From Something Old

by Alexander, Nick

  I was glad to be alone. It struck me as extremely sensitive of him to have left me to live this moment in solitude.

  I put the phone down, but Amy’s email was still there filling the screen, lighting up the night, and I couldn’t bear to see it any more, so I picked up the phone again and switched it off.

  And then I began to weep, silently, much as Joe had that afternoon. I wept because Ant thought I hated him, and out of sadness that, in a way, he was right. I wept with relief that my life would now change, and with fear that I had no idea how. I wept for my daughters, who would have to live through our separation, and out of relief that perhaps they’d get to know a slightly better version of their mother. I cried for Joe, who was losing the woman he loved, and out of jealousy that at least he’d known that kind of love. I cried for Ben, who was losing the stability of two parents who loved each other, and for Amy, who really couldn’t imagine what she was letting herself in for; for myself and all the wasted years, and then finally, and strangely most powerfully, I wept for my mother and my father.

  I’ve no idea why they popped up at that moment, but there they were in front of me in all their misery of love and longing, and they were as present in their absence as they had ever been when alive.

  The next morning, I woke up ridiculously early with an astonishing and unexpected sense of clarity. It was as if my brain had spent my sleeping hours processing everything and now it had jiggled everything around to make things clear.

  I switched on the little bedside lamp and lay there revelling in the sensation even as I tried to identify and name it. Because this wasn’t happiness exactly. It was more a peculiar feeling of being centred within my own body, as if, for the last nine years, I’d been just outside it, like a blurred stereoscopic projection with one half looking in on the other.

  But here we were – Ant and I were separating. I’d almost certainly go back to nursing. We would live apart. Nothing had ever felt so logical. Perhaps my mother had said, Go with the flow, after all.

  I got up just after six and cleared last night’s mess from the garden table, and then quietly started to sort out the kitchen.

  The children all woke up about seven thirty, so I set their breakfast outside in order that Joe could, for once, sleep in. By the time he surfaced, little Lola had returned with her yappy dog, and they were all splashing around in the jacuzzi.

  ‘Coffee?’ I asked, pointing the pot at him when he returned sleepy-headed from the bathroom.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, more slouching than sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Coffee would be good.’

  I poured two mugs and sat down opposite him.

  ‘You seem . . . I don’t know . . .’ he said, speaking through a yawn.

  I looked at him enquiringly over the top of my mug.

  ‘Perky, I suppose, is the word,’ he continued.

  I smiled vaguely at this. Joe’s directness never failed to surprise me.

  ‘It’s a bit weird, actually,’ I admitted. ‘I cried my heart out last night, but this morning I did wake up feeling quite perky. It wasn’t what I expected, but there it is.’

  ‘Make the most of it,’ Joe said. ‘It doesn’t last.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’

  ‘Though maybe yours will.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure these are just phases.’

  ‘But you’re not devastated,’ Joe said. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I was,’ I told him. ‘Last night I was totally devastated. This morning I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Is . . .’ Joe started, before interrupting himself. ‘Look, you don’t have to answer this, OK?’

  I nodded, encouraging him to continue, but he sipped his coffee and instead said, ‘Nah, maybe I shouldn’t get into that.’

  ‘Please, Joe,’ I said. ‘It’s what I like about you the most – your honesty. Ask away.’

  ‘Well, is Ant right? About you hating him? I couldn’t help but wonder if that was true or if he was just telling Amy that to make himself feel better.’

  I chewed my bottom lip as I tried to think how to answer the question honestly. ‘It’s complicated,’ I said finally. ‘But there’s definitely some hatred in the mix. There’s a bit of love, too, and if I’m honest, that’s the bit I find most confusing. He’s spent years bossing me around, telling me all the things I can and can’t do, and yet in a weird way I think if that stopped, I might miss it. Which is a terrifying thought, really.’

  ‘It sounds a bit like Stockholm syndrome,’ Joe said. I frowned at him, so he expounded. ‘You know – when people who’ve been held captive defend their abductors.’

