When Life Gives You Lemons Read online

I do manage to find out her age, though. She looks way younger than me – early forties at most – but, horrifyingly, it transpires that she and I are the same age. Fifty-bloody-two with the skin of a peach! She looks natural, too – not obviously Botoxed or weirdly stretched as if she’s had her skin hoisted up behind her ears. I can’t decide whether she is ageing incredibly well or I am crumbling at a terrifying rate.

  ‘I just want us to be happy, like we were,’ Andy says, looking exhausted when I try to grill him on this. ‘What can I do to help us get over it?’

  The trouble is, I don’t know.

  Sunday, February 24

  But my friend Penny does. ‘Make the most of it,’ she says. ‘All those household tasks you’ve wanted doing? Get him onto them right away.’

  I had to escape the house today – I literally can’t bear being around Andy – and was grateful she was around. It’s a sharp, blue-skied afternoon, and I’m helping Jules out by looking after Maeve for the day. As the girls scale the climbing frame, Penny details how I should put my husband to work as a handyman; a ‘strike while the iron’s hot’ sort of approach.

  ‘But he’s done everything already,’ I explain. ‘I found him the other day, prowling around actually looking for jobs that needed doing. There’s not one lightbulb that needs changing. He even pumped my bike tyres without being asked. He washed the skirting boards. There’s literally nothing left to do.’

  ‘How about the garden? Didn’t you say you want to start growing veg?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Then get him started,’ she insists.

  ‘It’s too early, Pen,’ I say.

  She looks quizzical. ‘You mean you’re not ready to talk?’

  ‘No, it’s too early to plant veg.’

  ‘Yes, but he could start digging things over, preparing the ground …’

  I laugh, despite the awfulness of it all. As if a ready supply of rocket will make everything all right. ‘Penny, I don’t care about that anymore.’

  ‘But you were so keen,’ she insists. ‘You said—’

  ‘Yes, before I found out about this woman!’

  ‘Oh, darling. I’m so sorry this has happened to you.’ As she squeezes my arm I look round at her kind face, pillarbox-red lipstick on as always, ash-blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders in bouncy waves. Despite being almost two decades older – Penny is seventy-one – she’s not remotely maternal with me. If anything, I find our age difference refreshing as, whatever I’m going through, there’s a pretty good chance she’s breezed her way through it and emerged, if not quite unscathed, then laughing throatily with a G&T clamped to her hand. So far, I have managed to keep my own booze consumption to a reasonable level; at least, reasonable for someone who’s been lied to and humiliated.

  We first met right here, Penny and I. Back then – five years ago – Izzy and I virtually lived in the park, a five-minute walk from our house, and we’d started to notice the lady who often wore dazzling bright colours when she walked her little black dog. We began to look out for her and, of course, she was delighted when Izzy made a fuss of Bobby, her schnauzer-poodle cross (‘He’s a schnoodle,’ she explained, to Izzy’s delight). After a few weeks of chatting we’d exchanged numbers so we could meet up. I started to look forward to seeing her.

  With her prim accent and crackly laugh, Penny seemed both earthy and grandiose. I soon learned that she’d been a fashion model in London in her teens, featuring on magazine covers and dancing in the Top of the Pops audience in a home-made crocheted dress. A mother at twenty-two, she had taught herself to pattern cut as a means of making a living once the modelling work had dried up. Whilst working in a typing pool by day, she started making clothes at night to sell at Portobello Road market – ‘My ponchos are collectors’ items now!’ she told me proudly – and eventually opened a tiny boutique back in her home city of Glasgow. Her talent and charm had attracted investors, and more shops opened. Throughout the latter half of the Seventies she presided over a popular, hugely influential chain of boutiques, called Girl Friday – the Topshop of its day.

  She’s turned serious now. ‘What are you going to do, d’you think?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’ I glance down at my scuffed boots poking out from my jeans. Penny is wearing a quilted red jacket with a fur-edged hood, a calf-length blue shimmery skirt and tan brogues.

  ‘So he’s promised he’ll never contact her again?’

  I nod. ‘Yeah, that’s what he says.’

