25 #3
She does. If he were to date a forty-four-year-old woman now, nobody would bat an eyelid.
It was unlikely anyone would even notice.
Hell, he could date a thirty-two-year-old now and it would be completely fine.
She, on the other hand, would be in the Daily Mail , next to the lady prison guards who kept copping off with armed robbers.
‘But no: I was the boring old fart tying her down, burying her . . . ’ He gestures around.
‘I know you think I’m some kind of crazy minimalist, but I’m not that weird, honestly.
I just thought she’d fill it with paintings and pictures and cushions and .
. . stuff. But she never did. She never brought a thing in.
She hated it so much. She was just online all the time . . . ’
‘Did Verity like it?’
‘She did,’ he says. ‘She loved getting a dog – they’d go for miles in the forest and Felicity was so gentle, but protective too.
You have no idea: having a differently abled child, you worry about them so much – what if someone takes advantage, what if they don’t notice something or become aware of something .
. . but here, she could roam for miles and we didn’t have to fret about her.
And the school was great, and she made a friend, and we really were considering the surgery. ’
‘I seem to remember her lip-reading being very good.’
He smiles in pride. ‘It is,’ he says. Then his face clouds again and he refills their glasses.
‘So what happened?’ asks Janey. ‘Did she move back?’
‘Well, first . . . ’ says Lowell. ‘And God knows I’m not blameless. I travel a lot with my work, you know. We build things all over. There’s a lot of meetings in London and Amsterdam and stuff.’
‘And you live in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Well, there are big chunks when I’m at home all the time, but she wasn’t crazy about those bits either.’
Janey nods.
‘But she wasn’t working . . . we’d agreed that was okay, that someone could look after Verity. But she wasn’t; she was online all day. And I mean all day.’
He swallows, and suddenly Janey knows what’s coming.
She’s seen it before. Many times. He looks at her, and sees her tiny nod, and the relief in his eyes as he realises she already knows what he is going to say is absolutely immense, as if he’s been carrying it for a very long time; as if he can’t believe he is about to be able to put it down.
‘The activism . . . ’ he says.
She nods again. ‘I know.’
He bows his head.
‘There is nothing . . . nothing wrong with being deaf,’ he says. ‘I believe that. I truly do. I truly think Verity is perfect. I wouldn’t change the tiniest bit of her.’
‘I completely agree with you,’ says Janey.
‘But I also don’t think she’s deaf because she got her vaccinations, or I got mine or Thalia got hers, or because they’re deliberately putting stuff in drinking water, or it’s because they chlorinate, or because the one world government is in the pay of pharmaceutical companies .
. . She went so fast from completely reasonable questioning, to absolute .
. . she believed everything. She thought having a cochlear implant was Bill Gates putting a control chip in your brain.
She absolutely believed that. Believes that. Fervently.’
‘Internet poisoning,’ says Janey. ‘I’ve seen it again and again and again. People come armed with their YouTube videos.’
‘Some of it is completely reasonable,’ says Lowell again, desperately trying to defend his wife. ‘But a lot of it is just absolute . . . pish .’
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ says Janey quickly.
He’s running his hands through his hair, very agitated. ‘And she believes all of it! She thinks she can cure deafness with diet!’
‘You can,’ says Janey. ‘If you’ve got carrots stuck in your ears.’
He stares at her for a moment and then, finally, laughs and breaks the tension.
‘Ha,’ he says. ‘You’re funny.’ He rubs his head again. ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. For going on and on about it. You’re such a good listener.’
Good listener and funny , thinks Janey to herself. Two of the least sexy female things in the history of the universe. Never mind. Never mind.
‘That’s okay,’ she says.
‘I’ve stopped now,’ he says. ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t talk about it much. It’s no excuse. Can we change the subject? What do you like?’
I like you, thinks Janey, suddenly terribly sad.
At everything and everyone that has passed her by.
But you are a million miles away, thinking about your ex-wife and worrying about your daughter, and you are not remotely, not even nearly, anywhere near that space, even if you saw me as something other than a frumpy clinician-stroke-dog-pee-specialist.
‘Actually,’ says Janey gently, ‘it’s getting late.’
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. “Man Yammers On” shocker.’
