‘You should give her a call. See if she wants to meet up?’ Bless him, Joe was evidently desperate for me to have some distraction.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I should. She messaged me at the weekend on the day that Layla left and I never replied.’ I nodded to myself. ‘Yes. I’ll call her.’
‘And you know, if you’re at a loose end or whatever, you could always come up to the golf club with me sometime? There are a couple of wives who play, although most of them just come along afterwards.’
‘I’m not sure I can bring myself to attend a venue where they only decided to admit women to the clubhouse bar four years ago,’ I said. ‘But I appreciate the offer, really I do.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘And I know the club hasn’t historically been the most progressive but they’re keen to change that perception, be more inclusive. I’m not trying to force you into it but there’s a social in a couple of weeks’ time. We could go?’
Despite his nonchalant tone I could see from his expression that this was important to him. Much as I thought a golf club social sounded hideous and I would probably rather slowly pluckout my eyeballs with some rusty tweezers than attend, I knew I should support my husband’s new-found hobby. We hadn’t been out together as a couple for ages and without wishing to be melodramatic, we were now all each other had (admittedly, that was a bit melodramatic).
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t pre-judge it. That sounds nice. Let’s go. Besides –’ I picked up our plates and carried them over to the dishwasher – ‘it’ll give me something to tell Mum next time she accuses me of becoming a hermit!’
I chuckled away to myself, expecting Joe to make a comment about my mother’s ridiculous notions but when I turned to look at him, he was staring at the table, two little worry lines still furrowing his brow.
Chapter Nine
‘So, it’s still feeling pretty raw then?’ Farah poured me a second cup of tea from our shared pot. We’d agreed to meet in the cafe of a local bookshop, both of us feeling, for our own reasons, that we needed to get out of our respective houses, and both of us appreciative of a calming bookish vibe. Since childhood I’d nursed a little fantasy of working in a place like this, surrounded by shelves of paperbacks, offering advice to avid readers who hung on my every word…
I sighed. ‘Yeah. I can’t lie. It’s shit. I miss her so bloody much.’ My eyes filled with the tears that appeared to be permanently on standby. Lacrimal ducts working overtime, never off duty.
Farah reached out to squeeze my hand. ‘I can’t really imagine,’ she said. ‘I know I always bollock on about being desperate for mine to leave home but I’m already in pieces about Noah even looking at university prospectuses.’
‘It’s more complicated with your lot too,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re ablendedfamily.’
She snorted. ‘Love that phrase,’ she said, pouring the milk. ‘Blended really implies that there’s some sort of harmonious balance but honestly, our family feels about as balanced as a circus troupe in a monastery, or a tribe of rampaging baboons let loose in the Louvre. I’m worried it’s going to make mine more keen to leave home in the long run. Neil’s kids don’t make it easy. Not for any of us. Carli told me tofuck off back to my ex-husbandyesterday. She’s thirteen! I’m trying to make allowances, but…’ She exhaled into her cup.
‘But at least there’s still stuff going on in your household,’ I said, aware I was competing for domestic awfulness with much more limited material but knowing that Farah would forgiveme because I was her oldest friend and she was therefore contractually obliged to forgive me for anything. ‘Even if it’s arguments and drama. Our house feels like a mausoleum. It’s just Joe and me circling each other warily, most of the time in silence. I have nothing to say to him. Like, absolutely nothing. I ran out of conversation yesterday. Completely. In that way you do with people you don’t know very well. Except I’ve known him for ages. I can’t work out if it’s a comfortable silence or an uncomfortable one but there’s part of me that’s wondering what we have in our lives now, like, what’s the point of us as a couple of parents if we’ve got nobody to parent. I’ve managed to talk him into driving us up to visit her this weekend but he’s not happy about it – he thinks I should move on, get over it. He just doesn’t understand. At all.’
‘Do you think you’ll leave him?’ I could tell that Farah was trying to keep her voice neutral.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing like it was with you and Mike – you don’t need to remind me about how lucky I am to have a good man in my corner, don’t worry.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because I don’t want to bethatfriend, the one who drones on about how awful getting divorced is, how nobody wants to know you when you’re a single woman, how you no longer get invited to parties because people suddenly see you as a predatory threat, like marital breakdown is contagious. Not to mention how crippling it is financially…’ She laughed. ‘I definitely don’t want to bethatfriend.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I know you were being facetious but also that a lot of what you just said was true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and it’s amazing that you’ve come through the whole thing stronger than ever…’ I reached out to grab her hand like we were playing some kind ofpass the parcelof womanly support.
‘But back to me,’ I said, and she laughed again. ‘It’s not that there’s a problem in mine and Joe’s relationship as such, morethat there’s a lack of clarity about who we are now – what our purpose is. I try to talk to him about it, about how I’m feeling, howemptyI feel. And he tries. I’m sure he tries. But then I’ll find that I’ve been wittering on about my existential crisis and he’s got one eye on the cricket score, or he’s been pondering whether Vanilla Ice had any further hits after ‘Ice, Ice Baby’, or who would win in a fight between Captain America and a great white shark.’
Farah nodded.
‘And then I just feel like, what’s the point? If anything, he’s a bit disapproving of how much time I’m spending talking to Layla on the phone, and how much she’s messaging me. And the fact that we’re visiting her again so soon. It’s like he thinks I’m making it more difficult for the both of us. So, I’m at the stage where I just don’t bother talking to him about it, if he’s either going to ignore me or make me feel worse. And then there’s nothing else to talk about, so we just carry on, skirting round each other in silence.’
‘It’s only been a couple of weeks though,’ said Farah. ‘Maybe it’ll get easier. Like, maybe your roles will sort of slot into place?’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said, my tone unhopeful. ‘Or maybe I need to actuallydosomething. If nothing else, I’ve got to get out of the house a bit more. This evening is the first time I’ve been beyond the front door in a week, other than popping over to Mum’s.’
‘And how is the lovely Meredith?’
‘Oh, you know, still shagging her way around Greater London and the Home Counties,’ I said with a jaunty smile.
‘And is that still giving you the ick or are you coming to terms with the fact that she’s enjoying this newfound sexual freedom?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head. ‘She asked my views on anal bleaching the other day.’
Farah choked a little on her Darjeeling.
‘I said,I don’t really have a view on it, Mum. I don’t think it’s really a thing other than in the porn industry. But what do I know? Maybe it is a thing. Maybe she would be happier with a bleached anus. MaybeI’dfeel better with a bleached anus?’
