Separate Lives (4 page)

After the apparently endless Stones medley, which featured a bit too much air guitar for me (any air guitar being too much air guitar, frankly) and a mass outbreak of non-ironic lighter waving during Boston's “More Than a Feeling” (who knew so many people still had lighters?), it was time for a head-clearing perambulation around the garden. I was pissed enough to feel not-unhappy, but then the memory of this morning resurfaced and my heart sank, assisted by heavy sausages.

And then, sitting beside a willow smoking a surreptitious fag, I found Heinous.

“Hey,” she said. “I don't really smoke. I'm just a bit . . .”

“Stressed? I heard your rant into the phone earlier. Domestic?”

“More of a post-domestic, really. My ex, Jonathan—father of my daughter. Did I tell you I had a daughter?”

“No, what with getting stuck in the 1980s you neglected to. Also, I'm properly pissed. And sausaged. Very good sausages by the way.” I sat down, landing heavily on my (by now) Hussein Chalayan-clad arse.

“Thanks, we give good sausage. Yeah, my daughter, Edie. Same age as yours, give or take.”

“Really? Well, maybe . . .” (and I surprised myself with this one) “we should get them together? Let them nick each other's Lelli Kelly shoes, or something. It would be a shame to break the cycle.”

Heinous laughed. “I think that would be great. If you ever a fancy a daytrip down to Random-on-Sea . . .”

“You don't live in London?” I was slightly surprised. I assumed she did, but then I'm so London-centric I assume everybody does. “Where's Random-on-Sea?”

“South coast. Not Brighton. From London, it's down and left a bit, just before East Sussex peters out and Kent kicks in. Ass-end-of-nowhere and a bastard for travel links but we've been there five years now, since I left Jonathan, and it suits us. You get a lot of house for the price of a two-bed flat in ‘Media Vale.'”

“Sounds lovely. Really.” I meant it. “Look, I'd better go and do the family thing. It's been . . .” I scrambled to my feet and sort of hovered with my arms outstretched. “It's been good. It's been real.”

And this was the point in the evening when Heinous Harvey and I actually hugged, right there under a willow at Careless while The Moody Blues' Justin Hayward sang “Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore.”

“It pains me to admit it,” I said, “but you're OK. And I love your boots. And I'll stop now because I'm pissed and I don't actually have lesbian tendencies. Not that there's anything wrong with lesbian tendencies. They're great, possibly even enviable. I just don't have them. Sorry if that's a terrible disappointment.”

“I'm devastated, obviously,” Heinous deadpanned. “But the boots are by Georgina Goodman and I happen to know they're now on sale, reduced from a slightly challenging £595 to a not-entirely-unaffordable £245.”

And even as we both convulsed into hiccupy sixth-form giggles I wasn't so pissed that I didn't make a mental note to check out the boots online first thing Monday morning.
Or possibly second thing. Just after a nice big row. It was something to look forward to.

Inside the marquee, people were now slow-dancing in couples. I sat back down at our table and attempted to make eye-contact with Alex, who was deep—extremely and obliviously deep—in conversation with Guy. A wave of misery rolled over me as I sat next to my partner, yet entirely alone, when Jeff spun the slow-dance-from-hell, the song that could make even big girls cry—10cc's “I'm Not In Love.” After what felt like an eternity of eons but was probably only as long as it took to get to the end of the first verse, Alex turned to me.

“I'm going to sit this one out with Guy. We're talking. That's OK, isn't it.” It wasn't a question but a statement.

“Yeah.” I couldn't bear the fact that my eyes were watering. And I just hoped nobody could see. Or if they did that they were so drunk they'd mistake my duct-excretions for tears of 10cc-related joy.

A tap on my shoulder.

“Susie. The father of your children is clearly pressingly engaged. Dance?”

It was Will, whom, it occurred to me, I had never actually seen dance. Maybe it had been a Careless Whisper-style “I'm never going to dance again” situation after Marianne had died? Either way I nearly fell off my chair.

“Whoops. I hope you're better on the dance floor.” Will grinned as Alex nodded in assent, as though it had ever been sought.

“Yeah you go for it, bro. Just keep your hands off the missus's arse.” Alex was weirdly faux-cheery-to-the-power-of, but clearly distracted and instantly back in earnest sotto-voce conversation with Guy. I'd learned never to gate-crash the twin-thing.

