From Something Old

by Alexander, Nick

  ‘I’m in one of the Powell flats out in Marshside,’ he replied. ‘Do you want me to come round so we can talk?’

  I’m, I thought, not We. Did that mean it was already over? It was perfectly possible that Amy had already had enough of him. And if he wanted forgiveness, would I give it?

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I replied. Then, ‘Tomorrow evening, once the girls are in bed.’ Whatever our discussion was going to hold, I needed more time to think.

  Of course, it was silly of me to imagine that Ant would ever ask my opinion on anything and the conversation the next day was an exact repeat of the one we’d had in Spain. He said that things hadn’t been right between us for ages. He said he wanted me to stay in the house with the girls and that he was happy to continue paying the bills. He said, once again, that this was an opportunity to move on in our lives, and that he thought I could probably be happier with someone else too.

  The only difference this time, and it was quite a big difference, was that instead of listening in dumb silence, I agreed wholeheartedly with everything he said. And that made me feel surprisingly powerful.

  Ten

  Joe

  It was weird and uncomfortable being home without Amy. I didn’t do any more crying and I didn’t feel quite as angry as I’d expected, either. I was struggling to feel anything, really. Things just seemed deflated, it all felt flat, as if someone had left the top off my life and all the fizz had gone out of it.

  We arrived home on Monday evening, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that I got news from her. I’d picked up my phone tens of times to call or text but hadn’t had the nerve to actually do it. Sometimes I just needed to know how to remove the child lock on the new hob, or to ask for the recipe for one of Ben’s favourite dishes. Other times I wanted to know how she was, if she was missing me, or if she was ever coming back. In the end, I found I could get by without her answering any of these questions.

  Ben understood everything. Not on a conscious level, I don’t think, but in some way of his own, he made sense of what was happening. I know this because he didn’t mention Amy once, and that absence of Amy, even in name, struck me as one of the most awful aspects of it all. I sensed that I should prompt a discussion. I understood that as an adult, that was my role, not Ben’s. But I feared I couldn’t do so without falling apart. And having his father fall apart was the last thing my son needed right then.

  Though I needed to go straight back to work, I took the Tuesday off, and Ben and I went food shopping. In an attempt at finding some fun for him in the midst of our dire situation, I let him choose whatever he wanted. I couldn’t find it within me to give a damn about what we ate.

  At the checkout, we unloaded the contents of our trolley on to the belt. We had microwavable veggie burgers, frozen chips, crisps and pizzas. We had potato cakes shaped like smileys, chocolate mousses, lollipops and Coke. I saw the elderly cashier raise an eyebrow and understood that, in her eyes, I’d become that man: the single dad who feeds his kid rubbish.

  When Amy finally called, I was in the process of leaving for work with Ben in tow, worrying about how I was going to get anything done. The set-up wasn’t ideal for either of us and her phone call came at the perfect time, so I asked her if she could look after him for the day and suggested we talk in the evening when I got home.

  Amy said that sounded ‘just great’, and that she’d be round in fifteen minutes, so I could go, and as I got my stuff ready to leave, I thought about that word great, running it over and over in my mind and twisting it like a knife in a wound.

  Just as I was leaving, it crossed my mind that she might be with Ant, and so I called her to make sure that wasn’t the case. The idea of Ben spending the day with the two of them was unbearable to me.

  ‘No, don’t worry,’ she reassured me. ‘Ant’s at work too. I thought I’d take Ben shopping in Canterbury.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘He’ll like that. And if you see a shoe shop, he needs new trainers.’

  I spent the day pulling down ugly units from a rich old lady’s kitchen. It felt good to be destroying something, and once I’d finished, though there was no reason whatsoever to do so, I smashed the old cupboards with a sledgehammer.

  When I got home at six, Amy’s sports car was parked outside, and that seemed really weird. It was as if she was taking a liberty by parking it there – I can’t really explain why.

  I found her in the kitchen drinking herbal tea, and her ownership of the kitchen got to me even more. I reminded myself that the house was hers, but it didn’t seem to help.

