It’s 6.30 a.m. when there’s a knock on my door. While Polly tries to evict Horst, her German lodger, I’ve temporarily holed up at my grandmother’s mansion flat, in deepest St John’s Wood. Why do old people get up so early? If I was old, I’d sleep till noon and then sit around all day in my pyjamas eating Maltesers and watching black and white films.
‘Good morning, my darling,’ she says, spryly crossing the room to fling open the curtains. ‘I’ve brought you a nice cup of tea. Look what a divine day it is!’
It is a beautiful day, sunny and clear. Even so, I can’t help wishing that it was stormy and wet. Selfish though it is, I want my frustration and pain to be reflected outside of myself. ‘Thanks, Gran,’ I say, reaching for it, my irritation at the alarm call swiftly subsumed by affection for her. I’m much closer to her than my mum, who’s utterly different from me. Gran’s got enormous spirit, regularly cleaning up at the local bridge club, and always ready with a story from her floozyish days during the war. When we were kids, my little brother and I were regularly sent to stay with our grandparents while our activist parents went off to fight for some cause far more deserving than us. Dan and I used to love the normality they provided, the perfect antidote to the radicalism of our home life, which invariably rendered us the school freaks. Like the time we came back from the Christmas holidays and innocently told our classmates that our dad’s gift to our mum was a dinky pair of padded handcuffs. We knew it was just to make being chained to the perimeter fence of Greenham Common that bit more comfortable, but the world at large thought we were the progeny of sex perverts. In those days, our outcast status bonded us, but since Dan’s set about reinventing himself as Daily Mail man, complete with the world’s most dreary wife and some disturbingly fascistic views on the benefit system, we’ve lost that connection.
Gran leaves, and I lie in bed for a while, trying to summon up the strength to face the day. I feel utterly desolate right now. I really can’t work out what I’ve gained by leaving; instead there’s just an enormous Adam‐shaped hole blown through the centre of my life. But how could I have said yes, feeling like I do? And once marriage got slapped on the table, there was no discernable route back to where we were before.
I try to cheer myself up by working out what I’ve learnt from the situation:
1. If your break‐up is sudden, think very carefully about what you take with you. Pack in haste, repent at leisure. Adam abandoned me at the hotel, leaving me with only my weekend bag. As I can’t yet face the prospect of seeing him, all I have in the world right now is some agonizing lacy knickers, a pair of wellington boots, an evening dress and a copy of The Kite Runner. I know I should read it, but I just don’t want to.
2. Which brings me to point two. You may think that a copy of Hello will cheer you up, but when Ulrika Jonsson’s love life starts looking more successful than your own you know you’ve hit rock bottom.
3. Do not, under any circs, tune the radio to Melancholic FM. If you’re sobbing along to Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin singing ‘Separate Lives’, applauding the profundity of the lyrics, you’ve definitely tipped over the edge.
I eventually force myself out of bed, arriving at the office to be greeted by an enormous bouquet of roses. I work on what might be the least glamorous magazine this side of Rodent Weekly. Casual Chic is written for a very specific kind of woman. She’s too old to read Elle, too mumsy to read Vogue and too self‐deluded and aspirational to admit that what she’d really like to buy is Heat. Within its glossy pages she will find ‘Fifty ways with a cherry tomato’ juxtaposed with ‘Impotence: why no marriage is safe’. Originally I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, but I took a wrong turning somewhere around 1999.
The office is ruthlessly commanded by the mothers’ mafia: without offspring you count for nothing around here. Right now they’re circling the extravagant flowers like curious orcs. Jocasta – mother to Percy and Agnes – is the leader of the pack (since when did it become compulsory for all middle‐class children to sound like octogenarians?).
‘Oh, Anna, they’re beautiful,’ she coos. ‘He’s going to propose any minute now, I can feel it in my bones!’
I haven’t yet found the strength to tell them. And the stream of flowers that Adam’s been sending have provided a pretty great red herring.
‘Fingers crossed!’ I stutter nervously.
I can’t bear to either suffer the sympathy or do battle with their world view. After all, why wouldn’t the pinnacle of achievement be eliciting a proposal from someone, anyone?
‘Is there something you’re not telling us, Anna?’ asks Tabitha, a whey‐faced mother of twins who edits the interiors section. Oh God, is it that obvious I’m lying? Perhaps I should just come clean.
‘No, I mean…’
Jocasta can hardly contain her excitement. ‘He’s already asked, hasn’t he? I can tell!’
‘Sort of…’ I can’t bear this. I feel like I’m going to start blubbing, right here in the middle of the office. ‘Look, I can’t talk about it right now, but as soon as there’s any more news you’ll be the first to know.’
And with that, I feign blushing embarrassment and cross to my desk. Luckily I haven’t got to endure their scrutiny for too long as I’m spending the week out of the office supervising make‐overs. Bored, obese housewives from Huddersfield are whisked down to London to be transformed by a highly dubious ‘team of experts’. I call Adam from the taxi, en route to the studio.
‘Adam, please, I know you’re hurting, but I can’t bear this. It’s making it even harder than it already is.’
‘I’m not going to just stand by and let you throw ten years away like it was meaningless.’
‘Of course it’s not meaningless! When did I say it was meaningless?’
‘Why can’t you appreciate what we’ve got? Other people would kill to have a relationship like ours.’
‘But there’s something wrong, Adam, something that’s just not there any more.’
I hate my own vagueness. So much of what I feel is indefinable, and what isn’t would crush him to nothing.
‘You’re making a mistake, Anna, a pretty fucking monumental mistake actually. You might think you’re going to meet this magical man, who’s going to sweep you off your feet and make everything suddenly brilliant, but you’re wrong. Nothing will ever be good enough for you, it’s just the way you are.’
