Chapter Nine
‘So, it’s still feeling pretty raw then?
’ Farah poured me a second cup of tea from our shared pot.
We’d agreed to meet in the cafe of a local bookshop, both of us feeling, for our own reasons, that we needed to get out of our respective houses, and both of us appreciative of a calming bookish vibe.
Since childhood I’d nursed a little fantasy of working in a place like this, surrounded by shelves of paperbacks, offering advice to avid readers who hung on my every word…
I sighed. ‘Yeah. I can’t lie. It’s shit. I miss her so bloody much.’ My eyes filled with the tears that appeared to be permanently on standby. Lacrimal ducts working overtime, never off duty.
Farah reached out to squeeze my hand. ‘I can’t really imagine,’ she said. ‘I know I always bollock on about being desperate for mine to leave home but I’m already in pieces about Noah even looking at university prospectuses.’
‘It’s more complicated with your lot too,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re a blended family.’
She snorted. ‘Love that phrase,’ she said, pouring the milk.
‘Blended really implies that there’s some sort of harmonious balance but honestly, our family feels about as balanced as a circus troupe in a monastery, or a tribe of rampaging baboons let loose in the Louvre.
I’m worried it’s going to make mine more keen to leave home in the long run.
Neil’s kids don’t make it easy. Not for any of us.
Carli told me to fuck off back to my ex-husband yesterday.
She’s thirteen! I’m trying to make allowances, but… ’ She exhaled into her cup.
‘But at least there’s still stuff going on in your household,’ I said, aware I was competing for domestic awfulness with much more limited material but knowing that Farah would forgive me because I was her oldest friend and she was therefore contractually obliged to forgive me for anything.
‘Even if it’s arguments and drama. Our house feels like a mausoleum.
It’s just Joe and me circling each other warily, most of the time in silence.
I have nothing to say to him. Like, absolutely nothing.
I ran out of conversation yesterday. Completely.
In that way you do with people you don’t know very well.
Except I’ve known him for ages. I can’t work out if it’s a comfortable silence or an uncomfortable one but there’s part of me that’s wondering what we have in our lives now, like, what’s the point of us as a couple of parents if we’ve got nobody to parent.
I’ve managed to talk him into driving us up to visit her this weekend but he’s not happy about it – he thinks I should move on, get over it. He just doesn’t understand. At all.’
‘Do you think you’ll leave him?’ I could tell that Farah was trying to keep her voice neutral.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing like it was with you and Mike – you don’t need to remind me about how lucky I am to have a good man in my corner, don’t worry.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because I don’t want to be that friend, the one who drones on about how awful getting divorced is, how nobody wants to know you when you’re a single woman, how you no longer get invited to parties because people suddenly see you as a predatory threat, like marital breakdown is contagious.
Not to mention how crippling it is financially…
’ She laughed. ‘I definitely don’t want to be that friend. ’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I know you were being facetious but also that a lot of what you just said was true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and it’s amazing that you’ve come through the whole thing stronger than ever…
’ I reached out to grab her hand like we were playing some kind of pass the parcel of womanly support.
‘But back to me,’ I said, and she laughed again.
‘It’s not that there’s a problem in mine and Joe’s relationship as such, more that there’s a lack of clarity about who we are now – what our purpose is.
I try to talk to him about it, about how I’m feeling, how empty I feel.
And he tries. I’m sure he tries. But then I’ll find that I’ve been wittering on about my existential crisis and he’s got one eye on the cricket score, or he’s been pondering whether Vanilla Ice had any further hits after ‘Ice, Ice Baby’, or who would win in a fight between Captain America and a great white shark. ’
Farah nodded.
‘And then I just feel like, what’s the point?
If anything, he’s a bit disapproving of how much time I’m spending talking to Layla on the phone, and how much she’s messaging me.
And the fact that we’re visiting her again so soon.
It’s like he thinks I’m making it more difficult for the both of us.
So, I’m at the stage where I just don’t bother talking to him about it, if he’s either going to ignore me or make me feel worse.
And then there’s nothing else to talk about, so we just carry on, skirting round each other in silence. ’
‘It’s only been a couple of weeks though,’ said Farah. ‘Maybe it’ll get easier. Like, maybe your roles will sort of slot into place?’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said, my tone unhopeful. ‘Or maybe I need to actually do something. If nothing else, I’ve got to get out of the house a bit more. This evening is the first time I’ve been beyond the front door in a week, other than popping over to Mum’s.’
