Separate Lives (29 page)

“Actually, I know the people who used to live here—lovely couple with a little girl—but they sold the house a few months ago and the new owner isn't looking to live in it for the foreseeable; it's just an investment. They haven't done much to it, as it happens—just a lick of paint.” Karen paused. “It's actually quite odd seeing it empty; the last time I was here was over Christmas, for dinner. You'd be surprised how many people you can cram in it if you want to.”

I glanced around the kitchen, noting how well it was laid out: the all-important triangle between the cooker, the fridge and the bamboo-topped island.

“How much?”

“Nine hundred and fifty a month. That's a lot here, by the way, though I think I might be able to get it down for you. I have a feeling that money isn't a huge issue for the owner, that they'd rather somebody nice was living in it.”

“That's sweet of you.”

“Not all agents are tough as old boots and fixated on the bottom line. Some of us actually get more of a buzz from finding the right person for the right house, and vice versa. Personally, I'd take it like a shot. It has a happy vibe.”

“It does. It feels good. If you can get it nearer eight hundred and fifty, I'll take it.”

Karen smiled. “I'll see what I can do. In fact I'll see what I can do right now . . .” and she went upstairs with her phone.

“Ah, you see—there's not much of a mobile signal down here—that's got to be a potential deal-breaker, right?” I shouted after her. She laughed.

She was back downstairs within a couple of minutes.

“Sorted. All yours for eight hundred and seventy five. Nightmare not having a phone signal in the basement, especially when you work from home, right?”

“That's brilliant, Karen. Thank you so much.”

“No problem. My client is delighted we've let it so quickly. The terms of the lease are that we're responsible for all the maintenance issues. You've got a hands-off landlady, but we'll see you right. And anyway, I don't anticipate too many problems—the whole place was renovated over the last couple of years: new wiring, the works. I hope you and your family will be very happy here.”

“So do I. I think we might be . . .” It was my turn to pause. “. . . Eventually.”

“Divorced myself five years ago. It's never easy. But it gets better.”

“Yes, that's what they say. We'll see. And thank you again. This feels right.”

“Do you want to pop back to the office with me now and go through the paperwork?”

“School run beckons, I'm afraid. I'll swing by in the morning, if that's OK?”

“Fine by me, but call first, in case I'm on a viewing.”

“I will.”

“Tell you what—and I really shouldn't be doing this—but why don't you hang on to the keys and drop them back to me in the morning? Maybe you could show the kids after school? Or just come back this evening by yourself, bring a tape measure, get a feel for the place?”

So I did, but I didn't bring Lula and Chuck. Alex and I hadn't yet sat them down and had the “Mummy and Daddy love you very much but we don't love each other enough to stay in the same house anymore” conversation, or words
to that effect. Because I'd been reading some “how to help the children when you break up” style stuff online, and apparently you have to tell kids how much you love them and that it's not their fault, though I've never quite understood why they would think it was, to be honest. It didn't cross my mind for a moment that it was my fault when my parents broke up; it was very obviously theirs. But even without that conversation it seemed a bit much to present the children with their third new house in under a year without preparing them first. So I picked the kids up from school and then had a quick word with Alex, asking if he would be in that evening to babysit—I was nervous in my dealings with him these days—and when he said he would be, I told him I'd found a house and I needed to go and spend some time in it with a tape measure, to see if sofas would fit, that sort of thing.

“And what sofas do you think you're taking from my home, precisely?”

I hadn't really expected this. It was still our home, they were our sofas—we had two, plus a sofa-bed—and I would probably take only one because my new house was smaller than the Dream Home. Of course, I would be taking other stuff, too . . . beds, kitchenalia, books, pictures . . . I'd assumed that we'd sit down and have some sort of terribly civilized, very British conversation about the division of our “marital” hardware. Now, however, Alex obviously wanted to shore up his fragile emotional state with a ballast of
stuff
, so this could be tricky.

“Well, I really only need one. I thought the old Chesterfield would be fine. You've never loved it quite as much as I do.”

“No, you're right, but I seem to remember I paid for it.”

“OK. Well, I think you probably paid for all the sofas, if memory serves, but I definitely bought the fridge and the dining table and chairs and the rugs . . .”

“Well you can't take the fridge. You can have the dining table if you have to, but I need some rugs.”

“This isn't sounding like a negotiation, it's sounding like you laying down the law. Which is unfair.”

“You fuck up my life, Susie, you pay the price.”

“I'm sorry?” I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

“You heard me.”

“Yes, I heard you, but I don't understand what you're talking about. I didn't ‘fuck up your life'—we both fucked up our own lives, together. It usually takes two to fuck up a relationship and I take responsibility for the bits that I did fuck up. But you need to take responsibility for the bits you fucked up, too.”

My voice was rising now. I was desperate to keep things quiet, “for the sake of the children,” but it was almost impossible. This man I was living . . . no, cohabiting . . . with was scarily close to becoming the enemy. How did that happen? And how did it happen so fast? We had loved each other, for years. Where had all that love gone?

“I'm not having this conversation now. Go and see your house. I'll get the children's supper and put them to bed.”

“But . . .”

“Shut up, Susie. Go.”

“I'll just have a quick word with the kids, if that's OK?”

If that's OK
? I was asking their father's permission to speak to my children? What kind of madness was this?

“I'll speak to the children. I'll tell them you're . . . I dunno, seeing Harriet. But go. Now. I don't want you around here. You're driving me fucking mad.”

“I'm just going to grab a tape measure—”

“FUCK OFF!”

