Chapter 27 #3
‘I genuinely believed I was somehow responsible for it. I shouldn’t have gone for a drink with them all, let alone several drinks.
I shouldn’t have gone on to that dive bar with them.
I shouldn’t have worn a skirt, and I shouldn’t have gone to the disabled loo instead of the ladies’ loos because couldn’t all these things be misconstrued as come-ons?
And I hate that I really believed that kind of bollocks until recently.
I hate that I’ve felt responsible for the fucking terrible behaviour of someone like Stephen, and I hate that Stephen isn’t even the only person to have made me feel that way.
I hate that this shit still goes on, and I hate that I have only just properly started to realize it now, at the age of forty-four.
And I hate that my sense of belief in myself is so fucking flimsy that I haven’t been able to tell you this, that I am genuinely convinced that when I reveal anything about myself that isn’t perfect and shiny and good, everyone around me will scarper.
You’ll all up sticks and abandon me at the first opportunity. ’
‘You know that’s not what a healthy relationship is about, right?
’ Nick shifts round the bed so he is facing her directly.
‘You know when we made those vows eight hundred years ago, we promised to stay with each other in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer?’ Olivia nods.
‘I didn’t say, “I promise only to love you if you are nice and polite at all times, do all the cleaning, cook all the dinners, and by the way can you make sure that you are always wearing a sexy leopard-print minidress too?” That’s not what a marriage is about, Olivia. Real love is unconditional.’
Olivia shudders. ‘Yes, well don’t forget I grew up in a house where love was absolutely conditional, on being a good girl.
On not being any trouble, and not adding to the already quite substantial pile of shit that my poor mum had to deal with.
Speaking of which, I need to tell you that her new man, Clive, is the dick who felt me up on the train. ’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘I’m only serious from now on, Nick.’ She lies back, stretches her legs into her husband’s lap.
He begins rubbing the balls of her feet, and Olivia starts talking again.
‘I don’t know quite what to do with the information right now, but I guess I’m going to have to figure it out.
As much as she gets on my tits, she has a right to know she’s going out with a sex pest.’
‘Your mum’s never been that great at handling reality, has she?’
‘Nope. She must have had one seriously fucked-up childhood.’
‘I feel really sorry for her, you know. Like, your painful obsession with perfection, you get it from her. Of course you want everything to be good, because that’s all you’ve known: the need to make it look as if everything is tickety-fucking-boo, even when it’s falling apart.
She grew up with alcoholics, married one, and then she felt this desperate need to hide it from you and Lily.
And then when you were unwell, she freaks out because here, again, is evidence that all is not tickety-fucking-boo. It’s classic.’
‘God, you’re so right, I’ve never seen it that way before. How do you know all of this?’
‘Because when you’re a secondary-school teacher you have to essentially become a psychotherapist in order to deal with thirty thirteen-year-olds and all the weird dynamics they bring with them to the classroom.’
‘Wow,’ says Olivia, who had until recently credited her husband with all the emotional intelligence of a fruit fly. ‘I’m impressed, Nick.’
‘And also, because I’m kind of outside it. Which is why I can say with some confidence that the notion that you are the difficult kid while Lily is the sweet-natured easy one is absolute bollocks.’
‘Lily is pretty awesome, though. I’d move her in if I could, instead of Dad.’
‘She is great, I feel blessed to have a sister-in-law I actually want to spend time with. And it’s nice having her round a couple of evenings a week. The kids love it.’
‘I love it. She loves it too, bizarrely. She genuinely seems to enjoy looking after them instead of simply using it as an emotional transaction.’
‘Maybe we could go on some dates when she’s here? And maybe we could talk about what you might want to do about The Morning, and working with Stephen. It’d be OK if you wanted to take some time away from it to figure out a plan, you know? We could make ends meet.’
‘That’s sweet, but we both know we couldn’t.
’ Olivia feels a sickening swirling in her stomach about their finances.
She hates this sensation, the one you get when you realize your wants and needs aren’t compatible with your actual circumstances.
‘Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t start rearranging the ends a bit better, so that they actually work for us. ’
‘Profound,’ says Nick, who is still rubbing her feet, his hands warm on her skin.
‘I feel like I should have probably had this conversation with you about twenty years ago.’ Olivia sighs. ‘It might have saved a lot of bother.’
‘Yeah, but you can’t figure any of this stuff out without first having to go right through it.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Or in the case of your dad, you can, but you get what I mean.
’ He stands up, goes into the bathroom where she hears some taps begin to run.
Then he comes back in, sits next to her.
‘I thought you’d want me to do that, given I’d just been rubbing your feet.
Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that love isn’t about asking the impossible of each other.
It is the opposite of that. There aren’t clauses and caveats to love.
It doesn’t have a price tag on it. It’s saying, “I will love you when you’re being brilliant, and I will love you when you’re being a dickhead, and I will love you when you make mistakes, even if you can’t love yourself through those mistakes.
”’ He takes her face in his hands, moves closer.
‘My love for you is unconditional, Olivia Greenwood. It really is. I love you when you are laughing, I love you when you are crying, I love you for your flaws and your fuck-ups as well as your innumerable plus sides. I love all of you. Not just the botoxed bits.’
She pulls back in mock horror. ‘How do you know I get botox?’
‘Because a few years ago your eyebrows would have raised when you asked that kind of question, but right now your face has stayed almost exactly the same. Except for the tears, which are making your mascara run down your face.’ Olivia goes to wipe her cheeks, but he stops her.
‘You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to wipe the mess off your face for me.
You don’t have to wipe up any mess for me.
You can just be you, with mascara down your face, and I promise you, Olivia Greenwood, that I’m going nowhere. ’
‘Well, that’s just about the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,’ she hiccups, tears starting afresh. ‘Shame about the setting, eh?’
‘I think the room is perfect, because with the exception of that awful signed photograph grinning at us,’ and at this he gets up, and places it face down on the MDF desk, ‘we’re the only people in it.
’ He opens the wardrobe, as if to check nobody’s hiding there.
‘Yep, only us, though this seems to have been stashed away in here.’ He pulls out a miniature bottle of Prosecco, shakes it as if he’s a Formula One driver on the podium at the Monaco Grand Prix and not a teacher from Haywards Heath bunking up for a night in a cheap hotel somewhere off the A22.
Then he removes the cork, unleashing the contents of the tiny bottle all over Olivia.
‘Nick!’ she squeals, laughing.
‘Oops!’ he mock apologizes. ‘Now you’re going to have to get out of those wet clothes and into the bath I’m running you in the 1970s en suite.’
Olivia reaches for the phone by the bed. She picks up the receiver, dials zero, waits for the girl on reception to answer. ‘Oh hi,’ she smiles, as Nick goes to check the temperature of the water. ‘I think we’re going to need a bit more of that Prosecco. And can I check that you do room service?’