We both smile.
‘She talks a lot about you. She seems to have settled in well,’ I say.
Simon nods. To his credit, I don’t doubt that he still is a decent father and is proactive in his children’s lives. I’ve seen his signature in the reading diary and his attempts at helping them with their homework. She opens up a couple of books and it’s classic Violet. Iris is ordered and neat – if she makes a mistake then she deletes it completely and she underlines things with a ruler and listens to instruction carefully. Violet has more wild abandon about her; no rulers, she puts giant crosses through things that don’t work and likes her bubble writing decorated with doodles of many, many cats.
I glance around the classroom as Mrs Westlake talks to us about standardised scores. The theme of the school is to show you how smart and educated these children are. Look at the copperplate handwriting, their reproductions of Van Gogh and our languages corner where they’ve all had a go at telling us what they like in French. I spy a contribution from my girl. J’aime les chats et la glace au chocolat. I hope that is useful to her one day if she ever visits Paris and is on a first date with a Frenchman.
‘So to push Violet into those top scores then what do we need to do? Maybe tutoring?’
I’ve lost track of the conversation so try to catch up.
‘For maths, perhaps, so she can grasp some of the concepts a little more tightly.’
I look over at Simon, a little confused.
‘Umm, I don’t think there’s need, right? She is only six.’
Simon looks at me pointedly. Put on a show, Emma.
‘We run an after-school tutoring club on Wednesdays that would help.’
Back when I was a youngster, clubs were fun endeavours that involved dancing, matching baseballs caps or were a chocolate biscuit that you had in your lunchbox. This was not a club.
‘Is it free?’ I ask. Simon physically baulks that I should ask this question.
‘It’s fifteen pounds per session.’
My point being this should be a parents’ evening, not a sales session.
‘Then it’s something to think about. It could be that she catches up with people throughout the year,’ I say.
‘Possibly,’ she replies. She goes into her folder and passes Simon a form. Sneaky.
‘Violet has also shown great interest in languages and art. Her pictures have been a joy.’ She goes to a file and pulls something out. It’s a family portrait but one that involves quite a few people. Mrs Westlake takes a deep breath. ‘I do understand that your family situation has evolved since I last taught Iris but this picture shows me that Violet’s chosen to embrace any new changes.’
It is a bold statement to make and not one which Simon takes to well. You are here to teach my daughter, not psychoanalyse her. I am, however, a bit more grateful that she’s looking after my daughter in a more global sense. It was what I worried about. How was she coping? Was any of this mess affecting her? I study the picture.
‘Has she said much in school about it?’ I ask tentatively. ‘A parent mentioned something to me the other day and I got a little worried that maybe she was getting upset at school.’
‘Which parent? You didn’t mention anything?’ asks Simon.
‘That mum from the pony party,’ I say bitingly. The one you paid off, like we were giving her licence to judge and belittle our little girl. Bravo.
Mrs Westlake looks at us. ‘I can’t really say. I’ve only known her a matter of months but I can ask around? In class, she’s attentive, bright and very helpful. She’s a credit to you both.’
Simon and I look at each other for a brief moment. We both tried to do right by those girls.
‘And when family situations change then it’s good for me to know so I can understand them. I hear names so I just try and piece it together. There is a mention of Aunty Lucy?’
I cringe, wondering how she may have come up in conversation.
‘That’s my sister. The one who draws all the smiley faces in their homework diaries. I am sorry about that.’
She smiles. ‘And Mr Chadwick, they talk of your new partner and Oliver.’
Simon is visibly irked. They named the baby already? I’ve heard that some people do that but I’ve always been more cautious. As a medic I’ve seen how these things worked out so I wanted to meet my babies first. It intrigues me that Susie may be further along than I thought though. What do I do with this information? I can’t believe the girls have already been talking about this at school? Will I now have to buy her a present? Simon can’t seem to deal with the emotional honesty on show though. Come on, Simon. Tell her it’s none of her business like you did me.
