Within a short time of Mark seeing all of this, he then let it be known that he missed me. He would make comments to try to fuck with my head, and he’d brush past me in the kitchen as he’d reach for the milk to make Rex his bedtime bottle – something he had never done before – and he would often call me when the kids were at school and nursery to see if he could ‘pop round’ for a cuppa.
In weaker moments, I almost cracked. It would have been so easy for me to slip and to have allowed him back in, but he had ripped out the hearts of two of my children, disowned a third, and the reality was I knew he would do it again. His performance as the ‘perfect dad’, acting like he cared, would have soon stopped. If I caved and accepted him back, he would have soon got bored of family life again, and the next time a young pretty girl was impressed with his flash car or expensive suit, that would have been it.
I didn’t want that life. I didn’t want to walk on eggshells because I’d spent too much money on a block of cheddar, waiting for him to leave us again. I didn’t want that for me, or my kids. I decided I’d rather be alone and safe than open us up to getting hurt again by the one man who should have done nothing but love and protect us. We were worth more.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Swipe in the Right Direction
The following year, with the very few remaining friends I had still blissful in their happy marriages, and with me having no family support and still dealing with Mark popping in and out when he fancied, I realised I was as lonely as fuck. Mark was a wanker, but I knew I had to stop thinking that all men were the same, so I joined a dating site called Love Finder. I had to pay a fee, but I’d read some grim tales online about the kind of men who signed up to dating sites and apps for free and just spent their weekends spreading the love – and STDs – to various vulnerable women. If a man was serious about finding love then maybe he’d pay a subscription fee … then again he may just be another rich twat like Mark, but all the same I just felt a bit better about it.
After a couple of disastrous dates where I had to text my friend Janey from playgroup and get her to fake-call a child emergency so I could urgently leave, I met Jamie. He had only joined the dating site the day before we began speaking, and he seemed reasonably decent. His picture showed a kind face with sparkling blue eyes and an endearingly self-conscious smile. His profile’s opening line – an observation about how he wasn’t sure if he was doing this properly since, as a law-abiding citizen, he wasn’t actually looking for ‘a partner in crime’ – actually made me snort when I read it, so I messaged him immediately. He wasn’t sleazy or pushy like the others, and he didn’t make any jokes that made me cringe so much I wanted to eat my own foot.
We met at a pizza restaurant in town. I knew it would be busy, so it wouldn’t be obvious to the world that we were strangers from an internet dating site, on a first date. When I saw him waiting outside, I got butterflies in my tummy and a fizz in my throat. He was really pretty; I don’t know if that’s the right word to use for a man, but that’s how I best describe him – his features were just pretty to look at. He was tall with dark hair that had a slight wave to it. He had little lines at the sides of his eyes, from his age, I imagine, but I remember them being visible because they were lighter than the rest of his face which had a lovely olive tan – and I liked that instantly because the lines were there when he smiled, such a beautiful genuine smile. He also had the most piercing blue eyes, like little twinkling crystals – his profile picture hadn’t even nearly done him justice.
He leant in to peck me on the cheek and he had that just-showered freshness to him. He’d dressed up but not too much, and he looked cool and casual in dark jeans, a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his toned forearms, and a pair of brown suede Adidas trainers. Trying to make conversation, I awkwardly commented on how nice his unusual shoes were and he gave me a cheeky smirk and said, ‘Limited edition Specials. I am a bit of a trainer freak,’ which made me giggle. I was relieved that I’d pitched it right in a denim dress and old-school Vans. Jamie’s first impression said ‘I take care of myself and I’m a grown-up, but I don’t take myself too seriously’. I liked that. I really liked that.
It was a warm summer evening so we’d sat outside at one of the pavement tables and immediately settled into a rhythm of easy conversation. He was charming without even a hint of arrogance, and funny, seemingly without trying to be. To my surprise, so was I. I made him laugh repeatedly and I found that I had things to say that weren’t about the school’s latest SATs scores or today’s episode of Hey Duggee. I realised that not only did I like him, I liked me too.
The waitress had to come to our table three times before we’d stopped talking for long enough to decide what we wanted to eat. The way he bit his lip in concentration when perusing the menu made me melt and I considered sending her away yet again. By the time the pizza arrived I’d found out all about his younger days living in Canterbury, his favourite football team (Arsenal, which was a shame but I guess it’s good to know the flaws early on) and his boring-but-pays-the-bills job.
We spoke about our kids, too, of course (he had two of his own, Ruby – who is a year older than Rex, and Will, who is the same age as Art), but he was genuinely interested in me – in my thoughts and opinions, what I wanted from the world, without being over the top. It made me see that it had been years since anyone had paid any attention to me. Mark never asked me how I was, or what I wanted. And to be honest, I didn’t even know what I wanted out of life any more. Once upon a time I’d had a passion, a dream, but now, it was clear, I had totally forgotten who I was or what my hopes and ambitions were. It was a question that when Jamie asked, not even I could answer – and it was the first time I felt really sad about that.
