The Mum Who'd Had Enough Page 12

  She hurries back inside, presumably to say bye to Flynn, then she’s out again and we’re muttering awkward goodbyes on the pavement, and she’s off.

  *

  I make dinner at five o’clock, which feels oddly early, but I can’t think what else to do. It’s a rather speedy affair – another stir-fry, this time with mushrooms. Now I remember that Flynn hates mushrooms. As I watch him pick them out, I raise the subject of his stiff hand – ‘I just overheard you saying to Mum’ – but it’s fine, he says, matter apparently closed. How am I supposed to support him if he won’t tell me what’s going on?

  We eat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Dad?’ He looks up from his bowl.

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘I think there’s someone at the door?’

  At first, I assume he’s resorting to that tactic he used to employ when he was little, on the rare occasions when he and I were having dinner alone. Dad, did you hear that? Something’s happening outside! I’d hurry to the window and when I came back, some offending item – usually a dastardly vegetable – would have disappeared from his plate. I once found a cauliflower floret dumped in a pot plant.

  But no – someone really is knocking. My heart seems to stop. She’s back! It’s all been a terrible mistake. She arrived at Abby’s and stared at all those boxes and bags in the boot of her car, and thought: no, I can’t do this …

  I drop my fork in my bowl and march through the hallway and fling open the front door.

  Eric is standing there, a hesitant smile on his face. ‘Okay, look – I know what you’re going to say.’

  I stare at him. Why is he here?

  ‘What I’m going to say about what?’ I ask, genuinely baffled.

  He grimaces. ‘Well, Sarah and I had a talk, and then we spoke to Liv and Nadira. None of us are happy about you hiding yourself away, and it’s only a barbecue—’

  ‘Oh, I can’t go to Liv’s barbecue,’ I say firmly. ‘I told you, I’m just not up to socialising right now. I mean, it’s kind of you to stop by and everything but …’ I break off and register Eric and Sarah’s blue Mazda parked across the street. Sarah catches my eye from the driver’s seat and beams encouragingly. I glance back into the house; the house which has, since Sinead’s departure today, seemed even more bleak with all the odd spaces where her things used to be. Her jars and potions, her dressing gown and jewellery: all gone.

  ‘C’mon,’ Eric offers. ‘It’s always a laugh at her place and you could do with a few beers and a bit of fun.’

  I study his face for a moment and see a friend who’s been thoughtful enough to drop by on some sort of rescue mission. He thinks he’s doing the right thing when, in fact, what I’m really more inclined to do is flop on the sofa and neck a bottle of wine.

  ‘Okay,’ I murmur. ‘I s’pose I could just show my face. But I won’t be hanging around for long, all right? I know you’ll want to stay late, but I can just get a cab home …’

  ‘Yeah, sure! Just a bit of chat, couple of drinks. Nothing too taxing.’ He nods encouragingly.

  I inhale deeply. Flynn has plans for tonight, not that he needs me hanging around and bothering him. ‘Give me a few minutes to get myself together, all right?’ I say, raising a smile.

  ‘Great. You go and get ready. Don’t worry about booze – we’ve got plenty in the car. But maybe give your hair a comb—’

  ‘My hair?’ I go to touch it and suspect it’s sticking up all over the place. I must’ve looked a sight for Sinead and didn’t realise.

  ‘Yeah. I know you’re having a shit time, but it is a party. Got to make an effort for your public, right?’ Eric is grinning now, poking fun. ‘Also,’ he adds, dropping his gaze a little, ‘you might want to put your T-shirt on the right way round.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  So, ten days after I learned that my marriage is over, I am on my way to a barbecue where I’m likely to be harangued into eating some kind of vodka-watermelon slush puppy.

  A birthday party populated by a disproportionally large percentage of driving examiners, which, apparently, Eric is looking forward to tremendously, judging by the way he and his wife Sarah are chatting about it merrily in the car. ‘That last one was brilliant, wasn’t it?’ he remarks, glancing back at me.

  ‘Hilarious,’ agrees Sarah, who’s driving. Clearly, they have planned to jolly me out of my malaise.

  From the back seat, I murmur in agreement and watch the neat red-brick terraces of Hesslevale’s outer reaches give way to softly rolling hills.

