Sorrow and Bliss(48)

*

Sometimes, during the day, I sat in the front window of the Executive Home and stared at the facing Executive Home, trying to imagine myself inside it, living a mirror image version of my exact life.

The actual woman who lived there at the time had boy-girl twins and a husband who was, according to the magnetic signs that he pressed onto his car doors in the morning and peeled off at night, The Chiropractor Who Comes To You.

One day she knocked on the door and apologised for not coming over sooner. We were wearing the same top and when she noticed and laughed, I saw she had adult braces. While she was talking, I imagined what it would be like to be her friend. If we would visit each other without texting, if we would drink wine in each other’s kitchens or outside in our gardens, if I would tell her about my life and she would be forthcoming about a childhood in which braces were not possible.

She said she hadn’t noticed any children and asked what I did. I told her I was a writer. She said she actually had a blog, and blushed telling me the name of it. It was mostly funny observations about life, and recipes, and she said I obviously didn’t need to read it.

The main thing: what did I think of the house? I said oh my gosh, like we were friends who have been talking for an hour and have finally got to the good part. ‘I feel like I’ve been in a dissociative fugue since we drove in the gates.’ I told her I had only lived in London and Paris and wasn’t sure I’d known places like this really existed. ‘Are we supposed to believe it’s Regency Bath, despite the satellite dishes?’ I was talking too fast by then because Patrick was the only person I had spoken to for a period of days but I thought I was being interesting and funny from the way she was smiling and furiously nodding. ‘I’ve come home about ten times and not been able to get the door open and then I realise I’m standing in front of the wrong house.’ I made a joke about the enervating nature of taupe carpet and said finally, on the positive side, if she happened to own fifteen thousand appliances with unusual plugs and ever wanted to use them all at once, she was welcome to run an extension cord over the pretend-cobbled street. Her smile was suddenly gone. She did a little cough and said it was probably good we were just renting and went back to her own house.

I didn’t understand why she went to extreme lengths to avoid eye contact with me after that, until I recounted the conversation to Patrick who pointed out that if she owned her house and loved it, she might have been a bit upset to hear an identical house described as soul-crushing.

I found her blog. It was called Living the Cul-De-Sac Life and there was a picture of our house or hers at the top. Since we were not going to be friends, I was disappointed that she was a good writer and that her funny observations were funny. I began reading it every day. To begin with, in search of references to myself and then, because she was writing the mirror-image version of my life, the one where my vacuum cleaner cupboard is on the left, and I have boy-girl twins and a husband who gets home around eight most nights, so I generally eat at five with the kids and I swear, this is the conversation we have every. single. night.

*Looks at plate of dinner on top of microwave*

Post-it stuck on it says ‘your dinner’

Him: Is this my dinner?

Me: Yes

Should I heat it up?

Yes

Long pause

How long for?

When did he stop being an adult with life skills?!

*

I got a letter from the library, forwarded by our tenants. It asked me for the Ian McEwan back and ￡92.90 in compound fines. Because there was no money in Martha’s Unexpecteds at the time, I rang up and told them that unfortunately Martha Friel was a registered missing person, but if she was ever found, I would ask her about the book.

*

I started going to the allotment with Patrick sometimes on weekends, on the proviso that I didn’t have to help. I said, ‘aka, she died doing what he loved.’ He bought a folding chair and a shed to keep it in so I could sit, reading or watching him, with my feet on a dead tree trunk that demarcated our failing carrots from the thriving carrots of our neighbour. Once, while he was doing something with a hoe that still had the cardboard tag around the handle, I lowered my book and said that I knew it would be expensive if they charged by the word but this is what I would like on my headstone: ‘It’s Cold Comfort Farm. Someone has just asked the main girl what she likes and she says: I wasn’t quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn’t think at all funny, and going for country walks and not being asked to express opinions about things like love, and isn’t so-and-so peculiar.’

He said, ‘Martha, expressing opinions about peculiar people is the only thing you care about. And you never ever need to be asked.’

*

In December, I got a part-time job at the Bodleian Library gift shop selling mugs and keyrings and branded tote bags to tourists because it meant I could spend eight hours sitting on a stool mostly not talking.

A woman wearing a souvenir sweatshirt came in and I watched her put a gift pack of pencils up her sleeve. When she came up to the counter to pay for something else, I asked if she’d like the pencils gift-wrapped as well. I told her it was complimentary. She turned red and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. She said she no longer wanted what she had put on the counter. As she turned to walk away I said, ‘Only five shoplifting days left ’til Christmas,’ and stayed sitting on my stool.