  ‘Oh, gosh,’ I said. I reflected on this for a few seconds and nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, in a way, I suppose that’s exactly what it is.’ I felt shocked that Joe had so easily handed me a key to thinking differently about my relationship with Ant. Having a label to hang on my conflicted feelings enabled me to feel a bit less confused almost immediately.

  ‘Do you think it can work?’ Joe asked. ‘Between the two of them, I mean?’

  ‘Ant and Amy?’ I asked. I tried to imagine it for a moment and then shook my head gently.

  ‘If that’s too painful for you to think about . . .’ Joe said.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I told him. ‘I’m just trying to visualise it. And I suppose I’d have to say that I doubt it. I really doubt it. Ant’s an incredibly difficult person to live with.’

  ‘You said that before,’ Joe said. ‘But how? How is he difficult?’

  ‘Well, he’s pretty aggressive,’ I said. ‘He’s passive aggressive mainly, but sometimes just plain aggressive aggressive. He’s controlling and obsessive; he’s a bit of a narcissist, and quite perverse sometimes. He’s pretty moody and unpredictable, too.’

  ‘Wow,’ Joe said. ‘All that, huh? No wonder you’re feeling perky.’

  I surprised myself by laughing at that. ‘I feel guilty about it, though.’

  ‘Guilty?’ Joe said. ‘What do you have to feel guilty about?’

  ‘About feeling perky, I suppose,’ I said.

  Joe stood then and crossed to the window to look out at the kids, and I suddenly panicked that I’d forgotten to watch them in the pool. But apparently everything was fine.

  ‘They get on really well,’ he said, and so I crossed to stand next to him, looking out.

  ‘Yes, they’re good kids, aren’t they? Ben’s great company for my two.’

  Joe sighed deeply.

  ‘And you?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joe said. ‘I thought my relationship was solid, so now I’m just confused.’

  I nodded thoughtfully. ‘I suppose sometimes you just have to look at what-is.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  ‘I suspect we lie to ourselves about how things are,’ I explained. ‘But when something like this happens, it reveals how they really were all along. It’s just that we didn’t want to see.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘Yes, I suppose. Gosh, that’s quite wise.’

  Because no one had ever called me wise, I laughed at this. All the same, the compliment felt good. Perhaps I did have useful things to say, I thought. Maybe the problem was simply that I hadn’t had anyone to talk to who was interested.

  ‘Anyway, I’m basically gutted,’ Joe said. ‘I’m not going to deny it. I’m all wiped out about it.’

  I rested one hand on his shoulder and said, ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I want to tell Ben the truth,’ he said with another sigh. ‘But I’m not sure how that fits in with your plans.’

  ‘The truth?’ I repeated. ‘I suppose that depends which bit of the truth.’

  ‘I thought I’d tell him that Mum—’ His voice cracked then, and he shrugged and moved away to fill his coffee cup from the pot before sitting once again at the table. He cleared his throat and continued, ‘I’m thinking of telling him that Mum’s new best friend is Ant. And they’ve gone off to spend some time together because they get alon
g so well.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I see.’

  ‘That seems to me to be something he can understand. And something that isn’t actually a lie.’

  I stared out at the girls as I thought about this.

  ‘Is that OK for you and your two?’ Joe asked. ‘Because they’re bound to compare notes.’

  ‘Best friends,’ I said, trying the words for size. ‘Best friends,’ I whispered again. Then, ‘I suppose it leaves it open for . . . whatever . . . evolution, or whatever you want to call it, happens.’

  ‘As in they’re not best friends any more. Or they’re . . .’ Joe coughed again, and then said, ‘. . . they’re in love, or getting married, or whatever.’

  ‘Getting married?’ I said, with a laugh. ‘That I doubt, somehow. But yes.’ I dragged my eyes from the girls to look at him. ‘Best friends. For now, let’s go with that.’

  ‘OK,’ Joe said. ‘I’m just going to wait until he asks me. If yours ask first, then you can say the same thing.’

