Chapter 19
NINETEEN
It had been three weeks, and I couldn’t stop thinking about my meeting with Rowan. Of course, there’d been the bad stuff – the coolness and awkwardness there’d been between us, which had never been there before. And that coolness – that sense of distance – seemed to have extended to the rest of the group as well. The WhatsApp group, normally filled with a steady flow of chat from when the first of us woke up in the morning until the last of us turned out the light at night, was more silent now, less intimate somehow. Some days had always been busier than others, of course; some were quieter, with just quick ‘Hello’s and ‘Crazy busy, love you all’s. Now, however, my posts were often ignored for several hours at a time, then responded to with just a love heart or a thumbs-up.
I couldn’t suppress a fear that if my friends weren’t chatting on there, they might be chatting somewhere else. What if Rowan had been asking the others the same question she’d asked me – had we been wrong about Zara? I was certain that I hadn’t been wrong: that Zara’s reappearance in our lives would lead to more drama, more manipulation, more fall-outs. But then I had skin in the game. It was my actions that had triggered Zara the most, and now I was the one with the most to lose if my friends were to decide that, back in the past, they’d made the wrong decision – backed the wrong horse.
I felt stuck, wanting to know if something was going on behind my back, but also not wanting to know, hoping that whatever it was, it would all blow over and things would return to how they’d been before.
But I was also thinking about how I’d felt walking through town to meet Rowan. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d become some country mouse with hayseeds in my hair (okay, maybe a bit); I went into Central London a couple of times a month. But for some reason, that last time had awoken something in me that had been dormant before.
My vague intention to brush up my CV and start looking for a job had become a burning desire. Everything about that day – the Tube journey, the crowded streets, even the too-cold, under-seasoned salad, had made me long to have a job again, a purpose outside motherhood, a commute, a desk, colleagues to bitch to when things were going badly – the lot.
It won’t be like it was before , I reminded myself. You won’t be able to go to the pub after work for a few drinks on a Friday. Hell, people don’t even go to offices on Fridays any more. You’ll still have other responsibilities. You can’t turn back the clock.
But I didn’t care. After I’d dropped the children at nursery, I dug out my laptop, made myself a coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The last time I’d looked at my CV had been six years ago, when I’d applied for the last job I’d got before the children were born. I logged on to LinkedIn for the first time in ages. To my surprise, I had a bunch of new notifications – people I’d worked with in the past wanting to connect with me, people endorsing me for skills, a handful mistaking me for another Naomi Hamilton who was apparently a shit-hot data analyst.
Lucky you, Other Naomi , I thought, deleting the messages. But I accepted the connection requests and updated my own profile, making sure to tag all my previous employers. I sent connection requests to a few old colleagues. Almost immediately, I found that the algorithm had sprung into action and begun recommending pages to me – law firms, recruitment agents, people I’d worked with whose names I could only just remember.
By the time I needed to pick up the twins, I’d been on there for hours. I felt I’d made progress, but I hadn’t achieved anything tangible yet. I didn’t even know whether I was going about things the right way. I should ask Kate , I thought. Kate spends half her life on LinkedIn. But something that would have felt totally normal a few weeks ago now seemed like an imposition, like asking a stranger for help rather than one of my best friends.
‘It’s a start,’ I told myself, closing my laptop and putting it back in the drawer where it had languished for so long. As I closed the drawer, I gave its aluminium casing a pat and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back.’
Then I put on my coat and hurried out to walk to nursery, my mind already on what I was going to feed the twins and, later, Patch and myself.
A few hours later, the dishwasher gurgling softly in the background, we were on the sofa, Patch flicking idly through the channels on the TV. I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, Patch’s arm was around my shoulders, and I found myself overwhelmed with an urge to confide in him about my worries.
‘Patch, there’s something weird going on.’
‘What, with the kids? Why didn’t you?—?’
‘Not with the kids. Well, no weirder than usual. With the Girlfriends’ Club.’
‘Really?’ He found a football match, a replay of some European game that neither of us had any particular interest in watching – certainly not me – and turned the sound down a bit.
‘You know how we chat every day on WhatsApp? Just about how our days are going, stuff like that?’
‘Look at that. Blatant foul. That referee needs to go to Specsavers. Yeah, you chat every day and stuff.’
