‘I’m so embarrassed,’ I said, and it was true. My teeth were hurting just at the thought of how I’d watched him wiping his plate with bread every night. I turned to look out of the side window and pulled a face at my own reflection in the glass.
‘Don’t be.’ Joe reached across and squeezed my knee, and this surprised me so much that I physically jumped.
‘Oops,’ Joe said. ‘Sorry!’
‘No, it’s . . .’ I said. Fine? I thought. Nice? Lovely? Because I couldn’t think of anything appropriate, the sentence remained unfinished for a few long seconds. ‘. . . just me,’ I said finally. ‘I’m jumpy.’
That evening, we all watched a film on Netflix. It was a teen movie called Lady Bird that Lucy had been nagging me to watch.
Joe and Ben shared the big armchair, while I snuggled on the sofa with the girls. Though the film was surprisingly good, my attention strayed about halfway through. For ten minutes I thought not about the film, but about a series of images running through my mind’s eye. In them, Ben and the girls were seated on the sofa, while Joe and I snuggled in the armchair together. The visualisation was surprisingly powerful, and I could imagine the feel of his body wrapped around me, picture the scent of his breath mingling with mine. By the time I snapped back into the room, I had beads of sweat pearling on my top lip.
‘. . . actually cried a bit, there,’ Joe said, once it was over.
I was surprised. Ant had never cried during a film, as far as I could recall, and if he had, he had certainly never owned up to it.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘It was lovely, wasn’t it? Good choice, Lucy.’
Ben, who had dozed off on Joe’s lap, stretched and linked his arms around his father’s neck. ‘I wish you could stay here for ever,’ he said, through a yawn.
‘I’m sorry, champ?’ Joe said.
‘Instead of going to live at Grandpa’s,’ Ben said. ‘I wish you could just stay here.’
Joe cleared his throat and stood, scooping sleepy Ben up in his arms. ‘The way the job’s going, I might well just be here for ever,’ he said. ‘Come on. Time to get you back to the house of horrors.’
From the corner of my eye, I watched them exit the room, and a few minutes later I heard them leave by the front door.
I was feeling strangely emotional as I put Sarah to bed, but I couldn’t work out why. The film had been quite moving in parts, so for a while I convinced myself that was the cause. How good we are at lying to ourselves! Well, I certainly am, at any rate.
Joe returned ten minutes later, while I was in the bathroom with Lucy. Getting her to brush her teeth was always something of a trial because she could never stop talking long enough to do it properly.
When I got downstairs, Joe was back in the armchair, watching a news channel.
‘Are you really behind on your job?’ I asked, and as I said it, I was hit by another wave of emotion and I suddenly understood that it came from my fear that he really would leave us in a week’s time, mixed with hope that he might yet stay a bit longer.
‘Yeah,’ Joe said, turning his attention from the TV. ‘This job we’re doing out in Hersden’s a real bitch. Half the wall came away with the cupboards, so we’re having to rebuild all that first.’
‘You know you can stay on longer,’ I said. ‘You can stay as long as you like.’
‘I was gonna ask you about that, actually,’ Joe said. ‘You don’t have another lodger lined up yet, do you?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve no plans to line one up, either,’ I said.
‘Having me has put you off for good, has it? I get that.’
I laughed. ‘No, I really like having you here.’ And there they were again, my almost-tears.
‘Good,’ Joe said. ‘Ben seems to like me being here, anyway.’
‘Well, it’s convenient. It’s almost next door.’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ Joe said. ‘But I think it’s more just the atmosphere, really.’
‘The atmosphere?’
‘Yeah, you run a very relaxed household, don’t you?’ Joe said. ‘You’re really easy-going.’
I laughed. ‘That’s like my supposed good cooking. No one’s ever said that before, either.’
‘Really?’ Joe said. ‘That surprises me. Maybe you’ve just been hanging out with the wrong people.’
Joe’s deadline came and went. He handed me another four hundred pounds, and I increased the quantity of food that I cooked day by day until he seemed satisfied. He really did eat like a horse.
