Chapter Six
Joe
Dinner time had always been the one time when we would get together as a family and share the details of our day, and despite whatever else was going on, we had that. Also, I think that, because I worked from home alone all day with just my thoughts, it was something I particularly looked forward to. I was the house chef, and I loved trying out new recipes on Freya and Dolly, and so for me dinner was always one of my favourite parts of the day. It was important, or it had been, before. Now, with Freya and I separated, and Dolly being weirdly ambivalent about it, the tension in the house was palpable and so dinner was different. Today, I was in the middle of cooking my famous spaghetti bolognese – only famous in our house and for wildly unspectacular reasons – when the front door opened, closed, and then Freya came walking into the kitchen.
‘Oh, you’re cooking,’ she said, standing next to me suddenly.
‘I am. We hadn’t discussed dinner time, and so I just thought—’
‘No, no, it’s, umm, fine, I just didn’t—’
‘What?’ I said, turning away from the hob and facing her. I had just put the spaghetti in, and was monitoring it while the sauce was in a separate saucepan, being kept warm on a low heat. I’d made a two-hour bolognese sauce, and I still needed to grate some Parmesan cheese. ‘Shouldn’t I have cooked?’
‘No, Joe, honestly, it’s fine, really. I, umm—’
‘Something smells good,’ said Dolly, suddenly walking in behind Freya. ‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Dolly, hi,’ said Freya.
‘I’m literally starving,’ said Dolly, walking across to the fridge and grabbing the orange juice, before she walked across to the side, got a glass from the cupboard and poured herself a large glass.
‘Do I have time for a quick shower?’ Freya said, turning back towards me.
‘Umm, yes, sure,’ I replied.
Freya awkwardly smiled before she left the room, while Dolly sat at the dining table.
‘Do we have garlic bread?’ she asked. ‘I’m literally craving it.’
‘We do not.’
‘Disappointing.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, and when I looked across at her, she smiled at me. ‘How was your day?’
‘Yeah, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know, Dolls, that’s why I asked.’
‘Oh, you want details. Such a boomer move,’ said Dolly, and I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was playing with me. We did this. A jovial backwards and forwards, and it was what we were good at. I was close with Dolly, but it had its limits. We were close when it came to things that weren’t too personal or difficult.
‘That would be great, Dolls, and FYI, I am a part of Gen X,’ I said, putting a fork into the boiling water, and giving the spaghetti a spin to make sure it wasn’t sticking.
‘Let me see,’ said Dolly. I heard the shower being turned on in the en suite in my old bedroom. Earlier, I had moved all my toiletries into the main bathroom I was now sharing with Dolly and her million bottles of ‘stuff’. ‘My day was fine.’
‘Fine? That’s not details. That’s fluff.’
‘Are you sure we don’t have any garlic bread?’ said Dolly, and I just gave her a look before I turned back to the stove and stirred the spaghetti again.
I honestly hadn’t considered not cooking dinner, but when Freya came in, I could immediately see that she hadn’t expected it. We had discussed finances and our distinct lack of them, housework and other living arrangement things, but we had neglected dinner. We had said something generic about being flexible with dinner time, but what did that mean? Was I supposed to check each and every day who was home for dinner? Perhaps foolishly, I had thought we would carry on as usual. Without dinner, we wouldn’t have a time to catch up, a moment to still be a family, and the idea of not doing it hadn’t entered my head. Business as usual, right?
I finished cooking, and started serving as Freya came walking back into the room. She was in her pyjamas, her damp hair tied back in a loose ponytail to keep it out of her eyes. She looked just like she had a thousand times before, post-work shower and walking into the kitchen for dinner. The only noticeable difference was that she was definitely wearing a bra. In years gone by, she had often returned home from work, and immediately taken her bra off with a smile and a sigh, saying how good it felt – I would often joke or say something about ‘letting those babies breathe’ or something else along those lines. She wouldn’t usually put a bra on post-shower unless we had guests, but once again, that was very much then and this was very much now. Two very different time periods.
‘Thanks for dinner, it smells great,’ said Freya, sitting down at the table.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said, walking across with a plate of spaghetti bolognese for Dolly and placing it in front of her. ‘Cheese?’
‘Please,’ Dolly replied.
I brought across the block of hard Parmesan and the grater.
‘Say when,’ I said, and started grating cheese over the top of her meal like I had done hundreds of times before.
‘When,’ said Dolly when she had a small mountain of Parmesan over the red sauce so it looked like snow. I walked back to the side and brought Freya’s plate of food over.
‘Cheese?’ I asked Freya.
‘It’s okay, I can do it,’ she said with a forced smile.
‘Yes, right, okay,’ I said, handing her the grater and the plate with the block of cheese on.
All of this felt so unnecessary. Grating her own cheese, making her own dinner, doing her own washing, and I got it, we were separated, but did that mean I couldn’t do anything for her any more? If I was popping the kettle on for a cup of tea, was I banned from asking if she fancied a cup, too? Was I still allowed to text her from Tesco and ask if she needed anything? What was next and where would it end?
I got myself a glass of red wine, and then offered Freya a glass but she declined, fetching herself white wine from the fridge. Dolly was vigorously stirring her cheese through her spaghetti, and then Freya sat down with her wine, and then I grated some cheese over the top of my bolognese, and it was time to eat. Everything was basically the same as it always had been, except for the fact that every slight thing we did felt ridiculously self-conscious and completely different. Every word and movement was under the microscope. I glanced at Freya, she returned my look, and I think both of us knew what we had to do. We had Dolly, and she was the main/only reason why we were even doing this. Without her, this would have been even more excruciatingly awkward. She was the glue that was holding this shitshow together.