  ‘At least, Eric was hilarious,’ Sarah adds with a snigger.

  ‘You know what that means, don’t you, Nate?’ Eric catches my eye in the rear-view mirror.

  I force a stiff smile. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It means he was slaughtered,’ she adds. ‘So tipsy he fell into that cactus, remember?’ They both laugh loudly, thankfully oblivious to the fact that their banter – the easy, teasing communication of a couple who are still very much in love – is serving only to plummet me further into a cesspit of gloom.

  It’s not that they have chosen to ignore the glaring fact that Sinead has left me. We got all that out of the way when I emerged from my house – T-shirt corrected, hair combed into some semblance of order – and was greeted by hugs and gushing sympathy by Sarah, whom I know is terribly fond of both of us. I disentangled myself and thanked her for her concern, asking if we could leave it there, just for today. It was the only way I could think of to get through the evening; i.e., to pretend it hasn’t happened.

  ‘Think there’ll be karaoke again?’ Eric muses.

  If there is, I may have to commit hara-kiri with a barbecue fork.

  ‘Hope so,’ Sarah enthuses, for she is the karaoke type – and I don’t mean that in a snidey way. She has a rich and confident voice, and on several occasions I have been happy to sit back with my beer and enjoy her hearty rendition of Suspicious Minds.

  We can’t go on togethuuurrrrr …

  But not today, thank you very much.

  ‘See that box next to you, Nate?’ Eric remarks.

  I glance at the transparent plastic container of raw meat, oozing blood, which is sitting beside me on the back seat. My stomach shifts uneasily. ‘Your marinated lamb?’

  ‘Yeah. Garlic, oregano, mint, lemon juice. Best left for twenty-four hours, if you’ve got the time. Tenderises it, then you get the smokiness from the barbecue coals …’ Eric smacks his lips.

  ‘Sounds delicious,’ I remark.

  ‘It’s his signature dish now,’ adds Sarah. ‘He’s started growing mint especially for it. What a ponce!’

  ‘It grows itself really,’ he chuckles. ‘Runs bloody rampant …’

  I blink at the passing fields, willing my friends to stop overcompensating and be a little less cheery. But then, they are cheery people; it’s me who’s the miserable old sod now. I start thinking of other friends of ours – people Sinead and I have grown close to through Flynn’s school and Scouts and various CP groups – and how I’m going to break it to everyone that we’re no longer together. As for Eric and Sarah – well, I’ll miss those evenings at theirs, over on the other side of Hesslevale, the pair of them always so relaxed and convivial, our glasses constantly refilled.

  Of course, I remind myself, they might still invite me … all by myself. I’m sure they’d love that, me sitting there, all sour-faced on their sofa, and everyone being careful not to mention Sinead. Plus, there’s no reason why I can’t invite them over for fantastically fun evenings at my house. Dismal stir-fries aside, I like to think I’m more than competent in the kitchen. However, whenever I’m cooking for friends there’s always a whiff of stress in the air, a slick of perspiration on my brow, and one of the side dishes is usually left in the oven to be discovered, a charred heap, several days later (‘What was this?’ Sinead would snigger before tipping it into the bin). On those sociable evenings at our place – and I can hardly bear to think of them as being in the past tense – her role was t
o be the fun one, handing out dishes of nuts and being sparkling company while I sweated and yelped in the kitchen and ran my burnt finger under the cold tap.

  ‘Um, I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Sarah says now, ‘but is Flynn okay? I mean, how d’you think he’s taking things?’

  ‘He seems okay so far,’ I reply, picturing him virtually manhandling me out of the door, hissing, Of course you’re going. Eric’s here for you, and I told you I’ve got people coming over. He can be terribly forceful when he wants to be.

  ‘I know it’ll be hard for him, but you’re a brilliant dad, Nate,’ she offers. ‘You’ll make sure it all works out.’

  My eyeballs seem to prickle. ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s kind of you to say so.’

  She catches my gaze in the rear-view mirror. ‘I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about this now.’

