Chapter Four
Joe
Our house was a three-bed terraced property in the Seven Dials area of Brighton. We bought it in 2008 before the house prices in Brighton shot through the roof and doubled in value over the following years. The house had been in the same family for over fifty years before us, so it needed a lot of work, some good old-fashioned TLC, which we were happy to do, and so after just one showing we put in an offer, which was accepted, and our move from London to Brighton was rubber-stamped. After the flat in Archway, it felt enormous and ever so grown-up, but we were excited by the opportunity to renovate a house and make it exactly how we wanted it.
Set over three floors, it boasted a number of original Victorian features, wooden sash windows, ornate cornicing, cast-iron fireplaces and a large walled garden with mature trees and shrubs. Over the next ten years, we added the downstairs extension, which meant we had the fashionable kitchen diner, plus bifold doors to the back garden. We added a new modern bathroom upstairs, and a utility room off the kitchen. Freya kitted the whole house out with some lovely decor, furniture and soft furnishings from various upscale retailers as well as some upcycled antique gems. It truly was our dream home, but it seemed that once we had made it perfect, every square inch full of everything we had ever wanted, my career tanked, our marriage started to gradually fall apart piece by piece, and now we faced the prospect of having to sell it. It was almost as heartbreaking as the break-up of the marriage itself. It felt like we had spent so many years curating the perfect life to then wake up and realise that, actually, it wasn’t as perfect as we had thought all along.
Freya ordered the takeaway from our usual Indian restaurant, which was utterly delicious, and because they knew us so well, they always popped in a few extra bits and pieces. Freya laid everything out on the kitchen island, and we were helping ourselves to the little containers which were full of rice, curries, and then the poppadoms with various dips, which were Dolly’s favourite. Dolly was still in her pyjamas, as she hadn’t been outside all day. She said she had been studying in her room, which I believed because, unlike me, she was a diligent student, who had ambitions of getting straight As in her A levels and going to Durham University to read English. At her age, I was more concerned with drinking, comedy and girls, and not necessarily in that order. I performed well enough at sixth form, and went to a decent enough university, where I got a perfectly reasonable 2:2 – a drinker’s degree – but I was always just doing enough to get by, while my real passions were outside of education. So many evenings when I should have been studying or writing essays, I was at comedy clubs or watching sitcoms, studying for the career I knew I wanted.
Dolly was somehow a perfect mixture of Freya and me. She had my dark hair, dark eyes, and Freya’s pale skin. She was reasonably tall, slim, and had her mother’s dogged determination and drive, but somehow my creativity and love of the English language. Today she was in baggy checked pyjama bottoms, a grey hoodie, and her scraggly hair was loosely tied back in a ponytail with one of the many scrunchies I would often find lying around the house. The family bathroom often felt like a graveyard for used scrunchies. She had on the same glasses she’d had since secondary school, that were slightly broken, probably with the wrong prescription, but which she refused to replace – they were good luck, apparently. She was filling her plate full of chicken korma, pilau rice, garlic naan, saag paneer, onion raita, mango chutney, mint yogurt and a whole extra plate of poppadoms. She grabbed a can of full-fat Coke from the fridge and sat at the table.
‘Thanks. This is the first proper meal I’ve had today,’ said Dolly eagerly.
‘I know you want to do well at college, love, but you need to keep your strength up,’ replied Freya, with a sort of 1980s advice vibe because Dolly had always been successful, whether her strength was kept up or not. During her GCSEs, we often had to bring food to her room, or she would forget to eat altogether. I feared that when she finally got to university, she would live off cereal, snacks and endless cups of coffee, which would actually be better than my diet at university, which had been largely alcohol-based. At least Dolly had the occasional smoothie with fruit and sometimes vegetables and she drank water, while my choice of a quick snack back in the day was more likely a Pot Noodle, and water was only ever consumed as tea or coffee.
‘I’m fine. I had two coffees this morning, a Snickers for lunch, and they’re always claiming they give you lots of energy. Plus an apple, so one of my five a day!’
‘Still, love, you need to do better. We can’t have you fainting mid-exam,’ said Freya.
‘It would reflect very badly on us,’ I said.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Freya pointedly.