‘Recently, it’s been kind of quiet. It’s like…’ It’s like all the usual chat is going on somewhere else instead. Somewhere I don’t know about. But I could barely articulate that thought, even to myself – it made me feel all strange inside, cold and sick and frightened.
‘People are busy. Hell, we’re busy.’
Except I wasn’t busy. No busier than usual, anyway. And as far as I was aware, my friends weren’t either.
‘It’s like, since Andy’s funeral, something’s different.’
‘Of course it’s different. It’s a lot to process, right? Losing a mate, at our age. That stuff’s not meant to happen yet. Not for years and years.’
‘Sure. But normally, after something big like that, we’d talk more, not less.’
‘But there’s no “like that”, is there? It’s not like this has ever happened bef— What a goal! Get in!’
My voice small, I said, ‘I don’t think it’s about Andy. You know, next week’s the second Wednesday of the month and no one’s made plans for the Girlfriends’ Club. That never happens. I think it’s something to do with Zara.’
Like always, I said her name cautiously, as if she was Lord Voldemort. It was a habit I’d developed early, and sustained so long it was automatic now.
‘What about her?’ Patch asked, equally warily.
‘I’m worried that now she’s back, they’ll want to be friends with her and not want to be friends with me any more.’ As soon as I’d said it, I realised how pathetic it sounded.
‘What, and you’re also worried Mrs Jones will put you in detention because you got caught smoking behind the bike sheds?’
‘Stop it. I know it seems so childish and dumb but it feels real. You know what Zara’s like – you know her better than anyone. She’s used to getting what she wants and I know her – she might still be mad at me because of what happened way back when, and if she decides she wants to take things that are mine then she will.’
I sniffed and pulled a tissue out of the sleeve of my jumper to wipe my nose. I’d wiped Meredith’s with it earlier, but that didn’t seem to matter much right now.
‘Nome, you’re being ridiculous. Come on. Zara’s just a girl – a woman, even – she’s not some wicked fairy going to turn up at the feast and curse everyone. Or however it goes in those stories that give the kids nightmares.’
‘She did though. She turned up at Andy’s funeral.’
‘And have we been cursed?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Come on,’ he said again. ‘Come here.’
I edged closer to him on the sofa and he put his arm round my shoulder and pulled me against him. The warmth of his body felt comforting, but also not – the fact I felt like I needed to be comforted and protected was unsettling in itself.
I turned my head and buried my face in his shoulder, so when I spoke my voice came out all muffled. ‘I’m worried she wants you back.’
I felt Patch’s chest shake with laughter. ‘So what if she does? I’m not her Oasis CD you borrowed and haven’t given back. She’s got no claim on me.’
And I do? I thought. If Patch was an autonomous adult, which obviously he was, I didn’t have any more of a claim on him than Zara did – apart from the slender gold band on my finger and the two not-so-autonomous non-adults tucked up in their beds upstairs. And I couldn’t imagine those things holding much sway with Zara if she decided to trample over my life in pursuit of what she wanted.
You didn’t have too much of a problem trampling over hers, though , said a niggling voice in my head, but I silenced it as quickly as I could. It was over; I did nothing wrong. But the refrain I’d repeated so often over the years seemed to have lost some of its power to reassure me.
‘Patch?’
He brushed a kiss on the top of my head. ‘What?’
‘If she did anything – said anything to you – that I wouldn’t be okay with, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’
I felt his chest rise and fall again, this time in a deep breath that ended in a sigh. ‘I can’t promise you that.’
‘Why not?’ I jerked my head up, craning my neck so I could see his face. But it was expressionless.
‘Because I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’
‘It would hurt me far worse if you were keeping secrets from me.’
‘People always say that, don’t they? But I don’t reckon it’s always true.’
‘Of course it’s true! If there was anything I needed to worry about, I’d want to know.’
‘So you could what? Worry about it more?’
‘So I could do something about it.’
‘Babe. If – massive if, obviously, because this is categorically not happening, okay? – Zee suddenly said she wanted us to be an item again and I wanted it too, what exactly do you think you could do about it?’
The thought felt like one of the players on the TV had kicked a football through the screen and it had hit me in the stomach. ‘I’d tell you not to.’
‘And what difference would that make, if I wanted to?’
‘I don’t know.’ My voice was a hoarse whisper.
