We All Live Here

Chapter Three

Here are the things I have learned in my fifteen years of marriage: it’s okay if you don’t feel filled with adoration every day. We are all going to get grumpy over the discarded socks, the missed annual car inspection, the fact that you haven’t had sex for six weeks. As the great Esther Perel says, love is a process. It is a verb. All marriages have peaks and troughs, and over those years you gain a greater perspective and realize that it is just part of the ebb and flow of your own, special, unique romantic life. Marriage can contain multitudes of emotions in one single day. You can wake up to the man snoring beside you and think you want to put a pillow over his head, and by eleven o’clock that same morning, you’re wishing the cleaner would leave early so that you could grab him and lose a delicious hour in bed together. You can feel fondness, irritation, lust, gratitude all in the same half-hour. The trick is to understand this process, this ebb and flow, and not be panicked by your own emotions. Because as long as you’re both in this together, a team, you know deep in your bones that this is just part of the glorious business of being human. Dan is my team, and we’re in this together, and there isn’t a day that I’m not grateful for that certainty.

Sometimes Lila remembers this extract, serialized helpfully in a national newspaper a whole fourteen days before Dan left her, and wants to curl up in a tiny hard ball, like a woodlouse trapped in a washbasin.

She had been so certain when she wrote it. She remembers sitting in the house, constructing that final sentence, feeling overwhelmed with love for her husband, her life. (She had often felt overwhelmed when writing about fictional Dan: he was so much less complicated than actual Dan.) Dan used to shake his head fondly when she talked about her father, had banned her from using her well-worn mantra: Everyone leaves in the end .

The first time she had said it to him, panicky in the face of his alarmingly consistent advances, unwilling to commit in the early months of their relationship, he had reached for her hand, folded it in both of his, and said: “You need to rewrite that story. Just because your dad behaved like an arsehole, it doesn’t mean all men will.” It had felt like a revelation, and then it had felt like a touchstone.

She thinks now that they were probably mostly happy for the first ten years, give or take the childcare juggling, the tiredness competitions when the babies were small. She definitely remembers a family holiday while she was writing her book when she had sat on the beach watching her daughters in the water playing with her mother (Francesca was very enthusiastic about the sea) and thought, hugging her sandy knees, how incredibly lucky she was. It had felt like being nestled in the very heart of something good and strong and solid: her mother splashing, Bill calling encouragement from under his sun hat, her beautiful laughing girls, her husband. Financial security, a new house, the sun, and the twinkling waves. It had felt like she had everything to look forward to.

And then—plot twist!—Dan had gone. And less than a year later, her mother too.

She has been mulling this for twenty minutes, her noise-blocking earphones on, staring out of the window, when she notices a man standing at the end of the front garden, gazing up. She watches him, frowning for a while, waiting for him to leave. But he doesn’t. Just takes two paces to the right, puts his hand on the trunk of the tree, and stands there, apparently thinking. He is wearing a puffy jacket, a pair of slightly grubby jeans, and a beanie hat. She cannot see his face. She feels a vague stab of anxiety: two weeks ago her neighbor’s car had been stolen from the front drive. She wills him to take a phone call, to move on, to do any one of a number of things that will tell her he is not a thief, not someone planning something sinister. But still he stands, looking up speculatively. She sits at her desk for a moment longer, then pulls the earphones from her head and races downstairs, four, five flights, clips a lead on Truant so that she is not alone, and opens the front door. The man looks round at her.

“This is a private driveway,” she says, loud enough for him to hear.

He doesn’t say anything, just regards her steadily as Truant sets up an urgent, deafening stream of barking. She remembers suddenly that she is still in her dressing-gown and pajamas at eleven o’clock in the morning. She had told herself that she was not allowed to get dressed until she had written a thousand words in an attempt to force herself to stay at her desk. Suddenly this feels like a categorical error.

“What?” he yells.

“This is a private driveway! Go away!”

He frowns a little. “I’m just looking at your tree.”

It is a ridiculous excuse.

“Well, don’t.”

“Don’t look at your tree?”

“No.” Truant is pulling at the lead, growling and snapping. She loves him for this show of aggression.

The man seems untroubled. He raises his eyebrows. “Can I look at your tree if I stand on the pavement?”

He takes two steps back, clearly slightly amused. It makes her feel furious and powerless at the same time, this man’s casual confidence, his apparent knowledge that she has no control over the situation.

“Just don’t look at my tree! Don’t look at my house! Go away!”

“That’s friendly.”

“I don’t owe you friendly. Just because I’m a woman I don’t have to be friendly. You’re standing in my front garden and I haven’t invited you to do that. So, no, I don’t have to be friendly.”

A shrill note has crept into her voice, and Truant’s barking is deafening. From the corner of her eye she can see next door’s curtains twitching in the bay window. No doubt this will be notched up on their list of neighborly misdemeanors. She lifts a hand by way of apology and the curtain closes.

“Nice car,” he says, glancing at the Mercedes.

