We All Live Here

Chapter Sixteen

The pub is in Hampstead, halfway down one of the tiny pedestrian streets that lead off the main road, where antique books jostle for space with delicatessens selling exotic salads, made with aubergine, for fifteen pounds a pot. Lila has to edge past a huge, angry-looking man with two Pomeranian dogs to enter, but once inside the pub is reassuringly shabby, all dark scuffed walls and wonky wooden tables, the kind of place she used to frequent all the time before she had children, and has barely visited since. Jensen is already there, somehow cleaned up in a blue shirt and dark jeans, and she feels momentarily awkward that she has not bothered to make up her face or even brush her hair. But what’s the point? She just needs to be out, in company. She needs to be away from her house. And her gardener was literally the only man who might be available.

Violet had looked mildly outraged when she said she was going out. But where? And then: Why can’t I come?

Lila had glossed over her question, announced breezily that they would all be fine without her, and walked out of the door before anyone had a chance to protest. She had strode the twenty minutes up the hill with a kind of grim determination, not looking at her phone, as its intermittent buzzing told of the slew of questions and protests that inevitably followed her departure. No, she is an adult woman, and she is allowed to do as she likes. Occasionally.

Jensen turns and sees her, and motions to a table where his battered canvas jacket sits on the back of the chair. She slides in, gazing around her at the other drinkers, deep in animated conversations that have already been lubricated by several drinks, or staring in silence into their pints. She inhales the yeasty air, trying to slow her pulse.

“So what do you want?” Jensen appears at the table and puts his drink down on a square coaster.

“Oh. Diet Coke. Please.” She is grateful that he doesn’t question it. When she and Dan had first got together, he had told her she was admirable for not drinking. He even gave it up himself for a while, especially when the kids were small. He had been anxious about something happening to one of them, and not being able to drive them to a hospital. He had been a surprisingly overprotective parent when they were little. But for the last few years of their marriage Dan had started drinking again—only “clean” drinks like vodka and slimline tonic, as he spent increasing amounts of his free time in Lycra on his carbon-framed bicycle—and from then he seemed to see her failure to drink as a kind of rebuke, or maybe a symptom of her joylessness. He would offer her one in front of friends, even though he knew she would say no, and roll his eyes when she did as if showing them what a trial it was to be with her. She wonders absently whether he drinks with Marja, whether before she got pregnant they would ease into their evening with an expensive bottle of wine and…

Jensen hands her a Coke, smiling. “I was kind of surprised when you—”

“This isn’t a date,” she says quickly.

He blinks. “Okay.”

“I mean—sorry—not that you aren’t a very nice man. I just want to make sure we’re straight from the off. I just—I just needed to get out of the house.”

He contemplates this for a moment. “And I’m the only person you could think of?”

“No. I have friends. Lots of friends.”

He looks confused.

“I mean I would normally meet my friend Eleanor. But she’s going to a sex party in Richmond. No, Rickmansworth. Somewhere with an R. Actually maybe that’s tomorrow.” She takes a swig of her drink. “I mean I do have other friends. But—actually—it’s got so awkward since Dan left that I find everyone exhausting. Everyone who knows us, I mean. I’ve sort of pulled in my horns. It’s like I have to explain everything, and talk about what happened, and I’m still getting used to the idea of him impregnating the Bendy Young Mistress so I can’t face explaining about that either. I’m so tired of the head tilt, that godawful look of sympathy. Or maybe it’s just their relief that it’s not them. And you already know. I just wanted to come out for a relaxing drink and not to have to…explain.”

She stares at her Diet Coke. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve just realized I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

Jensen appears to consider this. “Have you been on many non-dates?” he says. “Because you may want to work on your opening.”

“Was the sex party too much?”

“No. That was great. Could have done with more detail but, hey, let’s see how the Diet Coke goes down.”

He looks completely unruffled. She lets out a long breath. “Sorry. I haven’t been on a date—or a non-date—since 2004.”

“When’s your next?”

“Probably 2044.”

“I can tell you about my last, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Not really. Not if it involved a delicious frisson, an amazing meal, and then loads of perfect sex.”

“It involved an overpriced pizza and my date bursting into tears and telling me all about her ex-boyfriend. Whom she is definitely, definitely, definitely not still in love with.”

Lila pulls a face. “Ouch.”

“First and last go on the apps. I should have been warned that we weren’t suited when she listed her interests as ‘makeup.’ I don’t know if I’m cut out for relationships. Not modern ones, anyway. I’ve kind of shut up shop on that front.”

Lila starts to laugh. “Oh, God. It’s just all so…awful. Eleanor made me download one of those apps last year but it was like peering into the use-by section in Tesco. Everyone my age looked like they were well past their expiry date, or so bashed around that nobody was going to pick them up unless they were absolutely desperate.”

His laugh is an abrupt bellow that makes the people around them turn to look. “How old are you, anyway?” he says.

“Forty-two. You?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” she says, leaning back in her seat. “You’ll be looking at the early thirties. You’re considered in your prime.” Like Dan. “Good-looking, young, a man, you’ll be fixed up in no time, even if you’re not looking. Someone young and gorgeous.”

He eyes her quizzically. “Why would you do that?”

“Do what?”

“I’m literally three years younger than you. Possibly less. And you’re talking to me like I’m your nephew.”

“I don’t know.” She picks up the beer mat and fiddles with it. “Maybe I just…feel old.”

“No, that’s not it…You need distance.”

“What?”

“You need to push someone away before they can get close. Or just make out like there’s no possibility of anything between us, so that you can’t feel vulnerable, especially if I don’t make a pass at you.”

