Chapter 29
Beautiful walls you can walk along at sunset. The majestic Minster. Amazing restaurants and canal cruises and delis packed with delights. For god’s sake! York is making it really hard for me to hate-scroll through the photos on my phone from when I visited the city in my twenties. I’d been hoping to look back at the pictures and think, what a dump! But the photos paint a different picture. I had the loveliest time there and I know that Joe and Sid will really love it too. Urgh.
I’m not big into wallowing. When things imploded with Mark I felt quite relieved, if I’m honest. I’m not trivialising what happened, of course it was deeply painful and unpleasant, but when I boiled it down I felt a sense of freedom. I could do things my way for the first time in years. Raise my child how I wanted. Make business decisions without having to run them by him first. Even decorating my new home in Bristol felt joyous because we didn’t have to pour over paint samples and worry about whether a shade of beige was not beige enough. There is precisely no beige in my Bristol home.
Joe leaving feels dramatically different.
I’ve completely lost that sense of get-up-and-go. I mean, it’s midday and I’m still in pyjamas, for a start. And it’s not the first time since he told me. But I’ve got to pull myself together because I’ve got a planning meeting with Denise this afternoon – no, wait, it is the afternoon. I force my hair into some semblance of an up-do, pull on work clothes and have just added a lick of lipstick when the doorbell rings.
‘Hello, love.’ Denise smiles, her kindly face making me feel wobbly.
I make us coffees and we take a seat in my garden, enjoying the late June sunshine.
I did at least do some prep for this, so while I chat about projections and scroll through a spreadsheet, Denise makes all the right noises. That is until she lays her hand on mine.
‘Sophie, are you all right?’ she asks.
I can feel my face crumpling but I try desperately to stay professional.
‘Oh, you know,’ I waver.
‘I could kill my Joe.’
I can’t help but let out a watery laugh at this. ‘Seems a bit drastic, Denise?’
‘Of all the stupid decisions he’s made in his life,’ she tuts. ‘This one takes the biscuit.’
‘You’ll miss him,’ I say.
‘I’m not the only one,’ she says, keeping a watchful eye on me.
I suck air in through my teeth.
‘Shall we discuss planning the big launch?’
‘Or we could try and get to the bottom of why you and Joe are a pair of daft bats?’
‘I mean, I prefer the sound of the launch chat …’
Denise folds her arms. ‘You know why he’s going, don’t you?’
‘Because of the job offer,’ I reply. ‘And … he said he wants to meet someone.’
‘Give me strength,’ Denise puffs. ‘He’s already met someone, Sophie.’
‘Has he?’
What the hell?
‘Can I be honest with you?’ asks Denise while my mind reels.
‘I get the impression that I don’t have much of a choice?’
Denise chuckles at this.
‘You’re right. Listen, Joe was crushed when Mark came back into your life. I think he was hoping that there might be something more between the two of you and when you made it clear that there wouldn’t be, he still wanted to try and be friends. But then your ex-husband turned up and Joe wanted to do what he thought was the right thing, to remove himself from the problem. He already felt like there was no chance of a relationship between you and the new arrival firmed that up. It’s no coincidence that he accepted the York offer shortly after Mark showed up. He thinks that you deserve the chance of having a happy family together and he didn’t want to get in the way of that.’
I am flabbergasted by this. Up until now I thought Joe had been avoiding me because of the kiss. I thought he was angry with me.
‘But Denise, I have literally no feelings for Mark whatsoever. At this point he is just an annoying fly in the ointment. Does Joe seriously think we’d get back together?’
‘He’s a family man at heart,’ she says simply.
Suddenly everything starts to slot into place. Joe is going because I’ve pushed him away. ‘There’s no real reason to stay in Bristol,’ he’d said. I’ve kept him at arms’ length this entire time thinking that it was the couple of times when we got too close that was the problem. But it’s not. He thinks I’m getting close to someone else. It’s me who made him accept this job. He’s retreating from me because my ex-husband is back on the scene and wants to be part of Lila’s life. I feel a flash of red-hot anger towards Mark.
‘Whatever happens, there is no way I’m going back to Mark.’
‘I can see that, love. But I think Joe’s got himself in a muddle about it. He knows that Lila deserves to have her real dad around and so he’s decided to take himself out of the equation.’
I shake my head, feeling so heavy with all this.
‘What do I do, Denise?’ I ask. ‘He’s got the wrong end of the stick completely.’