My moods were very up and down about it all. Some days – most of the time, in fact – I could convince myself that nothing was happening here. He was just a lodger, I told myself, and if other thoughts began to manifest, I’d arm-wrestle my mind back under control. Those thoughts – such dangerous thoughts – were still there, of course, lingering in the periphery of consciousness. But by staring steadfastly straight ahead, I could almost pretend they didn’t exist.
From time to time, though, specifically if I’d had a drink, I’d lose my steely sense of self-control and let myself think about what it was like living with Joe. Because the truth of the matter was that it was wonderful. After years of living with someone who never understood – or even cared to understand – anything I tried to say, Joe, it turned out, ‘got me’. He was interested in my views. He liked my cooking, he laughed at my jokes, and I at his. We both liked the seaside and walking in the forest. We both loved nineties Britpop and arty films but hated trashy TV. Joe encouraged me, almost daily, to think more deeply and to laugh louder, and in his company I couldn’t help but do so. When I was with him, I could hear myself being funnier and sexier and more interesting, even to myself.
The fact of the matter was that Joe was heavenly. I could barely believe it had taken me so long to notice.
But Joe’s qualities, Joe’s beauty, too, weren’t classical, I suppose. He wasn’t flashily generous in the way Ant had been, and he didn’t have chiselled features or perfect skin. His clothes weren’t the elegant suits that made Ant stand out in a crowd, but faded jeans with ripped knees and dusty builders’ boots. So, in a way, everything that was good about Joe fell outside my frame of reference. It was as if I’d been trained to look for the wrong things, and so had needed to learn how to think differently before I could see him. But here he was, grinning at me lopsidedly and scratching at the bristle of his beard. Here he was, hitching up his jeans unselfconsciously, and making me laugh by taking the mickey out of himself.
I began to imagine him staying for ever, though I couldn’t come up with any scenario that could possibly make that happen. His wife was just down the road with my ex – that was the only thing that linked us. His things and his family were waiting for him in Whitby, after all, while at mine he was living out of a backpack. Every clue indicated that this was temporary, and yet, and yet . . . I just couldn’t quite convince myself that’s all it was.
Time and again, I’d push all of this from my mind, and, for a day or two, I’d be fine. But then I’d come into the lounge and see his son seated on the sofa with my girls as they waited for tonight’s film to begin. Joe would be crouching down to light the fire, his builder’s bum peeping over the top of his jeans, and he’d look up at me and give me that lopsided smile and say, ‘I thought I’d light a fire. Make it cosy, like,’ and my heart would start to ache all over again. Because not only would it have been hard for us to look more like a family, we didn’t look like any old family, either. We looked like the family I’d always dreamed of. We looked like the family I’d never had.
Ben lived at ours almost all of the time. In fact, the only days he went with his mother were the days when Ant took the girls. If they were all doing something together – and quite often, it was something expensive that Ant had organised – Ben was happy to tag along.
I asked Joe one day why he thought Ben spent so little time with Amy. It seemed strange to me that he could get by without seeing more of his mother, and even stranger that she could accept it.
; Joe shrugged, and smiled vaguely. ‘I think he just prefers it here,’ he said. ‘I think we all just prefer it here.’
By the end of March, I was feeling quite febrile about it all. On every other two-week anniversary, Joe had asked if he could stay on well before he was due to leave. This time we’d reached the thirty-first of March, and he still hadn’t said a word.
But the job he’d been working on was finished, this I knew – he’d gone over to pack up his tools that morning. So I was worried. Actually, I was more than worried, I was terrified.
I sat at the kitchen table all day, biting my nails and trying to imagine what might come next. Perhaps I should have said something, I thought. Maybe I should have given him some inkling about my feelings, and now I’d surely left it too late. But how can you tell your lodger you’re . . .
I couldn’t finish the sentence, even for myself. And was I? Was that really it? And if I named it, wouldn’t I be simply opening myself up to a fresh new world of pain?
