We All Live Here

Chapter Thirteen

Lila

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

So how is it going darling? Regent House called again this morning, desperate for three chapters and a synopsis.

ML

Anoushka xx

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Great! Almost ready to send.

Lila x

Lila has finished the three chapters. They are the most honest, brave, and, in her opinion, best chapters she has ever written. She has poured her very guts into them—the shock, the hurt, the anger, the sense of shame and vulnerability she has carried since The Rebuild ’s paperback publication, challenging herself at every turn to write more honestly, to peel back layer upon painful layer, to expose it all, even if it means her own public humiliation. It is brutal, possibly (she thinks in her more satisfied moments) even a little heartrending. It is the bald truth of what it is to be left for someone else, to watch the man you love build a new family without you but in full sight. Her daughters are disguised to the wider public, as before (she calls them simply Child A and Child B), but she has been nakedly honest about herself and Dan. Given his name was in several online gossip columns along with their story (she wishes the literary pages had been as interesting) she cannot see any point in suddenly trying to hide his identity. She has described Marja simply as the Mistress. Why not? It’s what she is. That was her choice.

And, besides, what does she owe them? This is her chance to claw back her narrative, to speak for all the women who have been left, who are trying to keep their remaining family afloat amid a series of catastrophic decisions and choices that were very much not theirs.

She has read her words again and again, editing, refining, printing them out and trying to read them as if she were someone else, looking carefully for too much self-pity, or anything that makes her sound bitter, anything that will enable people to write her off. Other women will get this , she thinks, as she finally puts the three chapters into an email and, with a shiver of trepidation, presses send . Other women will understand and identify. They are who I am doing this for . She tells herself this so often she almost believes it.

Adding to Lila’s sense of giddy anticipation is that Gabriel Mallory has texted her multiple times in the past week. Sometimes they are just questions about school ephemera, other times more personal. Every time her phone pings she gets a little shot of adrenaline, a second when she sees his name appear.

Lovely to see you today, and looking so incantevole.

According to Google, it means “lovely.”

It had taken Lila two hours to get ready for the school run that day.

Hey—Lennie wants to know if Violet would like to come over some time. Apparently they dug up some worms together at lunch break. Sounds like a solid basis for friendship.

(Violet had been annoyingly reluctant when she asked. “What? Why? But she’s in the year below me!” and “Mum, it wasn’t even a live worm!”) Lila has bribed her with ten pounds to say yes. It will probably cost her another ten to ensure she doesn’t just stomp off to another room and stare at the television if and when they actually go.

And best of all: Sorry you had a bad day. Your ex is clearly an idiot, if that isn’t overstepping a line.

Dan had arrived unexpectedly for the school pickup with Marja, his hand resting proprietorially on the small of her back, his expression loving and concerned. They were back from a hospital appointment, according to the snatches of conversation that floated above the playground. It was an unseasonably warm autumnal day and Marja had been wearing a soft black jersey dress that showed off her full breasts and rounded belly. She is one of those women who seem to have an inexplicable all-year-round light golden tan and the dress had slipped off one shoulder to reveal smooth, sculpted skin. He had nodded awkwardly at Lila as she hurried, head down, to where Gabriel was standing.

“That him, huh?” Gabriel had said, watching, and Lila had been so overcome with rage, sadness, and humiliation at the sight of them that she had been unable to reply. She and Gabriel had stood beside each other in silence for the seven interminable minutes it took for the children to come out. He had touched her elbow in solidarity as he left.

It’s not. And thank you x , she had replied. And felt suddenly a lot better.

Sometimes she thinks about asking him on a date. An actual date. Eleanor says it sounds like he’s interested, so why not? “For God’s sake, Lila, if there’s one advantage to getting to this age it’s being able to say the thing you’re thinking. You like him, he clearly likes you, so just ask. What’s the worst that could happen? C’mon—you’re a big girl.”

