‘And how are you Lewis? Last time we spoke, it was pretty…’
‘Crazy?’
‘For want of a better word.’
‘I’m sorry I did that. I was confused. Dad’s moved out now.’
His reaction to this is less emotional than last time. He still seems thoughtful but I guess the initial shock has subsided.
‘He has a new house. He let me choose the carpet.’
‘What colour did you go for?’
‘Grey. The man in the shop said it was scotch-guarded and it was on offer.’
‘How’s your mum?’ I ask him.
‘She’s sad. She cries a lot. She thinks I can’t hear her in the shower but I can and she gets drunk with her friends in the kitchen and they talk about stuff.’
I think about all those private tears I shed through my divorce. The ones you hope are hidden and silent. I cried mine in my bed mostly, wearing my duvet like a shroud.
‘Like?’
‘Money, dating, her friend talks a lot about a man she’s dating called Warren and he’s into strange things in bed.’ My eyes widen. ‘I’m nearly eight, I’m not stupid.’
I smile. ‘It’ll be a lot for your mum to process. I’m glad she’s got friends she can talk with.’
‘Do you still get sad about your divorce?’
I am unsure how much to divulge here. Does he need to hear that I stopped eating, that I once cried in a Costa toilet, and once had to be fished out of a bath by Beth after I turned into a human prune? I was sad. I still wear that hat on occasion too.
‘I do. It’s the end of something, that’s always sad.’
‘It’s not like you’re dead,’ he says, matter-of-factly. I have no choice but to laugh. ‘Life goes on. I think dad is dating someone. Maybe. He was talking to someone on the phone and I was listening behind the door.’
‘You’re a regular little house spy, eh?’
‘Ninja skills.’
‘And how do you feel about your dad dating again?’
He pauses. ‘I don’t know yet. As long as she’s nice and doesn’t put me under the stairs.’
‘I’m sure she won’t. In the attic maybe.’
Godwin laughs again as we wait for a lift.
‘Isn’t she funny, Godwin?’
‘You both are funny.’
‘Are you married, Godwin?’ asks Lewis.
‘I am. I’ve been married for thirty five years.’
My head swings around. ‘Jesus Christ.’ By the crucifix hung around his neck, this feels like the wrong expletive to use. ‘I mean, you don’t look old enough.’
‘We were young,’ he informs us. ‘I am blessed. But she’d probably keep me in the attic some days too.’
Would I have kept Simon in the attic? Maybe six feet under my patio. Lewis presses the lift buttons again and the doors open. A few people filter out including one who captures Lewis’s attention.
‘Oh man, are those VaporMax?’
Are they the what? I look down at him, confused but then up at the person in the lift. I know that face. He steps forward to keep the doors from closing. Jag.
‘Why thank you, Dr Kohli… How are you?’
‘I am very well, Miss Callaghan. And yes, bud… These are indeed VaporMax,’ he answers.
Lewis observes our interaction closely, with one keen eye still on the footwear.
‘This is Lewis, routine X-ray.’
Jag goes to high five him. ‘Doctor C helped replace two of my valves when I was born.’
‘Doctor C, I like that. I’m Jag, good to meet you, Lewis.’
He releases the door and turns to salute me with one finger through the closing gap. I wave animatedly with two hands which is less cool. Godwin presses the buttons needed to get us to X-ray.
‘Who’s Jag?’ asks Lewis.
‘Just a doctor friend.’
‘You’re blushing. Wasn’t she blushing, Godwin?’
Godwin smiles but doesn’t reply.
‘I am not.’
‘Yes, you are,’ he giggles.
‘Do you like how I bigged you up and said you replaced my valves?’
‘I noticed.’
‘You like him, don’t you?’
I look up at his expectant face. He processes life so well, so clearly. I credit this to his parents. Even the way they’ve chosen to end their marriage has been done so amicably and with the sole intent of making this boy a priority.
‘Are you happy, Doctor C? I hope you’re happy.’
I turn my head to look at this boy. He’s such a tonic. I should have paid him to counsel me after my divorce – I could have paid him in Haribo.
