“But look, we’re neighbors. So if you ever feel like getting together for a drink or a movie or something, just call, okay? I know what it’s like when you first split up, and friends make all the difference.”
“Okay,” I say, confused. I was ready to fend him off. Ready to push him away, to tell him that no, he couldn’t come in for a coffee, and no, thank you for the invitation to dinner but I’m really not ready to date anyone just yet.
“Here’s my card,” he says, pressing a card into my hand. “Take care, Ellie,” and with that he’s back up the path and gone.
I walk into my house and close the door, and then I lean back against the wall in the dark hallway for a few seconds, hand on my heart to still it, as I think about what just happened. Or didn’t happen. Or could have happened.
It’s the right thing, I think. Thank God he didn’t make a pass at me, imagine how awkward it would have been, how embarrassing it would have been.
It was definitely the right thing.
25
I groan as I open my eyes and try to focus on the clock: 7:38. Bugger. I lay my head back on the pillow and listen for Tom, but nothing, and then I remember that today is Sunday, and Tom is with Dan.
Oh, why did I have so many vodkas last night? What was I thinking? Nine months of abstinence during pregnancy reduced my alcohol tolerance to approximately zero, and eighteen months later I’ve clearly yet to get it back.
Stumbling into the bathroom, I look, bleary-eyed, at my reflection and groan again, the glamorous girl of last night now replaced by a puffy-eyed swollen monster. Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous. I swallow two Nurofen, then shuffle into the kitchen to make some coffee.
At ten-thirty I finally manage to get dressed, and am about to go down to the Polish for a much-needed cappuccino and almond croissant when the phone rings and it’s Lisa.
“Meet me by the swings in an hour,” she says, as I protest that on a child-free day there’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere near a playground.
“Fine,” she laughs. “So I’ll see you at the Polish in fifteen.” And she puts the phone down before I have a chance to argue. I know she wants to do the postmortem, and I wonder for a minute whether I ought to make something up: hot, passionate sex on Primrose Hill? Not in these temperatures. But she probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. She may not know Charlie, but she knows his crowd, certainly knows his type. I’ll just have to tell her the truth.
“You look terrible!” she laughs as she pushes Amy’s stroller through the tables to where I’m sitting, already cradling a cup of coffee that’s slowly restoring me to human resemblance.
“I can always rely on you, can’t I?” I roll my eyes.
She grins. “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen you hung over before.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Do you want me to be honest?”
“Oh, forget it,” I snort. “Anyway, how do you manage to look so bloody perfect? If I recall correctly—”
“Which is unlikely.”
“Not that unlikely, but didn’t we drink the same amount last night?”
“We both had three but I’m assuming you carried on drinking with Charlie.”
“Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Well, you’d better start remembering. I want to hear all the juicy details.”
I smile and shake my head. “There really aren’t any juicy details. He walked me home, we shook hands, and that was that.”
“That’s it?” Lisa looks horrified.
“That’s it. What were you expecting? Sex on Primrose Hill?”
“Well, yes, if you really want to know. That’s what I was hoping for.”
“I’m still married, you know.” My voice is now serious. “And the last thing I’m looking for is a romantic involvement.”
“Yes, I know you’re still married, but you can’t help it if a romantic involvement comes to find you; and let’s face it, he is rather delicious, and the chemistry between you is undeniable.”
“It is?”
“Don’t act so innocent! Of course it is. And don’t pretend you’re not interested. I know you’re separated, not divorced, but there’s no reason you can’t have fun either.”
What did she just say?
I look at Lisa. “What did you just say?”
“What?”
“What do you mean, ‘you can’t have fun either’? You mean Dan’s having fun? How do you know? What sort of fun? Dan has a girlfriend, doesn’t he? I knew it. There is something you’re not telling me.”
“Oh, Ellie, stop it. I didn’t mean that; it just came out. I doubt Dan has a girlfriend, and no, again, I’m not seeing him. I just meant you don’t have to shut yourself away and never go anywhere or see anyone. I understand that being separated is this awful, awkward limbo position, but this could be your last chance, and you have to take each day as it comes.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Take each day as it comes? I try. Whoops! Careful, Amy! Are you all right?” Amy’s out of her stroller and toddling around the café, babbling away to everyone, no one able to understand a word she’s saying. She trips over a table leg and falls down as Lisa rushes to pick her up.
When Amy’s calmed down, placated by a hot chocolate, Lisa apologizes for the interruption, and I shrug it off, being so used to interruptions these days.
“So,” I say, when all is calm again. “I do think Charlie is nice, and yes, he’s attractive, and yes, I feel the chemistry as well, but I really don’t think I’m going to do anything about it. And anyway, he was very blasé when he left, I don’t think he’s interested really.” I tell her how he shook my hand and what he said.
“I think he didn’t want to scare you off,” Lisa says. “So are you going to call him?”
I reach down into the pocket of my coat, which is hanging on the back of the chair behind me, and feel his business card still nestling there. “Nah.” I shake my head, leaning in to tickle Amy’s tummy as she squirms and squeals with joy. “Probably not.”
