A couples’ triathlon?
I’m washing my hair that night.
Ha ha. What about driving down to Southend and taking a jog along the seafront?
Maybe. But only if we get fish ’n’ chips!
There had been two more Couch to 5k meet-ups since Frankie and Hugh had snogged by the car park (she could only make alternate Sundays – she was going again tomorrow) and they had kissed goodbye – very energetically – both times. It was becoming a lovely habit. She’d got over her complete astonishment at it happening, that first time, and now expected it and looked forward to it. It was fun.
In between snogging meet-ups, they texted a lot. Hugh was pressing her to go on a date with him, but so far, Frankie had resisted. Despite her eagerness to give him her number, once she’d really given it some thought, she’d decided she was reluctant. She’d only recently got rid of Rob and wasn’t sure if she wanted a boyfriend or any kind of new man. She was happy to kiss Hugh – really happy – and enjoy their textual flirting, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready for more. She relished the periods of time to fantasise about him; if she went on a date with him those fantasies might disappear in a puff of smoke. She really didn’t want another Rob.
Hugh was keen and persistent. This morning he was trying to pin her down to a day and time. They’d been volleying texts between them like tennis balls since eight a.m. and it was now quarter past ten. His text speak was appalling and he used lots of horrible things like ‘gr8’ and ‘TTFN’ and far too many ‘lol’s, but he was fairly amusing and he wanted to go out with her, and that made her feel good. Thinking about their delectably infrequent, frantic kissing at the edge of the car park made her feel really good.
She grinned as another text came through. Oh. It was from Rob.
Harry forgot his homework.
Oh no! Can’t he do it when he gets home tomorrow?
He said it’ll be too late. It’s maths. I can help him with it. You’re useless.
Thanks! Can’t you print it off the internet?
No. He needs his textbook.
Ah, okay.
Can you bring it over? You can see where I live.
Frankie stared at the text. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see where he lived. Rob’s flat, house, home, place, pad whatever. It would be a bit weird. How long had he lived there now? Three months? Where he lived was now a world apart, his place had nothing to do with her.
A text from Hugh arrived:
We can do fish ’n’ chips. Then a 2k run to burn it off ;)
She sent a quick reply.
I’ll think about it. Got to go out now. Speak to you later x
She put a kiss because she felt bad, but she had to think about whether or not she would go to Rob’s flat. She had often wondered what it was like. It was strange and often horrible not to know where her children were sleeping every other weekend. She couldn’t picture them there, asleep at night, and it was weird. Their bedrooms, their pillows, their duvets. They were unknowns and she didn’t like it.
She’d cried last night, actually, out of nowhere and into her pillow, panicked that she couldn’t picture Alice’s face because she was unable to visualise her sleeping. She’d had to get out of bed and fetch the photo she had of all four of her children, from her dressing table. She’d examined them all. Traced over their faces with her finger. Perhaps she should go and see their bedrooms at Rob’s. Witness where they spent all that time. And, if she really admitted it to herself, she did have the tiniest, tiniest desire to go and have a nose at his flat.
Okay. Text me the address. The lady will help me find it.
Rob would know what she meant. The ‘lady’ was the satnav lady. Frankie liked to talk back to her, thank her for her instructions and call her a ‘dozy bint’ if she sent them the wrong way. She’d once forgotten her satnav (it was one of those stick-on ones) when driving Josh to a camp at Mersea, and Rob, at work, had looked up the route on Google Maps and spoken to her on loudspeaker as she drove, in satnav lady’s lilting Irish accent. It had been really funny.
As she pulled up outside a new-build row of terraces, featuring four storeys of windows with little balconies, she could see why Rob had chosen to live here. It was walking distance from an Asda and right up his street: quiet, clean and with no work needing doing to anything. Rob had been pushing for a new build when they’d moved to their house in New Primrose Road. He thought one would be less ‘grief’, as he’d put it. He’d been over-ruled; Frankie had wanted a rambling doer-upper and she’d got it. On the other hand, he’d made her move not far enough away from her parents, so it was a kind of payback.
