Our House(31)

No, no, I know you didn’t mean to offend. Let me answer your question this way: if a control freak gets up every morning to dress and feed her children (herself too, if she’s really on form), take them to school and head straight to the station to cram onto a commuter train to Victoria and then a tube to the West End; if, after working a full-on day, she then comes home and gets on with the kids’ reading, bath-and-bedtime routine (sometimes still with her coat on for the first part), segueing seamlessly into making dinner while unloading and reloading the dishwasher, her email open on the iPad on the counter or, every now and then, a friend propped nearby with a glass of wine because it’s so hard to catch up any other time, even though she gamely signs up for book groups and residents’ association and, yes, meetings with community police officers; if she finishes the evening by making the kids’ packed lunches for the next day and sorting out the recycling and putting the laundry on and ordering groceries online or birthday presents or whatever else needs finding or replacing that day; if she climbs into bed thinking her greatest achievement of the day has been not to scream at her children, not argue with her colleagues, not divorce her husband . . .

If that’s what a control freak does, then yes, I was one.


Bram, Word document

Rog Osborne and I used to joke that it was like the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds on Trinity Avenue, everything done along gender lines. (The kids went with the women, of course, unless it suited the Pink Ladies otherwise.)

Fi was Sandy through and through, blonde and wholesome and hardworking. Moral in a sweet, old-fashioned way. Totally on top of her assignments. I’d failed as her Danny long before we separated, long before I had my own greased-lightning moment behind the wheel and consigned us all to purgatory.


‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:13:01

It’s not that I lied to Polly, I really hadn’t intended getting involved with someone new. Burnt fingers, better things to think about, and all the rest of it. But intentions are a little more fluid than you think, I’ve found, and though it was true that I had no heart for the Gomorrah that was online dating, I did still have a heart – and other body parts.

I met Toby the old-fashioned way, in a bar, the bar of our local restaurant La Mouette, where Alison and I were marking my new Friday night availability at the expense of hers. Both of us were surprised by the place having grown so much livelier since our last visit that it now had need of a bouncer.

Neither I nor the guy waiting next to me at the bar was having any success catching the bartender’s eye.

‘I’ve done a bit of bar work in my time,’ he told me, ‘and I’m wondering if I should offer to help out.’

‘If you were female and over forty you’d be used to waiting,’ I said. As lines go, it was not one designed to seduce, but he grinned as if in agreement.

‘This place is crazy.’ He was grey-eyed, dark-browed, uncomplicated in style, younger than me by about the same number of years that Bram was older (impossible not to make comparisons, much as I set out to avoid them) and my impression was of someone unafraid to be direct when he needed to.

‘It’s not as bad as the Two Brewers,’ I said, and then, at his lack of recognition: ‘The pub at the other end of the Parade? You don’t live around here, then?’

‘No, Alder Rise is a bit swanky for me.’

‘Swanky? You make it sound like Beverly Hills or something.’ So conditioned was my small talk that I almost ran on as if I hadn’t heard him say he didn’t belong: the way house prices are going it might as well be Beverly Hills. Isn’t it awful how we’re all suddenly millionaires? People don’t get how trapped we feel! Plus there are suddenly all these crimes. Will that affect house prices, do you think?

But I caught myself and, in any case, he was skipping the property talk altogether to ask: ‘Here with your husband, are you?’

‘No. We’re divorcing.’ I was better-get-used-to-it breezy. ‘You?’

‘Been there. Few years ago now.’

So far so abbreviated. But the way he looked at me was full and uncompromising. (Was this how Bram was now looking at other women? Maybe even did before—? Stop.) ‘Where’s he now then?’ he asked. ‘Your ex?’

‘Still in the area. We share a house, actually. We have two sons.’

‘So you’ve split but you’re living together? How does that work?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s an unusual set-up. I won’t go into details.’

‘No, I’m interested.’

‘You don’t have to say that. Other people’s children, is there anything less interesting? Oh, two mojitos, please!’ By the time I turned back from the bartender, my new friend had his phone out.

‘Why don’t I call you some time.’ Not a question. And, in a way, that’s what caused the abrupt lurching sensation of desire, the self-confidence of him.

I gave him my number. ‘Fi,’ I added.

‘Toby.’

It wasn’t awkward, it was natural and that was why I didn’t fight it.

When I returned to our table with the drinks, Alison was laughing.

‘Well, you certainly have a type,’ she said.

‘We were just talking, Al.’

‘But he took your number!’

‘I neither confirm nor deny it,’ I said. ‘And you couldn’t be more wrong about my type. That guy’s easy and uncomplicated.’