Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (38 page)

“I’ve been such an idiot,” Maddy says when I’ve eventually calmed down sufficiently to be able to listen. “And I’ve behaved
so badly toward you.”

“Yes, my friend, you have. But I’ve been an idiot, too. Which is probably why we’re so compatible.”

“And you forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive, Mama Maddy, just so long as I can now, finally, hold that baby of yours.”

“Emma, sweetheart,” says Maddy, “I’d like you to meet your godmother. Properly this time. Until yesterday you only had me.
Now you’ve a daddy, two brothers, and a godmother. You are such a lucky girl.” She plucks Emma, tiny and perfect, from the
papoose, and places her tenderly in my arms.

• • •

I’m sitting with Vanessa in Mario’s, telling her everything that’s happened—except about Dan. I can’t quite bring myself to
share my sex life, albeit a measly one and a half sexual encounters, with a woman who’s been sharing her sex life with my
son. Even though I now count Vanessa as my friend, it doesn’t mean she has to know
everything
.

“How’s the counseling course going?” I ask.

“It’s hard; it’s not like I went to college or anything. But I’m sticking with it, and I’ve found myself some extracurricular
help.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means I’ve met someone.”

“Another toy boy?

“No, I’m not usually into cradle-snatching, you know. Olly was a one-off. No, this guy’s one of the teachers. He’s a psychologist,
and he’s really smart, and he’s got a great ass, and he isn’t even married.”

“Not even divorced?”

“Not even.”

“And how old?”

“He’s thirty-four next week, and he’s invited me away for the weekend. I wanted to ask you the most enormous favor, Hope.
Is there any chance at all that you could look after the kids? You won’t have to do much for them; they’ll never get bored
playing with Susanna.”

“I’d love to do that for you. Have you heard from Olly?”

“Yes, I got a long letter from him the other day. I think he’s really enjoying himself. Says he’s palled up with this other
teaching assistant—a girl—and they’re going to go traveling together. Reading between the lines, I think he’s trying to tell
me she’s more than a pal. I don’t mind. That episode is over, but it will always be a lovely memory.”

“You have a generous heart, Vanessa. I had a letter from him, too, waiting for me when I got back from Morocco. It was full
of wonderful descriptions of the school and the boys and the teachers and what little he has seen so far of his surroundings.
But no mention of the girl.”

“How are things between you and Jack?”

“We’re going away together after Christmas. It’s funny, I wanted this to happen so much, and now I’m not so sure.”

“Because . . .”

“Because when he left, I thought I was entirely to blame. Just as I thought I was entirely to blame for Maddy’s response when
I told Ed about the baby. But now I think that Jack’s got to take some responsibility, too. It’s all very well him saying
he supported me all those years, and that he always gave me more than I gave him, but the truth is, I was the one trying to
keep everything going, juggling the job and Olly, and running the household and making lots of money. I may not have given
him my full attention, but that’s normal when you’re married and working and have kids. And when I started to implode, he
couldn’t take it, even though that was when I needed him most. As for sex, well, who wants sex when they’re worn out and feeling
lousy about themselves?”

“So you’re thinking of going alone? Or canceling?”

“Neither, really. I’m just hoping our holiday doesn’t turn into a battleground. Perhaps it’s unrealistic of me to think we
can work things out on a romantic desert island if we can’t work them out here. Whereas before, I saw this holiday as a kind
of apology, a peace token, if you like, now I’m less in the mood to put myself down and apologize. I’m thinking that in the
wife stakes, I’ve not scored too badly down the years.”

I look out the window. The Christmas decorations are up, fairy lights strung between the streetlamps. The wine bar opposite
is spilling girls in high heels and bare legs out onto the pavement, along with young men clutching bottles of beer. They’re
laughing and drunkenly tripping off the pavement into the road as cars roar by, tooting horns. A figure wearing a familiar
striped scarf is walking past the restaurant on this side of the road. He has his arm round a woman’s shoulders, protecting
her from the biting wind. I can see only the top of the woman’s head, burrowing into him. It’s a very blond sort of head.
The scarf, there’s no mistaking—it was a present from me to Jack.

