Chapter 26
26
A lmost at the end of the second week of a holiday that had no end, and Kay was still waking at seven, as if her body clock had sensed the permanence of the re-wiring and was staging a fight-back. She closed her eyes against the sun, fingertips padding the lids as she lay listening to her empty house. What a conundrum middle-age was. There were no signposts to tell her which way. Not like childhood … Step this way to grow up … Turn right for university, left for a job.Not like young adulthood …This junction to start looking for a mate, start pro-creating, start collecting twigs (well,Matalan cushions), building your nest. It was almost as if, once a woman reached a certain age, she was expected to just drop off the face of the earth. She sat up and propped herself against her pillow. What was she supposed to do with this almost empty, almost silent nest? What happened with birds? Didn’t they just fly off? And then she was thinking about Helen, and her wall of boxes. Helen who had flown so far, only to come back to a nest she didn’t want to be in. She hadn’t said as much, but it was as clear to Kay as the nose on her face that Helen didn’t want to be back. And theirony of the situation was that Helen had the best reason in the world to stay, her grandson Ben,and she, Kay,had not much reason at all. And then she was thinking of her parents’ house, the carriage clock on the mantel that had been her mother’s retirement present, keeping time long after her mother’s time had run out.
In a habit that already become worryingly established, she reached for her phone and opened Tinder. She had one new message. Phone propped on her knees, head propped on her pillow she swiped it open.
Hi, what are you up to?
The message, she saw, had been sent at one am in the morning by James, who was fifty-two and liked, football (was there a man in England who didn’t?), only at the weekend and often.
Shaking her head she unmatched and then blocked him. In her first Tinder- innocence days, she would have excused one am in the morning as a disrespectful mistake and given James another chance. But Craig had warned her. ‘It’s a booty-call’ , he’d said, the first time it had happened. ‘Delete, then block.’ Kay wasn’t sure what had surprised her the most. The fact that here she was, a decade on from her last maths lesson with a young man who had possibly been her most hopeless student, and he was now the teacher and she the lost cause, or that middle-aged men who only ‘drank at the weekend’, were sending booty calls at one am to middle-aged women they had never met.
Tinder, she was quickly coming to realise was a tin of Quality Street, with a surplus of Toffee Pennys and very few Green Triangles. The app provided a masterclass in emotion and in just a few days she had run the gamut. Amazement as her very first ‘like’ had come in, astonishment and delight, quickly followed by excitement, as more had followed. Bewilderment, as she had read the messages, bemusement and now, already, scepticism. Because how quickly these would-be suitors gave themselves away, how unsavoury and disappointing they turned out to be.
Like Maurice, whose wife had recently died and who was new to Tinder, hoping to give love one last chance. Full of sympathy, Kay had exchanged several messages with him, until he had asked for her number and (remembering Craig’s advice) she had declined. A response that had caused Maurice to vanish swifter than a magician’s rabbit. She’d been left staring at the screen, disbelief turning to anger as she began to understand she had wasted time consoling a liar.
Or Graham. Fifty-five:
A teacher? I love teachers! Do you use a cane?
Or Florin. Fifty-one.
You are being very beautiful.
Or Simon. Forty-nine.
Just don’t tell me you have a cat? You’re too pretty for a cat.
Or Nigel, Fifty-five (but my friends tell me I’m more like forty-five).
You don’t run? Don’t worry, I’ll slow to a walk for you! See if you can keep up
The only profile who hadn’t disappointed, or leapt over boundaries, who had responded in a polite timeframe, consistently amused her, and hadn’t asked for her number, hadn’t in fact typed a letter wrong was, Goose, whom, despite Craig’s insistence, she hadn’t swiped left on.
Because although he was an expert in his chosen subject, Craig was also young, born in a world where he’d learned to take a selfie before he could write his name. Offering himself into this human version of the pet-shop window wasn’t a giant step forward for him, not like it had been for her. And not, she was thinking, like it obviously was for Goose, who with his self-deprecating humour she suspected was as scared of being the puppy left on the shelf as she was.
Thinking this, she opened the chat window.
Morning, she typed, now. Hope you have good day today.
Unimaginative, but genuine. She did hope that he would have a good day, she did enjoy ‘talking’ to him, and if that was all it was, then compared to what else was on offer, it was enough.
Downstairs she flipped the kettle on and read Alex’s note.
Out tonight, don’t make dinner for me.
She put the note down and opening the fridge for the milk, found herself staring at the macaroni cheese she’d taken out of the freezer last night. Along with half-completing one module of an on-line course in The Psychology of Fitness, and completing another season of Real Housewives, this was how she had spent her first full week of retirement: making dinners that no-one was around to eat. Her freezer was full of them. She’d even idled an hour away looking at smallholding properties in the North of Scotland, after which she had started digging a vegetable patch. She was meant to be flying to Cyprus. Every day Marianne texted for details of a flight Kay couldn’t bring herself to book, and although the desire to make a change was real, she just couldn’t work out how to take the first step. She was stuck; a fly caught in the web of a life years in the making. Superglued to her house and her garden, this tiny island that was beginning to feel as if it was all she had left.
She made tea, put the milk back and clutching her cup walked to the window. Once upon a time she had been a teacher, a wife, a daughter and a mother. Twenty-four years of full days, a child to care for and nurture, and then a mother to care for and comfort, students to educate, a husband to laugh and share with … a life. What, really, did she have now? Who, really, was she now? An ex-wife? An ex-teacher? Just about an ex-mother? Even her father’s social life was busier than her own. Last week he’d started a local-history course at the library. Which, after all the housebound years of looking after her mother, was wonderful. But he hadn’t told her. Craig had. And it seemed to Kay as she stood and watched the world go by, that if even her father didn’t need her anymore, she might as well label herself an ex-daughter as well.
Outside, a well-dressed woman carrying a shiny handbag had stopped to let her dog pee against the corner post of Kay’s driveway. She watched as the dog lifted its leg, and the woman got out her phone. Of course she did. Mobile phones, she thought as she sipped her tea, have destroyed the pause. Those moments in which nothing but a quiet patience is needed. She took another sip and frowned. The dog – in a change of toilet needs – was now squatting, the woman still scrolling. Poop bag, she thought as finally the woman looked down. But no poop bag appeared. The woman simply popped her phone away, did a double take along the street and, tugging at the lead began walking away.
Oh no! No No No No No! Kay slammed her cup down, flung the kitchen door open, and marched down her drive.
‘ Excuse me!’ she shouted.
The woman turned.
‘I think,’ she said, pointing at the pile of steaming poo, ‘that you’ve forgotten something.’
The woman froze, her dog looking up at her. ‘It’s not mine.’
It’s not mine! Kay threw her head back and laughed. So, her son didn’t need her anymore, and her father was busy every day talking to a secret admirer, and almost every conversation she had had on Tinder had led to a dead-end, but she would not stand by and let the world shit on her. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. ‘I know it’s not yours,’ she said, ‘but it is your dog’s, and if you don’t come back and clear it up, I swear I will pick it up with my bare hands and stuff it in your handbag.’
The woman didn’t move.
‘Don’t test me,’ Kay seethed. ‘I’ve tested me for the last twenty years and I haven’t failed yet. Do. Not. Test Me!’
And she watched as, avoiding eye contact, the woman turned back, fished out a poop bag and set about cleaning up the mess.
Only when it had been cleared and they were on their way again, did Kay start back up the drive, slowly at first and then, as she heard her phone ringing, a little faster. Someone was calling. Someone still needed her.