  ‘D’you believe him?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe.’ I glance at the girls who are huddled together, engrossed in chatter in the rope nest on the climbing frame. Bobby is snuffling around the bushes close by. ‘But I suppose I have to,’ I add.

  ‘You mean, you have to believe him, or you have to stay with him?’ She looks incredulous.

  ‘Well, both.’ I know how feeble this must sound. Apparently, Penny had kicked out her husband before their son Nick’s first birthday. When she told me this, she made it sound as if their break-up was as easy as dropping off a bag of old clothes at the charity shop. ‘I cleared the decks,’ was how she described it in her usual blasé way.

  ‘Darling, you do know Izzy would be fine,’ she ventures, not unkindly. ‘I know it seems enormous, breaking up when you have a young child. But it can work out better for everyone, believe me.’

  I nod, although the very idea of doing that to her makes me feel sick.

  ‘She’s a smart, level-headed girl,’ Penny adds. ‘She’d get used to the idea. Children adapt to all kinds of situations.’

  ‘It would be a massive thing to her,’ I murmur. ‘She adores her dad.’

  ‘But she must have lots of friends whose parents aren’t together,’ Penny adds, as if that would make things easier.

  ‘Well, yes, there’s a few.’

  ‘What about Maeve’s mum and dad?’

  ‘No, they’re very much together and blissfully happy.’ I fix my gaze upon my daughter’s cheery, animated face. I can’t even bear to think about turning her life on its head. ‘And then there’s Spencer to consider,’ I add.

  ‘But he’s an adult, leading his own independent life!’

  ‘He’d still be upset. I’m sure he thinks me and his dad are pretty solid, you know?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not about them, is it? It’s about you, and what you want. And look what Andy’s done to you.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I say, unconvincingly. But we’re a family, is what I really want to say, and I’m not sure I can throw away these twenty-five years. Although I’m still angry and hurt, I’m trying to do the right thing here. I don’t know how to explain that to Penny without it sounding as if I somehow disapprove that she left her son’s dad. In fact I think she was far braver than I could ever hope to be. Right now, I feel terrified.

  ‘Pen,’ I say now, ‘can I ask why you split up with Nick’s dad?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve told you all that already,’ she says quickly.

  In fact, she has barely mentioned him, beyond remarking that he was hardly a hands-on father – ‘He’d rather have chopped off his own foot than change a nappy’ – and started a new life in Canada after they’d split. When I asked if he is still alive, she shrugged and said, ‘Allegedly.’

  ‘Well, yes, you have a bit,’ I say now. ‘But I wondered … was there something specific that happened?’

  ‘A final straw kind of thing?’ she asks, getting up from the bench as Bobby potters out of sight. ‘Well, yes,’ she continues, ‘there was the soup incident …’

  ‘What happened?’

  She chuckles. ‘I’ve told you what Brian was like. Big-shot architect, shagging half the office, probably, surrounded by dolly birds, as he called them …’

  ‘Was it that? Was he sleeping with other women?’

  ‘Oh, almost definitely,’ she says blithely as she clips on Bobby’s lead. ‘But that wasn’t the reason. Everyone in our circle was doing it. It was more how he viewe
d me, you know?’

  I nod, although I don’t really understand. The girls run over to us, pleading for ice creams. Izzy takes Bobby’s lead as we leave the park and make our way towards the van. ‘I mean, these days you’d never be expected to do this,’ Penny goes on, ‘but back then, men like Brian wanted the corporate wife back at home. You know – the good little woman flapping about in a pinny, rustling up dinner parties for his colleagues …’

  ‘Surely he didn’t expect that from you!’ I exclaim.

  She sniggers. ‘Unfortunately, he did. You mean, you can’t imagine me topping up glasses and handing out vol-au-vents?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  Izzy looks round. ‘What’s volly vonts?’

  ‘Little pies,’ Penny replies, ‘with something like mushrooms inside, in a creamy sauce.’

  ‘Ugh,’ exclaims Maeve.

  ‘You didn’t make them, did you?’ I ask. I have encountered Penny’s ‘experimental’ cooking a couple of times: her ‘mango pork’ consisting of anaemic-looking chops and sliced fruit in a dish of cider, and a lime cheesecake with the texture of blackboard chalk. She seems to exist mainly on boxed meals from her freezer.

