It was agreed. We are taking the leap and moving to Cornwall to be closer to his kids, and embracing the fresh start we both craved. We are swapping city life for the seaside, our crazy-busy for quiet and relaxation (well, maybe not ‘quiet’ with five children in and out on different days, but this is my book, I can dream). I’m scared but excited and I think it will be the making of us going forward … as a family.
So now, we’re leaving our leafy townhouse in Canterbury – Jamie packed up his flat and moved out a few weeks early, in with us, to facilitate a quick sale above asking price – and renting for six months to begin with, to get a feel for the area.
We’ve found a huge house to rent right by the beach, with five bedrooms, a conservatory and a summer house. It’s a stunning home and I know it will be perfect for us. The terms of my divorce from Mark stated that when we did sell, or if he decided to buy me out, I would receive half of the equity from the sale. Along with the profits from Jamie’s flat, we had a decent pot of cash to start our new lives with. Jamie’s new company were very keen to have him on board so the salary ended up being more than we’d dared hope for, but even so, the monthly rent payments still felt like a bit of a splurge. It wasn’t long ago that I couldn’t afford school meals for my children so I was uneasy, but Jamie reasoned that it was just for six months, and we wanted to make sure that the transition was as smooth as possible for all the children. Having space felt like a key part of that, especially for the older ones.
Fast-forward eight weeks and I’m sat in the passenger seat as Jamie drives the five of us down the motorway in convoy with the removal vans. We have just said a tearful goodbye to Jamie’s mum, who, it turns out, has a brave face the exact same as Jamie’s, and I can tell that we’re all dealing with a multitude of emotions as we head towards our new life.
In the end, the plans for the move came together very quickly. Pat displayed nothing but enthusiasm for us, despite what we knew she was feeling inside, Laura was all for it, and Mark, of course, was dead against it. Despite that, the practicalities actually went so smoothly that I couldn’t help but take it as a sign that we were making the right decision.
‘Mum?’ Art calls from his position squished between his brother and sister. ‘Are we going to the beach when we get there? I don’t know where my trunks are.’
‘We might have a few things to do first off, sweetheart, but we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.’
‘Urgh, Art.’ Belle rolls her eyes, trying to play the grown-up. ‘We’ve got a million things to do; we’re not going to be able to go to the beach for weeks. It’s not even summer yet!’
His face drops, never getting used to his big sister’s knack of cutting him down, but I twist round and shoot him a wink that puts the smile back on his face. I tell Belle that although it’s only April it’s always summer in Cornwall and will be boiling hot on our arrival and she pipes up ‘Really?’. I giggle and say ‘No’ and she immediately realises I’m winding her up as payback on behalf of Art.
‘Anyway, Art,’ Jamie chimes in, ‘first things first: we have to hold the race for the bedrooms. Remember there’s seven of us but only five bedrooms. Me and your mum have agreed to share but that still means that one of you is outside. I can’t wait to see who it will be!’
Even Belle laughs, despite herself, while Art runs with the thought and starts imagining the various ways that such a scene might play out – he’s convinced that it’ll be Ruby in the garden. Belle looks up from her phone, where she’s no doubt been constantly texting her friends since their goodbye last night, and ventures that Rex will be the one, and Rex, for no reason other than that she’s given his name, becomes adamant that Belle will be outside. The reality is no one is outside as the attic has been converted, meaning we have a sixth bedroom, but Jamie loves to wind them up and Belle loves playing along.
I sit back and listen to the three of them talk about life with their new brother and sister, in their new home, going to their new schools and I’m thrilled that excitement has become the overriding emotion.
Now, we can concentrate on the seven of us becoming a blended family under one roof. And, as exciting as that seems, I am also shitting bricks about it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Finding Our Feet
Monday
They say moving house is one of the most stressful things alongside death and divorce. They’re right, whoever ‘they’ are.
We’ve been in the house eighteen days.
Jesus, it’s hard enough moving towns let alone halfway across the country. Despite the light-hearted joking in the car, the boys actually ended up in a full-blown punch-up when we were picking bedrooms, and Belle – who has always moaned that we don’t live near to the sea – has decided, now that it’s on our doorstep, she ‘hates the beach’ because the sand grains getting everywhere send her over the edge. Brilliant.
While Belle and Art continue to bicker over something and nothing, I take a moment to let this new life and home sink in. The house is bigger than I remembered it from our visit that weekend a couple of months ago. It’s beautiful and sits on a private lane off a main street, which leads down to a huge beach with golden sand. It’s the biggest beach in our town and it has kayaks and pedalos and deckchairs for hire in the summer. The front is lined with beach huts with pastel-coloured doors, and there are seasonal huts that sell fast food and ice cream. It’s not tacky like some beach resorts I went to as a kid, but tourists obviously play a big part in the industry here. As you walk down the hill, before you turn left to the beach or right into town, there’s a row of shops that overlook the beach, with a café, a little hairdressers and a small shop that sells essentials. It’s a pretty place; there are flowerbeds dotted around the streets that are maintained by local volunteers and the shops have huge, trailing, colourful hanging baskets outside of them.