‘I’ll try and do better,’ said Dolly. ‘I wouldn’t want to bring shame upon the family name.’
‘Good family name,’ I added with a smile.
‘Sorry, good family name,’ said Dolly, and she looked at me and smiled back.
Dolly and I had always been close, and we shared the same sense of humour, which I think frustrated Freya somewhat. They were close but in a different way. They were mother-and-daughter close, while we shared something slightly more cerebral. We connected on a deeper level that often didn’t need words and included lots of silly in-jokes and repeated banter. Dolly and I had always laughed a lot, and she had made comments about wanting to write comedy, or maybe even perform, which made me incredibly proud.
Freya and I filled our plates up, too, while Freya poured herself a glass of white wine and I got myself a can of Camden Hells lager from the fridge before joining Dolly at the table.
I looked across at Freya, she looked back at me, and I knew that neither of us were excited at the prospect of breaking Dolly’s heart. I hated the thought that we were letting her down because, whichever way you sliced it, we had failed and, in doing so, we had also failed her. Freya and I loved her so much, and yet it wasn’t quite enough to keep us together. At least we were waiting for her to move out before the actual separation, which was something. But then she would have the difficult decision of whose house she would go to during breaks from university. With the family house gone, it would undoubtedly become something of a game-show-style backwards and forwards between Freya and me with elation for the winner and commiserations and possible bitterness for the loser. Whatever way you looked at it, we had let her down, and the future wasn’t the Disney version of a family we had spent years doing our best to make a reality.
‘So,’ said Freya when we were about halfway through our meal. ‘There’s something we need to talk to you about, love.’
Dolly stopped eating and looked across at Freya. I was beginning to sweat, but I didn’t know if it was because I was nervous or whether it was the heat from the madras curry I had ordered. It felt like we were drawing the curtains on her childhood and, after this, everything would be different. Freya looked across at me for support. She obviously wanted me to help break the news. Perhaps my ‘special relationship’ with Dolly might somehow help soften the blow, and maybe I could sneak a joke in there and make everything better.
‘Dolly,’ I said, and she looked across at me. ‘You know that your mother and I have been having some issues for a while now. We haven’t been happily married for quite some time.’
‘Okaay,’ said Dolly. Another crunch as she popped a poppadom in her mouth.
‘Well,’ I replied, looking across at Freya, who gave me an encouraging nod. ‘We’ve decided that what’s best for us, for our future, is to separate.’
I said the word and we both looked across at Dolly, trying to gauge her reaction. Would she burst into tears? Would she dash out of the room in horror? Laugh? Be angry? Disappointed? Sad? Neither of us knew how she would respond, but I don’t think either of us were prepared for her actual response, which came swiftly, and with barely a flicker of emotion.
‘Right, okay,’ she said brightly, as if we had just told her we were changing our brand of toilet paper. She didn’t seem bothered at all, which was a very strange reaction indeed. To confirm her feelings upon the matter, she dipped another piece of poppadom in yoghurt, and then popped it in her mouth with a loud crunch.
‘Did you hear what your father said?’ said Freya, sounding concerned.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Dolly, her face giving nothing away.
‘You aren’t a bit sad about it?’ ventured Freya. ‘Or angry? Disappointed? It’s okay, whatever you’re feeling, love, you can tell us.’
Freya and I looked across at each other, both worried by our daughter’s apparent lack of emotion about our separation. Dolly wasn’t an unemotional person by any stretch of the imagination. As a young girl, she was always full of love, empathy, and she was never shy about expressing her feelings. Even as a teenager, she was never one of those grumpy, short-tempered teenagers, who retired into themselves, and barely said a word to their parents other than the occasional mumbled request for a new app on their phone or money for clothes. I had always felt like Dolly was an open-ish book, but now she was reacting to our news with barely a flicker of emotion.
‘I’m sad, obviously,’ said Dolly finally.
‘Sorry, but you don’t seem very sad,’ said Freya. ‘You seem almost, I don’t know, ambivalent.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said Dolly with the same level of control. ‘I think it’s sad.’
‘But?’ I asked.
‘But nothing,’ replied Dolly.