  ‘Of course not,’ she declares as we join the small queue at the ice cream van. ‘But one day, Brian phoned from his office – never mind that I was up to my neck with a new baby – and said, “Pen, darling, Roger and Cleo are coming over for dinner. Make sure you put together something nice, would you?”’

  ‘What did you do?’

  She beams at me. ‘We had a big tin of tomato soup so I heated that up. Brian came into the kitchen as I was ladling it into bowls – pretty, hand-painted bowls from Marrakesh – and said, “God, Penny, is that the best you can do?” And I said, “No, don’t worry, darling …” And I grabbed a lump of Cheddar from the fridge and waved it in his face and said, “I’ll put some fucking grated cheese on it.”’

  Izzy and Maeve are thrilled by this, and it feels like the entire ice cream queue has swivelled to glare at us as we crack up. My God, I am actually laughing. My husband has been shagging someone else, someone far more beautiful and successful than I could ever hope to be – but I can still laugh so much, I’m in danger of falling onto the ground.

  I’m so grateful to Penny for stopping me from thinking about Estelle Lang for about ten seconds.

  Chapter Seven

  Monday, February 25

  All day at work, I play over what Penny said: that my kids would be fine, and that sometimes, breaking up works out better for everyone.

  But then, Penny’s not me. We are entirely different. It’s not that I view myself as a better mother; just that I am incapable of being as relaxed as she seemed to be. I’m a worrier and a fusspot, of the belief that I must do my absolute best at all times, and that if I happen to get anything wrong I’ll be judged and reported and Izzy will be wrestled away from me and put into care.

  It sounds mad, but this is the situation we modern mothers have put ourselves in. Parenting Seventies-style was very different.

  My dad used to smoke in the car with Mum and me in it, and no one thought that was wrong. Mum once broke a thermometer and gave me the mercury to play with. I loved that mercury like Izzy loves her knitted sandwich! And no one worried about children’s nutrition. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that they might need something called ‘vitamins’ and ‘not too much sugar’. Penny told me recently that, when Nick was about five, he refused to eat anything but butterscotch Angel Delight – for a whole year.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked, aghast.

  ‘What could I do?’ She shrugged. ‘I let him!’

  ‘But … what about his health? His teeth? And nutrients?’ Although amazed and impressed, I also felt a little outraged on his behalf, even though he’s now apparently a fully functioning man in his forties, having carved out a successful career as a documentary maker in New Zealand.

  Penny laughed. ‘I was running seventeen shops, Viv. We had new stock dropping into these stores every two weeks. I didn’t have time to arrange vegetables in little faces on his plate.’

  Then there was the time he stripped off his clothes and ran around naked in the library. Apparently Penny ‘let him’ do that too (‘I was reading, darling’). I’ve heard how she took him on fashion shoots where ‘the make-up artist or model would play with him’; though, if there was a big social thing, there’d usually be a friend – or friend of a friend – she could drop him off with. Yet, amusingly, there’s always an extensive interview procedure before she ever leaves Bobby with anyone. Potential dog sitters are grilled.

  Another aspect of Penny that I find fascinatingly bizarre is how unbothered she seems about Nick living on the other side of the world. Divorced from his New Zealander wife, he’s still showing no sign of returning to the UK. She has only ever showed me a single picture of him – bearded and blurry, possibly taken from half a mile away – and that was because I asked her to.

  I find it hard enough with Spencer living a three-hour drive away from us. Maybe that’s why, every couple of months, I have a grocery order delivered to his flat.

  ‘Don’t they have groceries in Newcastle?’ Penny teased me when she found out about this.

  I guess the fact is that we are very different, and her insistence that everyone would be ‘just fine’ if Andy and I broke up is doing nothing to sway my decision. As it is, he keeps on saying he’s sorry, and that he loves me, and somehow, we are managing to get through the days. Thankfully, Izzy still seems to have no idea that anything is wrong.

