boyfriends who are ‘slightly accident-prone’ when dealing with those sisters – and I am rapidly losing the will to live. If it gets much later, Max will fall asleep and we won’t manage to test our Secretary scenario tonight. There must be some way to persuade Josh to bugger off.

  The box of chocolates that Max got for his birthday does the trick.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ I say to Greg as Josh finally hops out of the room, chewing a hazelnut and almond praline, one of Max’s favourites. ‘I thought he’d be here all night, going on about his self-inflicted injury. So what was Andrew arrested for?’

  ‘Drink-driving,’ says Greg. ‘But that’s all I’m allowed to tell you about what happened. He says you are to read tomorrow’s paper, as he’s sent you a hidden message, to show you that he’s not really a bad guy, and to persuade you to come back to work.’

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. I just eat a truffle, absent-mindedly.

  ‘You don’t look very happy about it,’ says Greg.

  ‘I don’t know if I am,’ I say, ‘though you’re looking very pleased with yourself. Something to do with Ellen, by any chance?’

  Greg looks surprised for a second, until I gesture at his clothes.

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘So that’s how you knew. Well, let’s just say James Blunt has a certain appeal.’

  ‘Christ,’ I say, then illogically, ‘Judas. You’re supposed to be on my side, Greg. That woman almost brought my marriage to its knees. God knows what was going on between her and Max.’

  ‘Nothing was going on,’ says Greg, rolling his eyes. ‘I can promise you that. Ellen says Max is far too old for her liking. She likes them young and fit, like me.’

  I’m so stunned that I don’t even react to the word ‘fit’ being used in relation to Greg. I’m more concerned about the slur on Max – and what it says about me.

  ‘Ellen’s the same age as Max, for God’s sake,’ I say, ‘and me. And what was all that mad sex talk about, whenever she saw him, and all those nudges and winks? She kept making meaningful comments about him to me, every time I saw her – you know that.’

  ‘I know,’ says Greg, with a pained expression. ‘I did ask her about that, in a roundabout way, but you’re not going to like what she said.’

  I probably won’t, but I still have to know. ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘And I’ll try my best not to over-react.’

  It must be bad, because Greg pats my hand before he speaks. He doesn’t even shake hands with ministers, without using hand sanitiser afterwards.

  ‘She said, “Molly’s so easy to wind up”,’ he says. ‘“She gives me hours and hours of fun.”’

  I’d go and kill her now, if I hadn’t promised Greg I’d stay calm, so I eat another of Max’s truffles instead. And then several more.

  ‘I almost had an affair because of that, though,’ I say, feeling sick, though I suppose that could be due to the chocolate.

  ‘I know,’ says Greg. ‘But you didn’t, did you? And it’s all over with the oil baron now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He was playing me for a fool, just like Ellen was. So I suppose I must really be a fool.’

  ‘Hm,’ says Greg, as I show him out, before rushing upstairs to bed. Max – miraculously – is still awake.

  ‘Have you b
een a naughty girl, Molly?’ he asks, slapping my hairbrush into his palm, in a menacing fashion.

  ‘Ye-es,’ I say. ‘I think I may have been – but completely by accident. Honestly.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  November

  (Bonfire of the vanities, as well as of this diary – I hope.)

  MONDAY, 1 NOVEMBER

  God, it’s all very well Max setting up a business from home, but when the hell am I going to manage to burn my diary without him noticing? I forgot to do it before I raced up to bed last night and now, every time I approach my target – the fireplace – he pops up, like Mr Bloody Beales’ dog. Or Mr Beales himself, now I come to think of it.

  I’m hovering in the garden, still in my dressing gown, and trying to see whether any of our neighbours owns an incinerator I could borrow or are building an early bonfire, when Greg phones me on my mobile – to say that he bought a copy of the Lichford News while he was on his way to work.

  ‘I’m bringing it round,’ he says. ‘I’ll be there in a minute, so get dressed, now. Then you can come into the office with me, if you want to, once you’ve seen the article.’

  ‘I doubt I will want to,’ I say. ‘Seeing as reading what The Boss has to say to the local press usually makes me want to resign. I can’t see this time being any different.’

  ‘Well, it is,’ says Greg. ‘You can take my word for that. Put the kettle on.’

  Max already has, so I go the window to watch for Greg to arrive, though he seems to be taking ages. Oh, he’s just sent me a text.

  ‘Approaching now,’ it says. ‘Have the door open, ready to admit me. Can’t be seen.’

  I’ve just done as he asks when he comes hurtling around the side of the hedge in the front garden, bent double, then drops to his knees and crawls up the path.

  ‘Out of the way,’ he says, pushing past me on the doorstep. ‘And shut the door – as fast as you can!’

  ‘Is someone following you or something?’ I say, as he finally stands up and hands me a totally mangled bunch of flowers.