He could say no. He could look embarrassed and shocked, as if he had just been kind, and explain that, thanks, he was flattered, but a forty-something single mum with two cranky daughters wasn’t really part of his game plan. She could make the school run even more excruciatingly uncomfortable for herself than it already is. At the moment she can look forward with a flicker of excitement to one minuscule part of her day, to dream in the bath about his floppy chestnut hair, the wounded expression in his eyes that she is sure she could change, those long, sensitive artist’s hands. She can close her eyes and play out a million scenarios in which she and Gabriel Mallory end up together, him propelling her gently across the playground, his arm slung lightly around her shoulder as Philippa and Marja and all those other mean mothers look on. Possibly while he talks to her softly in Italian. No, she thinks, better to keep a little prospect of something lovely for herself than to test it and lose it altogether. So she says nothing.

···

“I thought I might bring my old Steinway,” says Bill, who is helping her take out the rubbish.

“What?” says Lila, hauling the reeking black bin bag into the wheelie bin. She is still haunted by the sight of Marja in her fecund state, Dan’s hand resting on her back. Bill has the recycling box, and has washed and dried all the items before tipping them in. “The actual piano?”

“I miss playing. It’s very…comforting.”

She stops and wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. She really wants to say, Couldn’t you just play it at your house? But Bill asks for so little and gives so much, and tolerates Gene’s presence with, if not grace, at least a sort of grim stoicism. “But where would it go?”

Bill has clearly thought about this for some time. “I thought I could move that bench in the hallway and put it there. That way it wouldn’t be in your way in the living room. You could just shut the door if I played.”

Lila’s heart sinks. Two years ago she had wept when Dan removed his meager selection of clothes, books, and technology from the house. Even though he had barely taken any furniture, the gap where a photograph had been, or the empty sections in the bookshelves—even the absence in the garage of the four-thousand-pound carbon-framed bicycle she had always resented—had made her feel it was all impossibly empty. Now, perversely, this house feels as if it’s filling up with people, with their stuff. There is no place in it that is not cluttered with either one or the other. And—she realizes with a stab of discomfort that she feels awful admitting to—this means Bill is here for good. Nobody moves a piano if they’re not planning to stay forever. She is now going to be living with a slightly depressed old man for the rest of his life.

“That’s fine, Bill,” she says, and hopes her smile stretches as far as her eyes.

···

Over the next couple of days, Lila’s good mood is punctured again and again, like a series of soap bubbles popped on the spikes of a holly bush. The piano arrives, wheeled up the road on two dollies by Bill, Jensen, and two Polish friends, who smoke roll-ups and shake their heads mournfully when they see the steps up to the hallway. The piano is in place after forty minutes of sweating and cursing, and when the dollies are removed it lands in the hall with a dissonant chord and a horrible air of finality.

That afternoon Jensen hits a concrete layer while trying to build the new vegetable beds, and from four thirty the air is filled with the sound of his pneumatic drill as he attempts to break it up. This prompts two angry calls from the neighbors and the swift delivery of the last of Lila’s emergency-gift bottles of wine.

Celie arrives home from school in a filthy mood and sweeps through the house without talking to anyone, her face like thunder and shrouded by a cloud of hair, then slams her bedroom door and refuses to come out. Bill sits down to watch the six o’clock news in the front room, as is his preferred habit, but Violet and Gene have congregated in there, away from the noise in the garden, and keep interrupting him with their YouTube videos of Star Squadron Zero , Gene providing a running commentary of what it was like to play that part, the high jinks the crew got up to, the guest director who was—inevitably—a dick. At twenty past six Bill, apparently tired of competing with the iPad, retreats to the hall where he sets up a rousing rendition of “Strangers in the Night,” the notes filling the whole house because of the tiled floor and lack of soft surfaces. This leads Gene to turn up the sound of the iPad even further.

It is against this backdrop of piano, ancient sci-fi, and pneumatic drill that Anoushka calls. Lila stands in the kitchen with her hand against her free ear, trying to make out what she says.

“…love it but saying it’s not quite as discussed…”

“What?” says Lila, as Truant, maddened by the noise levels, decides to add to it with a manic, staccato bark.

“…sex!…want more adventures…”

“What? Sorry, Anoushka, I’m having trouble hearing you.”

“…sexytimes…example…”

“Sexytimes?”