  I nodded. ‘Is the flight home . . . it’s not tomorrow, is it? I keep losing track of the days.’

  ‘It is,’ Joe said. ‘Tomorrow’s Monday. We’ll need to leave just after lunch.’

  ‘God,’ I said. ‘That’s going to be quite something, going home to all of this.’

  ‘I know,’ Joe said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Whose car did you take to the airport?’ I asked. It had suddenly dawned on me that without Ant we’d be stranded at Luton.

  ‘Mine,’ Joe said. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘So you can drive us home?’

  He nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We won’t have enough booster seats, but we’ll just have to manage. For one trip, it’ll be fine.’

  Almost the second that we stepped back outside, Ben ran to Joe to ask him when his mother would be back. It was quite uncanny really, almost as if he’d been listening to our conversation.

  ‘She’s actually gone off with Ant for a bit,’ Joe told him, sitting down cross-legged to explain. I was impressed by how unflustered he sounded. ‘Ant is Mum’s new best friend.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ben said, frowning as he thought about this. I was watching Lucy and Sarah and could see that they too had tuned in to this conversation and were struggling to listen over Lola’s Spanish nattering.

  ‘But is she coming back?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Not here,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll see Mum when we get home.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, we’re going home tomorrow,’ Joe told him. ‘You know that.’

  ‘But will Mum be at home tomorrow?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, champ,’ Joe told him. ‘It depends if she got bored spending time with Ant, I guess.’

  Ben wrinkled his nose at this information. ‘But what about us?’ he asked, and I thought for a moment that maybe he was going to cry.

  ‘We’re good, aren’t we?’ Joe told him. ‘We’re having fun here in the sun with Lucy and Sarah.’

  ‘I s’pose,’ Ben said. ‘It seems a bit funny, though.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Joe said. ‘It is a bit funny. But we’re OK, aren’t we?’

  ‘I s’pose,’ Ben said again. ‘Can we go and find the pig later on?’

  ‘I thought we might go back to that lake,’ Joe said. ‘If we go early, we could grab that shady spot under the tree and spend the whole day swimming.’

  ‘But we could look for the pig on the way home,’ Ben said.

  ‘Sure,’ Joe said. ‘Why not?’

  As we gathered our things together ready to leave, I thought about how well Joe had dealt with Ben. He hadn’t wanted to lie to him, and so had managed to tell him the truth – or at least a version of it – without upsetting him. I found that combination not only clever, but rather touching.

  Kids do love repeat performances, so the idea of returning to the lake pleased everyone. The only thing was that they wanted the day to happen exactly like before – they wanted to eat the funny tapas in the restaurant (rather than the picnic we’d prepared) and they wanted ‘Macarena’ on the radio. The picnic they finally came around to, but Sarah, particularly, was not happy at all when we explained that we didn’t get to choose what songs played on the radio.

  Lucy seemed a little quieter than usual, and I guessed that she was pondering what she’d overheard, trying to square the circle of it in her young mind. She was also no doubt picking up on my own mood, which swung violently and unpredictably between brief sensations of deliverance and longer periods of despair. Joe had been right – the feeling had not lasted.

  It wasn’t until I was showering her that evening, back at the house, that she dared to ask the question that had been troubling her. Perhaps she simply hadn’t wanted to ask it in front of Joe and Ben.

  ‘Mummy?’ she said. ‘Is it true that Amy is best friends with Daddy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told her, as I rinsed her hair. ‘Apparently that is the case.’

  ‘So will Daddy be at home when we get there tomorrow?’

  I swallowed. Here it was, the heart of the matter.

  ‘No, dear,’ I told her, inspired by Joe’s strategy of simplified honesty. ‘I’m not sure that he will be. He might be off spending time with Amy somewhere.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lucy said. ‘So who’s going to read us the bedtime story? Will it be Joe?’

  I laughed drily at this. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, it won’t be Joe. Joe will be in his house with Ben. You remember Joe’s house, don’t you?’

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘I expect I’ll have to read you the story, won’t I?’