  I’m actually quite impressed by the two of us. Our marriage might be in shreds, and every so often I can’t help grilling him yet again about his feelings for that woman, and why he did it – those terribly cyclical conversations which lead us precisely nowhere. But despite all of that, we are doing our utmost to keep up appearances in front of our daughter, or whenever we are in the company of other adults.

  Whenever we’re out and about together, no one would guess there was anything wrong. I’d never have imagined we’d be capable of such Oscar-worthy performances.

  Wednesday, February 27

  I wake up to two revelations:

  I have somehow made it to my fifty-third birthday without dying of misery and shame.

  Culinary treats are being bestowed upon me as Izzy brings me breakfast in bed, comprising thickly buttered Cornish Wafers, a sliced banana and some grapes. She also presents me with a beautiful bangle that she made from her bead kit, and a hand-drawn birthday card depicting me looking pleasingly chic in a camel trench coat and jeans, walking Bobby.

  It’s raining heavily in her drawing, and the sky is dark and thundery and lacking her signature beaming yellow sun, but at least my eyelashes are lush and my mascara hasn’t run, and I am grinning determinedly in it. I decide it isn’t intended to represent ‘Mum’s life being so crappy it’s pouring down on her birthday’ but, ‘Positive Mum, happy whatever the weather’. And if that’s the case, my ‘everything’s fine!’ act must be working a treat, which is incredible as I still feel as if I am falling to pieces inside. The only reason I’m still sharing a bed with Andy is because I’m not sure I could get away with moving to Spencer’s old room without a barrage of tricky questions from Izzy.

  While she rushes off to change from PJs into school clothes – she shuns any assistance from me when it comes to getting ready – Andy presents me with a necklace of milky blue stones on a fine silver chain. ‘Thanks,’ I say, my eyes welling with tears. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. There’s also a bottle of my favourite figgy perfume and a thoughtful collection of interesting books.

  He really has gone to some effort. He is certainly honouring the occasion, which, rather than making me happy, is having the effect of triggering such a wave of grief that I can barely hold myself together. ‘Happy birthday, darling,’ he says, refilling my coffee cup like an eager elf. It’s a relief when he sets off to work and it’s just Izzy and me, setting off for school.r />
  Although Spencer never gets it together enough to put a card in the post, he calls me at lunchtime, vowing to visit soon. Often, these promises don’t come to fruition, and I’m kind of hoping this one doesn’t. Whereas Izzy seems to be unaware of the tensions between us, I’m pretty sure our son would detect that something’s amiss.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ he asks.

  ‘Dad’s booked dinner,’ I reply. ‘I’m not sure where we’re going. It’s a surprise.’

  ‘Aw, that’s nice! Somewhere fancy, then?’

  ‘I have a feeling it’s not Pizza Hut.’ He chuckles, and it occurs to me as we finish the call that it’s not the restaurant booking that’s significant; it’s the fact that Andy sorted out the babysitter too. He had to ask me for her number. But the fact is, he arranged it: a first for mankind.

  The restaurant turns out to be a wonderful seafood place, which I’d normally love. However, as it stands, I am horribly aware of going through the motions, as if it’s a normal birthday and everything’s fine; that we are happy and still very much in love. I pretend to enjoy the astronomically priced crustaceans as we fiddle away with all the little tools – the pliers and tweezers and all that pale flesh. I see Andy’s face blanch when he glimpses the bill.

  Later – after the babysitter’s gone, obviously – he’s all over me, kissing and touching and madly complimentary about my body, my face, the beautiful embroidered silky slip I’m wearing (my birthday present from Penny). It’s hard to believe that, until all this stuff happened, he seemed to regard having sex with me as on a par with the community litter pick-up (which we, being Good Citizens, always take part in). Actually, I used to wonder if he preferred the litter pick-up to doing it with me. He always seemed pleased when Mr Singh, the organiser, handed out the grabber sticks, to the point where I wondered if we should try to incorporate one in our sex life.

  But not any more, obviously. We actually do it tonight, for the first time since the Estelle revelations; there’s no hint of sciatica/lumbago or any mutterings that he has an early start in the morning. Whilst I feel a little weird and disconnected, it’s at least reassuring that we can still make it happen, and that it doesn’t feel completely abhorrent, which perhaps hints that there may be a future for us after all.