And you know what? I actually went. And I'd driven to Tesco Extra and bought a bloody tape measure before I realized that I hadn't, of course, measured the sofa, so I would have to measure the wall I thought it might fit against and then come home—home? Ha!—and measure the fucking sofa. And he thought
he
was going mad?

Maybe the signs were always there. Maybe I had just chosen not to notice that Alex was a bully. Or maybe he hadn't always been a bully? But that didn't seem to matter much because he sure as hell was a bully now. Even taking into account his father's sudden death and his wobbly employment status, this situation now seemed a great deal worse than I'd ever imagined it could be. I didn't have a blueprint for break-ups from long-term live-in relationships, but even if I had it wouldn't have looked like this.

At the house, early evening sunlight washed the as-yet-unmeasured walls of the sitting room. I sat on the white-painted floorboards, staring at light shafts playing against the cool gray of the chimneybreast, imagining the Venetian glass mirror against it, with invitations—to what? From who?—lined up along the mantelpiece and buttressed by Diptyque candles.

I sat on the floor for a very long time without moving, until the sun had dipped below the rooftops opposite and the room cooled. And with it my optimism about this womb-y little place. I loved the house, but I didn't love what it represented. I hadn't ever expected to be dancing a jig of joy when we moved in but I had hoped it would feel somehow right to be here. Now I wasn't so sure that I would feel “right” wherever we were. But this was a scary thought so I pushed it to
the back of my mind, rose to my feet and—finally—measured the bloody wall. The Chesterfield would probably be OK but I doubted there was room for a table next to it. Whatever.

Back “home,” just after 10 p.m., I found Alex in the kitchen, writing a list. When he handed it to me in silence it turned out to be an “inventory.”

I stared at this for an absurdly long time. For some reason I couldn't really “see” it properly. Then:

“That mirror is mine. You know it's mine. I had it before I met you. And you bought the posh bed for me when I was pregnant with Lula. And why do you get to keep the kids' beds when they'll mostly be with me?”

“Who says they'll mostly be with you? And I told the kids, by the way . . .”

“What? You told the kids
what
?”

“I told them you were leaving Daddy and taking them with you but that Daddy and Mummy, though Mummy's not here to say it right now, love them very, very much. There were a lot of tears, Susie. A
lot
.”

And it was my turn to pick up the nearest object—a full glass of red wine, as it happens—and throw it, hard. It hit the wall but only just missed Alex.

“You absolute fucking complete and utter bastard. You despicable low-life piece of
shit
.”

I gasped for breath, my heart racing so fast I thought I might actually faint.

“Pot-kettle-black, Susie. And sorry, but I'm afraid I'm definitely keeping that beautiful mirror you love so much. Or more accurately, I'm keeping what's left of it.”

I was lost for words. Alex was now smiling a terrifying sort of rictus-grin like something out of a horror movie—
Heeeeeeere's ALEX!
—so I turned on my heels and ran upstairs to the living room, where, as I'd anticipated, my beautiful mirror now lay on the floor, split into three pieces, with a
spider's web of cracks across the glass and shards all over the rug.
Alex's
rug.

So I carried on upstairs, to the children. Thankfully, whatever had happened earlier, Chuck was now fast asleep in his habitual pose, rumpled but relaxed-looking, flat on his back, arms flung out behind him on his pillow, but Lula's light was still on, her door ajar, so I tiptoed into the room, where I found her awake, staring at Cheryl Cole.

“Lula . . .”

She turned, appraised me for a moment in her usual, almost glacially composed way. Then she said: “Go away, Mummy. Just go away and leave me alone.”

It felt as though my heart had been ripped out of my body.

A week later, after seemingly endless, exhausting and circular conversations—with Alex, with the children, with Alex and the children—on the morning of the day that we, that is me, Lula and Chuck, moved out of the “Dream Home” and into the womb-y rental, I stopped by the letting agents to officially pick up the keys from Karen, despite the fact that I'd had one set all week.

“OK, the standing order's sorted, your deposit's cleared, everything's signed and counter-signed in triplicate, so you're good to go. Oh and there's this . . .”

Karen handed me a shoebox done up with masking tape. I must have looked puzzled. She shrugged.

“I'm assuming it's a bunch of guarantees and warranties and how-does-your-boiler-blow type boring paperwork. The owner asked me to pass it on to you. Like you probably haven't got enough boxes in your life already . . .”

“OK, one more for the pile. Thanks, Karen. I'm incredibly grateful for your help.”

“No problem. I promise you it gets easier. But before it does, I hope you'll be very happy in the house, all of you. It really suits you.”

“Thanks. And once I've bought a kettle please do swing by for a cuppa if you're passing. Seriously.”

“I might just do that. Take care.”

And what with one . . . no, thirty . . . things and another, such as unpacking and getting the bloody BT broadband up and running so I could send emails with my new address, I was spending a lot of time with the children, trying to mend things. Hearts, for example, not to mention a broken mirror. I was trying so hard to make our new domestic triangle the right sort of triangle.

After all of that, almost another week had passed before I bothered to open the box. Which, as Karen had predicted, contained precisely the kind of boring paperwork I could never be arsed to look at—that had always been Alex's domain—but which I supposed I would have to start to take on board, albeit reluctantly. But that wasn't all. Inside the shoebox was another box. Small, very posh, pink leather—blimey, it was Smythson—and inside that was an iPhone, and an envelope with my name—just “Susie”—written on it in what looked to be fountain pen.