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3.30p.m. Was Jude, clearly in meeting, whispering furtively, ‘Bridget. Vile Richard has totally fallen for Isabella.’
‘Who’s Isabella?’ I whispered urgently back.
‘The girl we made up on PlentyofFish. Vile Richard’s fixed to have a date with her tomorrow.’
‘But she isn’t real.’
‘Exactly. She’s me. He’s arranged to meet me, I mean her, at the Shadow Lounge and she’s going to stand him up.’
‘Brilliant,’ I whispered, as Jude said bossily, ‘So just put a stop order of two million yen at a hundred and twenty-five and wait for the quarterly profits.’ Then whispered, ‘And simultaneously, the guy I met on DatingSingleDoctors is meeting me – the actual me – two blocks away at the Soho Hotel.’
‘Great!’ I said, confusedly.
‘I know, right? Gottogobye.’
Hope the man from DatingSingleDoctors doesn’t turn out to be made up by Vile Richard.
3.40 p.m. Roxster still has not texted. Cannot concentrate. Am going home.
4 p.m. Got home to find terrifyingly pungent old-lady smell. Grazina had diligently followed my scribbled instructions, thrown all the food away, cleaned and sprayed everything and put mothballs in and behind any conceivable entry or exit to all floorboards, walls, doors or items of furniture. Will take me all weekend, and possibly rest of life, to find and destroy all mothballs. No moth could live through this or, crucially, toy boy. But that is, presumably, irrelevant, as STILL NO TEXT.
4.15 p.m. Gaah! There is bang, clatter and voices of everyone coming home. Is Friday night, is time for Chloe to leave and have not prepared my Thoughts.
4.16 p.m. How could Roxster not respond? Even though my last text was a question. Or was it? Will just check my last text again.
Lurched in dismay. There was not only a question, an ending of text with a question, but an undeniably presumptuous presumption that I would see Roxster again.
6 p.m. Went downstairs, attempting to conceal meltdown from Billy and Mabel (who fortunately, as is weekend, were absorbed respectively in Plants vs. Zombies and Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2) whilst simultaneously heating up spag bog (actually spag cheese without spag as Grazina has thrown away all the pasta). Finally, when supper was over, something about loading the dishwasher made me crack and send Roxster a fraudulently cheery text saying:
Then went into paroxysms of agony, so bad that I had to let Billy just stay permanently killing plants with zombies, and Mabel watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 for the seventh time so they wouldn’t notice. Realized was irresponsible and lazy parenting, but decided not as bad as emotional damage inflicted by awareness of melting-down mother over someone closer in age to – Gaaah! Is Roxster actually closer in age to Mabel than me? No, but I think he might be to Billy. Oh God. What am I thinking? No wonder he has stopped texting.
9.15 p.m. Still no text. Able, at last, to free-fall into well of misery, insecurity, emotional-pillow-pulled-from-under-feet, etc. The thing about going out with a younger man is that it makes you feel that you have miraculously turned back time. Sometimes, when we’re on the chair in the bathroom, and I catch sight of us in the mirror, I just can’t believe this is me, doing this with Roxster, at my age. But now it’s gone away I have burst like a bubble. Am I just using the whole thing to block existential despair about growing old, and the fear that maybe I’m going to have a stroke, and what would happen to Billy and Mabel?
It was worse when they were babies. Had constant dread that I would spontaneously die in the night, or fall down the stairs, and no one would come, and they would be left alone, and end up eating me. But then as Jude pointed out, ‘It’s better than dying alone and being eaten by an Alsatian.’
9.30 p.m. Must remember what it says in Zen and the Art of Falling in Love: when he comes, we welcome, when he goes, we let him go. Also, when Zen students sit on the Cushion they make friends with Loneliness, which is different from Aloneness. Loneliness is Transience and the way that people we love come into our lives and go away again which is just part of Life, or maybe that is Aloneness, and Loneliness is . . . Still no text.
11 p.m. Cannot get to sleep.
11.15 p.m. Oh, Mark. Mark. I know I did all this ‘Will he call, won’t he call?’ when we were going out, before we were married. But even then it was different. I knew him so well, I’d known him since I was running round his parents’ lawn with no clothes on.
He used to have conversations with me when he was sleeping. That’s when I could find out what he was really feeling inside.
‘Mark?’ That dark, handsome face, sleeping on the pillow. ‘Are you lovely?’
Sighing in his sleep, looking sad, ashamed, shaking his head.
‘Does your mummy love you?’
Very sad, now, trying to say ‘no’ through his sleep. Mark Darcy, the big powerful human rights lawyer, and inside, the little damaged boy, sent away to boarding school at seven.
‘Do I love you?’ I’d say. And then he would smile in his sleep, happy, proud, nod his head, pull me to him, snuggle me under his arm.
We knew each other inside out, back to front. Mark was a gentleman and I trusted him completely in everything and I went out from that safe place into the world. It was like exploring the scary underwater ocean from our safe little submarine. And now . . . everything is scary and nothing will be safe again.
11.55 p.m. What am I doing? What am I doing? Why did I start all this? Why didn’t I just stay as I was? Sad, lonely, workless, sexless, but at least a mother and faithful to their . . . faithful to their father.
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
