Chapter 23 #2
‘Um.’ I knew I had to tread carefully. In all the years that Amy and Paul had been together, I’d never heard her say a bad word against him, or at least not one that was more than the usual gripe about living with someone.
It was uncharted territory and I was unsure how to navigate it.
‘You just seem to be niggling at each other.’
‘Not at each other, I’m niggling at him,’ she said.
I didn’t like to point fingers, but it did seem to be coming more from Amy than it did Paul.
‘I don’t know, it’s just that every little thing that he does at the moment annoys me and because I’m being a bit shitty it seems to have spurred him on to be more romantic and that makes him even more annoying in my eyes. ’
There was so much to unpick that I didn’t know where to start.
‘What are you trying to say?’ I scrunched up my face; none of this made any sense.
‘It’s hard to explain… It’s just I’ve been wondering a lot about what life would be like without him.
And I know it would be hard being a single mum, and it would mean splitting time with the kids, but …
’ she shrugged ‘ … I guess I just wonder sometimes if we’re together because of logistics, that it’s cheaper and easier to manage the kids as a united front, than a split one. ’
She was holding her cup steady in her hands and looking at me like this was a perfectly normal conversation to be having.
‘You don’t really think that’s all there is to your relationship, do you?’
She shrugged. I was shocked into silence. Out of all the couples I knew, Amy and Paul were one of the most solid. If they fell, what hope did the rest of us have?
‘But you and Paul,’ I said, ‘you’re Amy and Paul.’ I was struggling to get my head round it.
She put down her drink and sighed. ‘I know, that’s the problem: we’re Amy and Paul and sometimes I want to be Amy again. Not a wife, not a mum, just me.’
She reached over and helped herself to another bite of tiffin.
‘Oh, Ams, I had no idea that you felt like this.’ I moved the plate closer to her; she needed the chocolate more than me. ‘But it sounds like you’re just a bit tired of your life, not of Paul. You still love him, don’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Of course, I love him. But it’s not the same.
Like whenever the five of us are together it makes me feel like we’re back at uni and it reminds me of who he used to be and who we used to be.
If this was back then, Paul and I would have been sneaking off for a quickie in the toilets.
I just miss all that buzz and excitement. ’
‘You miss being young,’ I said, picking up my cup and letting the heat ground me. ‘But look at the things that you do have, that you didn’t have then. And I’m not talking about the kids.’
‘Or the spare tyre round my midriff,’ she said, with a pathetic laugh.
‘We’ve all got one of those,’ I said, smiling. ‘I meant more, look at how much shared history you have. All those little in-jokes. How he’s always surprising you, and he’s so romantic.’
‘I know. I know all that. And it makes me feel terrible that I’m moaning when I should feel so lucky to be with someone as great as Paul and for him to still want to be with me.
Look at me. My hair has accidental balayage from neglecting my roots and dying it different colours from a packet.
’ She turned up the ends of her curls and examined them before letting them drop.
‘And my face, I think I’ve got more spots than I did when I was a teenager, and don’t get me started on the bags under my eyes. ’
‘Amy,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘But it’s true, it’s all true. And I’m worried that I’m with Paul because I don’t think that I’d get anyone else.’ She buried her head in her hands properly this time so that I could no longer see her. ‘I’m a terrible person,’ she whispered from underneath.
I could hear the pain in her voice and it made my heart ache for her.
‘You’re not a terrible person.’ I reached over and squeezed her arm. ‘You’re just a real person. Look, I’m not exactly an expert in this. Bear in mind if we were in Regency times I would have been written off as a spinster aunt or a governess by now.’
Amy peaked out from behind her hands; I could see her smile twitching.
‘But I think this is what marriage and family life is. This is probably what most people experience.’
She fully took her hands away and looked me in the eye.
‘What, boredom and sticking through things because you’re worried that you can’t do better?’
‘No, growing comfortable and complacent. It can’t be fireworks and butterflies all the time.’
‘But why can’t it? If this was Regency times, I’d be the lady of the manor that has an affair with the gardener out of sheer boredom.’
I couldn’t help but think of the TV adaption of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that Mum had made me watch one Christmas, but it wasn’t impure thoughts of Sean Bean I was having; it was the image of Andrew in his gardening gear causing me to blush.