Slow-dancing in public with Will meant I was forced to adopt a kind of close-but-not-too-close technique I'd never previously attempted. The way to pull it off seemed to be to do all the usual slow-dance moves with extra crotch-avoidance, while making small talk straight out of Austen. And then there was the fact that Will smelled of Creed's Green Irish Tweed, which was lovely but also confusing, because not only was it my favorite men's aftershave but also, rather wrongly, my father's favorite too.

“So, Will, I meant to ask you—where's Luke? I appreciate that Careless is the last place a cool eighteen-year-old male would want to be hanging on a Saturday night but I assumed there was a three-line whip?”

“There would have been, but he's up to his eyeballs in A-levels.”

“Of course, I'd forgotten, yeah. Poor Luke.” I wished I could be a bit more articulate but the situation was too distracting. Rather needily, I always wanted to impress Will with my wit and intelligence, though this was probably neither the time nor the place to do it.

“He already has a place at Oxford in theory, so after his exams he's off to Costa Rica with Operation Raleigh, during which he'll turn himself from a smart boy into a well-rounded young man.” Will paused, rolled his eyes. “With all that that entails.”

“South America? It's all red hot chili chicks and Class A's, surely?”

“Yeah, pretty much the perfect training for three years of PPE.”

Big boys don't cry
breathed the 10cc girl as “I'm Not In Love” shifted a musical gear from merely soppy to properly clinchy. My embarrassment was palpable.

“I get the feeling that us dancing to ‘I'm Not In Love' in front of the father of your children is possibly too big an ask? I can hardly blame you.” We pulled apart, relieving ourselves of the enforced intimacy—and relieved by our relief.

“That was nice. If wrong-feeling.”

“Well, maybe. But you looked like you wanted to dance. Come on, let's get you some air.”

“‘I can feel it coming in the air tonight' . . .”

I was singing Phil Collins. To Will. Shit. Nonetheless, I allowed myself to be gently steered out of the marquee and back down to the willows—fast becoming a place where surprising things could happen.

“Look, Susie. I asked you to dance because I wanted the chance for a quick word. And though I hadn't anticipated you'd be quite as pissed as you clearly are, I'm going to seize the moment anyway. So help me God. And the only reason I'm doing this is because you're you, and I care. You know I do.”

“I do know that. Yes.”

“And I don't want you to get hurt—or indeed to do any hurting because you've been hurt. And I'm almost certainly talking out of turn because I have had one, possibly even two glasses of wine, never mind the Pimm's. And I want you to know that whatever's going on with Alex—and it's pretty obvious something's going on—I think you shouldn't attempt to sweep it under the carpet but address it. As soon as possible. And that's about all I've got to say. At least that's all I'm able to say, here, now.”

“But?”

There were many questions jostling for my undivided attention simultaneously. Again.

“No ‘buts.' Not now. Just sort things out with Alex before it's—” He stopped short.

“Too late?”

“Yeah, OK. Too late.”

It was a bit too much, prompting an uninvited tear—a hot, fat, saline tear, the precursor, presumably, to many more, hotter, fatter, infinitely wetter and saltier tears. Will put an arm round my shoulder in an appropriately “chin-up, sis” kind of way while I sobbed a bit into his armpit. Then I pulled back, reached up on tiptoes and kissed him quickly—very quickly—on his stiff upper lip. Which was not very stiff at all.

“Thanks, Will. I hear you. Which also means I know that I need—no, not need, want—a drink.”

Back inside the marquee, I did have a drink. Possibly two. And then I stumbled the fifty yards to “our” quarters—the studio room over the stable-block-turned-garage, where Lula was already curled up on a sofa-bed alongside Charlie—and I slept right through the departing “Carriages at One” (minicabs by any other name) and then for another eight heavily dream-laden and unrefreshing hours.

Sunday morning arrived looking blurry. Thankfully the kids slept late (for kids) and Alex, who I presumed had come to bed at some point if only because there was a dent on his pillow, had already left the building. I was slightly surprised—and heartened—by the fact that on the bedside table there was a glass of water and a sachet of Resolve. Thoughtful. Suspiciously so? Or was I now just programmed to be suspicious? It could just have been kindness laced with a dash of self-interest. After all, a Susie with a sore head was always going to be less of an attractive proposition on a Sunday morning than, say, a Susie with a sore head that was becoming marginally less sore.

When I emerged from the shower with last night's mascara panda-ing my eyes, the kids were awake.

“Hi. Big night, eh? Fun?” I could just about do chirpy, though preferably monosyllabically.

“Where's Chloe, Mum?” said Lula, yawning and stretching; a Pixar lion cub. “And what happened to your eyes?”