‘Jag seems nice.’
‘Jag is nice.’
‘He has cool trainers too. Those are VaporMax and they’re like hundreds of pounds.’
‘People are fixated on his shoes,’ I tell him.
‘Shoes are important. Like if he wore Crocs then I would tell you to kick him to the curb.’
He snaps his fingers and Godwin and I laugh deeply from our bellies.
‘You should get together with Jag then. What are you worried about?’
‘My heart?’ I say quietly.
Godwin smiles at me through sympathetic eyes.
‘But hearts are the strongest organs in the human body, Doctor C. They can go through anything,’ Lewis tells me.
‘And where did you get that information?’ I ask.
‘You!’ He says laughing, the doors to the lift, decorated with three smiling octopuses, open. He did, didn’t he?
It’s seven o’clock and I am finished for the day. I went into X-ray myself and saw Lewis’ valves are as they should be. I returned him to the ward and to his mother and I hugged her. She seemed surprised by the gesture but it was out of solidarity, knowing that sadness and how it penetrates so deeply. It too will pass and like your son just reminded me, it could be worse, we could be dead. Or wearing Crocs, so a lot worse. I smile, thinking of that boy as I exit the hospital and reach into my bag to find my ringing phone.
‘You done, bitch?’
It’s Lucy, obviously. Lucy and I have made amends after our party antics. News of secret children and Beth’s relationship woes forced us back together but we also made a pact that I would replace her Bo Peep dress if she promised to keep school gate sexual relations to a minimum.
‘Just walking out the hospital now. What’s for dinner?’
‘Ummm, nothing. We met Aunty Beth for tea and had a Subway.’
‘Great. You didn’t get me anything?’
‘Were you looking for a foot long?’ she guffaws at the end of the line.
‘The girls? How are the girls?’
‘Satan picked them up about an hour ago. I was very good. I said nothing but I may have hissed at him like an angry jungle cat.’
‘Is that his new name then?’
‘We could go with Shitbag, Wanker, Fuckwit, Bollockface…’
‘Let’s stick with Satan. Are you home? I guess I’m picking up my own dinner.’
I feel a tap on my shoulder.
‘Nah, I’m taking you for a drink,’ she says, hanging up her phone.
I grab her shoulders for a hug. ‘You’re here?’
‘I am.’
‘I don’t want to get drunk. I’m not wearing the right shoes.’
She rolls her eyes at me. When everything first happened, her and Beth thought this was the way they could help me get over Simon. Pickle her, immerse her in alcohol and drag her on a dance floor so that she’ll forget all the terrible things that have happened. Those nights would usually end up with me crying, once into the arms of a hirsute kebab shop owner called Hamid.
‘One drink. Maybe.’
She studies my drawn and sallow face.
‘Or we can raid an M&S, drink at the station and have a train picnic.’
I almost cry with relief at the suggestion.
‘I’m too good to you.’ She links arms with me and we head towards the stati
on.
‘You never come to the hospital?’
‘Beth said to check in on you. You’ve been all morose since you found out about Simon’s bastard.’
‘He’s a child, don’t call him that.’
‘Meg’s a bastard. I call her that all the time. It’s not bad if used in a factual sense.’
‘It’s always bad. That child is related to you in some way.’
‘Will I have to buy it Christmas presents?’
‘It’s not an “it” either.’
She shrugs and drags me along the walkways to Waterloo, the winter breeze biting at our cheeks and whipping my hair into candy floss. I pull her into the M&S, dodging the marching commuters and grab a basket. I haven’t really eaten all day so the whole place calls to me, the food almost asking for me to eat it. All. I start taking very random things off the shelves: a packet of raspberry iced buns. That’ll do. I also take some hummus (obviously), some coleslaw, a family bag of salt and black pepper crisps and a trifle. I hope I don’t bump into Maddie as this is not nutrition.
‘I’ll look for the wine. I want some sushi, none of that crap with the mayonnaise.’ Lucy saunters off jigging to the music playing in the aisles.
