The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (39 page)

‘Are you sure, Lucy?’ he said gratefully. ‘That’s so nice of you.’

‘We might be hard up, but new pants won’t tip the balance. However, it is generous of me,’ I concurred, because I wanted
to accumulate enough points to see me through the three remaining days of the holiday. Of course, there is little self-sacrifice involved in spending an afternoon in your own company, browsing through shops in one of those North Norfolk towns which sells five different kinds of olive oil and has resisted the pressure to build an out-of-town shopping complex. I was happy to be on my own and leave him on the beach with the children for the afternoon.

In Holt I quickly found a shop that boasted an underwear department with big aspirations. The breadth and depth of its selection was disconcerting for a shop of its size and location. It ranged from raunchy little numbers in pastel shades to Jockey Y-fronts in colours that I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager, when Mark would insist on wearing only red pants to show his credentials as a ‘hot lover’. Then there were lacy knickers and bras that made me want to weep because they were so white and delicate and would inevitably fray and turn grey within a week in my possession. They were also very expensive and because Tom’s library project was indefinitely on hold, and my credit card debt was out of control, I resisted the temptation to buy, but couldn’t leave without trying them on.

I stood there, in front of the mirror, and found that somehow they reduced the rolls of fat around my tummy and made my breasts defy gravity. So, having chosen Tom a pair of sensible boxer shorts in thick, white cotton that would protect his manhood from any sea squall, I decided that I would hold on to this bra and knickers to enjoy the moment for a little longer.

I was daydreaming under a large sign saying ‘Lingerie for him and her’ with a red heart drawn around ‘him and her’, when I realised that I was no longer alone. A man was
searching through the Calvin Klein section. I was contemplating whether the male ego was affected by buying a pair of pants in a small size, and whether I should exchange the medium size pants that I had chosen for Tom for the extra large, thus currying even greater favour, when this man turned round to face me and I realised immediately that I recognised him.

Ten years on, he was a little heavier. His cheeks were rosy and full, and I could see more clearly what he might have looked like as a chubby toddler, because the extra weight meant fewer wrinkles. It added flesh to the bone. It was the look of a man who eats and drinks well. His hair was thinner, which meant his face looked disproportionably large, and underneath the first chin, I could see the hint of a second. The broad brush-strokes were the same. We ruthlessly assessed each other for a couple of seconds, and I concluded that, on balance, time had been marginally kinder to me, mainly because it was easier to hide my flaws.

‘Lucy,’ he said in surprise. ‘What are you doing here? Did you follow me in?’ I bristled. It was typical he should assume, even after all this time, that he was being pursued by me. The foundations of our relationship lay in mutual flirtation, leaning over a desk to look at something in the newspaper for a little too long with our shoulders touching, making each other laugh too much without letting other people enter the fray, and always ensuring that we sat next to each other at office parties. It was a pursuit of equals. But underneath his studied nonchalance, he was a vain man. In the same way that first impressions often give clarity of judgement, I was pleased to find that an unscheduled meeting after almost a decade provided similar insight. Distance doesn’t necessarily lend
enchantment to the view, which is just as well during the Middle Ages, when nostalgia for the past and fear for the future can prove an explosive partnership for the present.

‘Actually, I was here before you and we’re both after the same thing, I think,’ I said, holding up my underwear display.

‘I can’t decide whether I am a medium or a large,’ he said.

‘Medium, from what I remember,’ I said. He laughed. Sometimes when you meet a former lover, there is an ease of communication that cuts through the years. There can be a corresponding sense of loss because that same degree of intimacy can never be replicated. I was relieved to feel only the former.

‘I fell into that one,’ he said warmly. ‘Do you fancy a coffee?’

