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

  “A bit like that,” I said. “And, I know this sounds stupid and pretentious, but there’s a saying that dancers die twice: once when they stop dancing, and then again, obviously, when they actually die. So I was kind of mourning that, too, because I’d never thought my career would end the way it did. And I thought, when I met Felix again, that I could somehow get my old life back.”

  “And so you fucked him, and fucked up our marriage, and forgot all about our children, because you were pissed off about not being a ballet dancer any more. Jesus, Laura.” He shook his head. He was looking at me with utter contempt.

  “Jonathan, I didn’t. Please believe me. I’m not proud of what I did – I was unfaithful in my heart, and that’s a terrible thing to have done. And I kissed him, and that’s terrible too. And I didn’t tell you what was going on. But that was all. I promise.”

  “That’s enough for me to be going on with,” Jonathan said. “What you’re telling me, Laura, is that I’m not enough for you. Our marriage isn’t giving you what you want. So, fine – I suggest you go off and get whatever it is you do want. And I hope you know what that is, because I don’t.”

  I stared silently at the kitten, who’d fallen asleep on Darcey’s tablet, curled up in a ball with her nose tucked under her tail. I felt blindsided by shock and shame – put like that, what I’d done was unforgivable. Clearly Jonathan wasn’t going to forgive me. The scene I’d imagined – me telling him the truth about what had happened and saying I was sorry, him listening and understanding and us moving forward, reunited and stronger, wasn’t going to happen. I remembered Roddy’s advice from long ago: kiss and make up, then put it behind you. It hadn’t worked with Felix then and it wasn’t working with Jonathan now.

  Jonathan had his mobile out and was tapping the screen.

  “My cab’s on its way,” he said. “Two minutes. Anything else you want to say to me before I go?”

  There was – there was so much. That I was sorry. That I hadn’t wanted to hurt him. And things I wanted desperately to ask, too – was this it? Was this the end of our marriage? What should I tell the children? When would we see him again? But the constriction in my throat had tightened so I couldn’t speak.

  “We both need time to think,” Jonathan said, less harshly. “Tell the kids I’m away with work – God knows I have been often enough lately. They’ll hardly notice I’m gone. And I’ll call you after the weekend and we’ll sort out what to do next.”

  I nodded mutely. Jonathan’s phone buzzed and he said, “Cab’s here. Goodnight, Laura.”

  He didn’t kiss me goodbye. He put his jacket on and left the room, and I heard the wheels of his suitcase rattling over the wooden floor, then the slam of the front door. He hadn’t even unpacked, I realised – he’d made up his mind to leave before I’d said anything. He would have gone anyway. It felt so horribly unfair that I started to cry, heaving sobs of guilt and self-pity. Felix hadn’t listened to me when I told him the truth, all those years ago, and now Jonathan wouldn’t believe me, either. Before I’d even been able to explain, he’d jumped to the worst possible conclusion and decided what he was going to do about it. He hadn’t even given me a chance to tell him I loved him. I might as well not have talked to him at all.

  The kitten woke up and looked at me quizzically, then came over and sniffed my nose with hers. A tear landed on it and she started away, sneezing. It was so comical I started to giggle through my tears.

  “Oh Elsa,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re here, anyway, you daft little thing. What are we going to do, though? What the hell are we going to do? I brought you here under false pretences. You thought you were going to be a family cat and now we aren’t a family any more.”

  I imagined what my future would be like. Saying goodbye to the children one night a week and every other weekend. Seeing them go off to their Daddy, the hurt and confusion they’d go through as they adjusted. They would adjust, of course – children of divorced parents did, like Sadie and I had. And when Jonathan met someone else – which he would do, really soon – they’d adjust to that too. They’d probably even call her Mummy.

  And me? Would I be with Felix?