  Lucy looked into my eyes quite piercingly then, and I braced myself for a terrifying moment of from-the-mouths-of-babes honesty. But instead, she simply bopped me on the nose with her finger and said, ‘Well, just make sure you do, Mummy. Or there’ll be trouble.’

  Joe had bought too much food – way too much food – plus, due to all of the pizza we’d been eating, we’d hardly consumed any of it. So that final evening, we loaded the excess into bags and took it next door to our neighbours.

  The Spanish family were particularly strange about this, sifting through the bags and dividing the items into two piles: acceptable food items and rejects, which were essentially all of the vegan bits.

  The French boys enthusiastically took all our offerings, hemp milk and tofu included, and insisted that we go round for a drink before we left, so once we’d eaten, that’s what we did.

  They had a tiny but incredibly loud wireless speaker with them, and though they sadly didn’t have ‘Macarena’ for Sarah, they did have some eighties disco stuff that all three kids seemed to enjoy. So while we drank our beers outside, the kids strutted around like idiots to the Bee Gees.

  Amy had been right, it transpired: they were a couple, albeit a rather long-distance kind of couple. The tall one, Valentin, ran a record shop in Paris, while his partner was a clothing designer from Montpellier. He showed us some photos of the jackets he made on his iPhone, and they were really quite amazing pieces of high-fashion art. I was impressed.

  ‘So what about you?’ Valentin asked eventually. ‘How long have you been together?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not,’ I explained. ‘We’re just friends on holiday.’

  ‘Oh,’ Valentin said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s because you look like a couple,’ said his friend, who had a much stronger accent. ‘You look like family with the children and everything.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re not,’ Joe said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the fading daylight or whether he was actually blushing.

  ‘There were more of you before, right?’ Valentin asked, missing the vibe. He swigged at his beer. ‘I talked with an American woman, I think. A blonde woman.’

  ‘Amy,’ Joe said. ‘My wife.’

  ‘She’s nice,’ Valentin said. ‘She’s really cool.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Joe said, looking uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, she’s great. But she had to go home early.’

&n
bsp; ‘As did Anthony,’ I said, getting the information in before he asked me. ‘He had to go home early too.’

  ‘And now, lovely as this is,’ Joe said, gulping down the remains of his drink, ‘I think we need to get the kids home to bed. We’ve got a really long day tomorrow.’

  With the exception of checking Joe’s car in at Malaga airport, which for some reason was incredibly complicated, the journey went by without a hitch. Ant and Amy’s seats remained empty – they’d clearly booked new ones rather than changing their bookings – and their absence felt strange and upsetting.

  Back in Luton, Joe managed to remember where he had parked his pickup – something he’d been worrying about, even though it was so big you could see it from a mile away.

  As we drove along, the children chattered excitedly, happy to be going home or perhaps simply to have flown again, and by seven in the evening we were back in our cool, empty home, the English drizzle pattering gently on the roof.

  Lucy held me to my promise about reading a story but fell asleep before I was even halfway through. She, at least, didn’t seem overly perturbed by our arrival in this big, empty house.

  I sat in the lounge and listened to the air around me and tried to think about how different it all seemed without Ant.

  It was quiet, that was the most noticeable thing. Ant always switched on the TV the second he sat down. He never switched it off, either, leaving me to do that once he’d gone to bed. So yes, everything was much, much quieter. I could hear the whoosh of cars going past on the wet lane at the bottom of the drive, and the rain falling on the conservatory out back. I could even hear a cat somewhere, howling.

  It felt calmer, and somehow safer too. If Ant was in the house, there was always a crackle in the air, a pregnancy in the silence, waiting to deliver its next batch of mayhem.

  I wondered where Anthony was then. I wondered if he was still with Amy, and just as I decided he almost certainly was, my phone buzzed with a text message.

  ‘Are you home yet?’ it said. ‘Are the girls OK?’

  I thought about not replying. I was worried he was nearby and would appear to interrupt my moment of contemplation. But then I thought about him worrying about the girls and replied simply, ‘Yes.’