I think that inviting a woman out for coffee is the twenty-first-century equivalent of a Victorian man asking a woman to come and view his etchings. It is a seemingly innocuous invitation, propelled by apparently innocent intentions, yet the underlying issue is about being alone together. So we both put down our underwear haul a little too quickly and headed off to a small café where tea was served in proper china cups on white tablecloths. Over the next hour he told me the following. That he was on holiday in Norfolk with his wife and their two children. They had rented a converted barn somewhere outside of Holt along the coast at considerable expense. He was directing an independent film set in Bradford about a love affair between an Asian girl and a white boy. He was on the board of the British Film Institute. He spent a lot of time travelling. His wife was fine. Being apart so much made it even more difficult being together because they lived separate lives. He had never told her about us and nothing similar had ever happened again. I wasn’t sure that I believed him, but it said
something about how he wanted to view himself. Typically, because I had forgotten how self-obsessed he was, he asked nothing about me until the tea in the pot was cold and it had started raining again outside.

‘So what are you up to, Lucy?’ he asked finally.

‘Married, three children. I’m a stay-at-home mum,’ I said. ‘There’s a job title that ends a conversation in its tracks. I gave up
Newsnight
a couple of years after you left. I worked for a while after our first son was born.’

‘Why did you do that, you loved that job?’ he said. ‘You had so many plans, so many ideas. I thought you were destined for greatness. I’d give you a job any day.’

‘Work–life balance proved too elusive. So I thought I’d take a year out, then I got pregnant again and then again and suddenly eight years rolled by,’ I explained.

I wanted to ask him whether he could remember any of my great ideas, because I certainly couldn’t and they might come in useful now. Like all the excess sleep that I took for granted before I had children. I wished I had banked all that for future reference.

‘So does it suit you being a full-time mother?’ he asked.

‘Giving up work is a bit like moving from the city to the countryside,’ I said. ‘Once you’ve done it, it’s difficult to go back. I was sucked into the parenting vortex. The pace of life changes, it’s wild and unruly terrain, contemporary culture passes you by, and you go to bed earlier and earlier because it’s so exhausting, but you learn to live by the seasons again. And I think my children like having me around and I like being there for them. Now I’m obviously utterly unemployable and have less status than a lap dancer.’

He laughed. And we smiled at the irony of our shared
aspirations and their wildly different outcomes, because feminism might have come a long way, but women are still the ones who make the difficult decisions.

‘Lap dancers are powerful people,’ he said. Then he paused. ‘And how is married life?’ The question hung in the air because this was dangerous territory. I stared into my cold cup of tea.

‘Fine, bumpy at times, tragi-comic at others, I suppose,’ I said with the kind of honesty that is permissible when you are with someone you know you won’t see again. The kind of honesty that travelling in foreign lands allows. ‘Having children pushes you to extremes, and relationships can get lost in the domestic quagmire.’

‘Tell me about it. I sometimes think it is easier to be in love with people before you really get to know them and they topple off their pedestal,’ he said. ‘When I moved in with my wife and saw her cutting her toe and then eating the nails, a little bit of me died. That’s why those old relationships that never evolved beyond the lustful stage have such a hold on memory.’

‘Very true,’ I said unthinkingly.

‘That’s what my next film is about, it’s more commercial, based on this man and woman who meet each other again on Friends Reunited and end up trying to rekindle an old affair,’ he said. ‘It’s got American backers, so it has to have a Hollywood ending.’

‘So does she stay with her husband or go off with the old boyfriend?’ I asked.

‘She leaves her husband,’ he said.

‘But how is that a happy ending?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t say it was a happy ending, I said it was a Hollywood ending,’ he said.

‘But surely it would be more romantic if she stayed with her husband?’ I persisted.

‘Lucy, it would be a bit of a slow boiler if she did that,’ he argued.

‘So what happens to her husband?’

‘He ends up with someone else,’ he said a little impatiently.

‘And what about the wife of the old boyfriend?’

‘She’s dead,’ he said, yawning. ‘It’s more convenient that way. Old relationships don’t make good films, it’s the early stage, the sexual tension and the excitement that people want to see.’

‘I think long-term love is more about an attitude than a state of mind. It’s about how much you can give each rather than what you get from each other. Actually, in some ways it is more interesting than an immature relationship,’ I said. ‘At least that’s what I’m hoping.’

‘A slow, steady return on your investment over the years?’ he asked.

‘Something like that,’ I said.

‘Well, mine is doomed then, because I am a selfish bastard,’ he said. ‘What about your husband?’