On a Thursday afternoon, as I walk up the path to the flat, I see a familiar figure sitting on the doorstep. Familiar and strange because I haven’t seen Emma for months, haven’t known how to continue our friendship, whether it is in fact possible to continue our friendship. And so instead of talking about it, of exploring the possibility, I have withdrawn.
Oh, not quite so obviously. When she calls I let the machine pick up, and then call her back when I know she’s going to be out. I leave upbeat cheerful messages on her machine, saying how much I’d love to see her, even though I’m really busy, hoping that message will get back to Dan, hoping Dan will think I’m living the life of Riley now he’s no longer here.
I feel so childish at times—Trish tells me how childish I am at times—and yet I couldn’t bear for Dan to know just how lonely I really am. I couldn’t bear for him to know that I frequently lie in bed and cry, that the only thing that gets me up in the morning and keeps me going all day is Tom.
I couldn’t bear for him to know that I am terrified it is going to be like this for the rest of my life. That all the fun, and joy, and happiness have gone, and that this monotonous drudgery is all that is left for me to look forward to.
But I try not to think about that very often, or I wouldn’t be able to carry on.
And here is Emma, sitting on my doorstep, hugging her knees as she reads a magazine lying open on the ground. I hesitate. She hasn’t looked up. Could I leave? Escape without her seeing me? God knows I don’t want her to see me looking like this; don’t want her to report my horrific appearance back to Dan.
Except I have good reason for my appearance. Tom has started crying out for me in the night, and I’ve had less sleep recently than I have had in months. At times I am tempted to let him sleep in my bed, but that’s a road I’m not ready to go down just yet.
Emma looks up. Sees me standing there, hesitating, and leaps up and runs over to me, bursting into tears
as she throws her arms around me, and I find myself clinging to her and crying into her shoulder.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she says, as I rub her back and try to console her, weeping salty tears into her shearling coat.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. Your coat,” I say, when she eventually lets me go, and we both look down at her wet shoulder and laugh. “Oh, this old thing,” she says. “It was free from a photoshoot,” and I realize in that split second just how much I have missed her, and we both start hugging again.
“You’d better come in before the neighbors start to gossip about my new lesbian affair.” I disengage, wiping away the tears.
“At least they’d be able to say your girlfriend has great taste in coats,” Emma says, helping me down the steps with the stroller, and when we are inside and the door is closed, she looks at me, suddenly serious, and says, “You are a nasty old cow, avoiding me all these months. Don’t think I didn’t know you were screening my calls and ringing me back when you knew I’d be out.”
“Was I that obvious?”
“Yes. You can’t beat the master,” she says, unstrapping Tom and making him giggle as she tickles him. “Come here to Auntie Em,” she says, as he pulls her hair and laughs. “You little monkey. Did you tell Mummy I took you to the zoo last weekend?”
“You did?”
“Dan didn’t tell you?”
I sigh. “Dan doesn’t seem to tell me very much these days.”
And Emma shakes her head. “How in hell have the two of you moved so far apart in such a short space of time? I mean, what the fuck is happening? What’s going on? This is completely insane.”
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
“Yes, I want a cup of tea and I want to know what on earth is going on, because my brother won’t talk to anyone about it, and my mum knows she’s the last person in the world you’ll want to see, and Dan seems miserable as hell and you look like shit too—”
“Actually I only look like shit today because I’m hung over,” I lie, hoping it will reach Dan’s ears, hoping he will think I have been out having a good time, and cheered up somewhat by Dan’s being miserable as hell too. “You should have seen me last night.”
“I suppose you looked incredible last night?”
“As it happens, I did, rather,” I say nonchalantly, resolving to stop lying right away. This is Emma, and if anyone can see through a lie, Emma can. “Anyway. Piss off, Emma. I don’t see you for months and now you turn up on my doorstep and insult me.”
“I’m only doing it because I love you,” she says. I turn to look at her, but she’s sitting at the table, flicking through her magazine.
I stand in shock, holding the kettle. No one’s ever told me they loved me before, no one aside from my immediate family and Dan, of course. And even my immediate family never really said it. My mother loved me as best she could, I suppose, and my father made reference to loving me at my wedding, but if actions speak louder than words, the fact that I’ve hardly seen him since makes me doubt it somehow.
Dan says it. Said it. But how odd to hear it from Emma, who wasn’t joking when she said it, but said it completely matter-of-factly, as if it were something I would automatically know, something that couldn’t, wouldn’t, be questioned.
“Emma.” I put the tea on the table and sit down opposite her. “I know this sounds stupid, but do you really love me?”
Emma gives me a funny look. “Not in a neighbors-gossiping lesbian sort of way, no. But if you’re asking do I love you in a healthy, nonsexual, sister-in-law sort of way, absolutely. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just weird hearing a friend say I love you. Sorry. I know you didn’t mean it in a weird way.”
“But I’m not a friend. I mean, I am a friend, but I’m family. I know you’re my sister-in-law, but I’ve always thought of you as my sister, the sister I always wanted. That’s not weird, is it? Do you think that’s weird?”
“No.” I shake my head. And I start to cry.
Not just tears rolling down my cheeks. Huge, heaving, sobbing tears. I lay my head on my arms and let it all out. Finally.