Rob’s own parents had lived in an ancient, ramshackle farmhouse, up until his dad died and his mum moved into sheltered housing. It had constantly needed work doing to it, work that Rob was often roped into helping with, even as a kid. He was painting bannister spindles by the age of ten and regrouting by thirteen. When he grew up, he dreamed of owning a brand spanking new place that needed zero work: uPVC windows that never needed painting; walls that didn’t crack in the same places every year no matter how carefully they were filled in; rooms that were warm, but Frankie had come across the 1930s house in central Chelmsford, Rob’s required area, and thought it perfect. She liked a period feature, a tiled fireplace and a dado rail or two; she was partial to large rooms, good ceiling heights and a garden that was larger than a handkerchief. She persuaded Rob that it had the space and potential they needed and he spent the next two years with a power tool or a paintbrush in his hand.
He hadn’t always been a lazy git, thought Frankie ruefully, as she got out of the car. At one time, he’d made a real effort. He’d worked really hard on their house. So, where had it all gone wrong? she wondered. At what point exactly had he turned into an idle, good-for-nothing slob?
Rob loved Chelmsford. He loved living there. He always declared that he was a Chelmsford Man. Strictly speaking, though, he wasn’t. The ramshackle farmhouse he grew up in was in Danbury, a village five miles away. He and Frankie had met in the village, at The Ram pub and restaurant. She’d been on a girls’ night out, with work; he was out for a family dinner with his mum and sister. They’d seen each other at the bar, when he’d let her get served first, and later, she’d literally bumped into him in the narrow beamed corridor as they were both coming out of the toilets. Romantic!
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he’d said.
‘Yes.’ She’d laughed. He looked nice. Jeans, a short-sleeved shirt. Short, fair, curlyish hair. Not fat, not skinny. Cute.
As they’d passed each other, he’d turned and called back to her. ‘We’re going on into town tonight,’ he’d said. ‘Well, me and my sister Beth are – I don’t think my mum can be persuaded.’ He laughed, showing all his teeth. ‘I know this is a bit cheeky, but I’ll be in The Schooner if you fancy it.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
She didn’t know if the girls would be going into town after the meal or not, but by the time they’d polished off dessert and the last of the seven bottles of red, Frankie definitely was. She’d been glancing at Schooner man, over at the other side of the restaurant. He’d been laughing a lot. His mum and sister were laughing a lot, too. He left the restaurant at half ten. By eleven o’clock Frankie was drunk enough to call a taxi for herself and head into Chelmsford.
Rob was alone at the bar of The Schooner and the rest, as they say, was history. A whole lot of history.
His modern, low-maintenance flat was on the top floor. Frankie supposed Rob would have to buzz her in, but a girl in a denim jacket was heading in through the heavy glazed door in the centre of the block so she skipped in behind her, into a stark white communal hall. There was a pushbike there – wasn’t there always, in these places? It wasn’t Rob’s. His was still in the garage at home, flanked up against the wall next to the kit car.
She went up the grey, concrete stairs. Four flights. She counted along the blank white doors to Number 54 and rang the bell. There was a shout of ‘Mum’s here!’ and Harry came to the door.
‘Mum,’ he said. He didn’t look ecstatic to see her. He looked wary. Almost suspicious. It must have been as strange for him to see her here as it was for Frankie to be at the door of her husband’s unknown home. ‘Dad!’ he yelled, as though calling for backup, in the way that fathers who answer phones to their children always call for their wives. Then he took the text book Frankie was proffering and hopped back into the flat.
Rob appeared. He had an apron on. An actual apron. It wasn’t even a comedy one with boobs on. It was a proper, serious apron. With blue and white butcher’s stripes and a wholesome smear of flour across the front. Alice was balanced on his hip, her chubby legs wrapped around him. She reached out for Frankie with a huge toothy grin and Frankie grabbed her with near relief and took her in her arms.
‘Hello,’ she whispered, into Alice’s perfect, pink ear. ‘So this is where you are.’