  The thought filled me with horror. I couldn’t be with Felix – not now, not any more, not ever again. He could have been a dalliance, a brief flirtation with my past, but I didn’t want that and neither did he. I was different now – I was a mother with two children and a husband I’d loved and trusted until I’d fucked it up by doing something that broke his trust in me. Felix had wanted to recapture the romance we had when we were young. That was all I’d wanted too, really. The whole thing had been an illusion, a game, a scene from a play. I wanted Jonathan – I wanted my husband back, and now it was too late.

  My phone rang, startling me out of my reverie and making the kitten jump too. Please, God, let that be Jonathan, I prayed. Let him have changed his mind and be coming home again.

  I rummaged in my handbag and, of course, the second my fingers found the phone, it stopped ringing. I checked my missed calls – Zé. She hardly ever rang me – she texted or sent me messages on Facebook. There must be something wrong.

  When I called back, she answered straight away.

  “Hi, it’s me. Sorry I missed your —”

  “Are you back from New York?” she asked, without preamble.

  “Yes, we got back the other day. I’ve been staying with my sister. Is everything okay?”

  “Can I come over?” she said. “I need to talk to someone.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I could do with some company too.”

  “I’ll be there in five.”

  I put another bottle of wine in the fridge. The way she sounded, we were going to need it.

  Her appearance when I opened the door shocked me as much as Jonathan’s had done. She was wearing a tracksuit and no make-up, and she looked pale, distressed and much older. I could see she’d been crying, and when she saw me she started to again, and so did I. I wrapped her in a hug, took her through to the kitchen and poured drinks for both of us.

  “What’s happened, lovely?” I said. “What is it? Is there anything I can do?”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do,” she said. “I just needed to talk to someone. I’m so sorry to invade like this.”

  “Don’t be mad,” I said. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong. Is Juniper okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s asleep. Carmen’s there. I may as well make the most of her while I can.”

  “Is it Rick, then?”

  She nodded, and a succession of nightmare scenarios flashed through my mind. Another woman? But Zé had told me she’d suspected for ages that Rick wasn’t faithful, and chosen to turn a blind eye. Could he be ill? Diagnosed with some dreadful disease?

  Before I could speculate further, she said, “He’s been arrested.”

  “Oh my God. Is it a mistake? Sometimes that happens,” I said, trying to think of an example to reassure her and failing.

  “It’s not a mistake,” she said. “They’ve got him bang to rights. The stupid, stupid bastard. And I’m stupid too. I had no idea. Literally no idea at all that he was…”

  She fumbled in her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Do you mind? I’ll go outside if you like.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” I said. “I’ll join you, if you can spare one.”

  She ripped the cellophane off the pack and tried to open it, but her hands were shaking so much that she tore the cardboard flap. I took the pack gently from her, extracted two fags and lit them.

  “Sorry,” she said. “My Mum always used to quote some guy who said watching a woman open a pack of cigarettes is like watching a lioness opening an antelope. Who was it, I wonder? Misogynist dick. But he had a point.”

  I laughed, feeling the nicotine rush to my brain. Even with her own life falling apart around her, Zé had a way of making me feel better about things.

  “So what happened?” I said.

 
“It’s been going on for months,” she said. “Years, probably. I just didn’t see it – all those nights when he was ‘working late’ and I knew he wasn’t really, and I thought there was another woman and I just didn’t give a shit. I wish I’d called him out on it, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t be bothered, as long as I had my nice easy life. I’ve only got myself to blame.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Of course this isn’t your fault. You mustn’t even think that way.”

  I found a saucer for us to use as an ashtray and passed Zé the roll of paper towels to blow her nose.

  “He was gambling,” she said. “That’s what he was doing all along when he told me he was working. Online and in private members’ clubs and even on those fucking high-stakes terminals in betting shops. He lost more than a million pounds, Laura. He stole from the firm and pissed it all away.”