I remembered that I went to the toilet then to give myself a pep talk and avoid the date turning downbeat. When I got back, we’d both had the chance to realise that now it was dark it was cold too. I thought I’d messed it up – perhaps I’d been even more miserable than I’d realised – and was convinced that he was going to use the cold as an excuse to wrap things up there and then, but he turned to me and said in his lovely Kent accent, ‘Do you fancy heading inside to split a tiramisu and have a negroni for the road?’ which immediately gave me a flutter of butterflies in my belly.
The night ended with another kiss on the cheek – although this time he lingered slightly and aimed it close enough to the corner of my mouth to make my stomach flip again – and a flood of relief that the date had been worth selling half my wardrobe on eBay to pay for a sitter for the night. I remember that it only dawned on me on my way home that I hadn’t even noticed, let alone minded, that he’d held the door to the pizza place open for me as we’d left. I was just concentrating on making sure that we planned a second date. That made me feel good, that being with him had stopped me thinking of shit things.
The feelings I had for Jamie worried me. They came so quickly, and they were fierce – as soon as I left him that night, I missed him and I didn’t like it. Being alone again gave me time to overthink things and I was adamant that I wasn’t ever going to put myself in a position again where I could get damaged or hurt. Where someone could make me suffer again, which in turn would mean my babies would suffer.
I spent the next few weeks being a total moron, waiting days before I returned his texts or calls, cancelling dates at the last minute and then repeatedly trying to call it all off because I’d convinced myself it was too good to be true. But Jamie kept coming back. It took me a while to realise that actually I wasn’t ‘jumping in’ like I’d convinced myself; I had in fact spent a shitload of money that I didn’t have on therapy to get here, and so I decided life was too short. Jamie made me feel things I’d never felt before – not even when I first met Mark – so I decided to give him a chance, and he hasn’t let me down yet.
As we got to know each other more and more, Jamie opened up about his situation with his ex, Laura. I could tell that it was hard for him to talk about
and it felt like an important step for us. They’d also split up when Laura was pregnant with Ruby, but, unlike Mark, Jamie didn’t abandon them, and he doesn’t ever speak badly of her.
He told me Laura had struggled to be a mum after having their first baby, Will, and her family lived miles away in Cornwall. I understood immediately how lonely she must have felt, being a young mum with no family nearby. But she became really unwell a few years after Will was born, to the point that her mental health went into crisis. She was hospitalised and put on a cocktail of prescribed medication, which she was still taking when she fell pregnant with Ruby.
Laura became even more anxious about her health with the new baby arriving and wanted to return to her family in Cornwall. Jamie resisted – he’d begun to see that there was more wrong with their relationship than its location – and after weeks of talking it over, they realised it would be the hardest but best thing for everyone if they split. They just weren’t in love any more.
Jamie is an amazing dad, and when Will and Ruby are with us it’s easy to see how torn they are when it comes to the time to leave; keen to get back to their mum but reluctant to leave their dad behind. They idolise him so much. The long drive to meet Laura’s parents halfway is always difficult as we prepare ourselves for the goodbyes. More often than not, Jamie has to talk them round in the car park of the motorway services and remind them how much their mummy will have missed them and how excited she will be to see them. It’s devastating to watch and I always try to put myself in Jamie’s shoes and imagine how I’d feel if this was the set-up me and Mark had agreed upon. Mark’s unbearably difficult, but at least I get to see my children every day. During these moments, I wish that I could do something to make things easier on them all.
Speaking of exes and difficult relationships, not long after mine and Jamie’s pizza date, it started to become clear that Mark was unhappy with Sofia. I found it weird that despite them getting engaged within months of meeting there was never a mention of a wedding. Then, after another couple of months, when Jamie and I were becoming more serious, I eventually plucked up the courage and told Mark that I had met someone else. He broke. He begged me to try again with him. He promised he would be faithful, asked me to go to marriage counselling and said we shouldn’t give up on our relationship and destroy our kids’ worlds. He told me he had never been happy with Sofia, not ‘properly’ and that she was never going to be me. The irony of his speech left me flabbergasted as he’d sat on the sofa, covered in snot, begging and sobbing for me to give our marriage another chance.
It took me straight back to that dreadful evening when I had sat on that exact same spot on that exact same sofa and said those exact same words to him. Only he had walked out, abandoning me when I’d been heavily pregnant and broken-hearted. And he hadn’t given a fuck about my pain – or our children’s.
As much as I want to be able to say I took pleasure in turning down his offer, I just didn’t. I felt genuinely sad that he had thrown away his entire family to spend his afternoons fucking a woman he didn’t even love.
It made me realise that in life some people will never settle down; they will never be happy with what they have. No matter how good things are, they don’t feel content. They always chase something bigger, better. They are always looking for something else, something more, only in reality that just isn’t there, because any relationship faces problems. And some people, like Mark, don’t fight to get back what they once had – instead they give up, they move on, looking for something different, something new and exciting, leaving a trail of destruction behind them. And ultimately, the person they hurt the most is themselves.