My hand, which holds a wineglass, is trembling. “Did you see what I just saw?”

Vanessa fiddles with a ring on her middle finger and looks at her empty plate. “Hard to tell in this light,” she says, looking
up.

“Not that hard, actually,” I reply. “That was definitely my husband, and the woman he was with was definitely blond. I’m thinking
Sally.”

“I’ve never met her, remember?”

“I really don’t get it. Why would he agree to go away with me at Christmas if he’s having an affair with Sally right on our
doorstep? Why would Sally be calling me about her blasted charity every five minutes if she was having an affair with Jack?
And now I’ve gone and invited her and Nick to Christmas drinks.”

“I thought they were splitting up.”

“They are, but I didn’t know whom to choose, so I told them to decide among themselves, and the decision was that they’d both
come.”

“And Jack?”

“No, Jack’s not coming. We agreed it would be weird to have everyone round with us pretending to be a normal married couple.
So Jack’s going to see his sister, the dreaded Anita. It will be the first time in twenty years that she’s had to make Christmas
lunch.”

“Is she really that bad?”

“Actually, she’s worse. She came to see me only once while I was recuperating. She stayed less than ten minutes and spent
the entire time telling me that it was setting a terrible example to Olly, having two openly homosexual men sharing a bed
in the same house as an impressionable young man. I asked her if she thought it was catching, and she snorted and said I was
being deliberately controversial, as usual.”

“Hope, you’re burbling. We were talking about Jack, remember? You’ve just seen him walk by with a woman who may—or may not—be
Sally, with whom he may—or may not—be having an affair.”

I gulp down what’s left in my wineglass. “I’m burbling because I don’t know what else to do.”

“You could try to tell me what you’re feeling.”

“An absolute fool, for starters. Betrayed—by both of them. But am I eaten up with jealousy? Can I bear the thought of Jack
touching another woman? A few months ago I might have said yes to the first question and no to the second. And now I think
it might be the other way round. Does that mean I no longer love Jack after all? I’m really not sure. Will I fall to pieces
if he doesn’t come back? I fell to pieces when he left in May, but no, I don’t think I’ll fall to pieces again if he doesn’t
come back.”

“Why haven’t you confronted either of them before?”

“I suppose because I couldn’t face up to the truth. Didn’t think I could handle it. But seeing the two of them together like
that, well, I’m going to have to face it. I’m going to put it to Jack on the flight out.”

“That doesn’t sound like great timing to me.”

“As far as I’m concerned, no time is a great time. But at least, trapped inside his seat belt, he has nowhere to run.”

• • •

We’ve had an indifferent meal, watched an indifferent movie, and Jack is removing his book from the pocket of the seat in
front of him. I’m feeling sick, and it’s not the altitude that’s causing it.

“Jack, I don’t want to ruin our holiday or anything, not before it’s even begun, but I have to ask you something. If I don’t
ask, it will hang over me the whole time we’re away, and I don’t think I could bear it. In fact, I know I couldn’t bear it,
so I’m going to have to ask it anyway, even though the timing’s lousy and—”

“Spit it out, girl. You’ve got me cornered.” Jack half smiles, indulgent or long-suffering, I’m not sure which.

“You and Sally. Are you or are you not having an affair? I’ve suspected it for months, and I saw the two of you huddled up
together the other week, and I know that you’re always going round, and Nick—”

“I thought you asked me a question. Do you want an answer or not?” Jack laughs, and I’m about to be furious when he says quite
simply, “No, we’re not having an affair. We never have had an affair, and we never will.”

I’m more shocked than I would have been if he’d said they were going to move in together in the new year.

“But . . . but . . . Nick thinks you are, and I was having dinner with Vanessa, and I saw you go past Mario’s—last Thursday,
it was—and you were wearing that scarf I gave you. If that wasn’t Sally, who the hell—”

“Actually, that was Sally.”

“So you’re lying.”

“No, I’m not lying. We actually had a drink together to talk about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes, she wants to offer you a job. But she wasn’t at all sure you’d accept.”

“So why didn’t she ask me herself?”