He is studying the picture in detail, his face a little pale. I glance down at it. It is a standard child piece of art. The grass and sky are strips of colour to the top and bottom and we are as tall as the broccoli style trees. Lucy is there dressed like a giant fairy and I am in that white and black dress that I wore on my first date with Jag. I smile at the fact it does indeed look like a hospital gown. We all stand in a long line between two houses. Does it hurt to look at this? Part of me thinks Mrs Westlake is right. The landscape has changed but there’s no evidence of hate or sadness here. The most telling thing is that Simon, the girls and I are standing in the front and all the other people are on the periphery in separate homes. I notice a very pregnant Susie – poor woman looks like she’s swallowed a basketball. And then a small little boy stood next to her.
‘And I believe your son, Oliver will start here soon so that’s lovely.’
Who? My chest rises and falls slowly. I take a large gulp of wine. I am pretty sure they don’t take foetuses here unless that is some new pre-birth enrichment programme that I don’t know about. Simon stares at me. Silently begging me to act this out.
‘Remind me Simon, how old is Oliver again?’ I ask.
‘He’s four,’ he whispers.
I smile at Mrs Westlake. It’s no different really. He kept things from me for years, in marriage, so no doubt he would do the same in divorce. But I wonder, when will this stop? When will he stop having this power over me? Who is this child? Who is he to him? Breathe, Emma.
‘The only problem is that we can’t pass all the girls’ old uniform to him.’ I add.
Simon laughs, a little too hard and looks me in the eye. I acted for years and years, Chadwick. He thinks he’s good at this game, I’m better.
Thirteen
659 days since my mum told Simon she wished she’d broken his penis, not his nose
His name is Oliver Charles Chadwick. He takes his father’s last and middle names, and he was born in 2015. That was two years before I finally decided to divorce Simon and however I do the maths, there is crossover. When my mum punched him on Christmas day 2017, when we were still married, he already had a son. That holy grail he had been searching for, someone to carry on the family name.
Simon loved his daughters but I always sensed he was after a boy, as if creating something else with a penis defined his own machismo. That son would have been two years old at that point. Was Oliver the result of a one-night stand? Did Simon go to them after mum punched him? When did he see this kid? Was he present at the birth? Did he know it was his?
I think about a mini version of Simon wandering around, a baby version in little chinos and brown suede shoes. Maybe this was my fault. I’d grown up with a massive family and understood what it was all about but to have matched my mother and had three more would be lunacy in this day and age. The water bills alone would bankrupt us. I was also keen to kick-start my career again so had held up my hand and said I wanted to stop. Simon who had been a single child, tried to convince me otherwise, every month, but I stood firm by my choice. Was this some failure of mine to bear further fruit?
I sit in my office and stare out on to the Thames. I’ve been to that flat of his – she certainly doesn’t live with Simon, neither does young Oliver, so where are they? I turn to my desk. I may have go
ne a little overboard with my research. Social media queen Lucy helped but the person who really rolled their sleeves up was Maddie. She asked friends of friends and dug deep. She even managed to find out that Susie had given birth at St Thomas’ next door. We found some evidence of Oliver on social media via relatives but he doesn’t really feature on Susie’s profiles making me think he’s kept a secret. For that much alone, I feel nothing but true empathy for the poor kid.
‘Have you eaten? Have a biscuit?’ Maddie enters the room with freshly typed out notes and mugs of tea. I look over at her in my strange catatonic state. She sees the handouts on the desk, a weird mixture of photos and an article she found when Susie won a nursing prize in 2015 and looks at least six months gone in the pictures.
‘Oh, love. Maybe put it away for a while? Have you thought about what you’re going to do yet?’ she asks.
