When Life Gives You Lemons Read online

Which it is, in the ways that matter. Her parents and brother still love her. The tooth fairy hasn’t stopped leaving a pound under her pillow. She sees her dad regularly (although he’s said he’s ‘not quite ready’ for her to visit his new flat across town, whatever that means), and she still loves to sit drawing at the kitchen table. In Izzy’s world, there is little in life that can’t be made better with a new set of felt tips.

  Spencer, too, was initially appalled when news broke, but has come around to a kind of stoical acceptance. Although he insisted that there was no need at all, that he was absolutely FINE, Andy and I drove (separately) to Newcastle to talk things over with him. Although we were managing to be reasonably cordial with each other – at least in front of Izzy – I couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped in a car with him for the six-hour round trip.

  Our son was incredibly sweet and kind about everything. ‘As long as you’re all right, Mum,’ he said, with genuine concern, as I fought back tears over a bowl of noodles I couldn’t even eat. A couple of weeks later he arrived in Glasgow to check whether I really was okay, which made my heart soar. It amazes me sometimes that he has grown up into this thoughtful, caring young man despite a cheating bastard of a father being fifty per cent responsible for his genetic make-up.

  By then, Spencer had dragged it out of his father that there was another woman involved. And eventually, Izzy asked outright, ‘Does Daddy have a new girlfriend?’ It all tumbled out that, yes, he has ‘a friend.’ Neither she nor Spencer have met her yet, although I expect they will at some point. All I can hope is that they’ll come back to report some unfortunate trait, like horrendous body odour or a screechy voice, the kind that causes babies to start crying spontaneously and have to be hurried out of the room.

  Considering Andy’s apparent devotion to That Woman, I realise it’s pretty unlikely. But we are doing okay, I keep telling myself. We are certainly eating well.

  ‘Shall we keep some of these for Dad?’ Izzy asks as we tuck in.

  ‘Yes, we can, love,’ I say.

  ‘I’m seeing him tomorrow, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yep, he’s taking you out for the day.’

  ‘Hurrah!’ She grins. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m not sure what he has planned, but I’m sure it’ll be something fun.’

  We don’t have any formal system in place yet, for when he sees her; we are playing it by ear, stepping around each other carefully with brittle politeness. He and Izzy usually see a film, potter around the shops or have a pizza, stuff like that. I know the place he’s renting is in the West End. However, although I’ve managed to narrow it down to a fairly small vicinity, he won’t tell me the name of the actual street. He’s adamant that this isn’t because his new woman is living with him – but I can’t think of any other reason why he’d be so cagey about it. What else am I supposed to think?

  I look at Izzy across the table as she tucks in. She loves her days with her dad. I can tell she’s thinking about him and wondering what treats he has in store.

  She glances up at me, mouth full. ‘What are you gonna do tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, I have loads of things to catch up with,’ I say, meaning: I’ll be a whirl of productivity and not roam about the house, feeling abandoned and listless, thinking I really should clean the loo, but not doing it, and I must tackle that box of bath toys as I suspect there’s a nasty slime situation developing in there, but not doing that either.

  ‘Dad said he’s going to buy me new trainers,’ she says happily, jumping down from her chair.

  Sunday, July 21

  Izzy is out with Andy and I am alone. With no plans or obligations, the whole day spreads before me. I really must put it to good use.

  I could clean the extractor hood or hoover under the beds. I could use the opportunity to take up running to try and shift this menopausal belly of mine – which is starting to look like someone’s strapped a cushion to my middle – or see if Jules is around, to make a plan for my life coaching sessions (she’s been asking me when I want to get started, and I’ve been putting her off). There are so many things a newly dumped middle-aged woman could do to enhance her life. Instead I find myself frittering away the day by staring at pictures of The Eminent Dr Lang on my laptop – cruelly, there are dozens online – and crying.

  ‘Oh, darling, you need a different hobby,’ Penny says, not unkindly, when she shows up to rescue me.

  ‘What, like crochet?’ I bleat.

  ‘Crochet is very therapeutic.’

