We’d just started living together at that point. Dan had moved into my flat, bringing hardly anything with him, but, as he pointed out, he still had ample storage in his bedroom at home, so if he felt a sudden and desperate need for, say, the electric guitar he had learned how to play when he was eighteen, he only had to run over to Hampstead to pick it up.
I’d never lived with anyone before Dan, had always prized my independence, worked hard to make my flat exactly as I wanted it.
But once it became serious, once Dan started spending six out of seven nights at my place, it seemed ridiculous for both of us to continue paying a mortgage, and since my flat was fractionally larger but a million times more comfortable, we decided that his should be the one to be rented out.
I’d lived in my flat for five years. The happiest years of my life. It was the first time that I truly understood what it meant to be settled, the first time I knew what it was to have a home.
I trawled through the junk shops, furnishing the rooms on a shoestring, and weekends were spent halfway up a ladder, paintbrush in hand.
I’d bought all the interior magazines—Architectural Digest, House & Garden, World of Interiors—ripped out the rooms that I liked and then tried to imitate them on very little budget at all.
I had colleagues, friends, who would move every few years, get bored with their flats, want to move on to something bigger and better, but I never felt like that. I knew that my flat was everything I’d ever wanted, and I couldn’t imagine ever needing anything more.
Dan loved my flat from the moment he first came over (fifth date, I cooked: artichoke salad, monkfish with roasted tomatoes and garlic, chocolate mousse and strawberries. Naturally, we ended up in bed together, and the next morning I knew that in all probability I’d never sleep with anyone else again). Dan always said that my flat was exactly how he’d want his flat to be, if he had any style.
I thought he was joking, until the following week when I went over to his flat in Kentish Town. On the fifth floor of a huge apartment building, I walked in the door and immediately looked for a comfy sofa on which to collapse to recover from the walk up.
Nothing. No furniture. Just boxes of clothes, a futon that had definitely seen far better days, a huge flat-screen TV, and hundreds and hundreds of video tapes.
“I’m afraid it’s not very cosy,” Dan said, walking into his bedroom to gather up clean clothes for the following week at my house.
“That would be the understatement of the year,” I said, shocked that anyone could live like this. “When did you move in? Yesterday?”
“I’m hardly ever here,” he said, smiling.
“Clearly. But how come you’re hardly ever here when you’ve managed to spend the best part of last week at my place? If you were never home, how come you found the time to be with me most of last week? Surely I haven’t been that much of a boon to your social life?”
Dan grinned, arms full of shirts and T-shirts. “Social life? What social life? I had no social life before I met you.”
I slapped my forehead. “Of course! I should have known. You were at Calden that night for, what? A business meeting?”
“Actually I was,” he said, nodding. “You know us TV types. Why meet in a boardroom when there’s a perfectly good bar round the corner?”
“Actually I don’t think I know you TV types that well.”
“Oh no?” He raised an eyebrow and dropped the clothes on the floor as he walked toward me. “Then perhaps it’s time for us to get to know one another a whole lot better.”
Two weeks after Dan moved in, the doorbell rang. It was a Saturday morning and Dan had gone to the gym for his regular weekend workout, leaving me, finally, with some time all alone.
As excited as I’d been about Dan moving in, the apprehension was starting to strike. I’d always envisaged living together as some sort of romantic ideal: waking up in each other’s arms, laughing over fresh orange juice and toast on a Sunday morning. Much as I’m ashamed to admit it, I think that my idea of living together was something I’d cobbled together from various rather cheesy TV commercials.
But the reality was that it was my flat, paid for by me and decorated for me. I had chosen every piece of furniture in there, and had decided where to place it. If I didn’t like something, I moved it.
And all of a sudden I had to find more space for Dan’s stuff, including things that I couldn’t stand. His collection of framed film posters, for example. Chinatown. Dirty Harry. Once Upon a Time in America. I’m sure they would have looked amazing in, say, Dan’s room in his university hall of residence, but honestly, at thirty-five you would think he’d have something a bit more, well, grown-up. I’d banished them to the corridor, where they were stacked, face in, waiting for Dan to hang them.
And while I understand that an enormous flat-screen plasma TV is what every little boy dreams of having when he grows up, it didn’t quite go with my oh-so-feminine decor. I realized pretty quickly, though, that this was one battle I was clearly not going to win, and so I tried very hard to ignore the huge black rectangle lurking like a prophet of doom in the corner of the room.
Selfish? Of course I was. Who wouldn’t be selfish after living alone for effectively almost twenty years? I was used to doing things a certain way, and had never had to think about anyone else. I understood what the word compromise meant; I’d just never had to live it.
There Dan was, removing the photo frames I’d delicately placed on his stereo in an effort to make it more feminine, more in keeping with the rest of the room, and there I was, watching him while biting my tongue so as not to scream at him that this was my house and I didn’t want his stupid bloody stereo there in the first place.
“I know it’s difficult,” Dan said after our first tiny row, two days after he moved in. “You’ve lived on your own for years and I haven’t lived with anyone for a long time. We’re both used to having our own space; it’s going to take a while for us to adjust to having another person there. But Ellie”—he reached across the table and took my hand—“it’s worth it. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. This is just a tiny glitch and we both need to compromise.”