‘Come in!’ Rob said, all jolly, like Abigail at Abigail’s Party, welcoming her guests. ‘Excuse the pinny. Tilly and I were just making some fairy cakes. Or cupcakes, or whatever they call them these days. Come on in,’ he said again. Frankie followed him down a short hall and into an open-plan living room that had a kitchen shoehorned at one end, behind squeezed-back concertinaed doors. A lovely vanilla-y smell was wafting from a very clean-looking built-in oven.
‘Hi, Mum,’ said Tilly distractedly. She had an apron on, too, and was sitting on the sofa next to Harry. They were watching cartoons.
‘Hi, darling,’ said Frankie, going over to kiss them both. ‘You both okay?’ Her eyes were filling with tears and she felt ridiculous, but it was just so weird seeing them here.
‘Yeah,’ they said, in unison, without taking their eyes off the television.
‘Where’s Josh?’
‘Playing outside,’ said Tilly.
‘Oh.’
‘He’s out on the communal lawn,’ said Rob, ‘with some of the neighbours’ kids. He’s made loads of friends.’
‘Especially Jonathan,’ said Tilly in a sing-song voice. ‘And Daddy is friends with Jonathan’s mum.’
‘It’s just one of the neighbours,’ said Rob, shrugging and looking slightly sheepish. ‘Jenny. No biggie. We’ve been to Kaper Kids together.’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ said Frankie, but she was quite taken aback. Rob had a new friend? A Jenny? How was she supposed to feel about that? She didn’t know, but she supposed she didn’t have a right to feel anything about it. She sort of had a Hugh.
‘I’ll show you round,’ said Rob. ‘It won’t take long.’ He grinned. He looks happy here, thought Frankie. Really content. Perhaps he was happier. Now he was away from her. With his new flat and his freedom and his Jenny.
She followed him to the window where he pointed through the glass to the tiny balcony. He had a couple of pot plants on it. They didn’t look like they were on the brink of dying. They looked like he actually watered them.
‘Balcony,’ he said, unnecessarily.
She nodded. ‘Very nice. Those plants look like the kind Mum’s always bringing round for us. Er, for me,’ she added.
‘They are,’ he said. ‘She popped round.’
‘Oh! How did she know where you were?’ asked Frankie, incredulous.
‘She phoned me at work.’ Rob shrugged. ‘I got a lot of poor Rob’s.’
‘I bet you did,’ said Frankie.
‘There’s Josh,’ he said, pointing, and she could see him, kicking a ball around with a couple of other boys. Laughing his head off, a jumper tied round his waist.
‘Yes, I see him,’ she said. For some reason she felt incredibly sad.
Rob turned back to the room. ‘Living/dining/kitchen, as you can see.’ He swept his arm round the space. His sofa was a rather nice dark brown leather one, all antique-looking. She wondered where he’d got it from. Had he hired it? Or did it come with the flat?
‘Three bedrooms,’ he said, almost proudly. ‘Follow me.’
She followed, still holding Alice – although she was getting a heavy old lump, she didn’t want to put her down. He led her to a small bedroom that housed a double bed and a single. ‘Mine and Alice’s room,’ he said. The double bed had a pale blue cotton duvet and was neatly made. The single bed had a duvet and pillowcase set that was pink and had roses on it. It was very pretty.
‘A big girl’s bed,’ lisped Alice.
‘Yes, darling,’ said Frankie. ‘It is a big girl’s bed.’
At home, Alice still had a cot bed so it was a lot smaller. Alice’s big girl’s bed had her favourite rabbit on the pillow. There was a white bedside table next to it, with a little pink lamp and a drawer with a heart-shaped cut-out. Everything was so neat and tidy! Was Rob sure he lived here? Did he actually live in a fleapit next door and had broken into this pristine show home especially for her visit?
There was nothing else in the room, just one of those clothes rails you get in Argos, with a few of Rob’s things neatly hung on it. Neatly! It was unheard of! Perhaps the flat was so small he simply couldn’t be untidy here. Perhaps he’d been abducted by aliens and replaced with someone who gave a toss.