  ‘My fingers are too fat,’ I growl. Penny hugs me, turning serious. She looks especially summery today in a shift dress of pink and yellow squares, like Battenberg, accessorised with a chunky necklace of multicoloured stones.

  ‘I just think you should stop staring at these pictures,’ she says firmly. ‘It’s only making you feel worse.’

  ‘I was only having a little look,’ I fib. ‘See, if I do an image search of her, there are tons …’ Penny leans forward, frowning at the screen as I show her Estelle Lang standing at a podium, make-up immaculate, radiating authority as she delivers a keynote speech at some fucking conference or other. Here she is again, in a more formal headshot this time, wearing a crisp white shirt and navy blazer with a red scarf (possibly silk?) tied nattily at her slender neck. It’s a classic, elegant look I have never managed to pull off.

  ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’ Penny asks.

  I shrug. ‘A kind of self-harm?’

  She looks thoughtful for a moment. ‘Like you’re determined to sink really low, into a cesspit of gloom?’

  ‘Yes, something like that,’ I say dully.

  ‘And then,’ she adds, brightening, ‘when you’ve hit rock bottom, you can set about building yourself up again!’

  I muster a smile, grateful now to her for being here, for marching in when I didn’t answer the door. It’s a trait of hers that used to drive Andy crazy: ‘What makes her think it’s okay to just barge in like that? We could be doing anything!’

  Like what? I’d shot back at the time. What, actually, might we be doing?

  ‘That’s not the point, is it? It’s bloody invasive, that’s all.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ I say now.

  ‘Of course I am. I always am! Now, come on, put that laptop away.’

  ‘In a minute,’ I murmur. ‘Look, let me just show you something else. If I do another search, just for comparison, this comes up—’ And here it is: the sole picture of me that’s floating about in the ether. There are no glossy headshots, no pictures where I’m exuding glamour and authoritativeness at conferences. Instead, I’m looking fat in a sweat-stained vest, a ripped tutu and mud-speckled bunny ears at the school fun run last year.

  ‘Dear God, what’s that?’ Penny exclaims.

  I slam my laptop shut. ‘Nothing. No one. Oh, you’re right, Pen, I’ve really got to stop this. Come on, let’s go out.’

  As we catch the train into town together, the world immediately feels a little brighter. One of the many positive aspects of having Penny as a friend is that she refuses to indulge wallowing. It’s precisely what I needed today – to be taken in hand and marched out of my house.

  There are other benefits, too, in hanging out with an older woman, in that she can reassure me that the menopause ends eventually, and you come out the other side, and everything is all right. The anxiety abates. The sweats disappear. You stop being a carb-guzzling maniac and emerge as a calm, thoroughly emboldened woman, freed from periods, no longer a slave to your mood swings or worries about how you’re perceived.

  ‘You no longer care about anything,’ Penny has assured me on more than one occasion. ‘You just do whatever you want.’ This might explain why, as we arrive at our favourite bookshop café, I choose a small brownie (with all these books around it feels like a fairly low-risk option) while Penny goes for a whopping cream horn (potentially messy, I’d say, if I were performing a risk assessment).

  ‘Pen, tell me honestly,’ I say,
nibbling my brownie primly. ‘Did you ever fixate on someone like I’ve been doing? Like the way I’ve been googling Estelle Lang, I mean?’

  ‘There was no internet then, thankfully,’ she says.

  ‘No, of course not, but did you ever get so mad that you did, I don’t know – something crazy and badly behaved? Something ridiculous?’ I look at her across the table, willing her to say yes.

  She looks thoughtful at this. ‘Well,’ she starts hesitantly, ‘I once got terribly drunk and egged someone’s car—’

  ‘You egged someone’s car?’ I exclaim, delighted. ‘Whose was it?’

  ‘Just someone’s,’ she says airily, waving the horn about, cream bulging dangerously at its fat end. Sitting directly beneath it is an enormous coffee table book (Through the Lens: Icons of 70s Fashion). I’m not even sure why she lugged it over to our table. It’s not as if she’s looking at it.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Were you caught?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says.