I nodded, amazed that I had found someone so perfect for me, someone who loved me that much, who was able to be that honest about it.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Does that mean I can continue to leave my underwear on the bathroom floor?”
“Oh, ha ha. Don’t push your luck.” But I acquiesced when he leaned forward and kissed me hard on the lips.
And that Saturday morning, when the doorbell rang, I was mildly irritated, having just settled down to enjoy my solitary Saturday morning ritual of tea, croissants, and the Telegraph in bed. The March drizzle outside helped to ease my guilt—there’s nothing like lying in bed when it’s gray and raining outside. And I had no idea who could be ringing the bell.
I shuffled into my bathrobe—I’d been meaning to get a dressing gown forever but somehow I never got around to it—and, with mussed-up hair and eyes puffy and crusty with sleep, went to answer the front door, only to find Dan’s mother beaming on the doorstep.
“Ellie!” she said, planting a kiss on my cheek and pushing past me into the hallway as I froze, mortified that she was seeing me looking like this. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping in, but I realized if I waited for an invitation from Dan I’d be waiting forever. Now where can I put these?”
She was carrying an enormous bunch of tulips that she carted into the kitchen, where she began to open cupboards, looking, presumably, for a vase.
Shit. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. We’d made dinner together the night before, and Dan had come up behind me as I was clearing up and run his hand up my inner thigh, and the next thing you know we had abandoned all hope of restoring the kitchen to its former immaculate self and run to the bedroom, leaving everything to the morning.
I’d once heard that the mark of a true
chef is someone who cleans up as she goes, and despite being addicted to every food program on the box, despite watching Gordon, and Jamie, and everyone else wiping off their boards and getting rid of garlic skins and parsley stalks before starting on the next bit, I could never quite get the hang of it.
But oh, how I wish I’d tried that bit harder. I looked at the devastation through Linda Cooper’s eyes and crumpled.
“I’m so sorry about the mess,” I said weakly, picking up food-encrusted plates from the kitchen table and carrying them over to the sink. “I can’t believe you’ve seen my flat looking the messiest it’s ever been. I’m so embarrassed.” I opened a cupboard door and handed her a square glass vase.
“I have a wonderful cleaning lady who’s looking for more work,” she said with a smile. “I’ll give her a call if you like and see if she can come this week. How does that sound?”
“Oh. Great,” I said feebly, never having considered the idea of anyone other than myself cleaning my house. And frankly, with the exception of that morning, I like to think I do a good job, although there was no point in saying this. If I’d been Linda Cooper, I wouldn’t have believed me.
“Anyway,” she trilled, snipping the ends off the tulips and arranging them expertly in the vase, “it’ll only take me a second to clean this up. Were you about to jump in the shower? I’ll have this place spotless by the time you’ve finished.”
Now I know I shouldn’t have taken this personally, and I know she was only trying to help, but nevertheless I felt that I, or my cleaning capabilities, had been somehow put down, and I wasn’t happy.
I also felt horribly vulnerable in my graying, fraying bathrobe and hair all over the place, not a scrap of makeup on. I knew that I’d only be able to cope with the humiliation if I felt strong enough, and I’d only feel strong enough with my body armor, aka makeup and clothes, firmly in place.
And so I slunk off to the bathroom, leaving my boyfriend’s mother elbow-deep in Fairy Liquid.
Half an hour later I emerged, hair scraped back in a ponytail, white T-shirt and jeans, feeling like I could take on anyone.
“I made coffee for us,” Linda said brightly, as I walked into a now-gleaming kitchen. “And I hope you don’t mind but I washed all your vases—they were all quite filthy.”
I’m mortified. “Linda, you didn’t have to do that.”
“No, no. I know you young people don’t have time to clean properly, and it was the least I could do. Now come and sit down and let’s you and I get to know each other better.”
By the time she left I had the whole Cooper family history, including a far better picture of the family dynamic.
It seemed that Linda was not as secure as I had thought at our first meeting, and that there was definitely a touch of resentment about not having been able to pursue a career. I had already guessed that she was one of those women who fulfilled their ambitions vicariously through their children, and everything she said confirmed that to be true.
She was extraordinarily proud of Dan, who is clearly the golden boy thanks to his excellent degree and prolific career as a television producer. His last documentary had won several awards and generated an impressive amount of press coverage, which Linda had cut out and collected into a scrapbook.
Richard, she said, had yet to find his niche. Twenty-nine seemed to be old enough to know what you were going to do with the rest of your life, but Linda said he was a dreamer, and that he’d get there eventually.
“And Emma?” I asked. “She’s so outgoing, she has such a big personality. You must love having a daughter like that.”
“She’s like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When she is good she is very, very good, and when she is bad she is horrid.”
“Horrid? Really? She seems so charming.”
“That’s because she’s not your daughter.” Linda smiled. “I know your mother died very young and don’t take this the wrong way, but the teenage years between a mother and daughter can be very difficult.”