She had bought the sports car because it had felt like something her mother would do—impulsive and optimistic. She bought it from a specialist dealer because the first dealership she called failed to return her calls. And she bought the highest-specification, most expensive model her mother’s inheritance allowed her—a 1985 Mercedes Benz 380SL—because the sharp-suited salesman in the dealership she’d ended up at clearly didn’t believe she could afford it. (“Yup,” said Eleanor, her oldest friend, drily. “You really showed him.”)

“It’s got a tracker,” she yells.

“What?” He cannot hear her over the noise.

“It’s got a tracker fitted! And an alarm system!”

He frowns. “You think I’m going to steal your car?”

“No. I don’t think you’re going to steal my car. Because then the police would track it and you would end up in jail. I’m just letting you know that that’s not an option. And, by the way, there is no money in the house. Just in case you’re wondering.”

He frowns at his trainers for a minute, then looks up at her. “So you’ve come out here just to tell me I can’t look at your tree and I can’t steal your Mercedes or I’m going to jail and you have no money.”

It sounds ridiculous the way he says it and this makes her even crosser. “That’s about it. Maybe if you didn’t just walk into people’s front gardens, they wouldn’t feel obliged to say anything at all.”

“Actually I came into your front garden because I had an appointment with Bill.”

“What?”

“I had an appointment with Bill. About doing the garden. But nobody answered the door so I’m guessing he’s not in.”

She deflates. “Oh,” she says, and just then Truant, clearly maddened by this unending transgression, starts twisting against the lead, unsure whether he wants to fly at this man or flee. She wrestles with him, trying to calm him, but her tone has clearly sent him into a spiral of anxiety and he will not be settled.

“Bill’s at his place.” She has to shout this twice, as the first words are swallowed by the noise. “ His place. Down the road. Look, I’m sorry. Come in and I’ll call him. He’s obviously forgotten.”

But the man takes two steps back so that he is on the pavement. “You’re all right. I’ll call him myself.” And he heads off along the street, pulling his phone from his pocket as he leaves.

···

“I’m not surprised he ran away. You’re quite…stabby since Dan left.”

“Stabby?”

“Like most of the time you walk around looking like you could quite easily assassinate someone.”

Lila eyes the fork she has been waving around as she told Eleanor the story of the Garden Interloper Who Wasn’t and lowers it carefully. “I do not. Not like an actual knife stabby person.”

Eleanor is between jobs, which means she is wearing carefully applied makeup. When she is on a job—she does hair and makeup for television—she says she cannot be arsed to do her own face too. Lila looks at her and wonders if Eleanor is aging a lot better than she is. She’s…radiant.

“Well…”

“You’re saying I look like a crazy person.”

“Nope.” Eleanor stabs a piece of sushi and forks it into her mouth with a single chopstick. “I’m saying, as your oldest friend, that you can be a little…quick to rise these days.” Seeing Lila’s crestfallen face, she says, “I mean, totally understandable given what you’ve been through and everything. But I’d save that for Dan. You just might want to be careful about the vibes you give out to randoms.”

“Vibes?”

“Well, just maybe cut this a little.” She narrows her eyes suddenly and stares at Lila, her face stony.

Lila pushes her plate away from her. “Is that meant to be me?”

“Well, not actual you. You do a jutting thing with your chin too. I don’t think I can do that.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

“I say it with love, Lils. And there’s a whole raft of people you should totally give that vibe to. Dan at the top of the list. But humble gardener just staring at a tree while he waits for your elderly stepfather? Maybe not so much. Try this.” She slowly and exaggeratedly pulls her face into a smile.

“Funny.”

“I’m not being funny. Try it.”

“I know how to smile, El.”

“Maybe. But you don’t do it very much any more. I just don’t want you to end up, you know, one of those tight-lipped divorcées. It’s very hard to get lipstick to go on nicely once you get grooves.” She purses her lips and points to the tiny lines that result. “How’s Bill doing, anyway?”

Lila sighs, and takes a drink of water. “Hard to say. He could have his leg hanging off and still insist he was fine.” She has a vision of him plodding silently around the house, plugged into his earphones so that he can listen to Radio 3. He seems to need a constant supply of classical music, his barrier against the rest of the world. “He’s okay. I think. He makes the girls eat a lot of pulses.”

“Which they love.”

“You can imagine. I don’t know. He and Mum had this kind of regimented thing going on. Schedules and healthy food and tidiness and…order. So it can be a little tricky living with him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s there. I think it’s good for us to have the…continuity. But I wish he could unbend a little.” She sees Eleanor glance at her watch. “Are you going somewhere? You look really nice by the way.”

“Do I?” says Eleanor, with the insouciance of someone who knows it to be true. She has a huge shock of wavy mid-brown hair with a white streak at the front that manages to be both natural and ridiculously cool. She is wearing a bright scarlet silk shirt and half a dozen silver bangles. “I’m seeing Jamie and Nicoletta this evening.”

