We All Live Here

Chapter Nineteen

Lila

“That is absolutely hilarious. How old are you?”

Lila and Eleanor are in the gym changing room. They have just done a workout class—since she turned forty, Eleanor has been religious about staying in shape—and Lila has sweat in places she didn’t know could sweat (she thinks it may actually be coming out of her eyelids) and her T-shirt is basically two panda-eyes of wetness.

“Sixteen, apparently.” She is still finding it hard to breathe.

“And they actually told you off ?”

Lila rubs at her face with a towel. “Gene gave me this lecture about how it wasn’t smart just to disappear and there were all sorts of bad men out there and I had no idea because I hadn’t been out there and didn’t I even watch the news about what happened to women out there late at night on their own?”

“But they knew who you were with.”

“But Bill insisted they hadn’t known where I was because they had assumed Jensen had dropped me off as I wasn’t romantically involved with him, and then I hadn’t answered my phone. And then when I said I had been with Jensen, actually, Bill said sort of pompously that he valued his relationship with Jensen very much and he hoped I wouldn’t mess it up for him. And then he sniffed—this really judgmental sniff—and added that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to sleep with someone with whom I had a working relationship.”

Eleanor cackles. “Well, that’s you told.”

“And then Bill said it was perhaps not the best example to set the girls.”

Lila had stared at him, her cheeks flaming. “I’m forty-two years old,” she had said, standing a little more upright. “I haven’t even been on a date in twenty years. I’ve been too busy picking up the pieces while the girls’ father was busy impregnating a much younger woman. I spend most of my waking hours trying to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. And yours too, for that matter. So back off with your judgments—both of you.”

Or, at least, that was what she would have liked to say. What actually happened was that she had apparently reverted to being sixteen, found herself mute, then muttered, “Well, thanks for your opinion,” and, face glowing, had stalked past the two old men and up the stairs to take a shower.

“So—the important question. How was it?” Eleanor peels off her gym clothes with the casual insouciance of someone who is now apparently used to being naked in front of strangers. She actually sashays toward the lockers, like someone on a catwalk.

Lila stares at her towel. “It was…fun. I mean, it wasn’t like steamy Fifty Shades shenanigans, not like you get up to. But we laughed a lot. And the sex was kind of…a sidebar?”

She couldn’t quite articulate to Eleanor what had happened. How Jensen, in the end, had declined to have sex, but had instead done that thing to her that Dan hadn’t done in fifteen years (he once told her he didn’t really like it, that it made him feel claustrophobic). And she had felt at first deeply awkward and exposed, and then a little panicky, and then he had been so good at it that she had stopped feeling awkward, at least for the time it took her to come, noisily. Embarrassingly noisily, although she couldn’t seem to do anything about that at the time. And afterward she had been braced to feel awkward again but he had made her laugh and seemed so comfortable with bodies, and her sounds, and stray hairs, and told her he couldn’t go “all the way” on the first night as (a) neither of them had condoms, and (b) he needed to keep something back in case she thought he was easy, which had made her laugh again.

It had been almost three by the time they’d stopped talking, too late for Lila to go back without waking everyone. They had slept on a couple of garden cushions, and he had covered her with his jacket. He had fallen asleep almost immediately, his arm heavy across her waist, only the odd muffled snore coming from his side. She had barely slept, her whole body humming with the unfamiliarity of having a near-naked man beside her. For the entire day after it happened, she kept seeing his sandy-colored head between her legs and getting a shivery little charge from it.

Eleanor pokes her head over the shower cubicle.

“And you felt okay about it? After all this time with Dan?”

That was the thing. She really did. It was weird to feel this okay about having sex with someone you weren’t in love with. It had occurred to her afterward that in the last few years of their relationship, Dan had approached sex like he approached his carbon-framed bicycle. Once the preliminaries were out of the way, his head would drop into his shoulders, his whole body a knot of concentration, and it was basically a matter of pumping his way to the finish. “It was actually really…nice.”

“?‘Nice’?”

“Happy. Happy sex. I can’t really describe it. I mean, he’s not my type physically, and he’s not interested in a relationship, and he’s a slightly annoying broke gardener. But in terms of me getting back on the bike, it was pretty much perfect.”

As he had dropped her off, he’d told her he had to go and see his parents in Yorkshire for a bit. “Convenient,” she had scoffed, and he had rolled his eyes and said he genuinely had to—she should ask Bill if she didn’t believe him because he had already talked to him about it. He was sorry to leave her with all the mess in the garden but, you know, parents. She did know. He had texted her the following day, telling her he had had a great night and would love to see her again “or at least when I’m not in a trench in your garden,” but she was mindful of what Bill had said about mixing business and pleasure and hadn’t been sure how to reply. And now it had been three days, which had turned her not answering immediately because she didn’t know what to say into something more weighty and awkward.