‘Then it’s lucky that neither of us are in Regency times, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ she said. ‘A handsome rugged gardener?’
She was quiet for a moment and I felt I’d lost her to her fantasy before she jolted back to earth with a deep sigh.
‘I think it sounds like you need a break,’ I said. ‘And not a break from Paul, a break from everything. I think you just need to be you for a little bit. Let’s book that trip away, a proper girls’ weekend.’
I pushed the thought of Mum out of my mind.
Even if we were in Europe, we’d be able to get home quickly in an emergency.
This was the whole point of her going into a home, so that she could have that round-the-clock care, and I could start living my life again.
Only life wasn’t going to just start happening, I had to make it happen.
‘OK, let’s do it. And thank you, for not judging me.’ She tilted her head and gave me a grateful look.
‘Of course I wouldn’t judge. Relationships are complicated.’
‘Yeah. Don’t I know that,’ she said, taking her hair out of her messy bun and then scooping it up into an almost identical one. ‘I’m sure it’s just the news about Mags and Noah that’s rattled us.’
‘What news?’ I didn’t mean for my hands to jolt, but the mention of the two of them unsteadied me.
‘Noah and Mags?’ She finished off the last of the squares of cake and mumbled through the crumbs. ‘They’ve split up.’
‘They’ve what?’ I pushed my cup and saucer further away from me, not trusting my hands to be steady enough to drink it. ‘When?’
‘About a month ago. He’s moved out, he’s renting a flat in Epsom.’ She wiped her lips with a napkin.
‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ I’m not sure what was more shocking, that they had split up or that neither had told me. I know that I’d grown apart from both of them and our separate friendships, but I didn’t realise quite how far.
‘I don’t know, I thought everyone knew.’ She checked over her shoulder and leaned closer. ‘Look, I’m not one to gossip, but I think things haven’t been right for a while and it all got a bit much for him. You know Mags has always been so ambitious, hasn’t she?’
Mags’ ambition was one of the things that I’d always admired in her. Noah too.
‘I still can’t believe it. Is that it? Divorce?’
The words caught in my throat. I’d watched them from the very first time they met, to their wedding. Divorce seemed so final.
‘I think that’s where it’s heading. I think him actually renting a flat is a pretty big thing.’
‘I can’t believe it.’ I tried to stitch together the clues that I’d been presented with today. The hoodie under his coat, his tired-looking eyes. His bitterness when he spoke about Mags and her work.
‘I know, it was a massive shock. It hit Paul really hard. Although, we have got bets on how long it’ll be before Noah moves on.’
‘Moves on?’
There was that familiar pull on my heart, that one that had gripped tighter and tighter as Mags and Noah’s relationship had strengthened.
‘Yeah, come on, have you ever known Noah not to be in a relationship? Even when Hayley and him took that break at uni, he dated that other girl. What was her name? The one with all those earrings?’
I searched the rusty bits of my memory, trying to think of a name.
In moments when I couldn’t recall details easily there was that lurch in my stomach, that first hint of a worry that not remembering might be a sign that my memory would go early like Mum’s.
It didn’t matter that the name wasn’t important, that both of us could visualise the woman with the row of studs that ran from the tip to the lobe; in that moment I needed to remember it. ‘Ruth?’
‘Hmm, yes,’ said Amy, pointing at me, and that moment of panic yielded. ‘That’s the one. And then he’d barely broken up with Hayley and come back from Oz when he got together with—’
‘Mags.’ I started to feel a little sick, remembering what Paul had told me in Dublin about how if I hadn’t pushed Noah away things could have been different. ‘I guess he’s just one of those people that can’t be on his own.’
‘Exactly, so I gave him three months; you know, a little bit longer as he’s rebounding from a marriage. Paul reckons six months.’
‘Six months?’
It seemed an awfully short amount of time considering how long they’d been together.
‘I’ve eaten all the cake, let me get another.’
She was up before I could protest. I looked back out at the view but I couldn’t take it in; I was too busy trying to process it all.
I’d come today thinking that I was the odd one out, that everyone had their lives sorted, but the more I talked to my friends, the more I realised that none of us had it together.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt a little less alone.