‘Nothing is going to change until after you leave for university,’ said Freya, trying to reassure her. ‘Your dad will move into the spare room, but otherwise it’s business as usual.’
‘Business as usual!’ I reiterated for some added assurance, although I couldn’t help but feel like I was jumping on board with a position we all knew was essentially bollocks. We both looked at Dolly, hoping for something slightly more emotional or something that said she cared.
Instead, she stood up, and said, ‘I’m going to my room to study.’
‘You didn’t finish your food,’ I replied.
‘I’ll get it later,’ said Dolly, disappearing out of the room, and then we heard her feet on the stairs, and then her bedroom door closed with a thud. I looked across at Freya.
‘That was strange.’
‘It was,’ said Freya. ‘Do you think she properly understood?’
‘I mean, we were quite clear and she’s a smart girl.’
‘Right, agreed. It’s just… I don’t know. Should one of us go and talk to her? She’s clearly not handling this very well. You know how much she enjoys an Indian.’
‘Maybe leave it for now . Give her some space, and I’m sure she’ll get some food later.’
‘Right, okay.’
‘She’ll talk when she’s ready,’ I said, and Freya looked across at me and I knew exactly what she was thinking: Like you, you mean?
Freya and I ate the rest of our food in a strange, uncomfortable silence before tidying everything away in the same strange, uncomfortable silence. Tonight hadn’t gone how either of us had imagined, and I think we were both feeling a little unsure about what was going to happen next. It felt like the last six months had all been leading up to today: when we would separate, tell Dolly and then put the wheels in motion. The nights we had spent in deep conversation talking about our marriage. What had happened. Could we fix it? Should we get couples’ counselling? We had spent so many hours talking, trying to work out a solution, our marriage like a giant jigsaw puzzle we just couldn’t complete, no matter how we looked at it, and we had looked at it from every possible angle, but now that we had decided to put the puzzle pieces back in the box, everything felt underwhelming. Despite us agreeing it was a positive decision to separate, as we got ready to head upstairs to bed, it felt like anything but.
The spare room was at the front of the house, and it contained a bed, a wardrobe and my desk. I had chosen that room for my office because the window looked directly out to the street, so I could hear the mutterings of conversations, the whir of traffic and life, which inspired me when I wrote. Plus, it got the morning sunshine, which was when I worked the best. The room was large, airy and had a wonderful light to it, but now it was also my bedroom I felt a slightly different vibe. More student accommodation than modern workspace.
‘Everything all right?’ said Freya, poking her head around the door.
‘Thanks for putting sheets on the bed. You really didn’t have to.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Freya, and then we had another painfully long silence.
‘What did your mum say about it?’ I asked finally.
‘Just that it would be okay in time. She got over Dad, and her friend Gloria is now a lesbian, so you know, second lives.’
‘Right, okay, sounds… encouraging?’
‘Yes. I suppose.’
Another pause.
‘Marmalade has haemorrhoids,’ said Freya finally.
‘Oh, blimey. Poor Marmalade.’
‘Poor Mum, actually. She has to apply cream to the affected area.’
‘What a pain in the bum!’ I said, and we both laughed, more out of nerves, it seemed, than with genuine laughter, but it helped. ‘This is fucking weird, isn’t it?’
‘It is, but it’s day one, Joe.’
‘Right, day one. I hope Dolly is okay.’
‘She’ll probably be angry at us for a few years.’
‘A few years?’ I said incredulously. ‘I hope it isn’t that long.’
Freya stood by the door and looked at me, and I don’t think either of us knew what to say next. Day one of separation and it all felt strange and surreal. This was the woman I had spent so long married to, seen naked from just about every possible angle imaginable, and now we were acting like awkward, hormonal teenagers.
‘Night, Joe.’
‘Night,’ I replied, and then she left me alone in my new bedroom.
I hadn’t moved all my stuff into the room yet, but I had enough to begin sleeping in there for the night. I lay in bed listening to the gentle hum of traffic outside. I heard Dolly moving around the house as it got late, and she went back downstairs to get some more food. I thought of Freya in our old bedroom, and despite being in the same house I had been in for the past fifteen years with the same people, it was the first time I had felt alone in it.