17

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Marriage! It Smells, Tastes, Looks and Spreads Like Marriage, but It Just Isn’t

IT’S NOT ONLY doctors’ handwriting that is indecipherable. Their language is equally cryptic. When a physician is examining you and says, for example, ‘Hmmmmm,’ what that really means is that he has no bloody idea what the hell is wrong with you but whatever it is it’s disgusting.

‘That really is an interesting skin complaint’ decodes as ‘Excuse me while I go throw up my lunch.’

‘Nothing to worry about’ means you’ll be dead in two weeks.

And the old favourite, ‘There’s good news and there’s bad news’? Well, in Hugo’s case, the good news had to be that he was having an affair with a famous daytime TV soap diva. (Well, the symptoms were definitely pointing to that dismal diagnosis.) The bad news was that I was the one who was going to have to suffer for it.

Christmas and New Year I spent boldly going nowhere. Life had put me on hold. I know I vowed to give Hugo some emotional distance. But nobody had said anything about physical distance. As out of sight can be out of mind, I found a million reasons to discuss children, household insurance, storm gutters. I determined to make each contact pleasant. (Valium helped.) By smiling, laughing at his jokes and looking my most seductive (although, believe me, wearing a Wonder-bra is like volunteering for a car crash – it strangles your breath and crushes your ribcage), I hoped that he wouldn’t remember only the God-awful moments – and compare them unfavourably to the fabulous times he was having with her.

I was like Doris Day on acid. One morning I toasted my hand, spread strawberry jam on it and placed it on Julia’s plate. My bewildered nine-year-old suggested that perhaps it was time that I went back to work.

‘Oh, good idea, Julia,’ I said sarcastically. ‘So, tell me, do you think I’m too old for a paper round?’

Jamie provided the answer after serious consideration. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Do you really want to spend your entire childhood locked in your bedroom with only green vegetables to eat and educational TV?’ I snapped, as if competing for the Dysfunctional Mum of the Year award.

But as the winter squalls battered our Hampstead home, I convinced myself that we would weather the Britney storm. The clinic had been important to Hugo, sure, but he would soon realize that it wasn’t worth losing his marriage over.

When my spirits flagged, I reminded myself that I was making all this effort for the greater good – getting my man back where he belonged. I made an inventory of all the things I loved about him and recited them daily as a matrimonial mantra. We’d got each other through chickenpox, lost luggage, the death of relatives, the guinea-pig’s pneumonia, flat tyres, a brush with salmonella and a bomb scare. Yes, we’d been bacteria to each other, but also penicillin.

When Hugo didn’t make it for Christmas lunch (a surgical SOS as usual), Cal and Victoria began to lecture me stereophonically about the joys of living alone.

‘Why won’t you leave him, Lizzie? I mean, think of the money you could save on anti-depressants,’ Cal insisted.

‘I love him.’

‘But how do you know?’ Cal flumped down beside me on the wooden bench in the hall, from where we could watch the children disappearing up the stairs with the babysitter between their teeth.

‘Well … when he cuts his finger while grating the truffles, I wish it were me, you know?’

‘Oh, that’s gotta be love,’ Cal mocked, firing up a fag. ‘The point is, if your husband gets any more selfish, he’ll make a footnote of himself in a medical journal.’

‘We’ve been through so much … I didn’t even kill him during flat-pack furniture erection when we were first married – grounds for homicide normally.’ I tried to make light of things. ‘And, there’s the suntan lotion, there are parts of my back I just can’t reach … And we’ve just landscaped the garden …’

Victoria emerged from the kitchen, her crocodile-skin heels castaneting on the pine floors, her sharply tailored satin pant suit shimmering. ‘So, are you kicking the creep out?’

‘No,’ replied Cal, on my behalf. ‘They’re stayin’ together for the sake of the plants apparently.’

They both looked at me quizzically. It hadn’t come out right. Love is complicated. Even Einstein had never managed to explain it. ‘Look, I’ve saved my marriage. Aren’t you even going to look happy for me?’