“Well.” Eleanor’s grin has spread halfway across her face. “I’d say that was a pretty good first attempt.”

“Does that mean I can use your thinly disguised sexual escapades in my book?”

Eleanor is washing her hair, her fingers knuckle-deep in the foam on her head. She stops for a minute and pulls a face. “Actually, Lils, would you mind not? I was thinking about it and it just seems a bit weird. Even if you’re pretending it’s you, I think people I’ve been having fun with might recognize things, or be weird around me, and then I won’t be able to go out with them anymore. It just feels a bit…off?”

Lila looks at her with the kind of disappointment that happens when you’ve just been blocked from doing something for entirely understandable and sensible reasons.

“Okay,” she says, after a minute, trying not to sound resentful.

“Sorry,” says Eleanor.

“It’s fine. I’ll work something out.”

“I mean you’ve got your own stuff to write about now, right?”

“I guess.”

Lila reaches into her locker for her bag, then looks at her phone, checking that there’s nothing from the girls, and suddenly stares at the little screen.

Hey, so let me know when you fancy that drink. I’m sorry it took so long to reply—stuff just mounts up, you know? You looked raggiante at the school gates yesterday btw x.

···

Something strange has happened since the night of the non-date with Jensen. It is not an entente cordiale , exactly, but Lila’s two fathers are definitely not actively fighting. When she arrives home from the afternoon school run, Bill is at pains to be cheerful and pleasant, asking after Lila’s and Violet’s day, occasionally cooking less challenging meals, and showing Lila small changes he has made around the house—the pinning up of a notice board, so that the girls know what to take to school each day, or the purchase of a new lock for the first-floor bathroom so that nobody was likely to walk in on her anymore (for “her” read Bill, and for “nobody” read Gene). There is notably less peevish closing of doors and passive-aggressive piano playing.

Gene, meanwhile, rises at an almost normal hour (nine thirty), folds the sofa-bed neatly, is out for much of the day, then makes a point of performatively greeting Bill first when he returns. Hey, Bill! How’s your day been?

Perfectly pleasant, thank you, Gene. Yours? Bill responds.

Lila is not entirely sure whether this exchange takes place on the occasions she is not within earshot. But one evening the two men washed the dishes together after supper, Bill not even commenting when Gene put the plates back in the wrong cupboard, and over dinner the following evening they had a short conversation about a leak in one of the bathrooms, which involved nobody else at the table. If there is a slight gritted-teeth element to their small-talk, it means at least that Lila does not go about her day feeling like a bomb-disposal expert waiting for the next explosion.

Which is just as well. Because Lila has spent three days holed up in what was once her office, revising her opening chapter, which is now late, and which she has promised, absolutely promised, to get to Anoushka by Friday.

Two years ago I was a mostly teetotal, married woman, with two children, who hadn’t so much as looked at another man. I married for life, considered my family my world, and was probably a little judgmental of people who weren’t like me. So how did I end up on the floor of a workshop at the end of my first date with a younger man, sawdust in my hair, giggly with vodka, and having the best sex of my life?

She had called him J in the chapter, and not revealed his occupation, figuring that way he could be pretty much anyone. And she had avoided the whole taking-her-elderly-father-to-hospital episode beforehand, describing it simply as “a bad day at the office.” But the rest of it she had poured out almost verbatim: the way they had told each other about their lives at the pub, his lost keys, her determination to “get back on the bike,” the bit where she had realized she didn’t even know his surname, her terror and excitement and the thrill of getting naked again with another human being. She quite enjoys the process of writing it: it allows her to relive the whole evening in detail, to remember things she had forgotten (his watch strap getting caught in her hair, the way he ran out into the rainy garden afterward to pee), and then to observe it at a distance—the story of a woman reclaiming her life and her sexuality. She had tweaked it a little, ramping up the emotions, changing his appearance to dark-haired, giving it a conclusive ending: “Well,” said my best friend. “That sounds like a perfect first attempt.” But she hadn’t had to change anything about how she’d felt in the moment, the unexpected ease of it all, the laughter, the sawdust, the smell of the paraffin lamps, and the endless drumming of the rain on the roof, the way, she realizes now, she hadn’t once worried about what she looked like or how she came across to him.