‘Oh I know. The way he’s been mooning around lately.’ She gives me a kindly smile.
I know I need to smooth things over, and properly this time, but the truth is I’m sick of fighting for a friendship that hasn’t felt like a friendship for months. Because I don’t want him to go, but then I can’t give Joe what he wants. I can’t risk facing my own feelings towards Joe because if I pull at that thread, I’ll come unravelled. It’s too risky. I won’t rock the boat for Lila’s sake. And this afternoon, she’s going to meet her father. Which is a whole other sack of shit that I absolutely don’t want to deal with.
Lila is climbing the walls, desperate to get to the playground and show off her fifth birthday badge, which she’s been wearing ever since the big day last week. She doesn’t know that she’s meeting Mark yet, I want to see how things play out organically when he turns up.
Once at the playground I push her on the roundabout before we migrate to the seesaw, where our unmatched weights mean Lila spends a lot of time in the air, legs dangling, in fits of giggles. Then she makes a beeline for the big slide while I head off to a picnic bench, feeling the need to lick my wounds after my chat with Denise while warily watching out for Mark. I’m still reeling from what she said and I don’t think I’ve ever harboured such negative feeling towards a person as I do towards Mark right now. I’ve decided to blame him entirely for Joe’s decision to leave. It’s completely emotionally immature of me, I know, because this whole mess is mostly my making. But if Mark hadn’t shown up when he did, if he hadn’t offered me a job and generally got in the way, I’m not so sure that Joe would be leaving. So for now it’s Mark’s fault.
I’m looking on Rightmove at property prices in York for no explicable reason when my phone vibrates. The arrival of a message from Joe draws my attention to the time – Mark is late. And as far as I can remember, Mark does not approve of tardiness.
So sorry to do this last minute but I can’t make the wedding next weekend.
Tried calling but you’re not picking up?
Got to head up to York for a meeting the following Monday … I’ll have to head up on Sunday so will need the weekend to prep.
Feel really bad for cancelling.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!
I fling my phone down in an absolute huff and it lands next to some decaying orange peel, which feels symbolic. Something that once was so zesty has now been left to rot, just like me. Okay, I’m being dramatic. I’m not that similar to discarded orange peel. But I do find myself abandoned and dateless for a wedding in the space of a week, which totally sucks. I grab my phone again, ready to stick the knife in by indulging in another flick through the York photos, when I spot the Date My Sibling icon.
I let out a mirthless laugh.
How I loathed the dating app that Poppy signed me up for earlier in the year. It’s been so long since I thought about it that I can’t believe it’s still on my phone. I think back to Poppy’s relentless mission to ‘get me out there’, how convinced she was that I should open up my heart again. And how the very next day I met Joe. My heart squeezes at the thought of him, the familiar sinking feeling I get every single time I’m reminded that he’s leaving now.
What will Poppy say when I tell her he’s going? Joe and I decided pretty early on that we’d let our fauxmance fizzle out by the end of the summer holidays but it seemed so far in the future back then that I barely gave the notion a second thought. I was too busy typing up questionnaires, grilling Joe on his likes and dislikes, and quite quickly realising that he was my favourite person on the planet bar Lila. Frustrated, I kick the picnic bench and take a sharp inhale of breath as my big toe screams out in protest.
I am going to have to tell my sister that my fake boyfriend and I have fake broken up. I turn the words over in my mind. ‘Poppy, Joe and I are splitting up.’ It feels like they’re real. Like this is an actual break-up.
Lila waves to me and I smile as she heads down the slide backwards, other kids following suit. She’s such a daredevil, my daughter. Not like me, I’ve always been very cautious, very by the book.
Going solo to Alexis’s wedding feels like the shitty pièce de résistance. I’ve been to a few weddings over the past few years and I always feel like a fairground attraction as distant relatives and old friends gravitate over to see how poor old Sophie is coping. This time I’d imagined Joe and I throwing back champagne and busting out our best moves on the dancefloor. I’d pictured us watching the sun set over the sea from the fancy hotel in Cornwall, me wearing his suit jacket because it would have got cold by then.
I shake my head to clear painful thoughts of the future me that will never be. I will go to this wedding on my own, just like I always do. That’s how I operate, I remind myself, taking a slurp from Lila’s smoothie and hoping she doesn’t notice. (She can be very territorial about her beverages.)