I shake my head. Simon hasn’t even told me to my face yet. After the parents’ evening, I’d walked ahead of him in the corridor. I didn’t want to get in his car nor wish him goodbye. It’s one regret. I should have screamed SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY loudly as I made my exit down the winding school drive. He didn’t even message or call. I had to find this information out for myself. Again. I even had to ask my girls, as carefully as possible, Have you met Oliver? Yes, he’s Susie’s little boy. That’s all they knew. Did he look like my girls? I mean this was hardly a surprise given Simon’s track record but having to wade through his deceit and decipher all the layers was exhausting.
‘He makes me feel like I’m being nosy, that it’s none of my business. But it is, right?’
‘Ems, this is classic Simon. He makes you think that you’ve done something wrong and gets you second guessing yourself. Of course this is your business, it’s related to your girls and their living situation. The fact he hasn’t introduced you to Susie is ludicrous.’
I shrug my shoulders.
‘When I got together with Mark, the first thing he did was introduce me to his ex and we worked out the best way to raise his sons together.’ She places some digestive biscuits in front of me. ‘Please eat,’ she says and goes back to sorting through her files on my sofa.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ I ask her. ‘About Mark and his divorce.’
She stops filing to look up at me. She’s given me snippets of their relationship but I’ve always just filled in the gaps.
‘His ex-wife. Do you get on? What is she like?’
‘Claire? She’s… a character.’
‘Like a good character?’
She grimaces. ‘Like we all get on, really. But also like, say we were running away from a herd of zombies, I don’t think she’d help me.’
‘What would she do?’
‘She’s the sort who’d trip me up and use me as bait so she could get away faster.’
‘Which is why Mark divorced her?’
She laughs. ‘That and she was shagging a plumber called Jim.’ She can see the cogs in my mind whirring. ‘If you did ever meet Susie, she wouldn’t have to be your best mate. Claire’s certainly not mine but you just get to a point where this other person exists in your life, you keep it moving for the kids. And I love those kids like my own. They’re my bonus humans. I’d do anything for them. Drink your tea.’
I do as I’m told and return to my desk thinking about a time when I would meet Susie. How would that happen? I am thinking a soft play centre may be best so there are squishy corners in case it comes to physical fighting. I could get Lucy to bury herself in the ball pool and ambush them if needed?
‘Anyway, while I’m here… How are things with Jag?’
She raises an eyebrow at me. Since the party and her finding out about Stuart Morton, she’s approached everything with a bit of caution. I guess she’s the one who set us both up so feels a sense of duty that we both treat each other properly.
‘Things are good.’
‘And what happened up north with Meg’s brother-in-law?’
‘Was a glitch. Maybe I needed to get something out of my system, test the waters.’
She laughs. I think she knew deep down I wasn’t doing ill by Jag.
‘We went for coffee the other day. In the work cafeteria.’
‘Romantic.’
‘It was three in the morning, very romantic.’
Jag was someone I still kept in my periphery. I’ve questioned whether it’s too soon to drag Jag into the giant ball of confusion that is my life. What I like about him is that he offers me a sense of reprieve from all of that. We meet for night-time coffees and they’re quiet, serene – and backlit by the glow of the vending machines. He tells me everything about himself but I don’t do the same from my end. I mean he’s met my mother and slept on my sofa but I don’t want to invite him in just yet. Maybe I’m just scared he’d see the mess and run away as quickly as those Nike Air Max would take him.
‘Did he at least buy you some biscuits?’
‘We shared a packet of Bourbons.’
She studies my face but I give little away.
‘And when were you going to tell me that you’re going to be his plus one at that wedding?’
She beams at me. Bloody Lucy.
‘Maddie, I am going to be Jag’s plus one at a family wedding.’
There is mild squealing and a seal clap. How has this news worked itself around my small network of people already?
‘Lovely, that is pretty huge.’
‘It’s a giant family wedding at one of those London hotels overlooking Hyde Park. I’ll be one of about a million people there so calm down.’
‘I will not.’
‘How did he ask you?’
‘He said Emma, would you like to go to a wedding with me?’
