You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?)

  You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex

  (Can You?)

  Sophie Ranald

  You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) © Sophie Ranald 2015

  All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical (including but not limited to: the internet, photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system), without prior permission in writing from the author and/or publisher.

  The moral right of Sophie Ranald as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  For Jassy and Dion, with very best sisterly love

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  “Shit,” I whispered to Jonathan. “The buggers have packed Green Rabbit. They must have done. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find him.”

  I looked helplessly around us at the piles of dun-coloured cardboard boxes, all securely and immaculately taped shut, and the even larger pile of tea chests, their tops locked. Even as I spoke, the movers were beginning to carry our belongings out to the waiting van. Somewhere, buried beneath a pile of folded bedding, maybe, or lost within a heap of toys, was my son’s beloved comfort object, without which a horrendous meltdown, featuring uncontrollable wailing and rivers of tears and snot, was guaranteed. And Owen would be inconsolable, too.

  I was feeling pretty fragile anyway. My ankle hurt from endless trips up and down the stairs. My final, frantic decluttering session the previous night had led to the unwise conclusion that there was no point packing and moving two bottles of gin and one of vodka that were nearly finished, so I’d improvised and drunk a couple of rounds of vesper martinis while I prowled through the bare, forlorn rooms of our flat, wondering too late whether this move was going to prove a terrible mistake, and my head hurt too.

  “For God’s sake, Laura,” my husband said. “Why didn’t you… Never mind. There’s no point rowing over it. Don’t say anything to him; he might not notice until we’re on our way.”

  But he’d reckoned without our daughter’s uncanny ability to overhear conversations not meant for her five-year-old ears, and her newly discovered power to make her little brother cry.

  “Owen!” her voice rang out over the sound of the removal van’s engine idling by the front door. “Owen! Mummy’s lost Green Rabbit! She thinks he’s in a box. Poor Green Rabbit, shut up in the dark. And he might not even be there. He might have been taken to the charity shop by mistake.”

  “Darcey!” I tried my best to sound calm yet firm, but I heard my voice rising to a shriek as Owen started to sob. “How many times do I have to tell you that it’s not nice to be unkind to your brother? And it’s not true, darling. I’m sure Green Rabbit is perfectly safe.”

  Owen wailed, “I want Green Rabbit! I want him now!”

  I picked him up from the car seat where we’d strapped him half an hour before with the distraction of my normally off-limits iPad, to prevent him unpacking and unwrapping even faster than the relentlessly efficient movers could pack and wrap.

  “Darling, shhh,” I soothed, but his cries increased in volume, and his legs hammered against my thighs. “We’ll find him, I promise. As soon as we get to the new house, we’ll unpack your room first and there he’ll be.”

  I thought of my master spreadsheet, planned to the last box, with meticulous details of what boxes were to be opened in what order. So much for that – for the two-and-a-half years of his life, Owen had succumbed reluctantly to sleep only thanks to the soothing presence of the ever-tattier neon green plush toy. The platoon of tasteful John Lewis teddies, the adorable smiley monkey his aunt Sadie had given him for his first birthday, the cuddly hippo Jonathan had brought back from a business trip to South Africa – all had been shunned in favour of his precious bunny.

  I stroked his blond head, but he ducked away from my caress and yelled even louder, fighting to escape.

  “Find him, Daddy!” he commanded.

  Darcey watched, biting her thumb, looking as if she might be about to cry too as she realised the extent of the carnage she’d caused.

  “Now, come on, Sausage,” Jonathan said. “You know what rabbits do if they get a fright? They jump into a hole and wait until it’s safe to come out. Green Rabbit’s hiding in one of the boxes where it’s quiet and dark. He’s quite happy. And tonight, in your new bed, there he’ll be for you to cuddle. Promise.”

  Owen’s cries abated for a second.

  “And look what Mummy’s got here,” Jonathan said, rummaging in my handbag. “Chocolate buttons! Who’d like a chocolate button?”

  “Me!” I lied. “And I bet Darcey would too, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? And Daddy. Are there enough for Owen to have one too?”

  Owen hiccupped and stretched out a grubby hand. “Me!” he said, his trauma for the moment forgotten.

  I blew a grateful kiss to Jonathan, wiped Owen’s nose with a soggy tissue extracted from my jeans pocket, and parked him back in the buggy, where he began to savour his treat, smearing chocolate over his face, fingers and clothes with fierce concentration.

  I looked again at the moving spreadsheet on my phone.

  “Have you put the box with the chargers in the car? And the overnight bags?”

  “All sorted,” Jonathan said. “And the kettle and stuff. We should be good to go in half an hour.”

  “And my crusader costume,” Darcey said. “You said I could wear my crusader costume when I sleep in my new bed, didn’t you, Mummy? In case there are dragons? You promised.”

  “There won’t be dragons in Battersea,” I said automatically, for the thousandth time. “Not in our house, anyway. But if there were any, I know you’d protect us all, because you’re such a brave girl.”