  ‘Hello, Joe,’ she said, when I reached the doorway.

  I merely nodded by way of reply.

  ‘Do you want tea or something?’

  I shook my head and crossed to the kitchen sink, where I filled a glass with tap water.

  ‘Have a Coke,’ she said. ‘There’s loads and loads of Coke in the fridge. You’ve got gallons of the stuff.’ Amy didn’t approve of Coke. This much we knew.

  ‘Water’s fine,’ I said, refusing to rise to the bait. I moved to the window and looked out at the garden. ‘Where’s Ben?’ I asked, without looking back at her.

  ‘In his room. I bought him this Atari thing and I think he’s trying to set it up.’

  ‘A games console?’ I asked, addressing her reflection in the window. It was the same strategy I used during the gory bits on telly, where I’d squint at a reflection of the surgeon with the scalpel rather than looking directly at the screen.

  ‘Yeah, they’re back in fashion, apparently. It’s all gone retro.’

  I nodded and thought about the fact that Ben would almost certainly tire of Space Invaders within half an hour, but that I’d probably enjoy playing it myself. ‘Cool,’ I said, and then, mocking her without her knowing it, I added, ‘That’s just great.’

  A silence fell and eventually I turned back to face the room. ‘So?’ I prompted.

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say,’ Amy said.

  ‘Me neither,’ I told her.

  ‘Do you have, you know, any questions?’ she asked.

  I snorted at this, then closed my eyes and attempted to cool my mounting anger. ‘Just one, I guess. Are you still with him?’

  ‘With Ant?’ Amy asked obtusely.

  I shrugged. ‘Unless there are others? But maybe there are. How would I know?’

  Amy took a deep breath and stared straight ahead, past my left shoulder. ‘Yes, Joe, I’m still with Ant,’ she said flatly.

  I nodded slowly. ‘So it’s a goer, is it, your little love affair?’

  Amy thought about this and I thought I saw her stifle a smirk. It made me want to slap her. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, it’s a goer.’

  ‘He is a tosser, you know. I hope you realise that.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s what you’ve been told,’ Amy said. ‘Exes do tend to say that kind of thing.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve told him about me, then?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Joe. You know it isn’t,’ she said. ‘Anyway . . .’

  ‘Anyway . . .’

  ‘Look, I don’t know what you want me to say, Joe. I pretty much said all I have to say in the email.’

  ‘And I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  ‘Maybe tell me how you feel?’ she said. ‘You could have answered the email, but you chose not to.’

  I glared at her and wondered why she felt the need to witness my pain. But then I thought, Fuck it! Let her own it.

  ‘I’m devastated, Amy,’ I said. ‘I’m angry and I feel betrayed and depressed. And a whole shitload of other stuff besides. Happy?’

  ‘No, Joe,’ she said. ‘No, that doesn’t make me happy at all. It makes me really sad, if you must know.’

  ‘Good,’ I told her. ‘I’m glad you’re sad. I just . . . I can’t believe you’ve chucked our whole family down the drain, Ame. Do you even realise what you’ve done?’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ Amy said.

  ‘No kidding,’ I
said.

  ‘I mean, coming here, today . . . it’s too soon.’ She crossed to the sink and poured away her drink.

  ‘If you want to see me all bright and breezy, I suggest you come back in a few years,’ I said.

  ‘So, Ben,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘I can take him any day you want. I’m not working until mid-September, and I know that you are, so . . .’

  I covered my eyes with my hands and took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself. I was struggling to believe that this conversation was real – that this really was where my life had got to. ‘That would be good,’ I said finally. ‘But I don’t want him hanging around with that twat.’

  ‘Ant was fine for him to hang around with in Spain,’ Amy said.

  ‘Yeah, well, he wasn’t shagging my wife then,’ I muttered.

  Amy stared at me robotically and blinked a few times before saying, with forced calm, ‘No, of course. I understand. So maybe I should take him on weekdays, while you’re working, and you can have him at weekends when Ant’s off. OK?’