‘How was your day, love?’ said Freya, looking across at Dolly with a hopeful smile.
‘Fine,’ replied Dolly.
‘Still just fine?’ I asked.
‘What’s that?’ said Freya.
‘I asked her before about her day, and all I got was “fine” despite requesting details.’
‘Fine isn’t details, love,’ said Freya.
‘That’s what I said,’ I said, and we both looked across at Dolly, who was expertly twisting spaghetti on to her fork.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ said Dolly. ‘My day was fine. How was your day, Mum?’
Dolly and I both looked across at Freya, who looked uncomfortable being put on the spot like that. It was as if we had suddenly shoved a camera in front of her face and asked her a problematic question live on TV. Obviously she couldn’t just say fine. There was a pause, an awkward silence that stretched across the table. This was the new reality of us. Whatever she shared with Dolly she would need to share with me, and perhaps she wasn’t comfortable with that. We were in a war situation and information was king. Secrets needed to be kept and loose talk could potentially cost, well, not lives exactly, but something else. This was all new to me and, honestly, I didn’t know the rules yet. It was like playing a game of cards I hadn’t played before; it would take time, and while I was still going through the rules, I would definitely lose quite a few hands out of sheer stupidity.
‘My day was good. I had lunch with Lucy, which was nice, and I was given a new case to work on, and—’
‘It’s okay, you don’t need to drag it out because of me,’ said Dolly.
‘I wasn’t, I—’
‘How’s Lucy?’ I asked, before I shovelled a forkful of spaghetti into my mouth.
‘Yes, all good,’ said Freya.
A silence. Dolly looked across at me. I looked back at her.
‘Great,’ I replied to Freya.
Another pause.
‘Maya is pissed off with me,’ said Dolly suddenly.
Freya and I looked across at her with relief. Something meaty to get our conversational knives and forks into.
‘What, why?’ said Freya.
‘Don’t know. You know Maya, she’s… temperamental.’
‘Right, yes, totally,’ I replied, but I didn’t know because I had only met her a handful of times, and I had no idea if she was temperamental or not. Apparently, she was.
‘I had a friend around your age,’ said Freya. ‘Shelly Barnes. I thought she was a good friend, we had known each other since primary school, but she would change gears faster than a Formula One car. One minute we were as thick as thieves, sleepovers, and talking about boys until the early hours, then the next day, it was like you’d physically assaulted her family.’
‘What happened with you and Shelly? Did you stay friends?’ asked Dolly.
I looked across at Freya because I had never heard this story before.
‘It was just before my seventeenth birthday. I was having a house party and I had invited everyone we knew from college, and Shelly and I had a huge fight. She claimed I was only having the party because she had mentioned that she was having one, and apparently I stole her thunder. Long story short, she turned up drunk, tried to set fire to the sofa, and attacked Simon Thompson with a frozen cheesecake because she thought I was trying to get off with him.’
‘Oh my God!’ said Dolly. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘How have I not heard this story before?’ I asked incredulously.
‘I don’t know but it was insane,’ said Freya.
‘What happened to her?’ said Dolly.
‘I never saw her again after that night, and her family moved to Swindon soon after.’
‘So, the moral of the story is?’ I asked.
‘Don’t make friends with psychos?’ conjectured Dolly.
‘I don’t know. I’m sure Maya isn’t like that, but I suppose the moral is, sometimes friendships don’t work out and that’s okay. There was a time when I thought Shelly and I would be friends forever, but then she tried to burn my house down,’ said Freya, and we all giggled, and it felt good to just laugh together at the table. For a wonderful moment, all the awkwardness evaporated and we were just us again, eating, talking and acting like a proper family.
Unfortunately, once the laughter died down, the rest of dinner played out more like the first half had, like a challenging play you had been ushered along to see with a friend because they had a spare ticket, but you spent the whole time trying to work out what the hell was going on. There were long, difficult stretches that were hard to watch, and broken, stilted conversations that seemed to be heading nowhere, until finally it was time for the last scene, where hopefully some of it made sense and you had a clearer idea of what had just happened. Dolly eventually left and headed back upstairs to study, and Freya and I were cleaning up. I felt like I had to say something.
‘I’m sorry about dinner,’ I said, rinsing a plate under the tap before placing it into the dishwasher.
‘No, it’s fine, Joe. We didn’t discuss it, so it’s just… it’s fine.’
‘Details please,’ I said, looking across at Freya.
‘I don’t know what the answer is, Joe. Being separated, and yet still having dinner together every day feels a little strange, but also not eating together feels like…’
She stopped, I stopped, and we both stood in the kitchen and looked at each other.
‘Strange, too?’ I ventured.
‘Something like that. Can we just play it by ear?’
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I still can’t believe the Shelly Barnes story.’
‘I know. I hope Maya isn’t another Shelly Barnes.’
‘I doubt it. It sounds like Shelly Barnes had real mental health issues. Have you ever tried finding her on Facebook?’
‘Once, but she has no online presence.’
‘Maybe she’s in prison for arson or grievous bodily harm with a Cornetto,’ I said before we got back to cleaning up, and Dolly was upstairs in her room, and it sort of felt like everything was the same but at the same time I knew it wasn’t. Changes were happening, albeit slowly, but I knew that bigger changes were coming and soon, and we needed to prepare ourselves for them.