“Who?”

“The couple I was telling you about. We’re going to a hotel in Notting Hill. I’m quite excited.”

“Oh. The throuple .” Lila pulls a face.

“We prefer ménage à trois . ‘Throuple’ is a very Daily Mail way of putting it.”

In the three years that Eleanor has been single she has been on some kind of sexual odyssey, happily taking herself off weekly for what she calls her “adventures.” It’s a lot of fun, she tells Lila. No hang-ups about relationships or whether your body is perfect or whether you have a future together, all that stuff. It’s just having a laugh and some lovely sex. She wishes she’d done it years ago instead of hanging on with Eddie.

Every time Lila sees her now it is as if her friend is morphing into someone unrecognizable. “Isn’t it weird? I mean, do you have to work it all out beforehand? Who’s going to put what where? Or take turns?” Lila feels icky at the thought. She can barely imagine showing someone her naked shin, these days, let alone bouncing happily into bed with a pair of strangers.

“Not really. I like them, they like me. We just…hang out, have some wine, some laughs, have a nice time.”

“You make it sound like Book Club. But with genitalia.”

“Not far off.” Eleanor pops a piece of ginger into her mouth. “But less homework. You should try it.”

“I would rather die,” Lila responds. “Also, I can’t really imagine being with anyone but Dan. I was happy with him.”

“You used to tell me you didn’t have sex for six months at a time.”

“I hate your memory. Anyway. That was just at the end.”

Eleanor raises her eyebrows and obviously decides to let this pass. “I think you need some joy in your life, Lils. You need to have a laugh, get laid, get the softness back around those shoulders. You’re still pretty. You’ve got it going on.”

“I am not going to a sex party with you, Eleanor.”

“Go on the apps, then. Just meet someone. An experiment.”

Lila shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I will try to look less stabby, though. Oh, for crying out loud, how many times have we asked that waiter for the bill? Do I have to get up there and rip it out of his bloody hand myself?”

···

Bill has steamed fish for supper. The fuggy smell hits her as soon as she opens the front door, and she stands in the hallway and closes her eyes, reminding herself that he is doing a kind thing, cooking for them. That their house will smell like Billingsgate Fish Market for another forty-eight hours is just an unfortunate by-product.

Just don’t let it be with lentils , she thinks, stooping to say hello to Truant who is greeting her as if she is the only safe person in the universe.

“Hello, darling. I’ve done fish and lentils for supper,” he calls out, turning to her in her mother’s apron. “I added some ginger and garlic. I know the girls say they don’t like it but it’s very good for their immune systems.”

“Okay!” she says, wondering if there is any way she can order a takeaway without Bill knowing.

“How was your day, Lila?” He is mixing a dressing for a green salad, and Radio 3 is humming away in the background. His shoes are glowing like conkers and he’s wearing a collar and tie, even though he has been retired for thirteen years.

“Oh. Fine. I met Eleanor for lunch, then had to go and see the accountant.” She doesn’t want to talk about the meeting with the accountant. Her mind had started up a low static hum as he had run through the columns of projected income and scheduled tax payments. “How was yours? Jesus—what is that?” She does a double-take at the picture resting against the worktop. It’s a semi-abstract painting of a naked woman. A woman who has the same gray ringlets and tortoiseshell glasses as her mother. “Please tell me that’s not…”

“…your mother. I miss having her around. I thought it would be nice to have her in the living room.”

“But, Bill, she’s naked.”

“Oh, that never bothered her. You know she was very relaxed about her body.”

“I can tell you now that the girls are not going to be relaxed about having their naked grandmother above the television.”

Bill stops and lifts his glasses from his nose briefly, as if this has only just occurred to him. “I don’t know why you have to focus on the naked aspect. Really it’s more about the character within.”

“Bill, I can pretty much see everything within. Look, I know you miss Mum. Why don’t you have it in your room? That way it can be the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you see at night?”

He gazes at the image. “I just thought it would be nice if she was part of the family. Looking over us.”

“Maybe with pants on. A pants-on member of the family.”

He sighs, and his gaze slides sideways. “If you like.”

She feels suddenly guilty and puts her arms around him, as if in apology. He stiffens slightly, as though any physical contact is something of an assault. She thinks perhaps her mother was the only person Bill ever felt completely relaxed with.

“Maybe a nice photo. We could definitely do with some more pictures of Mum around the place,” she says.

“It’s like she never existed,” he says quietly. “Sometimes I look around and I wonder if she ever existed at all.”

She looks up at him then, at the grief etched on his face, the loss, and it feels like her own pales into insignificance. She has lost her mother, yes, but he has lost his soulmate.

“I have a box of pictures of her at the other house,” he says, taking a breath. “Photographs and things. If you really don’t want it there.”

She notes—with a stab of something she can’t quite identify—that he no longer calls his house “home.” “Tell you what,” she says. “Just leave it there for now. Given the amount of time the girls spend staring at their devices, they probably won’t even notice.”