‘Aren’t I looking happy?’ My sister prodded her frozen forehead, benumbed with botox.

‘Hello, I’m your sister,’ I extended my hand. ‘Lizzie McPhee. I don’t believe we’ve met. If you have any more “procedures”, Victoria, I’m no longer going to be able to pick you out in a crowd!’

‘Sven likes it … Where is he?’ She checked her watch. ‘He was supposed to pick me up hours ago.’

‘Why on earth do you want him so badly? Everyone he’s ever dated has ended up in rehab or a nunnery.’

‘Because the only job offer I’ve had this month is to advertise a cream for yeast infections on daytime TV. The chance of brokering this gig into a movie career looks as slim as Britney bloody Amore. Have you any idea what I’ve been reduced to? Belgrade catwalks, where some moronic designer whose collection is inspired by “negative space” and “airports” tells me to “be manly, butch, hot. It’s a jungle out there – but also lesbian”. The next day I’m told to walk a third of the way down the catwalk and then stop. Whinny. Stare at everyone, then go backstage. Ten years ago I was arriving at premières with Mick Jagger on one arm and a panther on a gold lead on the other. And now look at me!!!’ She shook me violently by the shoulders. ‘If he doesn’t marry me soon I am going to shoot myself, do-you-understand-me?’

My sister slid her pale arms into the satin lining of her raspberry coat sleeves. ‘Since Sven is obviously not planning to grace us with his presence, I’m leaving. Today has just been a total waste of makeup.’ She gave an elaborate sigh and then wove a sinuous trajectory around the kids’ bikes, skates and scooters to the front door.

I scanned Cal’s face for a flicker of tell-tale emotion. ‘How goes your love life?’ I probed.

‘On my good days I pray for death. Speaking of which, how tall are you, shug? I just need to know so that I can order your body-bag.’ Cal ground his butt into a pot plant. ‘’Cause this marriage is gonna kill you.’

‘Well, then, bury me in a herbaceous border somewhere. And, at the funeral, don’t let ’em play “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion.’

‘Good God, if only that woman had gone down with the Titanic.’ He sighed.

On New Year’s Day, when Hugo called my mobile to say he couldn’t make the family lunch at Richoux’s restaurant because of another emergency surgical procedure, my sister raised her crayoned brow like a dominatrix’s whip.

‘That just shows what a noble and good person he is,’ I said, defensively, ‘performing all this emergency surgery through the holidays.’

‘I’ve never heard butt-sag called an “emergency” before. Still, thank God all those self-sacrificing, philanthropic doctors who work in plastic surgery are there to help we women in our decade of need.’

I blinked neutrally. ‘He’s abandoning the Longevity Clinic.’

‘The clinic, you idiot, is a big success. Where do you think I’ve been getting all my procedures done recently?’ she announced.

Dismay skittered through my belly. ‘But … but I told him to choose between me and the clinic.’ A tiara of sweat beads adorned my brow. ‘In the end, I presumed he chose me.’

I was a glutton for punishment, I really was. I needed to join a psychological Weight-watchers to weigh up my excess emotions – yesterday two tantrums, the day before, three sulks; today, one nervous bloody breakdown.

With trembling hands, I lit up one of Victoria’s cigarettes. I hadn’t needed a smoke since my days as a foreign correspondent. Being married to Hugo Frazer MD I had, of late, found myself craving the peace and tranquillity I’d known caught in crossfire on the Gaza Strip. A French waiter swooped upon us. ‘Good afternoon. Would Madam prefer the smoking section?’ he asked, pointedly.

‘Actually, do you have a heroin-injecting, nervous-breakdown-having, suicide-while-you-wait section? Because that would do quite nicely thank you!’ I blurted, before shattering into hot, humiliated tears.

‘The Patient has no past history of attempted suicides but is constantly tearful. The patient refused a lobotomy … though suggested some serious drugs might help.’ Of course, the reason I didn’t need a lobotomy was that I already had one. It’s called a marriage certificate.