  And Darcey wasn’t the only one who was going to need to be a brave girl, I reflected. In spite of all the time I’d had to steel myself for the new life that awaited me, I still didn’t feel quite ready for it.

  Six months before, we’d completed our purchase of what the estate agents described as ‘a delightful family home, with endless potential for improvement’ and moved into a rented flat while the builders moved into our new house to begin the process of gutting and extending it. A week later, I was made redundant from my job at Flashpoint Communications. And that same day, in a freak coincidence, Jonathan learned that he’d been made a partner in the financial consulting firm where he’d worked since leaving university. Which made me feel just great, of course.

  I’d been sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, having just managed to stop crying, when he arrived back at the flat, which I was just beginning to think of as home, bearing a bottle of Krug from the off-licence, and said we needed to talk.

  For a moment I’d wondered if he was going to tell me he was having an affair, and I was going to lose him as well as my job. But even the most c
allous of cheating husbands wouldn’t drop that particular bombshell over a glass of fizz, and Jonathan wasn’t callous at all – nor could I imagine him ever cheating.

  Jonathan, my sister Sadie once said, is the Ikea dinner service of husbands. Pleasant to look at without being flashy, dependable, able to withstand the rigours of family life. I like to think that’s what Sadie meant, anyway; it’s possible she meant something quite different.

  “Can we sit down and have a chat?” Jonathan said, easing the cork out of the bottle with his usual quiet competence.

  “I think we need to,” I said.

  Then he told me his news, and I told him mine.

  “But don’t you see, Laura,” he said. “It’s actually perfect timing. I mean, I know you’re gutted, but it’s not like you loved working there, really, did you?”

  “Well, no,” I admitted. It was true – God knows I’d whinged extensively to him over the years about the unreasonableness of my boss, the irrational demands of our clients, the difficulty of juggling a full-time job with two small children and a husband who worked longer hours than I did, for considerably more money, and therefore couldn’t be summoned at the eleventh hour to do nursery pick-ups because I was having a crisis over a staff newsletter deadline.

  “And we’ll be far better off now, even without you working,” Jonathan said. “You’ll be able to keep the builders on track, which will be practically a full-time job anyway, and once we move you’ll be there for Darcey while she settles into her new school. And then you can look for another job, if you want to – but we might decide it’s better for you to be at home for the kids, because I suspect my hours are going to be even more crazy than they are now. It’s perfect timing.”

  Reluctantly, I found myself admitting that he had a point. It was often the way with my husband – when he decided he wanted something, the world seemed to organise itself to fall in with his plans, and, incredibly, the world never seemed to mind. Trains ran on time when Jonathan was on them. When we were buying the house and the estate agent turned flaky and refused to answer my calls for a week, all it took was one polite email from Jonathan to get them to reply with a full update and a fulsome apology. Even Jonathan’s suggestion that it might be time to try for another baby, because three years was the perfect age gap, had resulted in Owen turning up nine months later to the day.

  “Are you getting hungry?” Jonathan asked. “I am, I’m starving. Why don’t we order a takeaway? Thai or Indian?”

  “Whatever you want,” I said. “Either’s fine with me. I’m not that hungry, I had some chips earlier with the children.” This wasn’t strictly true, but Jonathan didn’t need to know that.

  While he rang the Everest Inn, I scraped the last few peas and cherry tomatoes off the children’s plates into the compost caddy and poured myself a glass of water. I went and checked on the children, silently opening Darcey’s door then Owen’s, tucking Darcey’s duvet over her feet and picking Green Rabbit off the floor so he’d be on Owen’s pillow if he woke in the night.

  The flat was silent, apart from Radio 6 Music playing softly in the kitchen. I sat on the sofa, resting my chin on my knees, and listened. Jonathan was humming along to a jazz saxophone, slightly off key as always. A radiator ticked. Darcey cried out in her sleep and I lifted my head, ready to go to her if she needed me. But she didn’t make another sound.

  This was it – this calm, this night-time peace that meant the end of another day, another day added on to the end of the end of ten years. Ten years – more or less, not actually to the day, because neither of us can remember the exact date we met – since I’d begun to realise that, in Jonathan, I’d found something I’d never expected to want. Ten years of weaving a web of security, strand by strand, that joined us first to each other, then to the first house we’d bought together, then to Darcey and Owen.

  You nailed it, Laura, I told myself. Back when you were twenty-two, you thought your life was fucked beyond repair. But it wasn’t. Well, it was fucked – but it was fixable. And now look at you. You’re thirty-five, and you’ve got it all sorted. A house thirty seconds from one of the best primary schools in London, which eventually won’t be a building site. Two gorgeous children. A husband you adore, who has just had a shiny new promotion.