“No, I know,” I said. “I may not have had my own mother but I went through it all with my friends.”
“Well, Emma’s always been a rebel. Of course I love her, but I don’t really understand her. And frankly, at her age she should really have settled down by now. I mean, look at you, Ellie. You’re roughly the same age, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“And you have your own flat, a good job, financial independence. Emma just drifts from job to job and party to party, moving in with friends or boyfriends whenever the wind changes. Oh, I don’t know,” she sighed. “Maybe it’s part of being creative.”
The key turned in the lock of the front door and I breathed a sigh of relief. Befriending the boyfriend’s mother was one thing; listening to her moan about her other children was something else entirely, something I wasn’t willing to deal with yet, not with this family I was only just getting to know.
“Mum!” Dan’s face lit up as he entered the kitchen. Kissing her first, he then came to kiss me.
“Yuck. You’re all sweaty.” I pulled away. “I take it you had a good workout today.”
“Yup. I’ll shower in a minute. What are you doing here, Mum?”
“I hadn’t heard from you, so I thought I’d better come to see your new flat.”
“Nice, isn’t it?” Dan grinned.
“It’s a definite improvement on the last place.”
“That’s not difficult,” I threw in, disappointed that she hadn’t described my flat as something other than as an improvement.
“Men!” Linda rolled her eyes at me and again I warmed to her, loved being included in the conspiracy, even if I didn’t quite believe it myself.
A couple of months passed, months that were, at times, difficult, at other times more wonderful than I could have imagined. I loved having someone to talk to every night, never having to go to bed and feel lonely.
But at other times I’d look at him and seethe with resentment. I hated having to watch The Simpsons when all I wanted to do was curl up quietly with a book; was pissed off that I seemed to be the one who had to think of what to eat for supper every night, not to mention cook it.
On the whole I would say the good times far outweighed the bad, and even though we had arguments, they blew over quickly, and were never bad enough to make either one of us question our relationship.
In late May, Dan won an important television industry award for one of his programs. He phoned me as soon as he heard and told me he’d be taking me out to Zuma for dinner, that I should dress up, that we were going out to celebrate.
I wore a classic black dress that I’d picked up in the sale at Nicole Farhi, my tastes somehow having grown more sophisticated now that I was part of a couple. As a single girl I had mixed and matched, tops from Hennes, trousers from Zara, sweaters from Joseph. Now, even though we rarely went to restaurants like Zuma, we socialized more than I had ever done before. I’m not the competitive type but I often felt slightly frumpy with the girlfriends and wives of his friends, and had decided to take myself in check and start to buy better clothes. Even if they were from the sale.
Dan’s friends were, for the most part, from school. Having drifted away from everyone with whom I was at school, I found it extraordinary that he still had “his boys,” as he called them. They meant everything to him. I knew very early on that if Dan and I were ever to get serious, I’d need to woo the boys just as much as I wooed Dan.
There was Simon, his preagreed best man, should Dan ever decide to get married. Ahem. Funny, good-looking, charming. I had no idea why Simon was still single, but Dan said he was terrible with women, and that I would discover this for myself eventually.
Tom, Rob, and Cheech, whose real name was apparently Nicholas, although he’d been Cheech for so long that when I asked why he was called Cheech, Dan couldn’t remember. I gathered eventually that it had something to do with various exploits at the university involving a bong.
Tom and
Rob were married, their wives being Lily and Anna, respectively; and the other two were in desperate need of home-cooked food, so soon after we moved in together I had the boys over for supper on a Friday, which became a weekly tradition. Each week I’d do a roast, complete with potatoes, vegetables, gravy, and bread sauce; and I always made sure I had a pudding reminiscent of their days at boarding school: spotted dick, apple pie and custard, treacle sponge. I made sure I traversed their stomachs on the way to their hearts, and it worked.
Dan had told me, after the first Friday night, that all four boys agreed I was “a keeper.” This was apparently the highest praise a girl could get, and I was, in fact, the first girl on whom all four had agreed. I was so happy I hardly slept.
Luckily the two wives were lovely, if not perhaps the friends I would have chosen for myself, but as soon as I’d kitted myself out in suitably fashionable clothes, I felt almost as if I’d been part of the gang forever.
We’d arranged to meet at Zuma, Dan coming straight from a late editorial meeting at work. I felt perfect in my dress, trendy yet elegant in my new Jimmy Choo heels, as I followed the maître d’ to the table, ordering my usual nonalcoholic drink while I waited for Dan to arrive.
“I’m so sorry I’m late.” He swept in a few minutes later, leaning over the table to give me a quick kiss. “You look lovely,” he said, and I smiled as he took the wine list handed to him by the waiter and read through it, pretending to look as if he knew what he was doing.
“What do you recommend?” he asked the sommelier after we had ordered our food, and nodded sagely when a 1996 Château Beychevelle was suggested, as if that were precisely the wine Dan would have ordered himself.
“Do you think we would have got kicked out if we’d ordered a half of house red?” I whispered.
“Something tells me this isn’t the kind of place where you can order a half bottle of plonk.” Dan grinned. “Not that I’m complaining.”