Turning Forty (2 page)

‘Don’t touch the stuff myself,’ says Dad. ‘But I’m pretty sure your mother’s got some in for guests.’ He begins searching in the nearest cupboard, which even I know is where Mum keeps her baking stuff, canned goods and pasta. Mum still clearly does everything domestic.

‘Try the next one along,’ I suggest.

Dad snorts that he knows his own ‘bloody kitchen’ better than I ever will. Once it becomes clear that he’s looking in the wrong place he simply mutters, ‘Well of course I chose the wrong cupboard, you were distracting me!’

‘There you go,’ he says, setting down a jar on the counter. ‘Will that satisfy you and your fancy London ways?’

The sight of the jar of supermarket own-brand instant coffee causes me to reminisce fondly about the seven-hundred-quid titanium silver Gaggia bean-to-cup coffee machine sitting on the granite counter in my kitchen back in London. ‘That’ll do nicely, Pop.’

I sit down at the kitchen table and flick through a local free newspaper next to the fruit bowl. ‘So how have you been, Pop?’

‘Oh, you know me,’ he says. ‘I’m fine in myself.’

I raise a sceptical eyebrow which is about as much as I’ll ever raise to my dad. Four years ago Dad had a heart attack. Things had been dodgy for a while and every time my phone rang I was convinced it would be one of my family calling to let me know the worst, but he pulled through in the end. The drugs seemed to sort out the problem for the interim and eventually he was lined up for a bypass operation, which seemed to have done the trick. To look at him now you’d never guess he’d been through all that but to this day I can’t take an unexpected late-night call from a member of my family without a split-second replay of that whole nightmare.

‘Anyway,’ continues Dad, ‘it’s your mother who’s the one to worry about. I’m always telling her to slow down but she won’t listen. Now that your sister’s moved closer she’s always volunteering us for babysitting duties even though it’s a good forty minutes in the car.’

My kid sister, Yvonne, and her family moved to Worcester from Plymouth the previous summer for her paediatrician husband Oliver’s job. Since then nearly every conversation with Mum begins with an update on how big my newest niece, Evie, is getting and how, despite being only seven months old, Mum’s convinced that she’ll be walking soon because ‘all Beckfords walk before their first birthday’, or an update on Evie’s brothers, two-year-old Peter and three-and-a half-year-old Jake.

Dad pulls out an envelope of photos from behind the radio on the kitchen counter and gives me a running commentary as he shuffles through them. As befits my father’s skills with a digital camera at least half of them appear to have been taken within a split second of each other, with only the slightest variation between them, but there are a few, like the one in my hands of a just-woken-up Evie smiling at Yvonne, which even I can’t help getting lost in. In the end Dad and I become so engrossed in the photos that we don’t hear Mum’s keys in the front door. So when I look up and see her laden down with shopping bags and she says, ‘Matthew! What are you doing home?’ I’m taken so much by surprise that without getting my brain into gear I say the first words that spring to my lips, which happen to be the unexpurgated truth. ‘It’s me and Lauren, Mum, we’re getting a divorce.’

2

It was a sunny Saturday morning in April when Lauren and I split up.

I’d been watching workmen from Gregson’s Shed and Fencing unloading shed panels from the back of their flatbed van and I remember thinking it significant that although I was watching history in the making I was also watching history in the making alone as once again my wife had chosen to make herself absent by going into work. However, not even this could take the shine off my day as I was finally going to get the one thing I had longed for most of my adult life: a garden shed. Not just any garden shed mind you, but an eight-foot by six-foot overlap softwood apex shed with a single door, three windows, a roof topped with premium quality sand roofing felt and planks treated with a red cedar basecoat, just like the one my dad has in the back garden of the house where I grew up.

Some might think that getting your own shed isn’t much of an ambition for a man staring down the wrong end of the barrel at his fortieth birthday and maybe they’ve got a point. It’s not like competing in a marathon, trekking around Mongolia, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or any of the other goals that automatically pop into the heads of thirtysomethings the moment they realise that forty is just around the corner. But when I turned thirty-nine I had no desire to push my body to its limit, watch the sun rise over Haleakala volcano, or even have a go at skydiving. All I wanted was a shed I could call my own.

Of course it wasn’t like I needed to be thirty-nine to own a shed. In fact I knew plenty of people of my generation who have had their shed for years. My best mate Gershwin, for instance, got his nine-foot by eight-foot apex in spruce green with double doors when he was thirty-five (but then again at the time he’d been married with kids since his early twenties). But me, I just didn’t feel ready for a shed because the ultimate truth of shed-buying is this: a real man only buys a shed when he has to take stock of his life, has surveyed all that he has achieved and is one hundred (not sixty, seventy-five or even ninety-nine point nine) per cent satisfied with the results.

And it was exactly that shed-worthiness survey I’d undertaken some seven days earlier as I sat in the business lounge at Frankfurt airport waiting for a flight back to Heathrow. Over a complimentary gin and tonic I reviewed the last decade of my life, and boy, was I happy with the results! I had a great job as head of development for a financial software company; owned a huge four-bedroom house in Blackheath that cost me a small fortune in mortgage repayments every month; and in Lauren, my wife of six years, I had not only the longest-standing relationship of my adult life but easily the best-looking partner of anyone I knew. Not bad for your average thirty-nine year old and pretty damn amazing for a comprehensive school kid from inner-city Birmingham. Can I have my shed now? I think I bloody well can!

