Chapter Eight
That Sunday night, Joe picked up a Chinese takeaway on his way back from the golf club, which was some comfort, given that there were no groceries in the house.
I hadn’t thought beyond Layla leaving, hadn’t even considered that we, the humble two who were left behind, might need to eat food or wear clean clothes at some point in the future.
By Thursday, five days into the abandonment, Joe tentatively suggested that a shopping trip was required.
This was over a supper of stale crackers, tinned spaghetti hoops and frozen sweetcorn, not a classic cordon bleu dish.
‘I’ll go to the Tesco garage,’ he said, peering gloomily into the fridge. ‘Can you do me a list of things we need?’
I was tempted to suggest that as he was the one standing in front of the fridge, he was better placed than me to establish what we needed.
I truly had never understood why I had to be the default person for keeping a constantly updated inventory of available groceries, best before dates and suitable food combinations to accommodate whimsical choices (Layla’s vegan phase, Joe’s rejection of ultra-processed foods phase).
‘Bread?’ I said helpfully. ‘Butter probably. I don’t know. Whatever you think.’
‘Well, what are we going to eat for the next few days?’ he asked, sounding a little frustrated.
‘I don’t know, Joe.’ My voice was flat. ‘Just get the basics and I’ll do an online order tomorrow.’
He returned an hour later with three plastic bags (because of course he hadn’t taken the bloody bags for life with him) full of the most random assortment of ‘basics’ you’ve ever seen, but I had neither the energy nor moral high ground to criticise.
I just went straight to bed. And when I say straight to bed, I meant Layla’s bed.
Clearly an unhealthy state of affairs but I’d burrowed into it as soon as we had arrived home after dropping her off and had been reluctant to leave its nesty confines ever since, eschewing the shed as my workplace and choosing instead to prop my laptop on my knees surrounded by increasingly musty and crumb-strewn bedding as I completed the copy-edits on an article about mobility aids in the home.
Whenever I felt sad, as I often did, I simply picked up one of her pillows, nestled my face into it and inhaled deeply, just to get that immediate endorphin hit of Layla-ness, which seemed to keep the pain at bay.
I had managed to keep the majority of my slovenly wallowing from Joe, usually ensuring that I was back in the marital bed by the time he made it upstairs at night and maintaining the facade that I was still working in the ‘home office’ on a daily basis, but there was a possibility he might become suspicious of the growing number of plates, mugs and books littering his daughter’s supposedly uninhabited room.
Actually, scratch that – there would have been a possibility if he were the kind of man who paid any attention to the domestic arrangements at home.
The house had always been my fiefdom, my husband an occasional and usually oblivious visitor from a far-off land.
It was a few days after the grocery embargo lifted that I realised I had absolutely nothing to say to my husband.
The one thing that had held me together in the week since Layla had started at university was the regularity of contact from her, and the information I gleaned from her regular texts had been my one topic of conversation, indeed, the only thing my mind could focus on.
My work was suffering – a couple of days ago I’d amended a paragraph about a new model of stair-lift designed to tackle corners more smoothly with the note: ‘maybe it’s Karl leaving the dirty plates in the sink? ’, which made no sense at all.
Since last weekend there has been an unspoken agreement that I will share with Joe snippets of the information I’ve gleaned from Layla throughout the day, information I think her father will find interesting or questions he might be able to help with.
So far this has mainly been restricted to questions such as: is there an adaptor to convert an android phone-charger to an Apple one (no), does he have a spare Apple charger he could send her (yes), does Layla need her own television licence in halls (yes), does the Netflix subscription cover multiple residences (no), could he upgrade the Netflix subscription (yes), does our home and contents insurance cover accidental damage to fixtures and fittings beyond our actual house (no – don’t ask).
This information exchange works well and Joe makes no further judgements about my parenting or the amount of time I spend either speaking to, messaging, or tracking my daughter on my phone (or at least he doesn’t vocalise those judgements – what he’s really thinking, who can say?
Likely it has more to do with perfecting his golf swing than anything else).
However, these little updates mean we are maintaining a sort of Layla-shaped presence in our family life and they also give me something to talk about.
The problem arises when I attempt to bring anything unrelated to Layla into the conversation.
Because there is simply nothing I can think of to say.
Mum hasn’t done anything outlandish since the dick-pic conversation and my husband would have minimal interest in hearing about who his mother-in-law was dating or which opera she was seeing this week.
If anything, mentioning my mother’s exciting social life would only serve to highlight how empty my own is.
Equally there is a limit to how interesting I can make my work sound, and I have tried to push that limit before, actually reading aloud to my husband three paragraphs about medication for erectile dysfunction because I was so proud of the editorial changes I’d made (suggesting the phrase ‘more responsive’ to replace ‘faster acting’ feeling that the latter implied an instant boner that may not be appropriate or appreciated).
It’s fair to say that Joe tries to be engaged and interested in my career but finds the details of my work about as fascinating as I find his.