He was a great guy, and completely not my type, and he taught me that, unlike during my twenties when sex was always tied up with all sorts of sexual politics—what my then boyfriend might have said or done beforehand, whether we were “in” a relationship, how drunk I was, or how insecure I felt about myself—sex in my forties was quite different: me inhabiting my body fully, unafraid to ask for what I wanted, comfortable with the idea that just because I was having great sex with someone didn’t mean I needed to spend the rest of my life with them. In fact, the exact opposite: that I could go into a sexual encounter knowing I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him. It was my first moment of liberation, and worth every hour on those lumpy garden cushions, and the sawdust in my hair…

Suck on that, Dan , she thinks. She prints it off to check it for spelling and grammatical errors—they are always somehow easier to see on a printed page—and then, when she’s satisfied there are none, she puts the chapter into an email, types in Anoushka’s address, and presses send. Then she closes her laptop, feeling oddly satisfied. She is a grown-up, independent woman writing about her sexual escapades. She is moving forward, taking care of her family, and reclaiming her financial independence. She has not had to make anything up. Even the fact that Truant has weed on the stairs (because nobody except Lila ever walks him) cannot dent her good mood.

Sounds good! When did you have in mind?

Pretty flat out with work most of this week but how about Thursday eve? Lennie is going to my mum’s.

Thursday’s great.

She and Gabriel have been texting again, backward and forward most evenings, little snippets about the school gate or things their children have been up to.

How’s the finest-looking woman in the playground?

He comments specifically on her appearance, saying her hair looked nice in that style, or that she looked amazing in those jeans, often using Italian words she looks up afterward. He pays attention to tiny details that Dan would never have noticed about her. He is kind, considerate, clearly conscious of the psychodrama she goes through every day faced with Marja’s presence.

I know it’s not my business, but I can’t get my head round Dan choosing that girl. She has nothing about her, not compared to you.

She likes the “that girl,” as if Marja is someone insubstantial. The texts are unpredictable, and come at odd hours, sometimes two or three in an hour, and then no reply at all. She imagines the stress of his daily life as a widowed father and the difficulties of managing a job as a top architect while trying to meet the emotional needs of his daughter.

It can be lonely sometimes, can’t it? she ventures, late one evening, while she is in the bath.

His answer comes twenty minutes later. Her water has started to grow cold.

It can. I know you get it. x

He seems to see her in a way that nobody else does. It’s like having a secret ally, one who sees only the best of you. In person, they usually exchange only the slightest of conversation—of course nobody wants to be the focus of the school mums’ forensic gaze—but his looks are meaningful, and every time she gets a text from him a small thrill goes through her, and she reads and rereads it several times, relishing the warmth of his digital gaze.

I saw a woman who looked just like you at work today. I slightly wished it had been—we could have gone for coffee.

It was me. I’m hiding in your office in a million disguises. That’s how I roll.

You’re very funny. One of your many charms. Anyway, she wasn’t half as good-looking as you x

It is most days now, and definitely flirtatious. Lila feels a little giddy on the walk to school, their impending date a glowing pocket warmer she holds tightly, a secret source of heat and comfort. When Philippa gives her one of her vaguely pitying looks—the ones that manage to combine We’re all so sorry for you with But it’s totally understandable why Dan would have wanted to trade you in for Marja— she meets it with a bland smile and walks over casually to stand in what she has come to think of as Gabriel’s corner, even on the days when he is not in it. Which is, annoyingly, most days. She’s in such a good mood that when a driver beeps at her to hurry up as she walks over the zebra crossing she stops and does just three jumping jacks in front of him, when really she would have been within her rights to do a dozen.

···

“So where are you going?” says Eleanor, who has popped round for coffee and to show off her new tattoo. It is a phoenix, apparently, rising from the ashes of her hip bone.

Lila wants to ask if it’s some kind of comment on osteoporosis but suspects this is not really the point. “Um…not sure yet.”

“He has confirmed the date, though?”

That was the thing. Gabriel had been annoyingly quiet for the last thirty-six hours. The last time he had mentioned it he said something about work, but that he was sure he’d make it, and now she doesn’t want to be chasing him for answers. She suspects the kind of people he surrounds himself with are far too cool to have to chase people for date details.

“I mean, pretty much, yes. He suggested Thursday.”

“When was that?”

“Um…Sunday?”

Eleanor gives her a steady look.

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice. He’s been texting, and it was him who suggested it in the first place.”

“After it was you who initially asked him for a drink.”

“Well, yes, but that was forgotten. He could have just ignored it. But he was the one who said let’s go out.”

Eleanor pulls the kind of face people pull when they don’t want to say what they would actually like to say.

“I’m sure he’ll be in touch before tomorrow,” Lila says firmly.