I don’t need a man. It’s a phrase I’ve told myself time and again. Only what used to make me feel empowered, filled up and proud now has the opposite effect.
I’m fine by myself. Aren’t I?
My phone starts chirruping again and the Barnaby’s Babes appear to be in organisation mode. I scan through the messages. Celeste is wondering whether we should celebrate the end of their first year at school with a Michelin-starred lunch with the kids? I can barely get Lila to eat with cutlery, let alone navigate her way around a formal setting. I imagine her using a fish knife to catapult peas in Oscar’s direction, or simply stabbing him with an oyster fork. Pleased to have something to take my mind off things, I hit reply to the group chat.
Perhaps a class trip to the park would be simpler?
Frankie: I’m with Sophie. No way am I forking out for a posh lunch for Jack. He’d smash the place up
Olivia: Park trip sounds great!
Tally: I’m keen on the park idea too Sophie! I can arrange some entertainment. Maybe a magician or a fire-breathing tiger?
Mel: FFS! We’re celebrating the end of reception class Tally, not a royal wedding.
Tally:
Celeste: Of course Douglas and I had great fun at Harry and Meg’s big day. Absolutely marvellous!
At this point Frankie sends me a direct message filled with nothing but the vomit emoji, which makes me smile. I reply again to the group chat.
Great! I’m happy to organise.
Where the heck is Mark? He’s almost an hour late now. I’ve walked the perimeter of the playground just in case I find him lurking by one of the entrances, plucking up the courage to come in, but he’s definitely not here.
Irritated, I dial his number.
‘Sophie, hi,’ he answers, sounding harried.
‘Mark, where are you? You’re late.’
‘Sorry! Business meeting overran.’
‘Right,’ I saw slowly. ‘And that’s more important than the first time you meet your daughter?’
‘Come on now, don’t be like that,’ he says in a coaxing, chipper tone which gets my hackles up even more.
‘Like what, exactly?’
‘Look, you must remember what it’s like. Business is even more hectic now we’re branching out and there’s been a lot of last-minute headaches that I could do without. Did I mention that we’re also trialling Mylk It up in Manchester? It’s doing really well so we might need to focus our efforts on the North East instead. You turning down the Bristol job really threw a spanner in the works, Sophie. I’m actually dashing up to Manchester tonight.’ He pauses, as if trying to remember where he was going with this. ‘Anyway, back to the playground! I could be with you in thirty?’
And I don’t know if it’s the way Mark is banging on about business when his focus should be entirely on my daughter today, or whether it’s a culmination of that and every other thing going on in my life right now, but something snaps.
I’m not having it. Why am I waiting around for him to turn up late to meet my daughter when it is crystal clear that Lila will never be his priority?
‘Actually Mark, we’re leaving.’
‘Okay, let’s pencil another date in.’
‘When? I’d like to know now. And please, let’s not “pencil” it in. You have to be certain about this. You can’t flit in and out. If you want to see her, I get it, but you have to commit.’
‘Hang on,’ he says, voice now edged with anger. ‘There’s no need to overreact. Take a moment. Do you really think you should punish Lila because you’re still in a tizz over what happened between us?’
I let out a hard laugh at this. ‘Are you kidding? This has absolutely nothing to do with you and absolutely everything to do with what’s best for my daughter. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that, Mark, because you’re not a parent. Not in the true sense of the word. Parents put their children before anything else and you can’t even commit to a play in the park.’
‘Fine,’ he spits. ‘It sounds like there’s very little point arguing. You know, with my focus moving north it wouldn’t be very convenient for me to keep finding time to come back to Bristol and “commit” to seeing her. You see we’re actually closing the Bristol pop-up, I just didn’t want to tell you because the press release hasn’t been sent out yet.’
I shake my head incredulously.
‘Did you actually want to see her, or was it a move to get me to take the job?’
‘Your words, not mine. And look, you can’t honestly expect me to suddenly turn up and play dad forever. It’s not exactly me, is it? I’ll call you next time I’m your way and maybe we can do a park visit then.’
‘Maybe not, Mark. You do whatever you need to do, just make sure you leave me and my daughter alone from now on. We are done.’
By the time I hang up I’m shaking. But as I sit back down at the picnic bench, I feel nothing but a sense of relief. That’s it. He’s out of our lives. Thank all the gods for that, I think, finding my smile for the first time in a while.
Lila trots over and puts a soft hand in mine.
‘Mummy? I love you.’
I scoop her up and cover her in kisses.