She would reserve her judgement. He was a messy so-and-so and always had been, she bet all the bedrooms weren’t as nice as this. If they were, she’d be quite angry, actually. How dare he be all tidy and conscientious here, when he never was at home?
Rob led her into the room next door.
‘The boys’ room.’ The next bedroom had two single beds. You couldn’t swing or squeeze a cat between them and surely the boys had to crawl up from the bottom of their beds to get in, but, again, it was tidy. She was flabbergasted.
‘And Tilly’s room.’ It was the other side of the narrow hallway.
Rob let her go in by herself. There probably wouldn’t have been room for both of them anyway; it was tiny. A single bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe. Flat-pack. She wondered if he’d put them up himself, without swearing. The last time he’d attempted any kind of flat-pack assembly at home, he’d ended up saying the F word fifteen times and they’d had to get a man in to finish the job. She was rather proud of herself, as last week she’d put a wooden shoe rack together all on her own. No fuss, no drama, no F words. Just the help of a forum on Google and a quick call to Grace. Who needed a man to cock it up?
A cuddly toy Frankie didn’t recognise was on top of Tilly’s bed. Everything was neat and tidy, tidy and neat. That was a line from the Mr Men book Rob used to read Tilly at bedtime, if he got home from work early enough. Mr Messy. Tilly loved it. As Rob put on a sing-song voice and described Mr Tidy and Mr Neat, who sorted out Mr Messy and made him a better person, Frankie used to stand in the doorway and laugh, thinking, ‘Nothing like Rob, then.’ That was before things got too bad. Before Rob became a Mr Messy who couldn’t be helped.
On the bookshelf in Tilly’s new room were a stack of about thirty Mr Men books. Square white books, all stacked together. He’d re-bought them. All of them. Her anger at his new tidiness momentarily disappeared and her eyes welled with tears. Stop it, she thought and shook them down. You wanted this. He lives somewhere else. He’s bought a few books – so what?
She went back into the living room. Rob was picking up a toy car from the floor.
‘It’s very tidy,’ said Frankie. ‘Have you got a cleaner?’
‘Nope.’
‘Has your mum been round to tidy up?’
‘No.’
‘Has my mum been round to tidy up?’
Laughing. ‘No!’
‘Then how come it’s so tidy?’
‘I tidied it.’
‘And you made the beds? I didn’t know you knew how.’
‘I’ve had to learn. I looked it up on YouTube.’
She didn’t know if he was joking or not. He leant over the back of the sofa and retrieved a basket of folded washing from behind it. Everything – T-shirts, children’s vests, socks – looked clean, smooth, folded. Where had this apparition of good housekeeping appeared from? Rob had always managed to crease a shirt transporting it from a hanger to his own body. How on earth was he able to materialise a whole basket full of nicely laundered clothing? As far as he was concerned, clean and pressed laundry just appeared from nowhere, done by the laundry fairy.
Rob’s washing smelt nice. Different from hers. A lavender smell. Rob’s washing. It was almost hilarious.
‘And you know how to use a washing machine as well.’ She realised she was sneering.
‘Of course. I learnt that too. I’ve learnt a lot of new things,’ he added, after a pause. And smiled. He held her gaze. She looked away, furious. There was a time he couldn’t even tell the washing machine from the tumble dryer, let alone how to operate either of them. Why couldn’t he have done any of this at home?
She glanced down to the basket and, finally depositing a now unbearably heavy Alice on the floor, picked up the corner of a clean white T-shirt.
‘Did you iron all this?’
‘Yes. Well, some of it. I’ve learnt a good technique. Hang straight from the machine to minimise ironing. It’s a good tip.’
‘I’ll remember it, thanks,’ she said sarcastically.
Bloody hell. He was giving her housekeeping tips. She couldn’t believe it.
Alice held up a podgy little hand and said, ‘Mama’ and Frankie gave it a gentle squeeze, then bent down and kissed her daughter on the cheek, breathing her in. She exhaled deeply. She supposed she should be pleased Rob was coping so well, for the children’s sake at least. She thought she’d be walking into a chaos of filthy-faced urchins and takeaway boxes. A social services job. But she’d got it all wrong. It was calm there. Organised. The children seemed happy. It was confusing. So, separately, they could each run a calm, ordered household, but together they were a disaster?