‘And how is the lovely Meredith?’
‘Oh, you know, still shagging her way around Greater London and the Home Counties,’ I said with a jaunty smile.
‘And is that still giving you the ick or are you coming to terms with the fact that she’s enjoying this newfound sexual freedom?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head. ‘She asked my views on anal bleaching the other day.’
Farah choked a little on her Darjeeling.
‘I said, I don’t really have a view on it, Mum. I don’t think it’s really a thing other than in the porn industry. But what do I know? Maybe it is a thing. Maybe she would be happier with a bleached anus. Maybe I’d feel better with a bleached anus?’
Farah nodded seriously. ‘Well, it would get you out of the house,’ she said.
‘True.’
‘How about getting a dog?’
I considered this for a moment. A dog would get me out of the house and provide a bit of company… ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want to just get a dog and then have to return it if it didn’t work out, that would be awful. And I mean, there’s the cats… I’m not sure.’
‘Our cat Hilda is fine with Neil’s dog. She just stays out of his way. Anyway, worth a thought. You could borrow him if you want?’
‘What, Neil?’ I said, referring to Farah’s very attractive and slightly younger new husband.
‘The dog,’ she said, smiling. ‘You definitely don’t want Neil, not with all his baggage.’
‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘You love his baggage really. And I’m sure Carli and Jordan will come round eventually. You won’t be the evil stepmother forever.’
‘And you won’t be the sad and lonely empty nester forever either,’ she said, finishing the dregs of her tea. ‘But give it some thought. About borrowing the dog, I mean. It might be a chance to just give it a trial run.’
Which is how a week later I came to be standing on top of a blustery plain, an empty red lead dangling by my side.
‘Orinoco!’ I screamed, my voice battling against the wind howling across the top of Briar’s Hill. ‘Orinoco! Where the fuck are you?’
Things had started well. Farah had dropped him off first thing this morning and had been hugely appreciative of my generosity.
She and Neil had managed to get a last-minute deal on one of those extremely pricey Cotswold hotels (a ‘mid-week autumn warmer special’, whatever that entailed) and their respective children had agreed to hold the fort at home, with certain restrictions.
‘I just didn’t think they could cope with the dog on top of everything else,’ Farah said breathlessly as she handed over the extraordinary amount of paraphernalia a two-year-old cockapoo appears to require.
‘If they can manage to get through a night being civil to each other and not breaking anything or running away from home then I’ll consider it a win.
But if they had Orinoco to contend with as well it might push them over the edge…
’ She sighed, the weight of family dynamics heavy in her expression.
‘Well, I think he looks delightful,’ I said gazing down into Orinoco’s beautiful caramel eyes and adorable fluffy face. ‘And I’m sure we’ll get on famously. How hard can it be?’
Famous last words.
‘Orinoco, you absolute bastard!’ I yelled once more. ‘Where the utter, utter bollocking fuck have you… Oh, sorry!’ I smiled sheepishly at another dogwalker who had appeared over the brow of the hill, a well-trained labrador walking sedately by his side.
‘Missing in action?’ asked the man. He had a concerned expression on his face, with wiry grey eyebrows furrowed beneath a knitted beanie.
‘Yes.’ I heaved out a sigh of despair. ‘Missing and he’s not even my dog. He went off in that direction.’ I pointed towards a thicket of trees that were bending in the wind. ‘To be honest, I suspect that whatever he’s found in there, be it dead or alive, is much more interesting than me.’
The man gave a knowing smile and looked down at his own impeccably behaved hound.
‘We’ll give you a hand,’ he said. ‘See if Pilot can sniff him out.’ He shifted his weight from the stick he was using and winced a little as he pulled a bag of dog treats from the pocket of his anorak.
‘These should help too,’ he said, shaking them at me.
‘Oh, no, honestly,’ I said. ‘Please don’t trouble yourself on my account.
You’re clearly out for a nice walk with your own lovely dog and…
’ And I don’t want you keeling over and breaking a hip just because of my ineptitude, I thought as he braced his weight against the stick and went to move forward in the direction of the trees.