‘Jon, for goodness’ sake, quit before it wrecks you.’
I had come home on the day that I received that email and slammed a whole bottle of Prosecco down my throat in under ten minutes. Then I had just sat at the kitchen table playing around with my phone in a complete daze.
‘It’s all a game. One massive, stupid game,’ was all I could think to say.
Susan came and sat next to me at the table and took hold of my hand.
‘I can’t bear to see you so unhappy.’
‘How can people be like that? Why am I spending my time working with people who behave like that? What am I doing?’
I turned to Susan and buried my head into her shoulder. And then I cried while Susan stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head. I cried in a way that I had never cried before as an adult. Yes, I was drunk but I felt stuck, trapped. I had the most wonderful home life that was available to me and where I was loved …where I was really valued. My wonderful family. My home. Where I belonged. And yet as soon as I opened the door and went out into the world I was faced with Peregrine, Clarissa, the torment of Harry’s life, the harshness with which Seb had been treated. It felt as though I was drowning in the sea with the most beautiful beach just out of reach. In vino veritas.
‘Jon, you can’t go on like this. It will kill you. You can’t keep working these long hours and trying to take on so much. Life is a temporary affair. You know all that. It’s what you tell me all the time. Don’t waste it. It’s not a dress rehearsal. Every coffin is the same size, rich or poor… Remember?’
‘I know. I know.’
Then my eldest son, Paul, came in, saw what was happening and put his arm around me, too. ‘Dad, it’s OK. Really it’s OK.’ He didn’t say anything else. He is so like his mother.
I sorted myself out. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve had too much to drink.’
‘Dad. Let’s all do something together...some family time. Let’s sit down and watch a film. How about Born Free?’ It is the film about Elsa the lioness and Paul knew it was my favourite film of all time. The kids and I had watched it together many times when they were younger.
‘You are a very clever boy, Paul, and so like your father. Same looks, same manner.’ Susan looked at me and smiled; she knows how to look after us so well.
Paul looked at me and grinned. ‘Yuck. You’re bloody joking. And there was I thinking I got my looks from you, Mum.’ But he kept his arm around my shoulder as he said it.
‘Jon, why don’t you sit down quietly and write out what it is you want to do? What it is that you are really thinking? Then you and I need to sit down together, on our own and sort this out for you. But do it tomorrow. Let’s watch that film, now.’
It was very good advice. I still have the piece of paper on which I wrote down my thoughts the following day. They went like this:
1) More than anything else in the world I want to be a full and happy member of my wonderful family. I love each one of them and I want to look after them to the best of my ability. I want to be my wife’s lifelong companion and the best father that I can be to my children. Nothing matters more to me than that.
2) I want to be a proper, grown-up, fulfilled man. I do not want to be caught up in the commercial world where nothing matters except money. I feel that if I continue in my present job it will turn me into something that I am not.
3) I want to be a good man, someone who serves a purpose. Someone who can be wise and, in time, get old happily. I do not want to spend my life being competitive. I want to be myself, as I am, not someone that I am forced to be.
4) I want to be able to understand what life is about. To find my own beliefs. To understand faith…religion… all the things that we used to talk about when we were younger but now seem to have been pushed aside by the demands of daily life.
5) I want to have time to enjoy things. To walk more slowly, drive more slowly, admire the world around me. Smell the air around me and enjoy it. Look at the stars. Join in with things with my friends and family rather than having to spend so much of my time with people I don’t like.
6) As to the job that I do, I want it to be something that I believe in.
And then Susan and I sat down and had a long, long talk. Cups of tea, no booze, kids banned from the room until we sent out the papal smoke allowing them to come back in.
‘Right,’ Susan said at the end, ‘one of two things is going to happen now. Either you promise me that, within six months, you will be out of this wretched job that you are doing, or I will go into your office stark naked, waving a bottle of vodka and telling them you are married to an alcoholic sex maniac.’
‘Er…I think that we better have a word with the kids.’