The sound of distant, fragmented piano playing, which has formed the backdrop to their conversation, has stopped and now Lila hears the sound of the front door opening and closing, the muffled goodbyes of Penelope Stockbridge’s departure. A moment later Bill walks into the kitchen. He greets Eleanor warmly, observes, when Eleanor shows him her hip tattoo that, goodness, it really is…quite something. And then, his offer of more tea gently refused, makes himself some Earl Grey and sits at the kitchen table. The newspaper is in front of him but he looks meditative.

“Everything all right, Bill?” says Lila, after she and Eleanor have exchanged looks.

“Fine!” he says. “All fine, thank you!”

“He’s moping because he likes Piano Lady and he doesn’t know what to do about it.” Gene strolls in from the garden, slugging a can of Coke. It’s an unseasonably warm day and he is in a faded T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley on the front. Lila hadn’t known he was even in.

“That’s not it,” says Bill.

“It is. He likes her but he feels bad because of your mom.”

“I like Penelope as a friend.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. She’s hot to trot for you, my friend. Hanging on your every word. Watching you play your instrument like she wishes you were playing her.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Gene. Not everybody’s mind is in the gutter.”

Gene grins, pleased with himself.

“She does come round a lot,” observes Lila.

Penelope comes two or three times a week. Always just to help Bill with his scales, apparently. He’s a terribly good pupil. It’s so rewarding for her. This week she has also brought a pasta bake, a tray of scones, and some flowers that were simply taking over her borders. They would only have gone to waste. It was really nothing. Lila has found it rather charming. Penelope is such a careful, anxious presence, so eager to please, that it’s hard to resent her.

“I think it’s nice, Bill,” she says. “I don’t think Mum would mind if you saw her as…more than a friend.”

Bill is gazing at his newspaper with his brow furrowed, the closest he comes to expressing deep existential trauma. “She is a very sweet lady,” he says, after a minute. “I feel she’s been dealt rather a raw deal in life. And I do enjoy her company. But, honestly, I wouldn’t know how to go about…I don’t know.”

“Pal! Don’t make it heavy weather! You’re overthinking this,” says Gene, scratching an armpit. “Just invite her to stay on for supper one evening. She’ll jump at the chance.”

Bill’s look suggests he’s considering whether Gene would be involved in that dinner.

“If you did decide to invite her for supper, we could all steer clear, couldn’t we, Gene?” says Lila. “Give Bill a little privacy?”

“Oh. Oh, sure! Wouldn’t want to cramp your style.” Gene gives him a vigorous nudge, which Bill endures politely.

“I don’t know…” Bill says again.

“Fella. C’mon. Who knows how much time we have around here? You gotta live life while you can. Hey—what would Francie have done? She knew how to live, right? She sucked the marrow out of every moment.”

They are all briefly silenced while they think of her.

“She certainly did,” says Bill, and lets out a shaky little sigh.

“It’s not a betrayal. It’s what she would have wanted. We all have to move on! Doesn’t mean we think about her any less.”

Lila wonders quite how that squares with the fact that Gene couldn’t even be bothered to mourn her mother’s death, but he’s being sweet to Bill so she decides to let it pass.

“You’re right,” says Bill, after he’s thought about it. “Maybe I will ask her if she’d like to join me for dinner.”

“Attaboy! Your old pal here will vamoose. Just say the word.”

Afterward, Lila wonders if Gene’s generosity of spirit is entirely altruistic. Should Bill move on with another woman, he is unlikely to want his room at Lila’s in the future. But Eleanor would no doubt have labeled that as an incredibly cynical and bleak view of human nature, even for her, so Lila nods encouragement and lets that one pass too.

“By the way, honey,” says Gene, “we fixed your john.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The lavatory,” says Bill. “The green bathroom. The one that kept blocking. We had a look on the outside wall this morning and we worked out that whoever installed it hadn’t put the soil pipe leg at the right angle where it feeds into the bathroom. That was why it kept backing up.”

“It was basically horizontal,” said Gene.

“It absolutely was. So Gene and I went to the plumbing-supplies shop, got a new piece of pipe, and re-fixed it to the main pipe at a slightly altered angle. I trust you’ll find that it solves the problem. I think we did rather a good job.”

“You fixed the loo?” Lila cannot get her head around the idea of these two men at a plumbing-supplies shop together. Let alone having the practical skills to fix the problem.

“We certainly did,” says Bill. “Flushes like a dream now.”

Lila cannot speak. She looks at them, at their sweet, proud expressions, and is suddenly flooded by an unfamiliar feeling. It might be uncomplicated affection.

“Even after a big curry,” adds Gene.

“Oh,” says Lila. They stand there, all basking in the moment. And then Lila gives her head a shake. “So, hang on, that bloody plumber has been charging me three hundred quid every few weeks for what? Sticking a coat hanger down the bog? I’m going to kill him.”