The last people to live in this house before us were the original owners and you can see they loved this home so much. The landlord told Jamie they bought it over forty-two years ago and raised their own children here. It’s a Victorian property with huge high ceilings and tall sash windows. There’s the large attic room, four doubles on the main floor and one bedroom with an en-suite on the ground floor, which I imagine has been added on since the house was built. There’s the summer house in the garden, which is currently storing all my furniture and bits and bobs. It has an en-suite and will be perfect for guests once we get it sorted. There are fitted solid oak floors downstairs and the carpets are new throughout the upstairs, cream and thick – the same as the ones Mark had in his first apartment, which makes me roll my eyes. The walls have been painted a sandstone colour throughout. Everything you look at is the best quality possible – from the door handles to the white goods. I worried it may be dated or shabby due to it being in the same family for so long but it’s clear they’ve always spent money on it and kept it modern. I panicked about renting because it’s not something I’ve ever done with the children, but it feels like home, a beautiful home. Our family home, together.
I feel so lucky and so happy, but a part of me, buried deep inside, can’t help thinking, What if it all goes wrong?
I push the thought away, determined not to let any of my old anxieties cloud our new life here. I watch the way Jamie is with my kids and I know he genuinely loves them and enjoys their company. He makes the effort to spend time individually with all three, talking about their interests, helping them do stuff or just sitting on the sofa, snuggled up to them, watching what they want to watch on the telly. They haven’t ever had that; even when Mark lived with us, it was always me that they wanted, and they never sought their dad out to ask him a question or spend time with him. The more I watch Jamie so naturally enjoying playing a parenting role, with such ease, it makes me wonder if being a dad was something Mark always knew deep down he didn’t want. Still, it’s made me grateful for now – for what we have and who we are, and that’s something I don’t ever want to change.
The majority
of our lives are now unpacked and out of boxes. Jamie is well settled in his new job and he seems to like it a lot. The two eldest have started school; Art is finishing his last few months of primary at the local school just round the corner – it’s a lot smaller than his last school but it’s nice and there doesn’t seem to be that ‘cliquey playground vibe’ I experienced in Canterbury.
Rex has been accepted to start there in September in reception, theoretically he could have started last year but I held him back so rather than him being one of the youngest he would be one of the eldest. People often ask me why I decided to do that and the real answer is I’m not sure, but mainly I think, it’s because I know he’s my last and I wanted to hold on to him that little bit longer. Belle has begun at the comprehensive school, which is a fifteen-minute bus ride away. They both seem to have enjoyed the first week. Belle has spent her evenings on FaceTime to her friends back home, which has left me riddled with guilt that I’ve ruined her teenage years, but she assures me she’s OK and is still happy we moved. I’m so proud of her for being the way she is. It’s possibly the worst age for a child to be uprooted – and we did talk about waiting another year and getting her GCSEs out of the way – but her teachers assured me she will get good grades and the reality is I think she would have been more damaged staying around her dad for a longer period of time.
All the kids seem happy, to be fair, and they also seem a lot closer since we moved. I feel less stressed too. We have a laugh before we go to school in the mornings, and I’ve noticed how quickly they’re growing up by the things they come out with. This morning I called the doctors to make an appointment and, when I ended the call, I remarked about how miserable the receptionist was. Belle said I shouldn’t be so harsh and maybe she was just having a bad day. I told her I had spoken to her three times now and she was miserable on every call and then Art came out with, ‘Maybe every time you call up its her time of the month. I’ve learned that can do funny things to girls and ladies.’ Belle told him to shut up and he said, ‘It does to you, Belle. I always know when it’s your time because you scream at everyone and eat all the chocolate.’ We all cried with laughter, Belle included – and it reminded me that these babies of mine are no longer babies.
Mark hasn’t called or texted them – not once – and the kids haven’t mentioned him. I haven’t bothered getting them to attempt to contact him either. When we decided to make the move down here, I knew I had to tell Mark, and I arranged to meet him in a pub close to the house. He walked in with a huge bouquet of yellow roses, beautifully wrapped. I could tell they were expensive – like the flowers he used to present me with weekly at the start, the flowers I imagine he presented Sofia with when I was carrying his child and he was seeing her, flowers once upon a time I felt so lucky to be given, but flowers now that when he walked into the pub carrying them they made me want to vomit. I genuinely believe that he thought I was going to say I wanted us to try again. When I told him we were moving away to give the kids a fresh start, he burst into tears and my heart genuinely hurt for him … until he stormed out of the pub just minutes later (taking his expensive flowers with him) and told me, loud enough for the rest of the establishment to hear, that I could ‘go fuck myself’.
I tried to call him the next day but he didn’t answer. I informed the kids’ schools that I wanted to move them and they contacted him to gain consent, which weirdly he gave, yet he never had a conversation with me about it after that night when he stormed out of the pub. I’d tried to talk to him like an adult, and as the other parent to the children we shared, but I was done with his game-playing and I was done chasing him. He had been the one to destroy our family in the first place and this move was the first step in putting us all back together.