“You…extra chapter…just so they get full…”

“Jeez, pal,” comes Gene’s booming voice, as Bill’s piano reaches a crescendo. “We’re trying to watch TV in here!”

“And I ’m trying to play the piano!”

“Oh, is that what they’re calling it now? I thought Truant was murdering a cat.”

“Will someone in this bloody house just bloody shut up for one minute so I can take a bloody work call?” Lila bellows.

“I’m not even doing anything!” comes Celie’s outraged muffled voice from upstairs.

“I know, darling. Sorry, Anoushka, can you repeat that?”

There is a brief silence, before Jensen, who is wearing ear protectors, starts up again. Lila watches him as his whole body vibrates along with the drill, his jaw set with the effort.

“They want to see a sexytimes chapter. There’s none of the fun, all of the gloom at the moment. They just want an example of the naughty escapades you’ve been having. Have you started work on any of that bit?”

“Sure!”

“So when can you get it to me?”

Lila stares through the window at Jensen. “End of next week?” she says, without a clue as to why she says this.

“Marvelous. They love the rest of it by the way, but they say they just want to make sure it’s not too one-note. We also want uplifting and naughty! Like a kind of literary push-you-up bra!”

“Push-you-up bra,” Lila repeats.

“Wonderful! So exciting. Can’t wait to read! Adieu, darling!”

It is all of seven seconds before the noise begins again. The iPad starts, the fuzzy electronic theme tune of Star Squadron Zero filling the living room, followed by Bill’s determined piano in the hall, now using pedals for extra emphasis. From upstairs Celie decides to add to this with a particularly gloomy Phoebe Bridgers song. Lila can just make out the words: “I’m not afraid to disappear” and “The billboard said the end is near” before Truant starts barking again. Her head hurts.

Jensen stops the pneumatic drill. Lila opens the kitchen door and steps outside.

She texts Gabriel while standing on the patio. She does it quickly, before she can think about it: Do you fancy going for a drink some time?

I am a mature woman capable of asking for what she wants , she tells herself, as she presses send, adrenaline shooting through her body. It’s just a drink, not a big deal whatsoever. She lets out a short hiccup of anticipation, and waits, glancing at the screen. She peers up at the sky, then back at the phone, looking for the pulsing dots that tell her he has read the message, but nothing comes. She stands for a minute, two minutes, three, now unable to tear her eyes from her phone. Finally, a sinking feeling descending in her stomach, she shoves her phone into her pocket and walks to the end of the garden to sit on the bench.

···

“Bill says your ex really is having a baby. I’d thought you might be joking.” Jensen has been putting his tools away. He sits heavily at the far end and takes a swig from a bottle of water, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm.

“Nope. Not joking. The level of public humiliation wasn’t quite enough, apparently.” She smiles breezily. Why did I send that message? Why? What was I thinking?

She wonders if she can just use Eleanor’s experiences and not tell her. Eleanor will read the book eventually but maybe she can disguise them. It will be at least a year before Eleanor can see anything. She takes her phone out of her pocket and puts it face down beside her, feeling faintly nauseous.

“You okay?”

She stares at him. Nobody ever asks her that question. Nobody ever just says, Are you okay? Not Bill, not Gene, not her children, not even Eleanor. Everyone tells her what she should be doing, or that it’s going to be all right, or that she needs to be less miserable, less moody, less angry, but nobody ever asks her that simple question.

“No,” she says. “Mostly not, actually.”

“You know, when I was having a breakdown…” he begins.

It takes her a moment to register what she has just heard.

“Yup. Five years ago.”

“Oh, God,” she says, her hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a fun day out. But it showed me how out of whack my life had got. Now I’m at the other side, I try to view it as useful.” He studies his scuffed workmen’s boots. “Anyway. So when I was having my breakdown a guy I used to work with sent me a quote from Rilke: ‘Keep going. No feeling is final.’ Something along those lines. And I always think of that, when things are a bit rough. No feeling is final. The shitty times don’t last forever. Even if they feel like it.”

She smiles wryly. “Boy, do they.” She can feel his eyes on her.

“Tricky day?”

“Yup. And the really annoying thing is I didn’t think it was going to be.”

“Those are the worst.”