The difference between us is that he has colleagues to talk about, their dynamics, the office banter, who’s dating whom, who’s up for promotion, who made an embarrassing faux pas in the board meeting.
He also listens to the news, has opinions about current affairs, and generally has an awareness of life outside our four walls that I seem to have lost over the years – unless you count my newfound enthusiasm for YouTube videos of ‘is it cake or is it real’, which seems to be a metaphor for many things.
Suffice to say that this evening, by the time I had updated Joe on Layla’s current comings and goings (she’s thinking about joining the college netball team; she’s been to the fresher’s fair; she had macaroni cheese for lunch) I had nothing further to add.
I used up my one good anecdote about the delivery driver coming to the wrong house yesterday, and I’d mentioned my concerns about Clarence having a fungal skin complaint the night before, so halfway through dinner when Joe asked what I’d been up to, with specific emphasis on me, I had nothing left in the arsenal.
‘Uhm. Nothing much,’ I said. ‘Just work. There are some new silicon catheters coming to the market and they’re running an advert about how they can reduce urinary infections.’
He nodded, trying to appear attentive as he ate his pork chop. I had at last managed to plough through the horror of an online grocery order for two rather than three, sobbing every time I saw multipack family offers in my list of favourites, but we finally had food back in the house.
‘So, work’s ticking along then,’ he said after a few moments’ pause where the only sound had been that of him chewing. ‘Nothing else to report?’
‘I’ve got nothing interesting to tell you about, Joe!’ I blurted, my expression a little panicked. ‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said, a forkful of meat poised halfway to his mouth. ‘I wasn’t accusing you of anything. I don’t think you’re keeping secrets from me.’
‘No, but…’
‘It’s not like either of us are living lives packed with intrigue.’ He laughed as he helped himself to more apple sauce.
‘But I literally have nothing to tell you. Nothing that doesn’t relate directly to Layla,’ I said, increasingly distressed by the truth of my words.
‘I don’t know any gossip. I’ve got no stories about village life or funny anecdotes about our neighbours.
I haven’t been listening to the news because it’s all so depressing and there are so many reports about conflict and genocide and wildfires and flooding, and there’s all this stuff about the rise of the far right and global insecurity.
It just makes me feel more tearful, and then I feel guilty for having the privilege to be tearful when I’m so distant from it all… ’
‘Hattie,’ he said, cutting me off with the universal calm-down gesture of palms aloft. ‘You don’t need to come up with some new “hot take” on current affairs to keep me entertained. Really, it’s just dinner, it’s not like an interview.’
‘No, I know,’ I said, feeling a little foolish.
Because for a moment before my outburst, when Joe had been slowly chewing his food in silence, waiting for me to say something, it had felt a bit like an interview, one for the role of ‘vaguely interesting spouse’.
And on the basis of this performance, I felt I was unlikely to get the job.
I realised that over the course of the past eighteen years, mine and my husband’s daily lives had revolved around our child.
Layla was our joint project and in lieu of anything interesting happening to me I could nearly always dredge up a story involving our daughter to compensate.
When Joe told me little details about his day, I could respond with little details about mine and Layla’s day.
Anything noteworthy that occurred was shaped by her.
And now she’d gone I was still using her as my conversational prop but with much more limited material.
‘Have you heard from Farah at all?’ Joe said now, presumably to remind me that I do have friends.
I shook my head. ‘She’s still adjusting to life with Neil,’ I said. ‘The whole moving in together, particularly with his kids, it’s proving tricky.’
‘You should give her a call. See if she wants to meet up?’ Bless him, Joe was evidently desperate for me to have some distraction.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I should. She messaged me at the weekend on the day that Layla left and I never replied.’ I nodded to myself. ‘Yes. I’ll call her.’
‘And you know, if you’re at a loose end or whatever, you could always come up to the golf club with me sometime? There are a couple of wives who play, although most of them just come along afterwards.’
‘I’m not sure I can bring myself to attend a venue where they only decided to admit women to the clubhouse bar four years ago,’ I said. ‘But I appreciate the offer, really I do.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘And I know the club hasn’t historically been the most progressive but they’re keen to change that perception, be more inclusive. I’m not trying to force you into it but there’s a social in a couple of weeks’ time. We could go?’
Despite his nonchalant tone I could see from his expression that this was important to him.
Much as I thought a golf club social sounded hideous and I would probably rather slowly pluck out my eyeballs with some rusty tweezers than attend, I knew I should support my husband’s new-found hobby.
We hadn’t been out together as a couple for ages and without wishing to be melodramatic, we were now all each other had (admittedly, that was a bit melodramatic).
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t pre-judge it. That sounds nice. Let’s go. Besides –’ I picked up our plates and carried them over to the dishwasher – ‘it’ll give me something to tell Mum next time she accuses me of becoming a hermit!’
I chuckled away to myself, expecting Joe to make a comment about my mother’s ridiculous notions but when I turned to look at him, he was staring at the table, two little worry lines still furrowing his brow.