  I made myself breathe slowly and evenly, in and out, in and out, and felt my shoulders relax. We hadn’t had a row – that was good. Jonathan and I almost never rowed, and when we did – even though we’d talk things all over calmly and sensibly afterwards – it left me with a sense of unease that lasted days. I’d give Jonathan my full support in his new job, I promised myself. I’d chivvy the builders and choose paint colours and design a kitchen worthy of Ideal Home magazine, even though I never cook. I’d love being a stay-at-home mum. I’d take them to museums, pantomimes and – no, not soft play. I drew the line at that.

  The crash of the door knocker startled me, and I waited anxiously for a few minutes to check that it hadn’t woken the children. Then I stood up and padded to the kitchen to find Jonathan.

  “They brought extra garlic naan and pickles,” he said. “I’ve no idea why, but I didn’t say no.”

  “Of course you know why,” I said. “It’s your irresistible charm, and the fact that you always tip outrageously.”

  “Come on – it’s not outrageous! Poor guy, having to drive around in the pissing rain and getting paid minimum wage if he’s lucky.”

  I slid my hand up under his shirt tails, which were hanging unevenly over his belt, stroking the smooth skin of his waist.

  “Not outrageous at all,” I said.

  “God, Laura, your hands are freezing.” He pressed my fingers between his warm, dry palms, then lifted them and kissed my wrists, his lips running gently down towards my elbows.

  “Let’s eat,” he said. “Then let’s go to bed.”

  Later, as I lay next to my husband’s warm, sleeping body, I became conscious of an unwelcome and lingering sensation that wasn’t just indigestion from the curry. I felt as if I’d somehow been out-manoeuvred, manipulated by circumstances into a place where I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be.

  Chapter 2

  “Is your daughter the new little girl who started in Delphine’s class last week?” a woman asked, falling into step next to me as I walked away from the classroom where I’d left Darcey.

  To be honest, I felt more like the new girl than my daughter seemed to. She set off each morning full of excitement about her day at school, while I dreaded the curious stares the other mums directed at me from beneath their immaculately shaped eyebrows.

  Most of them seemed to dress for the school run as if it were a significant social event, requiring full make-up, swishy blow-dries and high heels. And even among this glossy gaggle, this woman and her friends stood out – there was their uniform of skinny jeans, cashmere jumpers and Mulberry handbags. There was the way they chatted to one another, slightly too loudly, then suddenly very quietly again, with outbursts of laughter. There was the way the other women looked at them with a mixture of resentment and envy. In my leggings and T-shirt, which, I noticed with shame, was smeared with banana from Owen’s breakfast, I felt shabby and inadequate.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’m Laura Payne. We’ve just moved here from Ealing.”

  “Amanda Moss.” She offered a perfectly manicured hand for me to shake. “Settling in all right?”

  “I think so. The house renovation was a nightmare, but it’s great to be in at last.”

  “Oh – so it was you who bought twenty-three Millhouse Road,” she said. There was a subtle change in her manner – a hint of respect that hadn’t been there before. “Congratulations! I heard there was a massive bidding war.”

  “Not really,” I said, knowing she was itching for me to tell her how much we’d paid. “There might have been a couple of other offers. I can’t quite remember.”

  “On your way to work now, then?” she asked, with a slightly pointed glance at my shabby attir
e.

  “I’m not working at the moment,” I said. “I’ve been a housewife for the past few months. Literally – it’s felt like I’ve been married to the place. I’ve certainly spent more time with the builders than with my husband.”

  “And what does he do? Your hubby, I mean?”

  I told her, and she gave the smallest of nods, as if I’d passed some sort of test.

  “You’ll be wanting to get to know people in the area, of course,” she said. “Why not come along to our book group? It’s just a small group of mums who meet at each other’s houses, read a different book every month and have something to eat and a few drinkies. It’ll help you to get to know people.”

  This was my moment, I realised – my chance to break into the school gate A-list. Somehow, I didn’t feel as honoured at the prospect as I was clearly expected to, but, put on the spot, I couldn’t come up with an excuse that was even vaguely plausible. Anyway, Amanda was right, I supposed, I did need to get to know the mothers of the friends Darcey would hopefully make, now that she’d been torn away from her old school and the fledgling network of party inviters and play-date havers we’d begun to develop there.

  And my own social circle was limited, to say the least. When I was working, I’d occasionally go to the pub with my colleagues, but more often than not I’d have to bow out because Jonathan was working. The few women I’d met through NCT classes and nursery were the parents of my children’s friends, not my own. Apart from Sadie, who rang for a chat once a week.

  Sadie’s eleven years older than me, and although my mother never said as much, I’m pretty sure she and Dad had intended to stop at one child. By the time I came along, their marriage was a bit like the Cold War – complex negotiations followed by long silences, and the threat hanging over us all the time that it could all go bang.

  Sadie, understandably, left home as soon as she finished school, and soon after that she met Gareth, and the two of them have lived in happy chaos on their smallholding in the Cotswolds ever since, surrounded by chickens, ducks, horses and an assortment of cats and dogs.