‘Exactly. So you have to trust me, right? I don’t want to – I wouldn’t want to even if she did, which as far as I know she doesn’t. It’s you I married. It’s you I love. It’s you who’s the mother of my kids. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ His words soothed the hurt a little bit, like when one of the kids fell over in the park and grazed their knee and I gave them a chocolate button so they’d stop crying.
‘And speaking of the kids…’ Patch began, then stopped.
‘What about them?’
‘I’ve been thinking, Nome… Now’s probably not the best time to talk about it.’ He kissed the top of my head, like I was one of the children and he was about to turn out the light.
‘Damn it, Patch, what? You can’t just say something like that and then say you’re not going to say whatever it was.’
‘I’ve been thinking… I’ve been wondering whether we should have another baby.’
‘What?’ I jerked away from him. ‘Patch, what the fuck? Because I’ve been wondering whether you should have a vasectomy.’
We pulled apart and looked at each other. His face was as shocked and wounded as if I’d suggested carrying out the procedure right then and there with a butter knife from the kitchen drawer.
‘You’re joking,’ he said.
‘I’m not.’ I swivelled round to face him, hugging my knees to my chest. ‘I know now’s not the best time to bring it up and obviously it’s your body and totally your choice but I’ve been on the Pill for ages and I’m sick of it. It kind of feels like it’s your turn. Because I definitely don’t want another baby.’
‘Why not? You’re a fantastic mum.’
‘I’m not. I’m mostly average and often a bit shit.’ I took a gulp of my wine; the glass had been standing there for so long its sides were weeping with condensation. ‘The twins are… you know. I love them so much it hurts, sometimes. But I can’t do it again. I’m knackered. I want to go back to work and have something for me again.’
‘You’d be more knackered if you went back to work.’
‘Not as knackered as I’d be if I had another baby.’ Only now that we were actually discussing it did I realise how much the prospect terrified me. ‘Seriously, Patch. My body’s fucked. My feet are a size bigger than they were before. I’ve still got a stone I want to lose. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in four years.’
Patch looked as surprised by the intensity of my reaction as I was – surprised and hurt. ‘They’ll start school in September. It’ll be easier then.’
‘And that’s why I want to go back to work.’
‘But what about when I’m working late, or away?’ His tone was almost pleading.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it,’ I lied. ‘We’d make a plan. Other people manage. Your colleagues must manage.’
‘They mostly have wives who stay home and look after the kids.’
‘Yeah, well.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve done that. I’ve done my time. I need to move on from just being a mum now. You don’t get it – you don’t know what it’s like being with them twenty-four-seven with no time to yourself.’
‘I bloody wish I could.’ His hurt was turning to defensiveness now. ‘You don’t know what it’s like working ten-hour days and being away from home and never seeing them.’
‘So let’s swap.’ I called his bluff. ‘You stay home, I’ll go to work.’
‘And who pays the mortgage? Father Christmas?’
I felt my cheeks sting with anger. Back when we first got together, we’d earned about the same. Then Patch had got a promotion and another one, and then I’d got pregnant and that had been that. If I did find a job, whatever school-hours-friendly role I secured would command a salary maybe a quarter of what he brought home now.
‘Okay, so you can’t stop work,’ I admitted. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t start. There are ways – like I said, people manage. It’s months away, anyway – maybe next year. Let’s think about it, please?’
‘Haven’t you given me enough to think about for one night?’
‘Probably.’ I forced a smile. ‘I’m sorry, Patch. It’s a lot. The Zara stuff and now this. We can talk about it another time. Let’s go to bed.’
He picked up the remote control and turned the sound back up. The roar of the football stadium crowd filled the room. ‘You go. I might come up later – or sleep down here.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but thought better of it. Too much had been said and nothing resolved – and nothing would be, not tonight. So I said good night, kissing his cheek because he wouldn’t turn his head, went upstairs and got into bed.
Normally, I’d have gone on to WhatsApp to pour my heart out to my friends. Normally, even though they couldn’t solve my problems, their advice, virtual hugs and outrage on my behalf would have made me feel better. But now I couldn’t do that. I felt as if the hands I’d been able to reach out for in the dark were no longer there – or if they were, they wouldn’t reach out to me in return, and my fingers would be left scrabbling at empty air.