Chapter 2
Jo felt as if Bella had been watching her carefully for the past hour, scanning for signs that she really was as OK as she kept insisting that she was.
Five months after the separation is a dangerous time, Bella had told her twice this evening and said she knew from supporting other women through similar marriage meltdowns, which is why she’d had to respond to Jo’s message:
Flat as a fart, please say you’ll come round later.
It was only three weeks or so since the night Bella had driven over to Jo’s new home unannounced one evening because she hadn’t liked the way Jo wasn’t answering her calls or responding to her messages.
This never happened, it was an accepted part of Jo’s job to always to be contactable: she even had a pager to clip on if she found herself in an area with a bad phone signal.
So, Bella had gone to investigate and pulling up at the newly bought ‘railway cottage’ – i.e.
miniscule terraced red-brick house – she’d found the curtains drawn but chinks of light coming from the front room.
She’d rapped on the door, rung the bell and after a few minutes with no reply, she’d shouted into the letterbox: ‘It’s me, so stop hiding and let me in.
I’m not going away. I’ll annoy you all night if I have to.
’ Finally, Jo had come to the door with puffy eyes and a streaming nose swathed in a grubby white dressing gown.
Bella, known in various London circles as the tough-as-nails boss of her own computing consultancy, knew she was a slightly unlikely angel of mercy. Nevertheless, she’d put comforting arms around her friend and demanded to know what was wrong.
Jo had led her into the sitting room where all the telltale signs of heartbreak were in place: a generous scattering of crumpled tissues, a blanket on the sofa, three empty mugs, plus a plate stacked with white toast, dripping butter and what looked suspiciously like Marmite.
The TV freeze-framed on the funeral scene in Steel Magnolias.
‘What’s the matter?’ Bella had asked.
‘What’s the matter?!’ Jo had repeated, sounding incredulous, flinging herself onto the sofa: ‘I’m going to be divorced.
I’m going to be a single mother. I’m going to damage my children for life.
I’m going to struggle to pay the mortgage even on this horrible little house…
and’ – choked-back sob – ‘I’m never going to celebrate my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
’ Desperate snivel. ‘Who’s going to watch Mel’s ballet shows with me?
And Nettie’s first day at school… Will I even get to take her?
Or will it fall on a Simon day? And… and—’ Jo’s voice had disintegrated into a wail, ‘I’m practically forty!
’ Then she’d dived for the tissue box that Bella had thoughtfully held out to her.
‘You’re thirty-five,’ Bella had reminded her, starting with the obvious. ‘That’s not “practically forty”.’
Bella then let Jo cry on the shoulder of her designer suit for a few moments before asking crisply: ‘Do you seriously want to be married to Simon for twenty-five years? If you do, why not just pick up the phone and tell him? Go on, it’s over there. That’s just another fifteen years of Simon to go.’
These words of wisdom had Jo slowly shaking her head.
‘Jo,’ Bella had put an arm round her friend’s shoulder.
‘You’ve done the right thing, for many reasons.
I could reel off a whole list of reasons, but the most important one, the one you should keep right in the forefront of your mind, is that you don’t love him enough and he doesn’t love you enough.
And everyone deserves better than that.’
‘But why doesn’t he?’ Jo had asked, dissolving into a fresh burst of tears.
‘This is the first time I’ve seen you cry,’ Bella had told her, sounding almost surprised. ‘You’ve been so together about bringing your marriage to a close. It was your decision,’ she reminded Jo, as she held her close. ‘You always pretend you’re tough as old boots.’
‘No… I’m not really,’ Jo had admitted, ‘Very sensitive on the inside.’
‘That’s probably what makes you so good at your job,’ Bella had said.
‘Of course I’m better off without Simon. I know it,’ Jo had replied, before blowing her nose forcefully. ‘It’s just the idea… I always wanted to be happily married, part of a family, for years and years.’
‘You are part of a family,’ Bella had reminded her. ‘It’s a modern family, it’s normal. It’s just not a Walt Disney, 1950s family.’
‘You’re a Disney family!’ Jo had accused her. ‘With your husband and your 2.2 children. And you’re happy.’
‘I earn three times more than Don, that’s hardly Disney,’ had been Bella’s reply, along with: ‘And he’s much older than me, which might not be so sexy in ten years’ time and we’ve had plenty of problems. We have at least one Mount Etna scale row every month on top of the one I blame on PMT.
Don claims I’m in a bad mood the whole time because I’m so busy.
Sex is something he has to schedule into my diary weeks in advance and anyway, we’ve only been married for five years or so.
