Harry （Part 2）
When I moved out, it was meant to be temporary. That’s what we told ourselves anyway.
Fiona, Todd and Harry were locked down in their Covid-free house while I had to leave every day to work in just about the highest-risk environment in the country.
Colleagues were coming down with the illness all the time, and patients were dying every day.
It was unfair to put the kids at risk, Harry said, and it was impossible to disagree.
Plus, if I’m being totally honest, I’d been finding the atmosphere at home exhausting anyway.
It was obviously nowhere near as ‘exhausting’ as being at work but in a way, that’s my point.
By the time I got home I needed things to be relaxed.
All I wanted to do was slump in front of the TV with a glass of wine.
I didn’t want to be hassled about drinking too much or smoking too much or what risks I may or may not have taken whilst at work.
I didn’t want to be asked to wear a bloody face mask in my lounge either, because I’d had one on all day, and I didn’t want to listen to my family’s whingy – comparatively insubstantial – lockdown woes at all.
So when Jill suggested that I use her empty Airbnb place for a break, ‘until it all blows over’, I jumped at the opportunity. And I enjoyed it there, for a while.
The studio, which was tiny but pretty, was situated at the bottom of her garden. I could drink and smoke and watch crap TV without complaint. I slept better, I found, without Harry’s snoring, and didn’t miss his complaints about my hours, Fiona’s laziness or Todd’s smelly trainers either.
Sometimes Jill and I met in the garden (at a distance) for a ciggy and a glass of wine and on sunny days when I could fit him in, Harry and I would walk around the park.
But he was stressed, too, so our conversations became increasingly brittle.
We felt more like strangers every time we met and I remember having a vague premonition that rather than saving our marriage we might be breaking it.
We were a month into lockdown before either of the kids deigned to meet me. It was Fiona who agreed first, so we met at her favourite place – Vinters Park.
As we walked, we chatted about the pandemic and whether it was the Chinese who had manufactured the virus, a theory Fiona insisted was ‘gaining traction’. And then I asked her the dreaded question: I asked how things were at home.
‘Oh, good, actually,’ she said. ‘Everything’s quite shockingly chilled.’
It was such an unexpected thing for her to say that I could only assume the missing words were ‘since you moved out’. I was so shocked I stopped walking.
After a few paces, Fiona paused too and turned back. ‘Mum?’ she said.
‘I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean,’ I told her.
‘God, I knew you’d be like this,’ she said, instantly leaping into combat mode.
‘Like what?’
‘You’re always… Oh, you know what you’re like.’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’
‘You’re waiting all the time to jump on something. It’s like you’re on the lookout for something to be upset about.’
‘I am not! Where’s this coming from? I really have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I told her.
‘Look I don’t mean anything… you know… bad… by it.’
‘Oh, well, that’s a relief!’ I said sarcastically.
‘But even you’d admit your… um… energy… has been a bit off lately.’
‘My energy? If you mean that I’ve been tired…’
‘No, I mean your – you know – spiritual energy.’
‘My spiritual energy?’
‘Yes. Or your emotional energy, if you prefer.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit too yin for you,’ I said, forcing a laugh. ‘Or maybe I’ve been too yang?’
‘Ha,’ Fiona said. ‘Funny.’ Then, ‘Come on. Let’s keep walking. It’ll be dark soon.’
We walked in silence for a bit and then she said, ‘And now I suppose you’re sulking. You see, this is why no one dares say anything to you. Everyone’s too scared.’
‘I am not sulking!’ I was starting to feel quite angry, actually. Or tearful. I sensed it could go either way. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say.’
‘You don’t? Really?’
‘No. I’ve been very stressed, if that’s what you mean. My job is incredibly stressful.’
‘Everyone’s stressed, Mum,’ Fiona said dismissively. ‘There’s a worldwide pandemic on. But we’re not all—’
‘I’ll tell you what we’re not all doing,’ I interrupted. ‘We’re not all spending our days watching patients die of that worldwide pandemic, are we?’
‘No,’ Fiona said. ‘No I s’pose not.’
‘It’s hard, sweetie. My job is really hard right now. Do you understand that?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Cos you’re always telling us how hard it is.’
‘And I know it’s hard for you, too,’ I added, attempting to calm things down. ‘Really, I do. But I do think you could try to get where I’m coming from. I think you’re being a bit unfair. And a bit hurtful.’
‘Of course you do,’ Fiona said sourly. ‘That’s kind of my point.’ Then, ‘Sorry, Mum, but I need to get home. See you soon.’