“OK, my eyes demonstrate the fact that when you are a grown-up and have been to a party and had a whole glass of wine, you must always remember to remove your makeup. It's an important life lesson for all females.” Lula looked suitably bemused. “I expect Isobel, Chloe and Jack were sleeping in Isobel's old room, so why don't you go and look for them? I'm sure those posh pajamas from Grandma Joan are acceptable attire before noon.”

In a streak of candy-striped cotton, Lula disappeared, though a thumb-sucking Chuck was less easily persuaded out of bed.

“Come on, Small. Bet there's bacon butties.”

I carried him down the stairs, negotiated the gravel in my bare feet and entered the kitchen through the back door, to be confronted by a sitcom's-worth of Foxes and the aroma of upscale frying. Inside the “Careless Cafe” Joan was in charge of bacon, Guy was toasting, Alex was on coffee duty, Isobel was arranging condiments, Will was washing up and Nigel was wearing a novelty apron that said “How can you help? GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!” and beaming the smile of a man who had been married for fifty years and was miraculously still both compos and mentis.

“Ah, Susie. Charlie. You're here. Butties?”

And I felt a kind of sharp stab somewhere in my chest, albeit more of a metaphorical stab than an actual physical pain, and I knew it was because I was both moved by the
familial warmth and sheer coziness of the domestic scene unfolding in front of me and yet also somehow disconnected from it. In that moment I felt quite clearly that one of the reasons—perhaps even, in retrospect, the most compelling reason—I had wanted to accept Alex's proposal nine years ago was that marriage would give me instant all-areas access to a proper family, one that seemed, to all intents, and at least from the outside, to be convincingly functional. It was at times like this that I felt both very privileged to belong and, weirdly, almost entirely alienated. Half in, half out. Story of my life.

All through my only-childhood I'd been obsessed by notions of family and had gravitated to books in which siblings interacted in slightly baffling yet thrilling ways, sucking up stories of brothers and sisters who did stuff together, who fought and fell out and then found each other again. Using children's fiction as a template I probably grew up with a pretty warped perspective on what constituted A Family (fifty percent
The Chronicles of Narnia
, fifty percent
Little Women
) but it was also a very potent one. My parents had both emigrated from Australia in the early 1960s, as groovy middle-class Australians of the era were wont to do, and their eyes had met over a tray of Lamingtons in the flat of another Earl's Court émigré, so being a three-person family with no close relatives nearby we were a tight little unit, forever on the outside of other people's parties, looking in.

When I was seven my parents split up. And that my advertising copywriter father, Derek, ran off with his secretary is a source of eternal disappointment, if only because—and this is nothing to do with the secretary, Cathy, of whom I was, and remain, properly fond—it was the single
unimaginative act of a man whose imagination had made his fortune. Anyway this was the point when the family triangle—our impenetrable little pyramid—was irreparably broken. After that we were no longer A Family, just three individuals trying to find our way and bumping into each other occasionally en route.

After the split I lived with Pauline, my mum, seeing Dad every other weekend. By the time I was eleven Mum had met my soon-to-be-stepfather, another divorced Aussie (not to mention the first Australian I'd met who was actually called Bruce) and the two of them started planning a return “home.” I was invited, of course, but it was a no-brainer: Pauline and Bruce were planning to live in a country “town” (one pub and a petrol station, apparently) while I had spent my entire life a ten-minute drive from Selfridges.

When Mum and Bruce finally left for Australia the week after my fourteenth birthday, I moved in to Dad and Cathy's St. John's Wood townhouse. Dad had worked hard to turn a spare bedroom into a cool 1980s girl-den, installing an entirely impractical but massively desirable white wool carpet and painting the walls egg-yolk yellow. Gone were the 1970s brown-on-brown-with-accents-of-beige Laura Ashley print curtains of my old bedroom, replaced by “funky” blinds decorated with big red poppies. On one wall I had a long set of shelves already loaded with books, a pine dressing table-cum-chest of drawers next to the bed and a free-standing pine wardrobe. This sophisto-teen universe was set off by a yellow corduroy modular sofa beneath the shelves and, within minutes, my walls were Blu-tacked with pictures culled from the pages of
The Face
and
Smash Hits
. On the day I moved in, there, waiting for
me on my sofa, was a pair of red and white Converse-style high top roller skates with orange Kryptonic wheels, from Slick Willies in Kensington High Street. Obviously I didn't have the heart to say that I was already over roller skating, an obsession of the previous two years, and was infinitely more excited by the girl-heaven that was my own en-suite bathroom, in which I could (and did) fail to remove eye makeup at my leisure.