She grins. The truth is that’s not how it went down at all. Over our machine bought lattes he was telling me that he had a busy few weeks ahead as his sister was coming down and multiple cousins from all over the country and beyond. I asked him why and he said one of the cousins was getting married. I smiled and said how lovely. He said it was going to be one of those epic family get-togethers that was totally going to stress him out, mainly because of his mother who would use it as a way to emphasise how bloody single he still was. I asked him if there was any way I could help.
‘Come with me, it’ll be fun. If you like samosas and drumming and mammoth crowds of people.’
‘Why not?’ I said.
I don’t know why I agreed but I thought at least if he got hit with a bottle this time round, it wouldn’t be at the hands of my family.
‘It’s so romantic, being a wedding date,’ Maddie says, excitedly.
‘We’re not the ones getting married, Maddie.’
‘I know but I just have a feeling.’ Which translates into her having already put an outfit together for our nuptials. I bet she’s going with something coral with a statement earring.
She studies my face again. I am still grey with worry. ‘Have a biccie before you do your last rounds…’ she pleads.
I salute her.
‘And promise me one thing,’ she continues, ‘don’t allow that man to continue owning your headspace. You gave him back. He’s not your problem anymore.’
I think that’s the problem. Once I married Simon and had his children, he became part of my fabric and I don’t know if and when I will ever be able to untangle him from my life. It’s not as simple as returning him to a shop and getting a refund. Here, take him. He’s defective and not as described. I want all that time and my dignity back, please. Just bin him. God, divorce would be so much easier that way.
I always do a final stroll of my wards to check all patients are accounted for and so I can double check orders and notes. Today, the ward soothes a broken soul and scattered thoughts. It provides distraction. I fill in some notes sat by reception and watch as a girl, who I could feasibly fit in my pocket, scoots past with a tiny golden Zimmer frame, literally learning to walk again after what looks like hip surgery. I smile.
&nb
sp; ‘Doctor C!’ I glance up and a familiar face looks up at me from a wheelchair. Lewis.
I panic for a second. ‘Hello, there? All OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m having an X-ray like you said?’
Panic turns into relief. I smile at his mum. ‘I did say that. How are those drugs working out for you? More importantly, have you been riding in any more Ubers recently?’
He giggles. ‘No. I got grounded. They took away my PS4.’
‘I’m not surprised, kid.’
His mum intervenes. ‘The drugs have calmed things down, no episodes recently.’
‘Then that’s good,’ I reply.
Lewis studies my face. ‘Do you want to come to X-ray with us?’
His mum shakes her head, laughing. ‘Doctor C probably has things to do.’
I look up at the clock, I was supposed to leave an hour ago.
‘Actually, yeah, why not? We can catch up. Actually, if your mum wants a break – maybe a coffee – I can take over?’
I see his mum exhale loudly at the offer. It’s weird to see her here without her husband. He normally levels her out so the stress radiates off her today. I understand that completely. That feeling of solitude, of having to parent and do things solo is a novel and overwhelming experience. You have to exude calm for the kids but underneath the legs are kicking furiously. In those situations, even a machine-made filter coffee and half an hour to stare at her phone can help.
‘If that’s OK with you, Lewis? I mean I can come.’
‘Could you go down to the shop and buy me Skittles?’
‘I can,’ she kisses him on the forehead and puts an arm to mine. ‘Thank you.’
I stand and follow the porter out of the wards as Lewis puts an arm forward like he’s charging the light brigade. The wheels squeak on the shiny floors.
‘This is Godwin. He’s from Nigeria.’
I smile at him, we are familiar with each other but I’ve never asked him about his heritage. I assume Lewis has all the answers though.
‘He supports Spurs but we’ll forgive him that.’
Godwin has a loud roaring laugh that bounces off the walls. We proceed to walk.
Can I Give My Husband Back?: A totally laugh out loud and uplifting page turner Page 18