She feels herself bristle. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“No judgment. I just see the dynamics. Years of therapy, I guess.”

Lila pulls a face. “Don’t therapize me.”

“I’m not. I’m just observing.”

“You can observe what you like. Doesn’t make you right.”

“No, it doesn’t.” He takes another sip of his drink. “But I am.” He smiles.

“Wow. You can be quite annoying.”

“So my sister tells me. But you did it when you met me, remember?”

She folds her arms. “No, I didn’t. I was not overly friendly on that occasion because I thought you were going to steal my car.”

“You charged outside in your PJs and pretty much told me to get lost just for looking at your tree. Which is sick, by the way. You need to have it taken down.”

Lila closes her eyes. “Can we not? Can I just have one hour where there isn’t something I have to sort out that’s going to cost me money? Unless you’re about to tell me that Gene’s living in that too.”

There is a slight atmosphere, and she cannot work out whether it is friendly or spiky. The one thing it is not is relaxing. It is possible he senses this, because he pauses for a moment, then leans forward in his chair and puts his beer down. “You look very nice by the way. I’m saying that in a non-date, friendly, asexual, age-appropriate manner.”

Lila is not so embittered that she cannot recognize an olive branch when she sees one. “You’re very kind. And also a terrible liar. I haven’t washed my hair in two days and I haven’t got any makeup on.”

“Well, like I said, makeup isn’t really one of my interests. Hey, c’mon. Sorry if I therapized you. I’m not very good at small-talk, in case you hadn’t guessed. Though I can try if it helps.” He sits up. “Nice…décor in here?”

She follows his gaze. “I actually like old pubs,” she says. “The ones where everything is still stained with nicotine and the stale smell of spilled drinks. I like things where you can see the history.”

He nods.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen the two old bathrooms in our house, but I really like them too, even though everyone keeps telling me we need to rip them out and modernize. They’re not fashionable, but they’re quirky. I don’t like this thing where we have to keep moving on and moving up all the time.”

He’s still watching her.

“Oh, God, you’re not going to therapize that, are you?”

He shakes his head. “No. Although I hope you appreciate how hard I’m having to resist it. I don’t like new stuff either. When I had my kitchen put in my flat, me and my sister spent an hour kicking the cupboards just so they wouldn’t look new.”

“Are you serious?”

“They were wooden doors but with this terrible immaculate laminate paint on them. I just needed them to look a bit scuffed and dented to feel at home.”

“Yes! It used to drive Dan mad, all the scuffs and chaos of our house. I used to buy battered old chairs from charity shops, or weird old pictures with faces I liked, and he couldn’t stand it. He now lives in a minimalist paradise with approximately two pieces of perfect furniture in every room.”

“He’d get on well with my ex-fiancée. She needed everything to match. At one point we had two cream sofas, a cream marble coffee-table, and cream curtains. I used to feel like I had to shower before I dared walk into the living room.”

“You were engaged?” She doesn’t mean to sound as surprised as she does. He just doesn’t seem like someone who would get engaged, let alone to someone with cream sofas.

“Briefly. She didn’t appreciate the whole breakdown thing so much. And then I left the City and she realized I wasn’t going to make money anymore so…two strikes and I was out.” He takes another swig of his beer. “Oh, and there was the whole business of her shagging my work colleague.”

“Oh. Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. We were totally ill-matched. It just didn’t show till things got tough.”

“I used to think Dan and I were pretty well-matched.”

Neither of them says anything for a minute. Lila stares at her Diet Coke.

“You can love someone and still not be compatible,” he says.

“Or maybe compatible but just…not love someone anymore?”

He thinks for a minute. “That too. It’s dangerously close to therapy-speak. Want another Coke?”

They talk for another forty minutes before the call comes. She likes listening, realizes it’s rare that she gets to hear someone else talk about their life. It’s oddly restful to hear about someone else’s complications and mistakes. He tells her how he used to work on the Foreign Exchange, about liquidity and volatility and hedging, and how he finally got engaged after he woke up to find his girlfriend had scrawled “Do it or forget it” in lipstick on his windscreen. “Maybe, with hindsight, not the healthiest way to go into a marriage.” And then had come the breakdown, and a short stay in rehab. He relays all this with the calm, wry tone of someone discussing events that had happened to someone he has never met. She wonders whether to prod him a bit—she’s a little bit captivated by the demanding girlfriend with the lipstick—when the phone rings. It’s Violet.

“Mum, you need to come home.”

She looks up at him, one hand pressed to her ear, and rolls her eyes. Of course they wouldn’t let her have two hours to herself. Of course not. “Violet, I’m just having a drink with a friend. I’m allowed to have a—”

Violet’s voice is urgent. “No. You need to come. Bill put a photo of him and Grandma’s wedding day on the sideboard in the living room and then Gene put a picture of him and Grandma at their wedding next to it, and when Bill saw it he started shouting and Gene said, well, he thought Grandma looked happier in his one and then Bill chased him out in the garden with a chopping thing and Gene fell over the concrete bits and now he’s lying on the ground saying he can’t get up and Bill won’t come out of his room.”

Lila stares into the middle distance. She may have counted to ten, or ten thousand, she can’t remember. She takes a deep breath. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll be right home.”

It is as if she has been allowed a tiny window into a different life, then had it slammed abruptly in her face. Possibly by someone blowing a raspberry.

Jensen is watching her, his mouth pressed into a thin line of sympathy. “I think I caught the gist of that,” he says. “C’mon. I’ll drive you back.”