‘It’s not that,’ says Janey. ‘It isn’t, not at all. But I have work tomorrow. And you’re about to be very busy.’
‘Of course,’ he said, sitting back, more businesslike. ‘So, how long are these puppies going to stay? What do I have to do?’
‘Another three weeks?’ says Janey. ‘That’s assuming you find homes for them all. I think Dwight wants one.’
‘Okay, wow,’ says Lowell. ‘But I have to work. And I’ll need to go and visit Verity.’
‘Didn’t you say she was coming here for Easter?’
‘Well, I hope so, but Thalia isn’t keen . . . says this place has bad . . . there’s a 5G mast somewhere around here.’
‘There is,’ says Janey. ‘I strongly recommend not looking up what the local Facebook group had to say about it. But surely once Verity hears about the pups . . . Anyway, you know, I’m sure Essie would pop in and help.
For cash, probably. Just to make sure they’re all okay, feed them, take them out in the run . . . ’
Janey has absolutely no idea how her daughter will respond to the suggestion, but she’ll figure that out as they go. She likes the pups anyway; they make her happier than she has been in a long time.
‘Yeah, okay,’ says Lowell. He looks at the bottle, which is empty.
‘Phew,’ he says, and they stand up.
Janey rises with the strong sense of stepping away – from one way of being a woman into another: of being a woman, alone with a man, and a bottle of wine, and the old possibilities and dreams and titillations and chances.
But tonight she didn’t get to feel like that.
Tonight she was a sympathetic ear, nothing more, and it troubles her more than she would have ever thought or could have admitted; as if she is shedding the skin of her fundamental adult self, even when inside she feels exactly the same as she ever did.
And always will. For years and years and years stretching ahead.
Even as she stands to meet him, his bulk looming above her, she feels it: a quick spurt of attraction, an almost overwhelming desire to touch his jumper, to see him smile that gentle rumpled smile at her; his comfortable size, his slightly distracted air, as if he’s building houses in his head all the time; the hair that he runs his hands through, a gesture which immediately makes him look younger in a way she can’t quite put her finger on.
For a second, as they are facing each other, she catches something, or thinks she does: something in his eye.
As if, for the first time, he sees her. Woman her.
The person she thought she was. She can see it.
It’s like a tiny hole in the universe, a pause that stretches longer than it should do.
He’s confused; blinks, looks nervous. Then he returns to himself, and she thinks he is thinking how horrified she would be, a comfortable middle-aged lady, after all, in sensible trainers, with a Boots Advantage card.
Oh, and he had a twelve-years-younger wife, of course.
‘Thank you, sorry,’ he says, both things at once.
‘What for?’ she says, meaning both.
‘For . . . for monopolising your time. But for letting me . . . I don’t talk about it to many people,’ he says, rumpling his face.
‘You haven’t thought about a real therapist?’ Janey asks delicately.
‘I don’t . . . I mean, honestly, I don’t think I’m that interesting.
And I think . . . I think I’m not feeling bad for any mysterious reason, you know what I mean?
My wife left me because I’m a boring old fart – what is there to say about that?
People wanging on about themselves for hours on end doesn’t make them any less boring either, in my experience. So, again, my apologies.’
‘None needed,’ she says, smiling at him.
*
The puppies are scrabbling in the laundry and they go to check on them.
They are playing a game which appears to involve tearing their tiny claws up and down on the expensive towels, pulling loops out of them.
Little puddles of pee are starting to form.
Felicity is showing absolutely no interest in coming over to see how they’re doing, even though they are absolutely desperate to bolt over to her.
But they are tumbling around happily enough; it’s a warm, cosy spot for them.
‘Do you think puppies have existential problems?’ Lowell says.
Janey bends down and picks up Bute, the little girl with the big bum, whose hairy tail stub wags furiously when she recognises a familiar scent.
‘I think,’ says Janey, ‘that puppies might be the answer to existential problems.’
And she goes out into the chilly evening, walks – despite his gallant offer to accompany her – by herself back across town.
The last thing she needs is to be spotted by people who know her, given that that is practically everyone, or for people to start to gossip.
Particularly, these days, when there is absolutely nothing to gossip about; nothing at all.