  ‘I’d rather not, if that’s okay,’ I say quickly, at which she apologises profusely, then steers the conversation to her and Eric’s own boys, Johnny and Ryan, both of whom are flourishing at some kind of sports college. I try to listen and contribute to the conversation, feeling like a hostage in their family saloon. ‘Can we stop off so I can buy some booze?’ I ask, rather belatedly, as Liv’s village comes into view.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Eric says. ‘I told you – we’ve got plenty with us …’

  ‘But I’d feel better if I took something. There’s a shop here, isn’t there? I’m sure they’ll have wine …’

  ‘No need,’ Eric insists.

  I sigh heavily and sit back, aware of the subtle tilts of Eric and Sarah’s heads as they exchange a silent but clearly understandable message: D’you really think he’s okay? However, jollity is restored as we turn off the main road and into the village, which consists mainly of huddled stone cottages and the aforementioned shop, which I see now has closed down, its window whitewashed – so no chance of dashing in for emergency wine anyway.

  We turn into the newer cul-de-sac and park close to the end house, which Liv shares with her husband Steve and their two daughters. I check my watch as we all climb out of the car: 6.10 p.m. I’ll stay for an hour, I decide as we all file into the garden. I reckon I’ll just about be able to hold out that long, then I’ll sneak off home.

  Liv appears through the clusters of guests in a white dress emblazoned with red poppies. ‘Hey, good to see you,’ she exclaims, hugging each of us in turn and accepting Eric and Sarah’s crate of lamb and clinking bags of bottles gratefully. ‘Wow, you are a star, Eric,’ she gasps. Perhaps, amidst all the enthusing over his marinade, she won’t notice that I’ve come empty-handed. She turns to me. ‘You okay, love? I’m so glad you’ve come …’

  ‘Um, I’m glad too,’ I say half-heartedly.

  ‘I know it’s not easy …’ She squeezes my arm.

  ‘It’s fine, honestly. It’s great!’

  Liv’s husband Steve – a rugby-playing bear of a bloke – offers us drinks, and soon Liv is stationed back at the barbie (Steve is never allowed within a five-metre radius of the thing). Sipping beer from a bottle, I hover on the fringes of a group of examiners, all of whom I know from working across various test centres in our area.

  Although dark clouds are gathering, everyone seems in a jovial mood already. Nadira and her husband Chet have arrived. A terribly good-looking couple, they are so tactile with each other that I am seized by an urge to vault Liv’s fence and run across the neighbouring fields, all the way home. Of course, I can’t expect everyone else to stop expressing affection just because my wife no longer wants to be with me.

  ‘So, I asked this guy to please take the next right,’ says Martin, a newly-qualified examiner with a dense brown beard, ‘and he turns to me and goes, “Nah, mate, that’s not the quickest way back.”’ He laughs and bites into his hot dog. ‘So I say, “I’m actually giving you a direction. Could you take the next right, please?” But the man’s shaking his head, saying, “Look, I know it like the back of my hand around here. Lived here man and boy,” until I’m practically driven to shouting, “You do understand that this is your test, don’t you? We’re not just out on a casual drive …”’

  Now Nadira is acting out the time when a candidate had a sudden dramatic nosebleed that splashed all over her shirt.

  Petra, an older lady with a reputation for being rather fierce, tells us, ‘I kept saying, “The lights have changed to green now. You can move on …” And then I looked at him properly and realised he’d died.’

  Everyone laughs in that horrified way; it’s our ability to find humour in the awfulness that keeps us going sometimes. I know we’re not miners or surgeons and that, from an outsider’s point of view, we do little more than sit in the passenger seat, being utter bastards. But we are just doing a job, albeit a much-derided one, rather like tax inspectors or parking attendants – and it’s not always an easy one (take Angus Pew, threatening to contaminate my food in his restaurant). We are offered cash bribes and even sexual favours; colleagues of mine have been promised blow jobs and even entire nights of passion in exchange for that elusive pass certificate. Although that’s never happened to me, I have had a woman trying to thrust a giant Toblerone at me.

  Of course, gifts of any sort are always politely – but firmly – turned down.

  More stories come, but I am finding it impossible to pay proper attention to all the banter around me. I can’t bring myself to eat anything, either, despite Liv’s teenage daughter Molly touring the garden with trays piled high with succulent burgers and hot dogs.

