When Life Gives You Lemons

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.

Sometimes, rather than crying, I want to scream and break things and physically hurt him. As it is, I have merely kicked a hole in a wicker waste paper basket, smashed his favourite mug and stabbed a hole in his ratty old gardening sweater with a biro. Thankfully, Izzy hasn’t witnessed any of this. The fact that she needs me to keep things rattling along has been something of a saviour.

She’s in bed now – it’s just gone 9 p.m. – and Andy is here, taking far too long to remove his boxes of paperwork that have been clogging up the cupboard on the landing.

Seemingly, he can’t just load them into his car and fuck off out of my hair. No, he needs to carry everything into the living room and sort through it painstakingly slowly without any regard for my feelings at all. I am fidgeting about, tidying up and straightening things unnecessarily, willing him to leave.

‘Can’t you do that at home?’ I ask tersely.

‘Yeah, I will,’ he mutters. ‘Won’t be much longer.’ He continues to flick through paperwork.

If anything, my Sunday afternoon with Penny has ignited a fresh spark of anger in me. After all, when she was pissed off over some matter of the heart, she didn’t sit there feeling sorry for herself. Instead, she got drunk and egged someone’s car.

She guzzled a cream horn in a bookshop café because she wanted one. Although it didn’t end well, the fact is, she didn’t worry about the possible consequences. I should be more like Penny, I decide.

‘I really don’t want you doing this here,’ I bark at him.

‘Oh.’ Looking startled, he starts to gather up his stuff.

‘Can I also ask you,’ I add, my heart thudding now, ‘if there’s some reason why you won’t let Izzy visit you at your flat?’

He blinks at me in surprise. ‘Er, not really, no.’

‘It’s just, if there is, I’d rather you said why instead of spouting me a load of old shit.’

‘All right. Jesus.’ He shakes his head as if I am being entirely unreasonable. ‘There isn’t much space, that’s all.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really!’ Clutching a box crammed with papers, he starts to make his way towards the front door.

I can feel one of those hormonal rages building up in me, the ones I have no control over, and I inhale slowly and deeply in an attempt to calm myself. ‘I don’t mean for her to stay overnight,’ I go on. ‘I just mean to visit, so she can see what your place is like. I think it’d be really good for her.’

‘Why?’ He frowns, almost comically.

‘To satisfy her curiosity of course. So she knows you’re living somewhere nice and that she’s welcome there.’

‘Well, yeah, but it’s really tiny,’ he says, raking back his neatly cropped grey-speckled hair.

‘She’s only four feet tall,’ I remark tersely. ‘I’m sure she’d manage to fit in—’ I break off as Izzy saunters into the room.

‘Honey, you’re meant to be in bed,’ I start, which she ignores.

‘We use centimetres at school,’ she announces. ‘I’m a hundred and twenty-two centimetres tall, exactly the same as Maeve.’

‘Are you? Andy blusters, getting up. ‘Wow. I had no idea you were as tall as that …’

She plonks a hand on her hip. ‘Why can’t I come to your flat, Dad?’

‘Ohh …’ He darts me a thank-you-very-much-for-dragging-our-daughter-into-this look, as if it’s my fault. ‘I just need to sort things out, love, and make the place nice for you.’

She frowns at him. ‘I don’t mind what it’s like.’

‘No. No, I realise that,’ he says, cheeks flushed and now seemingly in an almighty hurry to cart his stuff out to his car.

I follow him outside. ‘Andy?’

‘I’m not really in the mood for this right now,’ he huffs, slamming the boot shut.

‘Not in the mood for what?’

‘For this interrogation …’

I look at him, this man who created such a fuss about the unbuttered scone regime when people are starving in the world and would be bloody delighted with a plain pastry from a hospital canteen, and who lied to me horribly over months and months. Whatever possessed me to fall in love with him? Was I insane? ‘It’s only your daughter who wants to visit you,’ I snap. ‘Not the bloody Duchess of Kent—’ I turn on my heel and start to march back towards the house.

‘Viv!’ he calls after me.

‘What?’ I stop and glare back at him.

‘Please don’t storm off like that. Can we talk for a minute?’

‘I’m going inside. Izzy should be in bed.’

‘I really do mean just for a minute.’

I sigh heavily and plod back towards him at his car.

‘Look …’ He pauses. ‘I’m sorry about all this. I will ask her over, but just not at the moment, okay?’

‘Whatever,’ I huff, maturely.

‘But, um … I did want to ask you something.’ He pauses again. ‘D’you mind if I take her away for a week—’

‘A week?’ I exclaim. ‘You mean a whole week?’

He nods. ‘Er … yeah. I haven’t mentioned it to her yet, obviously. I wanted to check with you first.’

‘Oh.’ I feel hollow. So this is what we do now, I realise; we take our daughter on separate holidays. Of course we do. What did I expect? ‘Well, um, yes. I suppose that’s okay. Where are you thinking of going?’

‘Just to Lewis and Nina’s. They’re having a bit of a gathering up there.’

‘A gathering for a whole week?’ Lewis is Andy’s youngest brother. He and his wife run an acclaimed restaurant perched on the shores of Loch Fyne. People often imagine that the Highlands are all about fish and chips and pie suppers, basically carbs dowsed with ketchup and vinegar, but The Nest is terribly chi-chi – all samphire and edible flowers served by bearded hipster types. As a family we’ve had many happy trips there over the years, staying at their pretty white cottage, and messing around with their rowing boat on the loch.

I try not to think about those blissful days as Andy goes on: ‘Remember they were building those chalets? Sorry, eco-lodges, I should say …’

‘Er, vaguely.’ Although I have to admit, I’ve had more pressing matters on my mind.

‘Well, they’re finally finished. The idea is, everyone’ll stay for the week and it’ll end with a big party in the restaurant.’

‘Everyone?’ My heart seems to twist.

‘Yeah, Mum and Dad and the whole rabble …’

With everything that’s happened, it hasn’t yet sunk in properly that my relationship with his parents will change dramatically. I’m extremely fond of them, and I know they are of me. But what will happen now?

‘Seems like Nina’s put a lot of effort into fitting them out,’ he goes on. ‘She’s had quilts made – bespoke quilts – and there are log-burning stoves and sheepskin rugs …’

‘It sounds amazing,’ I remark flatly.

‘Better than camping, anyhow,’ he rabbits on. ‘You know how bad the midges can be up there—’

‘Andy?’ I cut in.

‘Yes?’

Shit, I think I’m going to lose it now. ‘She’s not going with you, is she? To this gathering, I mean?’

‘What?’

‘You know who I mean. You’re not taking her, are you, on your family holiday with Izzy?’

‘Christ, no!’ he exclaims, looking aghast. ‘No, Viv, I promise you …’

‘If you were, I’d want to know.’

‘Of course she’s not coming,’ he says firmly. ‘We’ve agreed, haven’t we, that I’ll tell you when – if I feel it’s okay for them to meet. But that’s not happening anytime soon.’

Why not? I want to ask, conscious of my Penny-inspired bravado dwindling rapidly. Does a tiny part of you wonder if you’ve made a mistake? What made you want her anyway? Apart from her obvious beauty, intelligence, amazing career and impeccable dress sense, what caused you to choose her over your neurotic, perpetually worrying wife who works at the nerve centre of extruded snack pellets?

But I don’t ask these questions. I don’t ask anything at all. I just bark, ‘That’s fine. About the holiday, I mean.’ And I rub at my hot face as, blinking rapidly, I turn and march back to the house.

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