  “He stole from the firm? How?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I’m so thick, I don’t understand stuff like that, and he won’t tell me. He’s just denying everything. But he’s been sacked, and the police came this afternoon and arrested him. He’s going to go to prison, Laura. I know he is. And I hope he fucking rots there, because we’re going to lose everything. He borrowed against the house, too. I looked at our bank statements after they’d taken him away. There’s debt everywhere, so much of it. I’m so frightened, Laura. What are me and Juniper going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I put my hand over hers. Her fingers were icy cold.

  “I just let it happen,” she said. “I never asked him about work, about where he was – I just turned a blind eye and carried on with my life. I never even thought about the future – I just assumed that we’d carry on like this indefinitely, and if he ever did up and leave me for someone else, I’d take him to the cleaners and carry on as normal, without him. I even thought it would be better that way.”

  “But maybe it will,” I said. “You’ve got a chance for a fresh start. You’re so clever and amazing, and Rick wasn’t making you happy. Anyone could see that.”

  “But a fresh start where, Laura?” She took a gulp of wine and lit another fag. It took her three tries before she could get the flame in the right place. “The house will go. Carmen will have to go. We’ll end up in some horrible temporary accommodation and I’ll have to find a job, and I’m totally unemployable. All I know how to do is be a rich man’s wife.”

  “But you worked as a journalist,” I said. “And your blog…”

  “Is just a hobby to get me free clothes,” she said bitterly. “I haven’t worked for ten years. I thought I’d never have to again. I thought the rest of my life was going to be sessions with my personal trainer and going for manicures.”

  I said, “Let me talk to Jonathan. He’ll know what happened with Rick at work, anyway. Once you’ve got all the facts, it’ll be easier to decide what to do next. Nothing will happen for ages, anyway, will it?”

  “I’m meeting Rick’s lawyer tomorrow,” she said. “Apparently he’s shit-hot and gets people off who’ve done far worse things. But shit-hot means expensive, and there’s no money to pay him. Where is Jonathan, anyway?”

  I thought about pouring out the sorry story of my own stupidity, Jonathan’s anger and his coldness, how he’d walked out with his bag two hours before and I didn’t know if he’d ever come back. I wanted to confess to her everything I’d done with Felix. But her own problems were so huge and frightening – it would be unfair to add to them by making her worry about me.

  “Away with work,” I said. “But I’ll talk to him as soon as I can, I promise.”

  “Thanks, Laura,” she said. “God, what a mess. I suppose I’d better go home and try and get some sleep. I’m meeting the lawyer at stupid o’clock tomorrow – Carmen will stay with Juniper. I haven’t told her what’s going on, poor girl. And I’m going to have to tell Juniper, too.”

  The thought made her start to cry again. By the time she’d stopped, and we’d finished the wine and almost all the cigarettes and evicted the kitten, who’d fallen asleep in her handbag, and hugged each other goodnight, it was after midnight.

  But I didn’t go to sleep. I switched on my laptop and found my CV, which I hadn’t looked at for more than six years. It was time to update it now – time to start thinking about the future. If it wasn’t going to contain Jonathan, I was going to have to find a way to manage on my own. I couldn’t just wait for him to see the truth – I needed to take charge of my own life and the children’s. It was time to stop sleepwalking through my life, time to stop dreaming, however alluring and seductive my dreams had been. I was going to have to make a plan, and it would need to be a good one.

  Chapter 22

  “Ouch! Bloody hell, those claws of yours might be tiny but they’re sharp, Elsa.”

  The kitten’s pounce on my toes, which I’d unwisely allowed to poke out from under the duvet, jerked me from sleep. I sat up, groggy with hangover and feeling none of the determined optimism I’d managed to summon up the night before. A glance out of the window told me that there’d be no fun outdoor activities with the children – grey sheets of rain were battering the pavement and I could hear minor tidal waves swooshing up from the tyres of every passing car.

  Not bothering to get dressed, I went downstairs in search of coffee and managed to drink two cups before the children woke up. I’d definitely ruled myself out of contention for any good parenting awards anyway, so we spent the day on the sofa together, Owen watching CBeebies and Darcey and me playing with the kitten. We found an app that made little fish swim around the tablet screen, and Elsa was transfixed, batting it with her paws, whiskers bristling with frustration.