Cheese twists, noodle salad, cocktail sausages. I then stop next to someone with a roll of yellow stickers in their back pocket. Hello there. Have I managed to find that sacred hour when all the food is being marked down? He labels some prawns with dip and even though I get a little squeamish about eating fish near its expiry date, I put it in my basket. I then follow him around the corner. Praise Odin, there are shelves of the stuff from cheese to pâté. This is dinner. I put all sorts of random foodstuffs in my basket and smile at the thought. It takes me a while though to notice that there is someone stood next to me. They are heavily pregnant but I don’t think too much of it.
‘They have some knockdown pizzas, I could get one of those? Have the girls eaten?’ she says to someone on the phone.
There are pizzas? Maybe I could get a pizza. She reaches down and puts one in her basket. Only then do I look up at her face. Oh. She senses me staring, takes one look at me and stops talking to the person on the other line. Susie. She doesn’t say a word to me, nor do I to her. You are here, you are real and yes, you are indeed very pregnant.
I guess this was always a possibility given we work in the same neighbourhood but I was never going to be ready. However, I can’t read her. Is that anger? It feels like I’m something she just stepped in. She looks me up and down and turns her back to me. Excuse me? What have I done to her? I should be the angry one. As she goes to the tills, I hold back in shock around the reduced-price items. Simon won’t eat that pizza. It has pineapple on it. How pregnant is she? Tell me about Oliver. I’m Emma. I was his wife. Say something. Go and talk to her, Emma. But I am mute.
‘Look at you, yellow sticker bitch. Excellent work,’ says Lucy, depositing two bottles of red in the basket. She turns to head for the tills.
I grab her arm. ‘We can’t.’
‘Why?’ She looks at me confused. I can’t tell her. She’ll go for her because she’s Lucy. We’d start some middle-class bitch fight in this middle-class food hall, she’d pelt her with olives stuffed with anchovies and Percy Pigs and we’d be banned. I can’t have that fight. I don’t have that fight.
‘I just…’ I pull the already laden basket up to steady my shaking hands. ‘Bread. We need bread.’
‘We do? We’ve got plenty at home.’
‘No, I ate that this morning.’
‘It was a whole loaf? What’s wrong with you?’
I shrug, silent. That’s the thing, Luce. I don’t quite know.
Fourteen
665 days since I finally told Simon to go to hell and my sisters cheered
Why are you in the toilets?
It’s not like I’m sat in a public loo. These are the toilets in The Dorchester. There’s a sofa.
And? Go find the party? Go find the sodding bar.
I’m early. BTW, how on earth would I have needed ten condoms?
You found them. Well done. You never know ;) Which dress did you go for?
The black shimmery one.
Dull but predictable. Love you, have fun. Go get shitfaced, it’s a wedding xxx
I put my phone back in my handbag and look at myself again in the ornate mirror of The Dorchester loos where I’ve camped out due to nerves and paralytic fear. The black bejewelled dress I have on is courtesy of Lucy’s mate, Siv, my overriding memory of whom was her ability, through school, to apply liquid eyeliner in the middle of a moving bus with expert precision. When we made the call that we needed eveningwear for an Indian wedding, she showed up half an hour later with twenty five outfits, from saris to trouser suits to dresses, and all worn once as she has thirty five cousins and her mother doesn’t like the shame of repeated outfits in wedding photos.