And I’ve told him when he hits fifty-five, that’s it, I’m trading him in for a toyboy. ’
This outburst had at least made Jo smile.
‘What are you doing?’ Bella had asked gently.
‘Wallowing,’ had been Jo’s answer.
‘Steel Magnolias and Marmite?’ Bella had pulled a face.
‘I know, I know. And I don’t even like Marmite.’
‘You have to stop eating like this.’ Bella had picked up the plate, ‘Five extra pounds and a yeast overgrowth are not going to help. I’m going to pour you a drink and then you’re allowed one of my “emergency” cigarettes.’
‘So, liver failure and lung cancer are better, are they?’ Jo had countered.
‘Tea, then?’ Bella had suggested, trying to sound enthusiastic at the prospect of tea.
‘God no,’ Jo protested. ‘I’ve had about eighteen cups of tea already. Go into the kitchen and open a bottle of wine.’
Once Jo was tucked up under a blanket on the sofa, wine glass in hand, the trigger for this wave of divorce grief had emerged. She’d confided to Bella that Simon hadn’t moved into his new flat alone: an old ‘family friend’ had moved in with him.
‘Gwen!’ Jo had exclaimed, still hardly able to believe it. ‘You’ve met her, haven’t you? I’m sure you have. She’s…’ and Jo had paused, wondering how she would have described Gwen in the past. Now only the words ‘pathetic, needy, selfish and completely inconsiderate’ came to mind.
‘He swears nothing was going on between them until a few weeks ago,’ she’d told Bella.
‘But then why is she moving in with him so soon? She’s lived alone for years.
She’s older than him! Sensible… court shoes, white blouses, string of pearls type.
It’s as if he’s moved in with a younger, slimmer version of his mother! ’
‘Don’t worry,’ Bella had said as she’d left a comforted Jo later that night: ‘You’ve got your children, your new house and you’ve got your job.’
‘Yup and that’s enough,’ Jo had replied. ‘Don’t know how I coped with a husband as well.’
Tonight, here in the kitchen of the home she’d been in for barely two months, Bella had told Jo that she was looking much more ‘together’.
Divorce phase one: weight gain, saggy grey tracksuit and un-dyed hair seemed to be over.
The house sale was behind her, along with the dreaded house clearance – when every shred of Dr Simon Dundas had been taken out, wept over, boxed up, chucked, or, in the case of exceptionally emotional items, stored.
And now Jo was ready to emerge anew from the rubble of her ten-year marriage.
The week away with her daughters had done her good.
The colour was back in her cheeks, the downward turn her mouth had adopted lately seemed to have lifted and there was new hair: shortish, highlighted, feathery and flattering, not too post-break-up drastic.
‘So, you’re looking great. Holiday must have been relaxing, then?’ Bella asked.
‘Yeah, we had a great time – beachy, but bracing,’ Jo said as she spooned chicken salad onto their plates. ‘But I’d hardly got back to London before it all kicked off again: work harassing me, phone calls from the dreaded Hugo Hemburrow…’ Jo rolled her eyes.
‘Is there still a lot to sort out?’ Bella liked to keep a watchful eye on friends’ divorces, to make certain they weren’t being ripped off. Hugo Hemburrow, family law expert, came with her personal recommendation.
‘The pension,’ Jo replied. ‘We’re having a good old fight about Simon’s NHS pension. Hugo thinks I should be entitled to half of it, when the day comes.’
‘And what does Simon think?’ Bella asked.
‘I think the words “stick it” and “you know where” formed a large part of the conversation. We may have to settle for a portion.’
‘A portion is good.’
‘I think a portion will be fine.’
‘How is this affecting post-marital relations, though?’ Bella asked. ‘It can’t be very easy having to see him twice a week, discuss the children and everything.’
‘We’re both trying very hard,’ Jo managed, as generously as she could.
‘We don’t ever talk about the finances ourselves.
We let the lawyers deal with that. We just stick strictly to the children, make polite conversation and try to keep it as friendly as possible.
’Jo bit back the long list of complaints she would like to have added about her ex-husband, the man who was rapidly turning into the cliché of a divorced dad.
He was overdoing the hair tint, he’d upped the gym routine, grown a goatee, bought a swanky riverside bachelor pad, moved in his doting girlfriend, after about five minutes of dating, and even got himself a red BMW convertible that Jo knew he could barely make the repayments on, even though he was one of London’s top colon consultants.
Oh yes, as she’d always loved to tell people – what Simon didn’t know about shit wasn’t worth knowing.