‘He’s very detail-orientated, which can be maddening, but actually he isn’t structurally selfish,’ I said, ‘not in the way you are. But perhaps that’s why you are so successful.’

‘The trouble with success is that you are always meeting people who are even more successful than you are. When I made my first film I thought that would be enough. Now I realise that unless I can produce a consistently successful body of work, I will feel as though I have underachieved. There are moments of euphoria, but I rarely feel content. Contentment has eluded me.’

I know that I missed obvious clues, but this man was no longer attractive to me. My curiosity was that of someone who had been there at the beginning of a story. I wanted to know what happened in the middle to work out whether there would be a happy ending.

As I glanced at my watch, I realised with horror that I had been sitting in this café for almost two hours. The shop was now shut and I had forgotten to buy the pants. To return to the campsite without pants was inconceivable. I rummaged in my bag in search of my purse. It was then that I discovered that I had accidentally pilfered the bra and knickers I had tried on in the shop. This was the first time in my life that I had ever stolen anything. I decided immediately that I would keep them. I didn’t feel any remorse because the theft was not premeditated. It was permissible to engage in rash acts of dubious morality as long as they were unconscious.

‘Do you know that you have always been at the back of my thoughts, Lucy? I always wondered how it might have been, if we had evolved together,’ he said suddenly. ‘Whether you might have been the answer.’ His teacup looked tiny gripped between his hands.

‘Did you?’ I said, in astonishment. I noticed one of his hands moving towards my own and abruptly got up from my chair. It tipped backwards until it rested precariously against a radiator. I left it there.

‘I wouldn’t have been. It’s always a mistake to expect other people to make you happy. It helps, but it’s not a panacea,’ I said. ‘I think I’d better leave now.’ I left a five-pound note on the table, knowing that he wouldn’t have any cash because he never did. ‘It was really nice to see you again.’ He got up awkwardly and told me to get in touch, but I knew that he
didn’t really mean it. We had covered too much ground and it would be difficult to see each other again.

In a sense it was a fortuitous meeting, because for me it closed a chapter. But the repercussions of forgetting Tom’s pants and stealing underwear for myself endured. When I got back to the campsite he was furious, even before I told him that it was a fruitless endeavour.

‘What have you been doing all afternoon?’ he demanded. ‘Fred fell into the mud and cried for about an hour. Joe thought he was shrivelling up because the saltwater made his skin go wrinkly. And I found that passport in the car, so Sam cried because he was worried that you would think he had told me.’

I looked at Fred. His hair was caked with bits of seaweed, hard dried pieces of mud and the odd small feather. On his face there were a few clear gulleys amidst the mud where I imagined pools of tears had fallen down his cheeks.

‘Why didn’t you wash him?’ I asked, holding his little face in my hand.

‘I thought you would be home to help,’ Tom said disapprovingly. I looked at him, then said to Sam, ‘We’re just going to have a small argument. Keep an eye on Fred and Joe, please.’

So I told Tom that I had bumped into an old colleague. He remembered him with unusual clarity and asked whether I had ever slept with him, because he had always suspected that there was something between us. I made a bad decision. I failed to see the situation from Tom’s point of view and assumed because it was unimportant to me that it would hold similar currency for him. So I told him the truth about the first encounter, because I thought that it had happened so long ago that it didn’t matter and I was pleased to discover this man
meant so little to me. But of course it mattered. So I didn’t mention the second. And then I told Tom that he was being a hypocrite, because he was the one who had slept with Joanna Saunders and that he had done it much more and for longer than me. His account was in arrears. And all those raw wounds were reopened. Forgetting is sometimes easier than forgiving.

‘If you can’t ride two horses at once you shouldn’t be in the circus.’

WHEN I GET
a text message from Robert Bass a month after the party saying, We need to talk. Can you meet me for a coffee? Have finished book, I recognise, that whatever my reply, it constitutes a big top of the pyramid-type decision. After what had transpired at the party, contact between us had become loaded with specific undertones. There was nothing impressionistic about the encounter in the coat cupboard. The attraction was explicit, which now means that I have to assume greater responsibility for my actions. It is the difference between consciously and unconsciously stealing underwear from the shop in Holt. This is what happens when fantasy spills over into reality.