  ‘But did it feel satisfying?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes—’

  ‘Maybe that’s why Andy’s being evasive about where he’s living,’ I cut in. ‘And he won’t let Izzy visit, in case she tells me. Perhaps he thinks I’ll go round and inflict some kind of damage on his car, or the property …’

  Penny slips off her turquoise cardigan and drapes it over the shoulders of her pink and yellow dress. I always feel terribly unadventurous in my basic tops and jeans whenever I am in her company. I loved fashion when I was younger and pored over magazines for inspiration. Rather than covering my bedroom walls with pop star posters, I stuck up pages carefully cut out from the women’s glossies. Later, as a student, I took to scouring charity shops and pulling together a bright, cheery, mish-mashy sort of look.

  When I became a mum, I tried to adhere to a ‘lipstick at toddler group’ rule and did my best to maintain a reasonable standard of appearance; to take a pride in myself, I suppose. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve opted for the easiest, most sensible choices for work and knocking around at home. Practicality has been my priority, and as a result I have amassed a wardrobe of black, grey and navy basics, with barely a glimmer of brightness anywhere.

  Penny wears happy clothes, Izzy observed, soon after we’d got to know her. I hope mine don’t scream: Depressed.

  ‘Are you sure that woman hasn’t moved in?’ Penny asks, licking cream from her lips. ‘I hate to say it, but I think that’s more likely.’

  ‘He says not,’ I say with a shrug, ‘and I don’t see why he’d bother lying to me at this stage.’

  ‘Well, perhaps he’s too embarrassed for Izzy to see the place?’ she suggests.

  ‘But why would that be?’

  She grins at me. ‘Maybe it’s next to a strip club?’

  I almost choke on this. ‘I wish it was, but I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Just in a shitty street, then?’

  I shake my head. ‘He’d never live anywhere too shabby. You know what he’s like, such a fuss-pants about things. We once rented an Airbnb in Paris. It was immaculate – really lovely. But Andy got it into his head that there was a lingering cheese smell in the fridge. Honestly, the moaning that went on, the perpetual opening and closing of the door and the endless sniffing. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t smell a thing. But he has a thing about odours, a hypersensitive nose—’

  Penny smirks. ‘Isn’t that a bit of hindrance for a doctor?’

  ‘Not really. He’s an endocrinologist, remember. It’s all about hormonal issues, thyroid disorders, that kind of stuff. He never has to do anything murky—’

  ‘What about tests? Doesn’t he have to take samples, swabs, that sort of thing?’

  ‘No, he has other people to do that for him.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t seem fair,’ she declares, and I smile. Penny is attracted to decidedly un-fussy men; artists or odd-job-types who live in ropey flats with cats constantly meandering in and out or, in the case of Hamish, a composer who lives on a narrowboat on the canal. ‘So he never had any gruesome stories to tell you?’ she asks.

  ‘No, never. That’s the thing about living with a doctor. You imagine you’ll hear all kinds of juicy stuff, but all you get are gripes about the fact that the canteen staff aren’t allowed to sell buttered scones anymore, so he has to buy an unbuttered scone and a tiny foil-wrapped pat of butter that’s too hard to spread. Christ, the moaning I had to endure about that—’

  ‘Outrageous,’ she snorts, ‘a man of Andy’s standing, having to spread his own butter …’

  ‘And it wasn’t just that,’ I continue. ‘When the new car park system was introduced, staff spaces weren’t quite as near to the hospital entrance as they used to be. Honestly, you’d have thought the world had ended.’

  ‘How ridiculous.’

  I nod, enjoying offloading to my friend. It sounds trite, but remembering Andy’s bad points always makes me feel mildly better about my current situation. ‘Then there was the Great Decline in Toilet Paper Quality of 2017, and then they made the dramatic switch from plastic cups at the water cooler to cardboard cones …’

  ‘He moaned about that?’

  ‘Yes! You’d think he’d have supported the decision to ditch single-use plastic, but no …’

  ‘Oh, Viv,’ she announces, ‘you’re well rid of that man—’ As if to emphasise her strength of feeling she bites down hard on her pastry, forcing the cream to jet out in a dramatic spurt.