Emma sweeps Tom up and takes him into the living room, where she manages to get him into a catatonic state by putting on a Baby Einstein DVD before coming back into the kitchen and rubbing my back as I cry.
And I can’t stop. All the pent-up feeling of the past few weeks, past few months, seems to come out in one fell swoop. I cry and cry and cry, and when the tears have all dried up and I am doing giant, dry hiccups, Emma sits opposite me and raises an eyebrow.
“Looks like you needed that,” she says. “Do you feel better now?”
“Yes,” I sniff, pulling out an old tissue from my pocket that releases clouds of lint into the air. “Sorry,” I sniff, as Emma waves the lint away.
“Don’t be silly,” Emma says. “Not my house.”
“You know that’s the most amazing thing anyone’s ever said to me?” I say.
“What?”
“That you think of me as your sister.”
“Oh, God, please don’t start crying again. The Baby Einstein disc’s nearly over.”
I laugh. “No, I’m not going to start crying again,” and I busy myself clearing the table while I try to process my thoughts.
Because what Emma’s just given me is this: I always wanted to marry into a huge, loving family. I thought we would all instantly be wrapped in this warm web of love, acceptance, and understanding, but that isn’t how it was, how it is, at all.
And yet, despite the differences, despite the lack of understanding, the pain, and the heartbreak, Emma still thinks of me as family. She loves me. She accepts me even though I’m separated from Dan, even though I’ve avoided her calls for weeks, even though I’ve acted as if I wanted nothing more to do with her.
Up until today, up until I saw her sitting on my doorstep, I thought—I genuinely thought—I didn’t want anything more to do with any of the Cooper family. I thought that if my marriage to Dan was over, my relationship with his family would be over, but I suppose it isn’t quite as clear-cut or precise as that.
Emma still loves me, even though she doesn’t have to, even though I didn’t consider myself part of her family anymore. Maybe that means that they are my family, that despite everything that’s happened, and even if Dan and I do eventually get divorced, maybe they will remain my family, and not just because of Tom.
“Are you okay?” Emma says to me, as I stand in a daze, looking out the window.
“I’m fine,” I say. “So how is everyone? How’s your mum?”
Let me just make things quite clear before I go on. I have no wish to see Linda. Or Michael, although he doesn’t tend to enter my thoughts so much.
But seeing Emma here brings so many memories flooding back. Good memories. Happy memories. Memories from before the accident, which for so long has seemed to obliterate all that had happened before it.
Suddenly I remember Linda hugging me. I remember her squeezing me tight at my wedding and telling me I was another daughter in her family. I remember the earrings she gave me, her excitement when I had Tom, her desire to be involved in everything, her genuine happiness for me.
I still don’t want to see her. But I’d quite like to hear how she is.
“Mum’s fine,” Emma says. “Same old irritating self, although I think Dan being at home is beginning to get on her nerves slightly.”
“But I thought he was the perfect son. Dan who can do no wrong.”
“He was.” She grimaces. “But now he seems to be Dan the sullen son who expects her to do all his laundry and cook and clean for him. All I keep hearing is how messy his bedroom is.”
“Oh, great. Now I suppose she thinks I spoiled him.”
“I think she realizes she did a perfectly good job all by herself before you even came on the scene. We miss you, you know. I mean, not just me, but all of us. Maybe you’re not ready to hear this; I don’t want to upset you.”
“Set off a
nother crying fit, you mean?”
“Well, yes, exactly, but my mum really was devastated about what happened with Tom.”
“So was I.” I try not to grit my teeth.
“But she was also devastated about what happened with you, that you wouldn’t see her, wouldn’t talk to her, and now she thinks that you and Dan separating is all her fault.”
I look down at the table.
“Which I told her was ridiculous,” Emma continues. I don’t say anything. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” And I don’t. For months I have blamed Linda, have managed to blame her for every bad thing that has happened in my life, have built her into this huge demonic figure, the matriarch of this awful, dysfunctional family, and yet now that Emma, lovely familiar Emma, is sitting here in my kitchen, I don’t know what to think anymore.
I won’t admit this, not to Emma, but a part of me wants to see Linda. A part of me wants to swallow my pride and talk to her, really talk to her about what happened. I want to see just how much she has suffered, see whether she does truly feel what everyone tells me she feels.
But I don’t think I have it in me to do it. I don’t think my throat is big enough to swallow that amount of pride.
“She’d love to see you, you know,” Emma says quietly.
“Is that why you’re here?” There’s fury suddenly in my voice, fury at the possibility of there being a hidden agenda behind Emma’s sudden visit.
“God, no. Calm down, calm down. Absolutely not. She doesn’t know I’m here. Nor does Dan. But she talks about you a lot.”
“She does? What kind of stuff?”
“Well, not in front of Dan, obviously. He’d just walk out of the room. But she talks about you like you’re one of the family. I heard her, just the other day, telling someone her daughter-in-law does marketing for Calden. She never boasts about me like that.”
“Oh. She did?”
“Yes. She did. So what do you think? Do you think maybe you could phone her or something? Maybe get together and talk?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think probably not yet. It’s all still too fresh and too painful.”