‘Sweetie!’ I called after her. ‘Fiona! Come back and talk to…’ But she’d already turned off down another path to our left and, blowing a kiss over her shoulder, she strode away.
I was so stunned that I sat on a bench until the cold made me start to shiver.
Harry phoned me two hours later. I’d barely managed to get warm.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Me? I’m fine,’ I replied flatly. The truth was that I was bloody upset and had even had a little cry because my daughter hated me, I’d been banished from my own home and had to return to my impossibly exhausting job the next day… All that, plus the state of the world in general.
Having downed two medium glasses of South African Chardonnay, I was also a tad tipsy which seemed just as well considering the circumstances.
‘Fiona came home in a right state,’ Harry said. ‘I was wondering what you said to her.’
‘What I said to her?’
‘OK, what you both said, then. What you said to each other. She’s locked herself in her room.’
‘Lucky you,’ I said. ‘I’d make the most of that if I were you.’
‘So come on,’ Harry said. ‘What happened?’
‘She basically said things are better at home without me,’ I told him, aware, as I said it, that I was paraphrasing to my advantage.
‘Did she?’ Harry asked. ‘Did she really? Because I can’t imagine our Fiona saying that.’
‘Well, she did,’ I told him. ‘More or less. She said things are shockingly chilled since I left.’
‘Well, I’m sure that’s not what she meant,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sure she was trying to reassure you.’
‘Reassure me?’ I exclaimed. ‘About the fact that you’re all so much better off without me? That’s incredibly reassuring, Haz. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘And please don’t go off on one. Not when I’m trying to help.’
‘I am not going off on one. Don’t you start too!’
‘Look, I’m sure she was just trying to reassure you that we’re all OK. Despite everything that’s happening. Despite you having to stay at Jill’s… Despite the horrific news cycle we’re all constantly subjected to, we’re OK. And we all miss you like crazy. It’s hard.’
‘Do you?’ I asked. ‘Is it hard? Because she categorically did not say that. In fact she said very much the opposite.’
‘Yes, of course we miss you,’ Harry said. ‘The bed’s too cold without you.’ It was a lyric from a song we’d both liked many years before – a typical Harry attempt at mid-argument seduction, a strategy he used often to calm things down.
‘Cute,’ I said, signalling that I wasn’t buying it. ‘Funny guy.’
‘It actually is,’ Harry said. ‘It’s bloody freezing.’
‘The electric blanket’s in the cupboard,’ I told him. ‘You’re just too lazy to put it on.’
‘That’s probably true. I’ll look into it.’
‘Anyway, that’s not what she said, Harry. So please don’t have a go at me. She didn’t say you all miss me at all. What she said was that I’m always looking for fights and that things are super chilled now I’m not there to upset everyone.’
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Well…’
I pulled a face at my mobile and waited for him to continue. I could sense he was going to dig himself deeper, quite possibly considerably deeper.
‘That’s kind of why I’m calling, actually,’ he said. ‘Because things have been fairly chilled. Which, when the world’s falling apart, is no mean feat.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said sourly. ‘You win the Single Father of the Year award.’
‘And I was wondering…’ Harry continued, wisely ignoring my jibe, ‘if you could cool it a bit. Just try not to wind them up when you see them. They’ve got a lot to deal with, too.’
‘God, it must be so awful for them,’ I said. ‘All that extra time they have to spend on the PlayStation.’
‘And she’s right,’ Harry said, ploughing on. ‘Everything has been really chilled. Until tonight.’
‘Which is my fault, obvs.’
‘Well, you saw Fiona and you argued with her, and she came home and shouted at me, and then had an argument with Todd, and now she’s upset and locked in her room. Which is the first time in ages that anyone in this house has raised their voice.’
‘When you say “in ages” you mean since I moved out.’
‘If you must put it that way,’ Harry said, ‘then, yes.’
A wave of anger rose within me that was so massive it choked my ability to speak. I couldn’t even begin to think of words which might express what I wanted to say. Beads of sweat prickled my brow.
‘You bring a lot of stress home with you from work and you tend to start dr—’
I ended the call. My finger, as it hit the end call button, was shaking.
Harry phoned me back immediately. ‘I think we got cut off,’ he said.
After a moment of silence, he added, ‘Unless… Did you just…? You didn’t hang up on me, did you? Because that would be very childish if it were the case. In fact that would be exactly the sort of th—’
‘Oh do fuck off, Harry,’ I said, cutting him off before he went full-blown teacher on me. ‘Do go and fucking fuck right off.’ And then I ended the call again, feeling proud that this time I’d found exactly the right words to express myself.