Chapter 8 #2
‘That’s because most of your stuff used to be in here.’ There’s a throb of awkward silence.
He clears his throat. ‘You look well,’ he says, appraising me.
‘Wish I could say the same for you.’ I laugh to take the sting out of the words.
‘And straight to the point, as usual,’ he quips. Avoidance tactics, but we play out our usual roles. He thrusts his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His sandy-brown hair is still showing no signs of grey, but I can see flecks of white in his stubble.
‘Band going well?’
‘Not bad.’
Charlie’s band, Moderation, had some early success at the height of the Britpop era back in the mid- to late 1990s with a hit single that Radio 1 used to play endlessly, and a record deal for one album.
The band – particularly the lead singer, Sirus – had been young and good-looking, but when they failed to write anything as catchy again they were subsequently dropped and have spent the last twenty-odd years trying to replicate it.
Now in their mid-forties, they are still performing at gigs in small venues around the West Country.
Charlie also works as a painter and decorator for his dad’s company, which he likes for its flexibility, but in the belief he’d be a huge rock star one day, he never bothered with any further education after he left school.
I’d met him after his flurry of success, in November 2004.
I hadn’t been living in Bristol long and didn’t recognize him when I got chatting to him at a pub in Clifton as we stood at the bar waiting to be served.
He’d laughed at that, his sparkly eyes crinkling as he acknowledged, ‘Nobody remembers the drummer,’ which wasn’t quite true, but I didn’t want to burst his bubble by admitting I just didn’t remember him.
I’d been smitten from that very first meeting.
He was tall and broad and, as Jo described him later, ‘very manly’.
I’d always gone for finer-boned, wiry men with floppy hair and big eyes but there had been something about him, the relaxed way he stood at the bar, as though he had all the time in the world, confidence that was just on the right side of cocky, his gaze, which he fixed on me while I talked, making me feel like the most important person in the room and that I could do anything, be anyone.
It wasn’t long before I moved into his swanky flat near the Downs, which he’d bought at the height of his fame, and I became the band’s – or rather Charlie’s – number-one fan.
I preferred their newer music, which was more mature, nuanced, and I believed they would hit the heights of that first single.
I really did. Charlie’s optimism was infectious.
Me, who’d always been a glass-half-empty person, falling in love with a man who truly believed his cup ran over.
And things were great, at first, when he wasn’t weighed down by responsibility, when he was young enough to think fame could still happen.
When he could take off whenever he fancied to play a gig in some random town up or down the country – even abroad – and I could go with him.
I put my own career on hold to accompany him – not that I had much of one by then.
Five years earlier I’d left my midwifery training, having become disillusioned after everything that happened with Simone.
I’d looked up to her before I started to suspect what she was involved in.
It turned out I’d been right about that, but the whole experience had left me depressed.
I spent the next few years doing temp work for a recruitment agency.
I fell hard for Charlie. But when I found out I was pregnant with Rufus eighteen months after we’d met, when I was twenty-six, things moved quickly.
I wanted to put down roots, give our baby a stable upbringing.
Charlie had been twenty-seven and I knew he felt he wasn’t ready to be a father.
He was still a big kid himself. So I was shocked when, just as I’d begun to show, he took me out to dinner in a fancy restaurant in town and slid a blue velvet box across the table.
‘You don’t have to marry me.’ I’d laughed when I opened it and saw the most beautiful emerald ring. ‘This isn’t 1956.’
‘No, it’s 2006, and I want you to be my wife.
’ He’d grinned, although his smile had slipped slightly at the thought I might say no.
I’d loved him for that. His uncertainty.
A glimpse at his more vulnerable side, which I rarely saw.
And we really did try to make it work. We were happy for a long time. Until we weren’t.
There have been so many moments over the last seven months when I’ve been tempted to pick up the phone and ask him to come home.
To beg him to give our marriage another try.
But I know it’s not what he wants. Not really.
And I’m not sure it’s what I want either.
I can’t separate the longing for him from my longing not to be alone.
And now he’s met someone new.
‘So … last night …’ He looks sheepish. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out that way.’
‘Is it serious?’
He fidgets from foot to foot. He still wears the same style of trainers as he did when I first met him: black Adidas Sambas. ‘It’s early days.’
My chest feels tight as it hits home that it’s really over between us. ‘Right.’
‘There’s another reason why I wanted to talk to you.’ He hesitates, his eyes not leaving mine.
‘Spit it out, Charlie.’
‘The house.’
My stomach drops. ‘What about it?’ Our arrangement was that I’d keep the house. Charlie still owns the flat he had when I first met him and which he’s now moved back into.
‘We need to sell it.’