‘Rabby,’ said Alice.
‘It’s on your bed,’ said Rob.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Frankie.
As she walked to Rob and Alice’s room, she passed a door set into the wall of the hall. A cupboard. She opened it and a football magazine immediately fell on the floor. She was surprised more didn’t tumble out. The cupboard was jam-packed full of stuff. Toys, clothes, books, an empty cereal packet. A badminton racquet. Shoved in, rammed in. Stuffed to the absolute hilt.
He had a Monica Cupboard, like in Friends! A cupboard crammed full of junk to enable the immaculate apartment around it.
Weirdly, it made her smile. She felt better: he hadn’t turned into a completely saintly housekeeping robot, after all. Maybe the tidiness she had witnessed was proof of some kind of effort, rather than some warped male Stepford transformation purely to spite her?
She went back to the living room/kitchen and gave Alice her rabbit.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Rob said. ‘I’ve got Hobnobs.’
She hadn’t planned on stopping very long, but she felt more relaxed, somehow, now she’d seen the secret cupboard. And Hobnobs were her favourite. ‘Okay.’
‘And chocolate digestives. And Clubs…’
‘Clubs?’
‘Oh yeah, we know how to live, over here. If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit…’ he sang.
‘…join our club.’
She couldn’t help but grin. God, they were both really old. They knew the same silly advert jingles. The same lines. It had always been that way. They shared the same jokes, finished each other’s sentences. They had a few stock phrases they would complete for each other, including:
‘You’ll always find me…’
‘…in the kitchen at parties.’
‘You’re terrible…’
‘…Muriel.’ Then, ‘Mariel,’ they would both drawl in unison, in over-exaggerated Australian accents, referring to Muriel’s more glamorous alias.
‘We were on…’
‘A break.’
How they’d laughed at that episode of Friends, many moons ago. They loved Friends. They’d watched it every Friday night, with a Domino’s pizza, Ben and Jerry’s Funky Monkey and a bottle of Sol each with a lime segment stuffed into the neck of the bottle. Joey’s Man Bag, Monica’s Secret Closet and Ross and Rachel On a Break. How they’d laughed. And now they were on a break too. Frankie didn’t know how Rob felt about it. She thought, again, that he seemed pretty content. She hadn’t seen this far ahead, how he would be without her… She’d just wanted to get away from him.
She looked at the back of his head as he turned to put the kettle on. He’d had his hair cut. It looked neat around the ears. He hadn’t bothered getting it cut in the months before they’d split. It had started curling round the bottom of his ears and growing down his neck. It looked nice now, with its not unattractive sprinkling of grey.
They’d talked about that sort of thing loads of times. About getting old, going grey. They’d both assumed it was something they’d do together. She’d said she would always, always dye her hair, although maybe when she was a hundred she’d let it go a soft silver. He said he was dreading losing his hair and it going grey, and that this part of ageing was the one women had over men – they could dye their still-apparent hair and not look ridiculous, whilst men risked an odd, copper-coloured comb-over. She’d told him not to worry, that she liked grey hair, and if he started receding, he could just shave it all off and do a Grant Mitchell, as she found it sexy.
Rob’s hair hadn’t receded, but it was going grey. Frankie had an urge to reassure him, to say, ‘Your hair looks quite sexy, all grey like that,’ but she couldn’t, could she? She’d dumped him.
The one thing he’d done for her, at home, was to make her the occasional cup of tea. As the kettle boiled and he rummaged in a cupboard for teabags and sugar, it was almost just like old times. She felt conflicted. She’d dumped him because he was hopeless. He was probably still hopeless. But, at this moment, she missed him.