I’ve played it safe in a black eveningwear number. The bodice is embroidered and sparkly in a way that doesn’t look like I’m about to dance a foxtrot and it fits well and flows down to an acceptable length. I don’t know what pretty or attractive looks like anymore because I’m stuck in that unfortunate habit of always questioning why I was never quite good enough for Simon. So it’s a bloody shame I’m drawn back to a time when I last had on something similar. Simon and I were going to a medics’ charity ball and I had bought a navy floor-length gown for the evening. It was hourglass shaped, boobsy and different to my usual shapeless shift dresses. I had spent a fortune on waxing and nails and asked the hairdresser to curl my hair in the fashion of some sultry nineteen-forties movie star. I rarely made an effort but it was two months after the Australian nanny. I remember standing in front of my bedroom mirror with fake eyelashes and elbow-length gloves and Simon barged past me, fresh from work. He saw nothing. He had a quick shower and put on a tux and told me to hurry as the traffic on the Hammersmith flyover would be a bastard this time of night. That night, he schmoozed his way around the room getting drunk on expensive bottles of whisky that he splashed out on in some sort of male pissing contest. He flirted with the waitress who brought our bread to the table. He bid on some framed print in an auction. It’s all for charity, he said when he went on stage to collect it and people applauded and cheered him on. We didn’t dance. I couldn’t eat because my bodice was so tight so he lucked out by having two helpings of lamb shank. The nadir came at the end of that evening. I was stuck in conversation with a neurologist who was telling me about his research and had managed to sneak the word lobe into the conversation at least twenty-three times. I excused myself to go to the toilet. As I walked down the corridor towards the restrooms, Simon appeared out of an unmarked door. He asked me where I was going. To the toilet? Five seconds later, the waitress with the bread appeared, wiping her lip. I bowed my head. Simon shrugged and walked away like nothing had happened. That’s a really lovely dress, the waitress said.
Find the bar, said Lucy. I don’t know why I’m nervous and why I’ve been hiding in the loos. I guess on the way here I realised this was quite a big step as far as dates go. I could be in wedding photos that people will own for an eternity. I am going to meet family. What if they don’t like me? They could hate me? I then saw shaped topiary as we pulled up and opened my clutch to pay the Uber driver and all of Lucy’s planted condoms and sheer panic came flying out. Bar. Gin will help. A cocktail maybe? This looks like the sort of place that will have a bar with pristine square napkins and a gentleman playing classical piano in the corner. That’s classy. I can do classy while I wait to gatecrash this wedding. And I am prepared for alcohol because Lucy told me to have toast before I left the house to line my stomach. She can be useful sometimes. I should have ditched these condoms in the loos. But that also feels wasteful.
‘Evening madam, a table for you?’ A waiter greets me at the door of the bar. I may bow back at him.
‘I was just hoping to get a drink. I’m here for the wedding but I’m a bit early.’
‘Ah yes
, the wedding in The Ballroom. You’re more than welcome.’
He leads me through and I try my best to take a seat on the stool without looking like I’m mounting it.
The bartender puts a napkin in front of me. ‘Good evening, madam.’ All this madam business is making me conscious that people assume me to be here as a prostitute looking for custom.
‘Good evening. I was hoping for a gin and tonic.’
‘Do you have a preference of gin?’
I look back at him blankly. The alcoholic type?
‘We have over thirty-nine varieties. Maybe the lady would like to try something fruit-infused, or perhaps something spicy, dry? And do you have a preference for tonic?’
The gin and tonics I prepare at home are Schweppes and lemon slice based and sometimes drunk out of mugs. When did alcohol get so fancy?
‘You know what? Surprise me.’
He grins at being given free licence. From beside me, a voice laughs.
‘This is why I went for brandy.’
It’s an older Asian gentleman in traditional dress. I don’t want to assume he’s here for the wedding too but he has kind eyes and a charming laugh, though that could be the brandy. He shakes my hand. ‘My name is Arjun.’
‘I am Emma.’
He gives me a second look and studies my face. ‘This may be a strange question to ask a lady I’ve just met but…’
Christ, please don’t think I’m an escort.
‘Do you happen to be a heart surgeon?’
I narrow my eyes at his guesswork.
‘I am?’
His laugh gets bigger. ‘Then young sir behind the bar, this drink goes on my tab. I am Arjun Kohli, Jag’s father.’
Never mind coming in here to calm my nerves. I’ve walked right into the lion’s den. You’re Jag’s father? He says his son’s name in a rich accent that makes it sound stately. I smile at him.
Can I Give My Husband Back?: A totally laugh out loud and uplifting page turner Page 19