  I’d like to say that we moved on to a plethora of stimulating and fun rainy-day activities over the next two days. I wish I could claim that we made a tent under the kitchen table, or baked biscuits, or went outside and splashed in puddles. But we did none of those things – like I say, in the parenting league table, I was precisely bottom. Even at the best of times, the kids liked nothing better than slumping in front of screens, and it was about all I had the will for too. And besides, I wanted us to be there, if Jonathan came home.

  But he didn’t. He didn’t even call. All that weekend, we didn’t leave the house. We lived on cereal and takeaways and watched mindless crap on YouTube. The rain fell, and we waited.

  By Monday, even the kitten had cabin fever. The kids were beginning to complain of being bored (when I say “beginning”, they’d been whining about it intermittently since Saturday night) and I was going out of my mind with the need to see something beyond the walls of our house. For the first time since we’d left New York, I blow-dried my hair properly, put on make-up, and dressed in something that wasn’t pyjamas. I made cheese on toast for our lunch, but Owen announced that he wasn’t hungry.

  “Do you want something else? Cereal? Banana?”

  “Ice cream,” he said.

  “You can’t have… Oh, all right,” I said, conceding defeat and opening the freezer. But we were out of ice cream. We were, in fact, out of just about everything except a bag of peas buried under a mountain of frost, a chicken carcass that had been there for months waiting for Jonathan to turn it into stock, and one lone fish finger in a squashed cardboard box.

  “I want ice cream,” Owen demanded.

  “There isn’t any, sweetie,” I said. “Look – you can see there isn’t.”

  “Yoghurt,” he said.

  I sighed. “There isn’t any of that, either. We’re going to have to go to the supermarket.”

  “I don’t want to,” Darcey said. “It’s so boring.”

  “I know it is,” I said. “I feel your pain, Pickle. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is drag the two of you round Waitrose, but it’s that or starve.”

  “I want Daddy,” Owen said. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “Daddy’s working,” I said. “He’ll be home in a couple of days, and maybe he’ll take you to M
cDonald’s.”

  “I want Daddy now,” Owen said, starting to cry.

  I picked him up and tried to cuddle him, but he was having none of it, his feet thudding against my thighs, his entire body rigid with rage. He could probably sense that all was not well, I thought, a fresh wave of guilt and misery battering me. My poor babies – how many more days and nights would there be when they wanted their father and he wasn’t there? And how many years did I have ahead of me, coping alone with the house, the children and a job if I eventually managed to find one?

  Owen was still yelling when my phone rang. I prayed it would be Jonathan, but it was Amanda.

  “Oh dear, someone sounds cross,” she said.

  “Just a bit,” I said. “Actually we’re all going a bit crazy. This rain!”

  “It’s like bloody Groundhog Day over here too,” Amanda said. “That’s why I was ringing. I’ve given in to the relentless demands for soft play, and I was wondering if you wanted to join us?”

  “I’d love to,” I said, crossing my fingers, “but I’ve realised we’re absolutely out of food and down to our last roll of loo paper, so I really need to do a supermarket run. Is there any chance you could…?”

  “Believe me, any distraction right now will be welcomed with open arms,” Amanda said. “Drop the kids off here and go and do your shopping. I’ll take care of them. Hopefully not by drowning the lot of them in the Thames.”

  She sounded surprisingly human, I reflected, bundling Owen and Darcey into their macs and heading out into the street. If even Amanda, the model parent, was going crazy with school-holiday inertia, I could feel a bit better about my own laxness.

  We hurried through the drizzle to Amanda’s house, and it wasn’t without a certain sense of relief that I handed the children over.

  “I’ll drop them back off at yours around five, okay?” she said.

  “Fantastic,” I said, thrusting two twenty pound notes at her. “Let me know if that doesn’t cover whatever you do. Take them to a Michelin-starred restaurant, casino, whatever, it’s fine.”