I buzz the door open and check my hair in the mirror. I may not stand a chance with Jason, our marriage may be well and truly dead in the water, our divorce a fact of life I have to live with every day, but I still want him to feel some regret, want him to look at me wistfully, see me at my best.
While Annie gathered her things, I surreptitiously ran to the bathroom and tidied myself up. Not too much, not enough for Annie to notice, although she’s thirteen: She notices everything. Primer to remove the shine and turn my skin into silk, a touch of bronzing powder that glimmers seductively on my cheekbones, a slick of gloss, my hair quickly brushed, then gathered up in a loose bun, tendrils hanging around my face, in just the way he always used to love. I pick up my reading glasses and put them on. I don’t really need them—in fact, they make everything slightly fuzzy—but Sam says I look like the sexiest librarian he’s ever seen in the glasses, so what the hell. Jason can see me looking like a sexy librarian, even if to me he’s just a blurry fuzz.
“Hey, Jason,” I say casually, picking up a stack of books, walking through the hallway and waving, as if he had just caught me unawares, as if I had no idea he was coming, as if I weren’t nervous at all, and yes, ashamed as I am to admit it, I am nervous. Always. Still.
He is still exactly, but exactly, my type. And his smile still has the ability to completely undo me. And I look at his hands and remember exactly what his hands used to do, how they used to make me feel, and I could cry with my own remorse and pain.
Jason is such a good guy. He has always been such a good guy. I sit around, frequently, with other forty-something women, and they talk of their husbands, or ex-husbands, with disdain, with derisive laughter; they talk of the excuses they come up with to avoid having sex, the holidays they would much rather take with their girlfriends, and I always find myself looking at them as if they are speaking another language, for it was never like this with Jason.
Even when I was drunk, it was never like this with Jason.
When I was drunk, I loved him more. The fact that his eyes registered his disappointment only made me want to comfort him, reassure him in my slurry way that it wasn’t his fault, that I was fine, that I still loved him, no matter what.
“Hi, Cat,” he says, awkward. Always awkward. It was fine between us for a while, after I made the amends. We had a few weeks where I actually started to think that maybe we weren’t dead in the water, maybe we had a chance. On Annie’s birthday the only thing she said she wanted was the two of us to take her to see Matilda and then dinner at Wagamama—finally a place she loved unreservedly.
We did, and it felt like a proper family, like we were all supposed to be together, in the way we were together when Annie was very small.
Annie spent the entire evening beaming, and even though she had turned thirteen, she walked along between us, holding our hands, constantly looking from one to the other as if she couldn’t believe that not only were we together, we were having fun.
And we were having fun. We loved the play, then slurped noodles and drank green tea and delighted Annie by telling funny stories about when she was a little girl, which she has heard a million times before but never gets tired of hearing, and it was actually a shock, at the end of the night, when Jason said good night and went home.
There was a moment, at the end of the night, when he had gone in to kiss Annie good night, as she had asked him to do, and I had offered Jason a coffee, and he hesitated, and our eyes held for just a few seconds longer than was probably necessary, and my heart jolted, and I thought he was going to kiss me. He didn’t. He left, but I was certain that look meant he still loved me, still felt something, and surely it was only going to be a matter of time.
It was only a matter of time before he announced he had met someone. Cara. I didn’t hear it from Jason but from Annie, who bounced home after a weekend with her father filled with excitement about this amazing woman who had spent most of the weekend with them.
When I say woman, that isn’t quite correct. Girl. Or girl-like. I learned, that Monday afternoon when Annie came home from school, that Cara is, oh lucky Cara, only twenty-nine! Twenty-nine! Practically a child! So much younger than Jason. She is blond! said Annie. And beautiful! Well, of course. And so much fun!
I knew it was serious from the outset because even though I’m quite sure she wasn’t the first girl Jason had gone out with, she was the first girl he had ever introduced to Annie, and not just introduced, spent the weekend with. Although she didn’t spend the night.
I asked.