This is even worse than I thought it would be.
‘I’m going to go – this isn’t helping either of us.’
‘This can’t be it, Anna, I’m telling you that right now.’
I hang up, shaking. I can’t bear how much pain I’ve inflicted on him, the snarling monster I’ve turned him into. And what if he’s right? What if some part of me is too bitter and gnarled to open myself up to making a real connection with someone? I take a drag on an imaginary stress‐busting cigarette (it’s been five years, a girl can dream) and force myself not to spiral into panic. I have to stay calm and keep believing that I’m going to find something that feels more right in the dim and distant future when I’m ready.
The ‘experts’ (or rather the hags, as I affectionately call them) are already gathered in the studio when I arrive. All three of them are fiftyish and Northern, with deep, unnatural tans and smoker’s coughs. They are the last people on earth you would entrust your physical appearance to if you had any common sense. Doreen, the chief hag, immediately starts tugging at my bedraggled curls, very much the worse for wear after four days without my hair straighteners.
‘What’s happened to you, love? You’re all tangled up!’
That is so exactly how I feel, all tangled and knotted and chaotic, that I immediately well up. Soon she and Michael (the fag hag) are plying me with HobNobs and prising the whole sorry tale out of me. The tea and sympathy does the trick as, professionally speaking, the day’s an unqualified success. The willing victims are put in hideously unflattering outfits and plastered with so much make‐up that they wouldn’t look out of place in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Nevertheless, they all seem bizarrely delighted with the results and I return to north London with something close to a spring in my step.
Gran’s got an inevitable gin and tonic on the go, and immediately sets about mixing one for me. She shakes some Twiglets into a bowl, laying them on the table with a jaunty flourish.
‘Karen’s been on the phone, but I said I’d let you tell her all the gory details yourself.’
Our parents never let us call them mum and dad: they considered it far too hierarchical. Instead they were good old ‘Karen and Greg’, a couple of mates who just happened to have conceived us. This was actually more weird than fun. I found myself secretly wondering if they actually wanted to be parents, or were just making the best of an unfortunate accident.
‘Did she? I’ll ring her back,’ I say vaguely. I love Karen, but talking to her always makes me feel like I’m failing at some invisible test I don’t yet know the rules to. ‘Have you heard from Henry today?’ I ask.
Henry is eighty‐six, an old codger in Gran’s book. Four years makes a big difference in your eighties, kind of like it does when you’re a teenager. Then you’re worried that they’ll pressurize you for sex, whereas by Gran’s age you’re worried they’ll pressurize you for 24‐hour nursing care.
‘Not a peep. I must admit I’m frightfully relieved.’
Henry lived near Granny and Grandpa when they were in their thirties and had young families. Granddad died four years ago, at which point Henry called up out of the blue. Now he’s claiming that he’s been in love with Gran since the 1950s, despite having had a perfectly good wife for most of the intervening years. It’s entirely understandable – with a little help from a bottle, her hair remains the same ash blonde it’s always been, and her outfits are nothing short of immaculate – but she’s determined that her romantic days are long since over. Luckily Henry’s far too decrepit to get down on one knee, so thus far he’s been spared the heartbreak of rejection.
We have our dinner, eaten at the table with actual silver, and settle down in front of 24. Having been in the Intelligence Corps in the war, Gran’s got oddly macho taste in television. She’d rather poke her eyes out with a stick than watch Last of the Summer Wine. ‘What do you think he does when he needs to spend a penny?’ she asks matter‐of‐factly as Jack Bauer scales a skyscraper in search of a particularly murderous terrorist.
All in all this isn’t so bad. Maybe I should just stay here, living the urban high life with my crazy geriatric flatmate. But of course she can’t resist picking the scab.
‘Darling,’ she starts.
‘Yes,’ I mutter, knowing what’s coming.
‘Are you absolutely sure about this? You know I love having you here, but you really need to think about what you want in the long term. By your age I was married, I’d had three children. I know it’s different for your generation, with your smart jobs and your flexible mortgages, but it won’t stop you being lonely.’
Oh God, the L word. She’s on a roll now.
‘You’re thirty‐two, Anna. Please don’t leave it too late. If you don’t marry this chap, you have to think seriously about who’s left.’
‘Don’t say it like that, Gran. When I feel ready to start dating, there’ll be plenty of men around.’ Yeah, right. Who am I trying to kid?
‘Yes, but what kind of men? By now, all that’s available are divorcees. Or I suppose you could have a child with a gay. I believe that’s what a lot of career women do these days.’
‘A gay?! What kind of statement is that? I really, really don’t need this.’
‘Please don’t get angry with me, Anna.’ She sounds almost stern now. ‘I understand far more of what you’re going through than you realize. But when I was your age we didn’t question all the time, we just accepted what we had.’
By now the stress of the last few days, or months, is flooding through my system and my face is an attractive mass of snot and tears.
‘Gran, sometimes there comes a point where you have to choose whether to stick or twist. Well, this is me twisting, and maybe that’s wrong, but it’s what I’ve decided.’
She softens a little, puts her arm round me.
‘Anna, darling, don’t be offended, but do you think it might be an idea for me to freeze your eggs for Christmas? I’ve been reading up on it, and it’s really quite a straightforward procedure.’
I’m weirdly touched, but as gifts go, it sounds even less festive than the handcuffs. And anyway, it’s clearly the wrong religious festival. At least if it was Easter there’d be some kind of twisted logic to it.
I know she means well, but I also know that this isn’t going to work out. So I swiftly retreat to my room, where I pack my bags in preparation for throwing myself on Polly’s mercy.