Perhaps Joe had merely been the first man to come along after Ant, I thought, trying to reason myself into a calmer state of mind. And that was indisputably true. Joe had absolutely been the first man to come along after Ant.
But then I thought of Joe’s face, of his chunky body, and his thick hair, and the smile lines around his eyes, and couldn’t help but smile myself. Because no, that wasn’t it.
It was that Joe made me want to be a better version of myself. He noticed me, that was the thing. He really saw me. And that attention – something that had been missing my entire life – made me want to be wittier and kinder and cleverer. In a nutshell, being with Joe made me feel alive.
He got home extra early that day. It must have been about three, because I hadn’t even left to meet the girls from school.
‘All done?’ I asked, on entering the kitchen. He was washing his hands at the sink.
‘All done,’ he said, shooting me a sideways smile. ‘I thought I’d never finish. Jesus, that was a shitty job. Pardon my French.’
‘You’ve got . . .’ I said, raising a finger to my forehead and rubbing it, imagining how it would feel to be stroking Joe’s hair instead. ‘You’ve got paint, here . . .’ I said. ‘In your hair.’
‘Oh,’ he said, turning back to the sink, and washing his face with gusto.
‘So what now?’ I asked, as he dried his face on a tea towel.
‘Um?’ he asked, sounding fake, sounding as if he was pretending the subject was unexpected.
‘What now?’ I asked again. ‘Have you decided on your next move yet?’
Joe dried his hands and threw the tea towel on to the countertop, and then picked it back up again to hang it from the rail. Finally, he turned his back to the sink and frowned at the floor for a moment before looking up at me. ‘Yeah, I need to talk to you about that,’ he said.
His partner, Joe-the-younger, had found more work, he explained. He’d been begging Joe to stay on.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And what have you decided?’
‘Well, it’s up to you, really,’ Joe said. ‘I, um, totally get it if you want me out.’
‘I totally don’t want you out,’ I said. ‘I love you being here, Joe. Really I do.’ It was the closest I’d ever got to saying how I felt, but even though I’d managed to slip the word love in there, it was still so far from the truth.
Joe shrugged. ‘I’m loving being here,’ he said. ‘And it’s great for Ben, too. And the work just keeps coming in . . . So it would seem silly to walk away, you know?’
‘It would,’ I told him. ‘It makes perfect sense.’
‘But that’s not it, really,’ Joe said. ‘I’m . . . um . . . I don’t know how to say it, really. But I’m happy at the moment. I didn’t expect that, not now, not with, you know, everything that’s happened. But I am. This . . .’ He gestured vaguely around the kitchen. ‘It just works for me, you know?’
I nodded and blinked back tears. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘So I thought maybe we could . . . you know . . .’ Joe stammered.
‘Yes?’ I asked. I gripped one hand with the other to stop it trembling.
‘Maybe we could plan a bit longer term,’ Joe said.
‘That might be nice,’ I told him. I winced at myself. Nice sounded so mealy-mouthed, after all.
‘So . . . I thought . . . maybe, end of April. Or even May?’ Joe said. ‘See how it goes?’
‘That would be lovely,’ I said, both thrilled that he was staying and distraught that, even as he was announcing it, he was maintaining the temporary nature of his stay.
‘Um, another thing is Easter,’ Joe said.
‘Easter?’
‘Yeah. I have to go up to Dad’s.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘No problem. Do you want me to look after Ben or something?’
‘No,’ Joe said. ‘No, that’s not it. Ben’s coming with me. He loves to see his grandad and everything, so . . .’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘No, it’s just . . . well . . . I was wondering if, maybe . . . I mean, only if you fancy it . . . but I thought perhaps you might want to tag along?’
‘Me?’ I said.
Joe shrugged. ‘Yeah. And the girls, of course. We could make it into a holiday kind of thing. Well, a break, anyway. What d’ya think?’
I chewed my bottom lip for a second and swallowed with difficulty. And then I made myself be brave. ‘That would be lovely,’ I said. ‘I’d really, really like that.’
Even though I hadn’t seen Kerry for years, and had been incredibly excited about the Easter trip she had tentatively planned, I phoned her that evening to reschedule.