  ‘I guess. This week, at least. He’s back to school on Monday, so . . .’

  ‘I’ll come and pick him up at eight forty, just after you’ve left for work,’ Amy said.

  ‘Can you spend your time with him here?’ I asked. I’d just visualised Ben wherever Amy and Ant were living and hadn’t liked the image. ‘I think it would be better for him. Healthier, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sure,’ Amy said. ‘Why not? The flat’s small and a bit empty, anyway. He’d get bored.’

  ‘It’s Powell’s, is it?’ I asked.

  Amy nodded. ‘How did you know? From Heather?’

  I shook my head. ‘A guess. I know he’s still got empty units out there.’

  ‘We’re in the show flat,’ Amy told me, and I really wished she hadn’t. I’d fitted the kitchen units and bedroom cupboards in the show flat, so I knew it well. Now I could imagine their living arrangements only too perfectly. I imagined Ant hanging his suits in the fitted wardrobe I’d built, right next to my wife’s dresses. I shuddered as if I was cold.

  ‘But you’re right, it’s better if he spends time here as usual,’ Amy continued. ‘It’s why I want you and Ben to stay here for now, even though, technically, the house is mine.’

  I nodded. ‘OK,’ I said. I was probably supposed to be thanking her for her largesse, but that wasn’t happening, not today, and probably not ever.

  ‘Is he OK?’ she asked. ‘I mean, he seems OK, but . . .’

  ‘Yeah, he’s fine,’ I said. ‘For a kid who’s living through what he’s living through, he’s doing great.’

  ‘You told him that we’re best friends,’ Amy said. When I frowned, she added, ‘Me and Ant? You said best friends, apparently.’

  I nodded vaguely.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ she said. ‘It’s classy. So I’m grateful.’

  ‘Classy,’ I repeated, thinking that it was a strange word to use, considering the situation. ‘Whatever . . . Look, Amy, are we done here?’

  ‘Sure,’ Amy said, heading for the door. ‘I’ll just say goodbye to Ben, OK?’

  The final days of August whizzed by – I was working like a madman.

  Joe-the-younger was still on holiday, and where my usual day finished around eight, now I had to be home by six to look after Ben. Amy tried to be home by six thirty for Ant, she told me. He liked to eat quite early, she said. Just the thought of it made me feel sick.

  She’d arrive to look after Ben just as I left the house, and because she generally jumped in her car the minute she saw me coming home in the evening, there was very little communication between us.

  I was feeling dazed about it all – that was my overriding sensation. When I was working, I’d slog hard enough to drive the entire situation from my mind, but in the evenings, though I put on a brave face for Ben, the truth was that I just felt numb. There was a vague feeling of waiting for something, too, as if the status quo couldn’t continue to exist. Sometimes I thought I was waiting for her to realise the folly of her ways and come back to us, and other times I was merely waiting to feel better about the fact that she was gone. But basically, those were the sensations: numbness and waiting.

  The following Monday Ben started back at school, so Amy was no longer required to look after him during the day. I’d drop him at school in the morning, and he’d walk back with Heather and her kids in the afternoon, then stay at her place until I got home.

  Though Heather and the girls were just down the road, and despite the fact that I did think of them often – wondering in particular how Heather was coping with her similar situation – the truth is that I avoided engaging with her. She was a part of this whole horror story and things seemed complicated enough without throwing her feelings into the mix.

  But at the end of Ben’s first week back, I got home to find her sitting on the wall at the end of our drive. I parked the truck and walked back down to greet her.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, once she’d hung up. ‘Just chatting to my sister. Sorry.’

  ‘Hello, Heather,’ I said. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said lightly, ‘you know . . . Ben’s in the back garden with Lucy and Sarah.’ She nodded towards the rear of the house. ‘He wanted to show Lucy something and they ended up playing with a football, so I thought I’d leave them to it for a bit. Sarah was chatting to your cat the last time I looked.’