He turned and smiled at her, held her gaze. The smile hung between them like the Clifton suspension bridge. They’d been there once, the day after going to a friend’s wedding in Bristol. It had been a dreadful day, weather-wise, characterised by that soft summer drizzle – warm and very annoying. They had cagoules on with the hoods up. But buoyed by the romance of the wedding they’d just been to, and the fact that they’d only been married a year themselves, they had kissed at one end of the bridge. It had been a fantastic day. A fantastic kiss. And now, in Rob’s new flat, it seemed that either one of them could climb that smile, that bridge, to reach the other.
After a few awkward seconds, they let the smile fall. He wasn’t allowed to smile at her like that any more. They were separated. Estranged. ‘My estranged husband’. What an odd phrase. It made her think of a Victorian gentleman wearing a funny hat and pulling a cat’s bum face.
Rob handed her a mug of tea. She realised it was his Fimbles mug, from home. She hadn’t noticed it had gone. Then he reached to a high cupboard to get the Hobnobs. He’d lost a bit of weight. His jeans were hanging off his backside a bit. Was he eating properly? Proper meals? Was he feeding the children well? He must be. They certainly weren’t coming back home to her like starving waifs.
‘Are you eating okay?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Rob. ‘Does my mouth work? As far as I’m aware. I don’t think I’ve got an eating problem.’ She knew he was thinking of the ‘drinking problem’ scene in Airplane, the one where the drinking problem is Ted Striker missing his mouth every time. They’d seen and loved that movie a hundred times.
‘Ha, no. Are you eating properly? The right stuff? What are you giving the children?’ The mood immediately changed. She was nagging.
‘We’re all eating properly, thank you. Me and my children. How about you? Tinned spaghetti bolognaise and Cadbury’s chocolate fingers?’ He knew they were her favourites, when she could eat alone and have whatever she wanted. Things that required No Cooking.
‘As an occasional treat,’ she lied.
‘I hope you’re looking after yourself, the weekends I have the children,’ he said. Now he was nagging. His voice took on a hard edge. ‘Are you going out drinking? Having a lot of “me” time?’
He was being sarcastic, with the ‘me’ time nonsense. She knew he hated that ridiculous phrase. Still, it put her back up. She had never had any ‘me time’ when they were together. None. Except five minutes in the loo, from time to time. Even then, someone was usually banging on the door, demanding something. Whereas he had all the ‘me’ time in the world. Even his commute to work on the trains he moaned so much about was a blissful chance to just sit and do nothing, whilst she wrestled breakfast and nappies and mess and uniforms and tea and bath and homework and reading and bedtime.
He was also fishing, she knew, about what she was doing in his absence. She knew him. He wanted to know was she going out? Meeting other men. Had she met another man? Oh dear. No way was she mentioning Hugh and all the snogging…
‘It’s not really any of your business,’ she said coolly, bristling.
‘I hope you’re being careful,’ he said. ‘You know what I mean.’ If he’d been a jolly uncle figure or Sid James, he may have winked at this point, but he didn’t. He looked serious and a bit hacked off. He actually does think I’m going out and shagging other men, thought Frankie. And he looked bothered about it. Did he still fancy her?
‘Of course,’ she said, breezily. He could make of that what he wanted.
‘Anyway, right,’ he said, putting the biscuits back in the cupboard. ‘So…we have plans…’
Frankie baulked. ‘Oh…okay…plans, with the children? Of course. Anything nice?’
‘We’re going to the Natural History Museum. Going up on the train.’
‘Oh, great. Fab.’ They’d all wanted to go. She’d wanted to go. They’d talked about going this year, in the summer holidays. He knew that.
‘So, what are you up to today?’ He wasn’t going to invite her, then. For a family outing. It would just be the five of them.
‘Oh, plans, as well, you know. Things to do…places to see…’
‘Okay. Well, have fun,’ said Rob. He was actually ushering her to his front door. His clean, white front door. He’d even thought to buy a mat, too. It was all brown and unsullied. It said ‘Welcome’, like this was a proper home.
Before she knew it, she was outside his door and it had been shut – shut on him and his weekend with their children.
She stood for a second, like you do when you suddenly think of the perfect retort for a conversation you left ten minutes ago, then she turned and walked down the stairs.