‘It suits me better, to be honest,’ she said. ‘I’ve been invited to a massive party on Lake Como by my DJ friend. It’s going to be absolutely amazing and there are rumours that Clooney’s going to be there.’
My sister’s lack of disappointment made me laugh, and I strongly suspected that she would have cancelled me in favour of the party anyway.
The run-up to Easter was such a strange, emotional no-man’s-land, I really didn’t know what to think.
In a way, of course, nothing had changed. Joe was still a paying lodger, vanishing to his room at ten thirty and still planning, in theory, his move north. But in another way, everything had changed as well, because he’d told me something quintessential: he was happy here; he preferred living here. And so did his son. I ran that conversation over and over in my head and wondered if it was unreasonable to let myself dream.
My moods swung back and forth, depending on whether I chose to concentrate on Joe-the-lodger, or Joe, the object of my desire. Suffice to say, I was terribly excited about the upcoming trip to Whitby.
Ant and Amy were living down the road by then, so when I passed their house I would see their two cars parked side by side and invariably imagine them indoors together. Sometimes, particularly when I was walking home after having taken the girls to school, I would take time to try to work out how I felt about it, but the only real conclusion I ever came to was that, like Joe, I didn’t seem to care as much as I probably should.
Funnily enough, it was thinking about how Amy had treated Joe and Ben that gave rise to the strongest emotion – anger on their behalf. But if I wanted to temper it and calm myself down, I found that I could do so simply by remembering the fact that poor Amy was now living with Ant. Because how could anyone ever choose that? I wondered, even though, of course, I’d chosen exactly that myself.
Back home, I could analyse my feelings rather better, and I came to realise just how lonely I’d been. And I don’t mean lonely after Ant left, either; I mean before, when we were still together. Because though being alone hadn’t been easy, there is truly nothing that makes you feel more lonely, I now saw, than living with someone, spending your weekends and evenings with someone, who simply doesn’t relate to you at all. Spending your time with a partner who doesn’t even like you that much – a partner you don’t have any
respect for either – that, my friends, is what real loneliness feels like.
Ben was now at ours five nights a week. Only on Saturday nights and Sundays did he and the girls stay at number 12, as we now called it. It was Joe who’d started referring to it as number 12, no doubt because it was less painful than calling his old house Amy’s place, or even worse, Amy and Ant’s.
Once I’d managed to lure Dandy back home – by switching to an inordinately expensive brand of cat food – our house felt like a proper family nest. I’d sit in the middle of it all with the cat on my lap, knowing that Joe was reading in the conservatory and the three kids were playing upstairs, and I’d feel ecstatic about the benevolent buzz of it all. I’d imagine how sterile and awful things must seem down at number 12, and allow myself to feel smug.
On Easter weekend we changed our routine, and the children went to number 12 for Friday and Saturday, so that we could leave for Whitby on Easter Sunday morning.
In order to avoid Ant’s wrath, I’d got into the habit of getting everyone ready with military precision, so I had to keep reminding myself that Joe was not Ant. ‘We’ll leave when we leave,’ he told me, and I wandered through the house gathering stuff together, murmuring, ‘We leave when we leave, we leave when we leave,’ while still expecting to be told off.
‘Can we stop on the way if we get hungry?’ I asked him, when our paths crossed in the hallway.
‘Of course,’ Joe replied. ‘I’m not gonna drive for five hours without a break, am I? We can stop any time you want.’
It was half past eleven by the time we’d bundled everyone out of the house, and it was after six when we got to Whitby. The journey had been entirely stress-free, had been fun even, with Joe and I chatting easily up front and the kids in the rear pulling faces at the occupants of other cars.
Joe’s dad’s place was pretty amazing. It was a four-storey Regency terrace, with three bedrooms on each of the upper floors. A faded plaque on the door said it had once been called The Waves, and an even more faded sign in the window still read No Vacancies.
While Joe’s dad made a pot of tea, Emma showed us around the house.
From Something Old Page 30