  ‘You can go back there and sit in a chair, you know,’ I told her. ‘You are allowed.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But here’s fine. And I need to get home soon anyway.’

  ‘So, come on,’ I said. ‘How have you been? Are you OK?’

  She looked at me soulfully and licked her lips. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I have no idea? I think I’m waiting for some profound realisation to come along, but nothing’s popping up. I don’t expect that makes any sense to you.’

  ‘It does,’ I told her. ‘It totally does. Come inside. Have a drink. We can catch up.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but not today. I really do need to be getting along. But maybe another time, OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Any time.’

  ‘Have you heard . . . ?’ she said. She cleared her throat and started again, saying, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any news, have you? About whether they’re . . . you know . . . happy? I can’t help but wonder how it’s all going.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Me and Amy aren’t exactly chatty right now.’

  ‘No,’ Heather said. ‘I can imagine. Ant doesn’t tell me anything either.’

  ‘But there are no signs of cracks that I know of. If that’s what you’re hoping for.’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m not,’ Heather said. ‘I’m not hoping for anything at all.’

  ‘No?’ I said. ‘Well, good for you.’

  ‘But everything just feels so . . . temporary, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I mean, Ant’s still living in that show flat. We have no real arrangement about anything, really. Not about the bills, or the house, or the future . . . It’s all just ad hoc, day to day, you know . . . It’s a very strange way to be living.’

  ‘It’s destabilising,’ I said. ‘I agree.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Heather said. ‘Destabilising is the word.’

  At that moment, Ben came running around the corner of the house, followed by Lucy, who was brandishing a stick.

  ‘Go and get your sister, will you?’ Heather told her, pulling the stick from Lucy’s grasp and throwing it into the bushes. ‘We need to be getting home.’

  Once Lucy had caught Sarah, we waved them goodbye and started to walk back towards the front door, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Amy’s red Mazda.

  Ben ran to greet his mother, giving her a hug when she stepped from the car. On being told she needed to talk to me, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. I led Amy into the lounge and closed the door behind us, wondering what this was about.

  ‘So,’ Amy said. ‘What’s up?’

&
nbsp; ‘Um, you’re the one who just said you needed to talk,’ I told her, feeling confused.

  ‘You’re right. And we do. We need to talk about when I can get to see Ben,’ she said, sounding almost aggressive.

  With Ben having started back at school, it was true that she hadn’t seen him all week. So I’d guessed we would have to rejig things somehow.

  ‘You’re going to have to choose between weekends or week nights,’ Amy continued. ‘Because you simply can’t have both, Joe. I do need some access to my son.’

  I frowned. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Of course. No problem.’

  ‘And if that frown’s about Ben seeing Ant,’ Amy said, ‘then you’re really going to have to get over it. Because there’s no way around that one, I’m afraid.’

  And I was worried about that, it was true. But I was also trying to imagine how Amy could have Ben to stay. The show flat at Powell’s was a single-bedroom unit, after all.

  ‘Are you still in that tiny flat?’ I asked. I instantly regretted having said this, fearing I’d opened a path to a potential conversation about my tenancy in the house.

  ‘We are,’ Amy replied. ‘But another one’s come free – a three-bed unit on the second floor – so hopefully we’ll be moving into that one.’

  I nodded and tried not to imagine the scene, but failed, remembering the high-gloss kitchen units I’d screwed to the walls with my own hands, the cupboards I’d fitted in all three bedrooms.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Amy prompted.

  ‘I think we need to see what Ben thinks,’ I told her.

  ‘Sure,’ Amy said. ‘But I don’t think we should put him in a position where he thinks he’s responsible for what happens. We don’t want him thinking he has to control all this, do we?’

  I crossed to the sink and poured a glass of water to give myself time to think about this. ‘Actually,’ I said, on returning to the table, ‘maybe we should let him feel he has some control. I mean, obviously he needs to see both of us, but we could at least let him choose when and where and how, couldn’t we? He hasn’t had any say in the rest of this, after all.’