  ‘Penny!’ I exclaim, reeling back as a few specks hit me.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry, what a mess.’ She snatches my paper napkin and tries to dab at my chest.

  ‘I don’t care about my top,’ I hiss, indicating the cream-splattered £55 coffee table book sitting between us. ‘Look at that!’

  Penny glares at it as if it had no business being there and rubs at it with a napkin. Although a delicate wipe would have sufficed, she rubs so hard, she takes the gloss off it. ‘Oh, God, I’m just making it worse,’ she mutters. ‘C’mon, let’s go.’

  ‘We can’t just leave it!’

  She jumps up from her seat and grabs at my arm. ‘What else are we going to do? Re-gloss it?’

  ‘Well, maybe we should offer to pay for—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she splutters. Come on.’

  I’m not proud of the fact that we leg it from the café. I love this shop, and I’m grateful that it seems to be thriving when so many others are closing down. What if everyone came in here and spurted whipped cream about the place? Was the incident captured on CCTV?

  Maybe I’m over-reacting, and no one will actually care about a ruined book. But it’s in my nature to worry and, much as I’d love to be blasé like Penny, I’m not built that way. I worry about upsetting people and causing offence – it’s ridiculous really. I worry about Spencer, even though he is a bona fide adult who can drive on the road and runs his own smelly little Skoda, filled with crisps packets, Coke cans and the remains of fast food (I always feel like I need a cover-all suit – like the kind asbestos-removal guys wear – whenever I get into it). And, of course, I fret about his diet and whether he’s getting enough nutrients.

  I worry about Izzy too, about whether she is really okay about Andy and I splitting up, or is just putting on a brave front. I worry about my future, and whether I’ll be a PA at Flaxico until the end of time, and whether we really do have rats in the garden and, if so, will they find their way into the house and bite Izzy during the night?

  ‘Hurry up,’ Penny barks, glancing behind as I scuttle after her through the shop like some kind of lady-servant. Seconds later, we reach the exit. She breezes out first, and we speed-walk along the pedestrianised street until we’re safely around the corner.

  She stops, catching her breath. It’s a warm, rather clammy afternoon and my hair is sticking to my forehead. ‘Well, that was unfortunate,’ she announces.

  ‘God, Penny,’ I exclaim. ‘You do realise we can never go in there
again.’

  ‘Of course we can! No one saw us.’

  ‘Oh, no, we blended right in.’

  She shakes her head and links her arm through mine as we make our way towards the subway. ‘You worry far too much.’

  ‘I know I do.’

  ‘But I’m really sorry about your top.’

  ‘That’s okay, it’s just an old thing.’

  I catch her eye, and she smiles, and I can’t help chuckling. Yet again, she’s briefly stopped me from obsessing over my husband’s new love.

  ‘You know what I think?’ she asks.

  ‘What?’ I’m anticipating a nugget of sage advice.

  ‘I think,’ she announces as we descend into the station, ‘they shouldn’t sell those kinds of cakes if they don’t want customers to eat them.’

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday, July 24

  Before it happened to me, I’d imagined that being left by one’s husband would be traumatic for those first few weeks – and then there’d be a quiet and gradual recovery. The calm after the storm, I suppose. And for much of the time, it is like this: reasonably civilised and fairly businesslike. I have done my utmost to remain dignified whenever Andy has come over to pick up Izzy or to take away more of his stuff. I’ve even gone so far as making him cups of tea (without spitting in them) and helping him to lug bags of books and medical magazines out to his car.

  However, on other days, it can feel as if my heart’s been broken all over again, and I’m simmering with fury and hurt. I have found myself crying inconsolably in the dairy aisle of the supermarket. I’ve had to pull over in my car on my way home from work, and sit there mopping at my face, knowing I’m going to look a state when I pick up Izzy from holiday club or a friend’s place, but unable to pull myself together. I have ploughed up and down the swimming pool, imagining Andy and her together, doing it, my tears mingling with all that chlorinated water. I have called him, intending to shout and rage, but just cried into the phone and then hung up. Such incidents seem to happen in bursts, then a couple of weeks can go by and there’s not a single tear shed.