  ‘Try some of this then,’ Molly says, now brandishing a platter of the famous watermelon which, as it turns out, isn’t a slush puppy sort of affair at all, but just chunks of seemingly innocent fruit.

  ‘That does look good,’ I say, taking a piece, in the hope that it’ll quell the bitter taste that seems to have developed in my mouth. Bitter, because Sinead should be here at my side.

  Now Liv’s sister, who’s wearing a kind of kaftan over tight pink trousers, is making a shouty announcement through a microphone that the karaoke is about to begin. The gaggle of children all whoop with delight.

  ‘Me first!’ yells Ava, Liv and Steve’s youngest, a late baby who arrived when they were well into their forties, and who’s around six or seven, I think – Sinead would remember her exact age, her favourite colour and probably her birthday, if pushed.

  A backing track begins. I munch on the watermelon slice as Ava and her friends blare out an enthusiastic rendition of Dolly Parton’s Joleen.

  Karaoke proves to be a huge success, no doubt helped along by the fact that wine and beer are in full flow now. As no one else seems interested in the watermelon, I tuck into another slice from the tray which has been dumped, conveniently, within arm’s reach. Liv and Steve’s garden is filling up with more friends and neighbours, and as dusk falls some of the guests start dancing on the patio. I exchange pleasantries, and make a pretence of joining in with the odd bit of chat, but really I’m feeling very far away from the actual proceedings as I nibble on more vodka-infused fruit.

  It’s extremely moreish, and not due to the alcohol content – at least, I don’t think it’s that – but because my mouth is terribly dry, and watermelon is quenching. Sinead might have left me, but at least I’ve had my sodding five a day. More like ten, probably. I should be the poster guy for some government heath campaign. Also, munching away gives me something to occupy myself with while everyone else chats and laughs and takes their turn on the karaoke. Because what else would I do otherwise? I can’t think of any amusing anecdotes to contribute, apart from finding a note from my wife, listing the nineteen reasons (naturally, I’ve counted them) why she doesn’t love me anymore.

  And I can’t imagine that’d get many laughs.

  ‘Nate, c’mon – give us a song!’ Steve is in my face now, cheeks flushed, beaming encouragingly.

  ‘Oh, I’m not really a karaoke kind of guy,’ I protest with an awkward laugh.

  �
�But all those bands you were in …’

  ‘Yeah, but as the guitarist, not the singer …’

  ‘Aw, go on,’ Nadira exclaims, grabbing my arm. ‘Let’s do a duet!’

  ‘No, I can’t, really. You know I have a terrible voice …’ I check my watch, astounded that it’s just gone 9 p.m. Somehow, three hours have slipped by. I’m drunk, I realise. Slowly and steadily I’ve ingested enough vodka watermelon to partially anaesthetise myself from the horror of the past ten days. Nadira pleads some more, then sashays off to blast out Lost in Music with Chet. I look around the garden, at the glowing glass lanterns and silvery fairy lights that seem to have appeared suddenly, turning a garden in an ordinary cul-de-sac into a magical grotto. Sensing myself wobbling, I grip a wooden bird table for support.

  What a lovely garden this is, I decide. Liv and Steve’s home is a modern semi with nothing to distinguish it from the other houses in the road, but what they’ve done with the space is remarkable. While their neighbours’ gardens seem to consist of neatly-clipped rectangular lawns, Liv and Steve have carved theirs up into intimate spaces with cleverly-placed hedges and shrubs. Narrow brick paths weave in and out, leading you from one nook to the next. Several wrought-iron benches, ancient stone birdbaths and many other ornamental delights are hidden at the far end of the garden, away from the revellers.

  I know this because I seem to have blundered away from the main party where Liv is now belting out Come Fly With Me, a Sinatra classic and a must at this kind of event. Will anyone dare to murder a Springsteen number, I wonder? If Sinead were here, she might have urged me to, virtually shoving me onto the stage. But she’s not here, she’s at Abby’s, perhaps re-watching The Sopranos, or maybe shagging some new lover somewhere, looking sensational in her pink camisole – and, anyway, I’m bloody fine, because I am not alone either. I have the watermelon tray with me, which I am now cradling to my chest, like a long-lost friend.