But she met them at the Wolseley early Sunday morning for breakfast. And went boating on the Serpentine with them. And made them dinner on Sunday night, lasagna, which I never make because pasta, as far as I’m concerned, is nutritionally empty. Even if it is delicious.
It was clearly serious, and yes, I will admit to being sad. And disappointed. But I was also grateful that if Jason was going to have a girlfriend, at least it’s a girlfriend who’s nice to my daughter; at least she doesn’t have a potential evil stepmother to contend with. It was small consolation, but consolation nevertheless.
How wrong I was. What I didn’t see coming was Cara’s raging jealousy. It didn’t emerge for a while. The first time I met her I was going out and Jason had come to pick Annie up, so we all walked out together, and there she was, this very short blond woman in the front seat of Jason’s car.
Sober, I am always gracious, or at least I try to be, so I walked over with a big smile to introduce myself. She could barely look me in the eye. It was quite clear, in fact, that she wanted nothing to do with me, and as the relationship has progressed it is clear to me that she is the one who wears the trousers, and oh what demanding trousers they are.
Before Cara, Jason and I were becoming friends. We had had that lovely night at the theater, and then a few other nights, always with Annie as the excuse, but it was starting to feel hopeful.
Suddenly he stopped wanting to spend time with me, started making excuses. I would suggest something, but he was busy. After a little while I stopped suggesting we do things together, but then, if I asked him to take Annie on a night that wasn’t his, or babysit her, or show up to something at school, which had never, ever been a problem for him, suddenly he was unavailable. All the time.
It became clear that this had nothing to do with Jason, for Jason had always put his daughter before everything, but was about Cara wielding her insecurity through power, demanding he put her first, their relationship. It has put a tremendous wedge between us these past few months.
I hesitate in the doorway. If the poison dwarf—as I have secretly started to refer to her, but to Sam only; I would never let Annie hear—if the poison dwarf is waiting in the car, her usual sour expression on her face, Jason will be out of here quicker than you can say Snow White.
“Annie’s just getting her stuff,” I say. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“That would be lovely,” he says, and I almost drop my books in surprise. Clearly she’s not in the car.
I move the glasses up to the top of my head. I know I look good in them, but this is ridiculous, I’ll never find the bloody kettle, while Jason makes himself at home at the kitchen table.
This used to be our kitchen table. It is a scrubbed pine table my mum found at Alfie’s antique market and Jason and I stripped ourselves. It’s a bit eighties country, and not the sort of thing that’s very in right now—everyone I know has sleek modern maple-and-steel tables these days—but I love this. It feels like I’m sitting in an old farmhouse in the country, and I will never get rid of it.
I put the kettle on and turn to see Jason, his legs spread because they have never fit properly under the table, his hair messy in the way that I have always loved, and my heart turns over. I quickly walk outside into the corridor saying I’ll be back in a sec because I don’t want him to see the tears well up in my eyes.
Why did I throw this all away?
For a while, I blamed Jason. Why couldn’t he forgive me? Why was it such a big deal? He was the one to blame.
I don’t think that now.
Now I just wish things were different.
My friends say I’ll meet someone else, but all the dates I’ve been on were terrible. I show up terrified they’re going to think I’m awful, and invariably they’re the ones who end up wanting to see me again, with me coming up with every excuse in the book not to have to endure a whole evening listening to arrogance, or entitlement, or just plain dullness.
“Sorry.” I come back in the room and make the tea. “So how are you? What’s going on?”
“Nothing too exciting,” he says. “Busy, as usual. Work is crazy. You?”
“Pretty much the same. The usual interviews with women who are screwing up their lives.” I realize what I’ve said. “Clearly a subject I have much experience with.”
He has the grace to laugh, ruefully.
“And you’re going to meetings?” he says hopefully.
“Absolutely.” I had long ago found meetings he wouldn’t be at, women’s meetings where I was absolutely safe, didn’t run the risk of running into him, or having to endure cheap pickup lines, what we call the thirteenth step, from the less salubrious men in the program. “I finally get what the whole living in recovery thing is about.”
He nods, and I note the flash of sadness in his eyes, and I get it. Why couldn’t I get this before? Why wasn’t I able to do this when we were still married?