I met a lady the other day when I popped into the café down the road. Rex and I often call into it on the way back from the school run in the morning and it’s a really beautiful place, only small but done out in a nautical theme with a mix of blues, reds and whites and little sailboat ornaments dotted about the place.
Outside they have a stand, which sells buckets, spades, crabbing lines and bait. Inside it smells of fresh bread and hot coffee, and they serve the best home-made carrot cake. They have a play corner where Rex spends his time chalking on the blackboard on the wall, building tall towers out of the blocks or cooking up a storm with the wooden food in the play kitchen while I sit, sipping coffee and watching the world go by through the window for half an hour.
The lady was already there when I walked in, stood at the counter, chatting to the girl making her coffee, and I recognised her from the playground at Art’s school. Her jacket was hung over a chair at one of the small tables, and I thought how nice it would be to have a new friend to go with my new life, so, as Rex headed to the play corner, I bit the bullet and sat at the empty table next to where her coat was reserving her space.
I heard her ask the girl where Lou was, who I assumed was the owner. The young girl serving explained that Lou had fallen and fractured her wrist so was unable to drive in, or do much at all really, and she would be covering most shifts until Lou was back. The lady’s little boy, who looked slightly younger than Rex, walked over to play with him in the corner, she followed, saw me sat smiling at the boys and said, ‘Hi, is he yours? He’s adorable,’ before introducing herself as Jen, a midwife with three sons of her own, and sitting down at her table. Jen was instantly warm and friendly and I liked her immediately. Her little boy Jack had just turned four.
‘A job as a midwife and three sons? You must be exhausted!’ I said to her, with what I hoped came across as admiration.
‘Oh, absolutely! I can barely remember what it’s like to be asleep, and I haven’t been more than three feet away from a child at any point in the last five years, but—’ at this point her little one ran over and squished the half-eaten soggy biscuit he’d been munching on into her hand before dashing away again. Jen rolled her eyes and, gesturing towards her hand, said, ‘It’s worth it for these perks, though, right?’
We giggled like old friends and, as we chatted more, I found out that she was six years younger than me, and when I looked at her I felt a bit shit about myself. She seemed so young and cool, with highlighted hair with a pastel-pink shade running through it, and was wearing a dungaree dress with Converse boots. She had accessorised her look with bangles and matched a smear of red lipstick to a scarlet head scarf she had tied in a funky knot. I felt a bit envious of her look; it was one of those where it appeared to be thrown together, but it worked well and she had the confidence to pull it off.
It made me realise how bad I looked. I hadn’t even changed out of the vest top I had slept in the night before, and rather than bothering to put a bra on, I’d just thrown a jumper over me instead, which I now noticed had a dodgy orange stain on the front. Probably Bolognese, which I hadn’t cooked for over a fortnight, which meant my jumper hadn’t been washed since then – ideal. My hair was stacked on top of my head in a crocodile clip and I was pretty sure my leggings were so old they were now see-through from the back.
I wondered right then if Jamie ever noticed other women, other mums, who seemed to just have it together way more than I did. I then felt that pain, the quick stab of ‘what if?’ and the panic that hits your chest. What if he did notice other women? What if one made a pass at him? What if he declined her advances but then came home and I looked like shit? What if he then ended up having a full-blown affair and ripping my heart out just like Mark did …?
I pulled myself back to reality and felt a quick surge of hatred for Mark for making me question everything and everyone because of what he’d done. I was dressed like this because we’d moved house, we were unpacking and constantly busy – it would be pointless me dressing up with a full face of make-up. And actually, when Jamie got in from work, he would wrap his arms around my waist, pick me up and kiss me a hundred times no matter how I looked or what I was wearing. He saw me, as a whole – not just the Bolognese stain.
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br /> I brushed aside my anxieties and carried on chatting to Jen. She told me her two youngest sons are from her current marriage but that she has an older son who is twelve who she had with her previous partner. She told me their separation was like a scene from EastEnders and, before I could join in and top her story with mine, she told me he’d left home as normal one Wednesday morning to go to work – kissing her and their son goodbye – and he’d never returned. She’d called the police and reported him as a missing person and his friends and family had all gone out looking for him in a frantic state. It turned out he’d been shagging a neighbour and had moved in with her a few streets away.
‘He never came back to the house, not to collect over a decade’s worth of belongings, and not to wish his son a happy birthday when he turned three a few days later. It very nearly destroyed me completely, but I picked myself up, and two years later I met the man who would become my husband. My ex then agreed to me changing our son’s surname, if I’d relieve him of all his parental responsibilities. Oh god, am I oversharing? We’ve only just met, sorry if it’s TMI!’
‘Not at all! What a bastard!’ was my response. ‘I’m going through similar with my ex and it’s soul-destroying that when you look at your babies and see all their qualities, and you feel that love, that they don’t feel it too. That they’ve just given it all up.’
‘I don’t see it like that,’ she told me. Although her ex was a total fuckwit, she felt that it was for the best that at least he could hold his hands up and admit he didn’t want to be a father or have any involvement in their son’s life. And because of that, her new husband has taken on the role of dad and everyone was fine and happy with that.
A Different Kind of Happy Page 5