They sit in silence for a while. Her garden, she thinks, resembles the Somme. What was once a vaguely pleasing wilderness of overgrown plants and uncut lawn is now a mess of trenches, piles of earth, and concrete.

“You look like you could do with a drink.”

She pulls her attention back to him. “Yeah…Not really one of my vices.”

He raises one eyebrow.

“Oh, no, I’m not AA or anything like that. It’s just…my dad drank. Drinks. And Mum hated it for that reason. And he kind of messed up his life.” From the house, they can hear Bill’s determined piano. “And is still messing it up, apparently. So I guess I’ve just never seen the appeal.”

“You’ve never been drunk?”

“A couple of times. But I don’t…I don’t really like feeling…you know, out of control.” And if I started drinking while I feel like this , she says silently, I think I’d never stop.

“Fair enough. Tough never to get a holiday from your head, though.”

“I smoke. To get to sleep. Sometimes,” she says, in case she sounds too prim. “But I can’t anymore because I caught my daughter doing it. Apparently I need to be a good example.”

“That’s a terrifying thought.” He laughs.

She asks him if he has children and he says no.

“Did your wife not want them? Actually, forget I asked. That’s horribly intrusive. The kind of thing you’re not meant to say. Sorry.”

“My wife?”

She glances at his finger. The wedding ring is gone. “I—I thought you wore a wedding ring.”

He turns over his hand, as if looking for clues. “Oh! No. That’s my dad’s old ring. It’s a little loose on my right hand so when I’m gardening I wedge it onto the left so I don’t lose it.”

“Ah.”

The discovery that he is single, and that she has noted it, seems briefly to silence them. Lila sits on the bench that Bill made for her mother and runs her hand gently over the arm, feeling the carefully sanded wood, all the hours of work, the love that went into this piece of furniture. She cannot imagine anyone making a bench for her, and shakes her head, trying to get rid of the thought.

“I’d better go in,” she says, trying to make herself sound brighter than she feels. “Back to work.”

“I’ll stop the drilling for now. We’re nearly there anyway,” he says.

As she picks her way back across the rubble-strewn garden he calls: “You know, it’s going to be a nice thing.”

She turns to face him, shielding her eyes against the sun.

“The garden. It’s going to be a nice thing.” When she doesn’t say anything he grins and adds: “Sometimes things just turn out…nice.”

···

I asked him out. And he hasn’t replied.

Eleanor’s response comes within seconds: How long ago did you send it?

Two hours.

That’s nothing. Could be in a meeting.

Not if you like someone. You message straight back if you like someone.

Lila, you haven’t dated in almost twenty years. This is not how the world works now.

Also I have to write about having had loads of wild sexytimes for my new book. Can I borrow your experiences and pretend I’m you?

Only on one condition.

What’s that?

YOU get laid first.

I’m trying! I literally just told you I asked Hot Architect out for a drink. So can I?

Good luck! Let me know how you get on Xx

Eleanor can be really annoying sometimes.

El, I need to get this chapter written asap. I’m hardly going to be able to start a whole relationship by then, am I?

What century are you living in??? Who said anything about a relationship?

···

Anoushka has sent a follow-up email, including bits of the original from Regent House.

We absolutely love this project and are passionate about Lila’s writing, but we all felt it was a little too downbeat in the early chapters. There is a lot of hurt and betrayal and it is a little gloomier than we had expected. We would love for the book to open with, say, one of her crazier escapades, just so the reader knows that this is going to be a story of redemption, a sexy phoenix rising from the ashes, before we go into how she got there. Plus we are all desperate to hear how fun life can be on the other side of divorce—and we know a multitude of female readers will be too! We are very much looking forward to reading—the wilder the better!

Lila glances away from her screen and down at her phone. It is now two hours and forty-six minutes since she sent the text and Gabriel Mallory has not responded. Perhaps he is even now wincing as he tries to work out how to let her down gently. She has had no intimate contact in almost three years beyond a routine smear test. She is suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling that this book idea is going to fail, that she has promised something she has no possible chance of delivering. She is going to have to tell Anoushka the truth. What on earth had she been thinking?

No. She ponders Eleanor’s words.

There is another way.