Or maybe it’s just projection. Maybe he’s not thinking that at all.
“How’s Cara?” I find myself blurting out to fill the awkward silence, instantly berating myself for being so bloody obvious.
“She’s good,” he says, and I wonder how on earth things got awkward between us, when they had been so good for so long. How is it that we are sitting here, like strangers, when we slept side by side for so many years, produced a daughter, lived and loved and laughed together?
“Daddy!” Annie bursts into the room, her dark curly hair flying behind her, her green eyes sparkling, all puppyish limbs on the brink of morphing into womanhood. Her entrance saves us both, lifting the energy to enable us both to pretend to be normal, to pretend that things are good.
“Sweet pea! Come on. We’re going out for dinner tonight. A new place in Notting Hill.”
“Great!” she says, coming over and putting her arms round me. My daughter, at thirteen, is entirely unpredictable. There are mornings when she comes into the kitchen with a black cloud over her face. Those days she barely speaks, uttering monosyllabic grunts, radiating contempt for everything and everyone in her life, and particularly, it seems, me.
Other days she is warm and sunny, her arms reaching around me for hugs, as they are now, and I could melt with love and gratitude at those times, my little girl still my little girl, able to forgive me for all I have done.
“Can I maybe keep her tonight?” Jason asks. “It might be late, and I thought it would be easier.”
I hesitate. I don’t particularly like last-minute changes, and I am not sure if Annie wants to go, for she isn’t always thrilled about sharing her father with Cara, but one look at her face and I see she does.
“Sure,” I say, giving her one last squeeze. “I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
They leave, the flat settling into the silence. In the old days, I would dread the silence, the times Annie would be with her father and I would be alone. After all those years of living by myself you would think I would have gotten used to my own company, but I was never entirely on my own when alcohol was involved.
Sober, without my daughter, without my husband, I had no idea who I was anymore. I had no idea what to do with myself without anyone around, without the ability to drown my fears in drink.
I became, in those early months, a television addict. I had never been a big telly watcher, but suddenly it became my salvation, allowing me the ability to lose myself by binge-watching an entire series, sometimes numerous series, without having to think about my life at all.
Whole weekends would pass with me lying on the sofa, consuming giant bowls of popcorn and endless cups of tea as I glued myself to the small screen. I had no idea how life should be, how to live a life. I just knew I needed to get through the days, one day at a time. I went to a lot of meetings, and met program friends, and tried to keep busy, but in my flat, on my own, it was the television set that saved me.
Today, things are different. I cook. I listen to the radio instead of the TV—plays on Radio 4, the show Desert Island Discs, which is the highlight of my week. I garden. I have a small garden but have discovered a love of planting things, the rigorous discipline of learning the Latin names of the plants I buy, learning what they need to survive. My happiest moments in the last eighteen months have largely been spent at Clifton Nurseries, where I can browse for hours, testing myself with my plant knowledge, daydreaming of the day I might have a garden big enough for everything.
I go out to the garden now, with a glass of iced tea. In the old days, it would have been a bottle of wine, but as long as I have something cold, I am fine.
I dug up the old paving stones that made the terrace, and created a Japanese zen garden with gravel, a water feature, and long exotic grasses. A large stone Buddha reminds me to be mindful, and even though I am not a Buddhist, not an anything other than a recovering alcoholic with faith in a Higher Power, I take enormous comfort in my serene, beautiful Buddha.
There are two wicker chairs out there, where Annie and I often sit with our books, where I try to meditate a few times a week, although I am still a work in progress. More often than not, just as I close my eyes to meditate, I will have spied a few weeds, and how can I possibly relax and meditate until I have pulled those weeds out, and nine times out of ten, before I know it, an hour of weeding later, I no longer have time to meditate because I have someplace to be.
Tonight I have no place to be. Tonight it is just me, with the evening stretching ahead of me. I put my drink down, take a few deep breaths, settle into the chair, and close my eyes, focusing only on the breath coming in through my nostrils, cool and sweet; going out, warm and soft.
And I feel hopeful that life can be good.