“Because Sally’s the sort of person who needs to know all the angles. And she thought if she offered it too soon, before you’d
decided for yourself the kind of thing you wanted to do next, you’d turn her down. So she wanted my opinion on how best to
approach you.”

“If you’ve not been having an affair, why does Nick think you were? Why were you round there so often? Why did you keep going
out for drinks with her?”

“Because she kept inviting me; because she needed someone other than Nick to stare at across the dinner table every night;
and because I listened to her troubles. We physios are a bit like hairdressers: People tell us their troubles.”

“So you haven’t been having an affair with Sally.”

“No. I’ve been having an affair with Daniella and also with Evie.”

“With
whom
?”

“Two women I met—one in a wine bar and the other on a bus.”

“Two women! Both at once?”

“No, not both at once. First one and then the other. And now neither. Satisfied?”

I’m smiling. I don’t know why, but I’m smiling. I’m about to ask how good they were in bed, then I shut myself up. Of course
Jack hasn’t become a born-again virgin since our breakup. Why should he have been? But he hasn’t been having an affair with
Sally.

“What kind of job?” I ask, grabbing Jack’s hand and kissing the back of it.

“Director of communications, something like that.”

“Can she afford me?”

“Not at the rate you’ve been getting.”

“You know Craig wants me to launch a new magazine for him?”

“Back to square one, then, Hope, exactly where you wanted to be.”

I say nothing. We must be halfway to our island paradise in the Maldives. Suddenly, I can’t wait to get there.

W
e’ve been here four days and nights, and we still haven’t made love. But there’s a companionable closeness, and it’s growing.
At night we sleep in a big double bed together, sometimes snuggling in a spoon position. During the day, Jack goes off on
diving trips, and I swim closer to home, snorkeling around the bay, where there are more than enough fish for my taste, or
reading on the deck of our overwater bungalow.

This hideaway island in the Maldives is little more than an amoeba in a vast turquoise ocean. You can walk around it, barefoot
in the sand, in a little over twenty minutes. I do it in the morning, alone, and in the evening, as the sun goes down, we
walk together. We hold hands, and it feels good. Can we be the only couple on the island not on a honeymoon? The only couple
more interested in what’s on our dinner plates than looking into each other’s eyes? We make jokes about it, and if sometimes
I feel a bit wistful, it doesn’t make me wish I could go back, because that would take away so many of the good things I’ve
experienced since meeting Jack. We talk easily and sometimes not at all. I look around and am surprised by how little some
of the honeymoon couples have to say to each other.

“Was I really so awful, Jack? Turning fifty, hitting menopause, losing my job and my mother—even if we weren’t exactly close—was
quite a lot to shoulder all at once. And with Olly leaving home as well. Isn’t the test of a good relationship how you deal
with the hard times, not just the good?”

“Of course it is. Still, I’d been feeling for ages that I didn’t exist for you. Sure, I was handy to have around, but that
was about it. I was furious with you. Even when you were so low, I felt more furious than sympathetic.”

“I’m quite prepared to admit that I was whiny and self-pitying. But I was close to a breakdown as well. You should have been
there. Even after my operation, you didn’t offer to come and look after me.”

“It seemed the wrong basis on which to start over. If Mike and Stanko hadn’t stepped in, I would have done it myself. But
you did okay with those guys.”

“I did more than okay. I learned again what a good relationship looks like. But I did miss you.”

“You asked me about my affairs. What about you?”

“Too busy collapsing on the pavement outside Waitrose and having general anesthetics for that kind of thing.” So I’m telling
a lie. And just as I didn’t feel guilty about Paris, I don’t feel guilty about denying it.

“It’s nice being here with you,” says Jack. “I’m not sure I’d rather be here with anyone else.”

I could be having sex on every corner of this island with a man like Dan. “Mmm,” I reply noncommittally.
Nice
. Nice? Is that something I’m supposed to be grateful for at fifty?

More in the spirit of irony than romance, I’ve booked the exclusive hideaway sleepover package for New Year’s Eve, which is
our last night on the island. At five in the afternoon, a small
dhoni,
a traditional Maldivian fishing boat, pulls up outside our water villa, and we chug over to another island that’s no more
than a hundred meters in length and barely half that in width and which is to be our private quarters for the night.