Mark didn’t make things easy after I told him about Jamie. He began demanding to see the kids more, requesting overnight stays, which he hadn’t ever wanted to do previously, only to let them down at the last minute as they were excitedly sat in the lounge window with their coats on. I’d get letters from the mortgage company saying we had defaulted on payments. He would harass me constantly about pointless things and whenever I tried to fight my corner, I would receive a barrage of abuse where I was reminded that I lived in ‘his house’.
Jamie always told me not to react, to ‘bite my tongue’ to the point that those three words have become a bit of a standing joke between the two of us, mainly because I am so shit at doing it. Ultimately, we both knew Mark was after a reaction from me and I had to ignore it as much as I could. So, I stopped giving him the attention he craved. I ignored his relentless, demanding voicemails and texts, and I didn’t react when he cancelled on the kids or dropped them back a day early pretending he’d been ‘called into the office’. But as things with me and Jamie got ever more serious, and I saw what a healthy relationship looked like, I was just sick of Mark’s constant game-playing and manipulation. I’d had enough and something had to change …
One Sunday after we had dropped Jamie’s kids back to the Bristol services then made the long journey back home, I realised that Jamie was broken too. He had his head slightly turned towards the driver’s side window to try to hide the tears running down his cheeks, and I had to try to do something.
‘Jamie, listen. I know it’s hard, I can’t imagine, but the next visit will come round before you know it and—’
He quietened me with a flash of his brave face and a gentle squeeze of my thigh. ‘I know, Jo, I know. I just don’t understand why this isn’t getting easier. I’m missing so much and I …’ he trailed off as tears threatened again.
‘It will. You’re still finding your way and it was always going to be difficult, shifting your life from what you thought it would be to what it is. It’s hard when things are taken out of your control, time heals and …’ I quietened myself that time; my platitudes wouldn’t help.
We settled back into silence and I stared out of the window as we drove past town after town, and I began to think about the people who called these places home and then about how home was actually more than just a place, it was people.
Canterbury was only my home because that was where Mark had wanted us to be; now my home was where my children, and Jamie, and his children were. By that measure, Jamie was never really ‘at home’, with his children living hundreds of miles away. And really, Canterbury itself held nothing for either of us any more. Granted, Jamie’s mum, Pat, was there, and we loved her and relied on her a lot – not least for sleepovers for my three when Jamie and I made the journey halfway to Cornwall to take his kids home – but she hated seeing him wrenched from his children as much as I did, and I knew she’d have given anything for him to see them more.
An idea started to form.
As we hit the Surrey hills, I began to search for available jobs for Jamie and for houses close to where his kids lived that we could rent together – we were more than ready to live together and would have been by now if it wasn’t for Mark. It was doable, totally. I bookmarked everything and tried to put a lid on my excitement until we got back ‘home’; this wasn’t a conversation to have while driving seventy miles per hour down the M25 while trying not to cry.
We got home and he was really withdrawn, pretending he was OK. I suggested getting a takeaway, but he said he was happy to cook us something. I assumed he was looking for something to keep him busy so I replied to him saying we had loads to do so it would be easier to order a curry. I saw his face look instantly confused by my ‘loads to do’ comment and when he asked what, I told him I wanted him to look at some properties I had favourited, give me the OK on the Airbnb I had chosen for the following weekend so we could view the houses, and sign himself up to Indeed for job alerts.
He looked totally confused by then and when he asked what I was talking about, I burst with excitement and practically screamed, ‘We’re moving, to Cornwall. There is nothing here for us any more, and I prefer you when you’re hanging out with your kids.’ After a mild flashback of Mark simply telling me where we were going to be living, I tempered my earlier statement with, ‘If you want to, that is.
We should definitely talk about it as a possibility at least, and a weekend away next weekend to think it all through and weigh up our options would be no bad thing. I could do with some sea air.’ I giggled nervously at my last comment and met Jamie’s eyes to try to gauge his reaction.
He still looked confused. So I blathered on and took my phone out to show him the available properties (including the one we have just paid a deposit on!), and the job vacancies that were similar to what he was already doing. I think that was the moment he knew I was serious. I think it was the moment I really knew I was too – I was never this decisive and I’d surprised myself.
His confused face turned interested, then hopeful, before breaking out into full-blown excitement. He needed to be with his children. He had a little cry, which he tried to hide again, but this time it was a happy cry, where he affectionately pushed his forehead into mine and just repeated the words ‘Thank you, baby’ over and over again.
That night, we ordered curry and revelled in our own private excitement. Since Belle was staying over with a friend, and Art and Rex were at Pat’s for the night, we had time to think it through before broaching the subject with them the next day. I’d prepared a whole speech. For me there was no downside, I didn’t really have any proper friends, not ride or die friends, I had no job to worry about. The only thing that concerned me was Belle’s reaction and the impact the move would have on her – she’s fifteen and I was planning on uprooting her whole life right before her GCSEs – but we talked it all through and we all felt good about the outcome. She loves Will and Ruby and she loves Jamie, and I’d never been more proud of her than when I saw her taking in his hopeful face and declaring herself on board. Later, I overheard her telling her best friend Suze about the hot Cornish surfers she’d be hanging out with and I realised her decision wasn’t entirely selfless.
A Different Kind of Happy Page 4