Now, there are some people out there who think that turning forty is no big deal and that the age-related running of marathons, climbing of mountains and buying of sheds is a mug’s game. I make no bones about it: these people are idiots. They have to be, because no one but a certifiable idiot would ever spin such hackneyed untruths as: ‘Forty is just another birthday’ or worse still: ‘You’re only as young as you feel.’ Idiots of the world listen up: forty is the end of the race, the deadline of deadlines and the point at which excuses are no longer permitted.

Because, let’s face it, if at twenty you find yourself messing about in dead-end jobs, backpacking around Asia or still trying to find your ‘true self’, no one is going to bat an eyelid. Even if you do that kind of thing at thirty, the worst you might get would be an ‘Each to his own,’ and a quick raise of the eyebrow from your nan because there’s still a very tangible feeling that there’s time to turn the ship round. Cut to a decade later however, and it’s a completely different story. If you haven’t got your life sorted at forty, no one, not even your own mum, is going to hand you a medal and say well done. Because the universal truth of getting older is obvious: IF YOU ARE A LOSER AT FORTY YOU WILL BE A LOSER FOR LIFE.

That’s why turning forty is such an absolute kick in the crotch. It means you finally have to put your house in order, get your act together and pull your finger out from wherever it’s been hiding. It’s like when you’re a kid and you’re pulling faces out of the car window and your dad tells you that if the wind changes you’ll stick like that. That’s what turning forty is: the point at which the wind changes. The point at which you’ll be stuck for good with a complete mess of a life if you don’t get all your ducks in a row, and preferably have them tucked away in your shed for safe keeping.

The guys from Gregson’s worked hard all afternoon and soon a job that would have taken me an eternity was finished and I was asked to give it the once-over.

I hadn’t got a clue what I was supposed to be looking for but I couldn’t let them know that and so I gave them my best ‘bloke face’ (showing neither approval or displeasure) and opened doors, checked windows and jumped on the spot in the corners but honestly, all I wanted to do was get myself a chair, put it inside and spend the rest of the day inhaling that great fresh wood smell.

I allowed my bloke face to break into a grin. ‘A job well done, guys.’

‘It’ll need another coat of preservative straight away and regular coating once a year to keep it in top condition,’ said the head workman.

‘Goes without saying,’ I replied.

‘And just keep an eye on the roof felt,’ he added. ‘It’s guaranteed for ten years so if you do have any problems call us and we’ll get it sorted.’

As the workmen collected their tools and saw themselves off the premises I remained at the top of the garden drooling over my shed. Now I’d got it I couldn’t wait to fill it up with the kind of useless ephemera that used to occupy my dad’s: rusting push lawn mowers, pristine Flymos, Black and Decker workmates, the constituent parts of dilapidated rabbit hutches, plastic ice-cream tubs overflowing with screws, nuts and bolts, open jars half filled with turpentine and paintbrushes and, of course, the icing on the cake, multiple kids’ bikes all with flat tyres.

A noise from behind me alerted me to the fact that I was no longer alone. I turned to see that Lauren had joined me. As befitting the weather she was dressed in a lightweight jacket and jeans. She looked beautiful and I wanted her to want to come closer and kiss me but she didn’t move.

‘So is this it?’

I nodded. ‘What do you think?’

‘It looks nice,’ she said unconvincingly (I was well aware of Lauren’s true feelings about my shed but at this point it was all water off a duck’s back). She drew a deep breath and added quickly, ‘Can you spare a minute? I just need a word with you about something.’

‘Can it wait?’ I kept my eyes firmly on the shed, ‘I really want to get the shed organised.’

‘Oh, come on Matt, it’s just a shed.’

‘Not to me, OK?’

She put a hand on my arm.

‘But I really need to talk to you.’

‘And like I said, now is not a good time.’

‘Just a few moments.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Matt!’

She was crying now but I still didn’t turn round.

‘We need to talk, Matt, we need to talk right now! Can’t you see it? Can’t you see that I don’t love you any more?’

I finally allowed my gaze to shift to her tear-streaked face.

‘Of course I can. What do you think I am, blind?’

‘Then why didn’t you say something?’

I looked at my shed, and then back at Lauren and without another word I headed back indoors.

3

Lauren and I met in Australia eight years ago. Our meeting had followed on from what I can only describe as a period of extreme transition which had begun when I’d split up with my live-in girlfriend, Elaine, while living in New York. Thousands of miles from home, with a thirtieth birthday looming, I’d packed my bags and bought a one-way ticket back to the UK.

Safe in the arms of friends and family in Birmingham I set about trying to turn thirty without losing the plot. And it worked, up to a point. Although there was a major complication where I briefly mistook the hazy warmth of nostalgia for something more, thankfully everything came good in the end. Fresh to thirtydom, I embarked on a new chapter of both my professional and personal life in Oz; and as most of my contemporaries were settling down and starting families I opted instead to get to the top of my game. I’d always worked hard but suddenly I upped a gear, always the first to arrive in the mornings and regularly working late in the evenings. When it came to weekends I spent more time in the office than anywhere else. In short I became a workaholic but as it was the only thing that seemed to give my life meaning I decided that the best thing I could do was just go with it. My increased work ethic did not go unnoticed and not only did I get paid very well, but I also climbed up the career ladder very quickly indeed.

One night a group of colleagues and the strategic business consultants with whom we’d been locked in a conference room for the best part of the day suggested that we all go for a wind-down at a bar near our office. Tempted as I was to say, ‘Actually, I think I might stay here and go through these development reports,’ I found myself saying, ‘Yeah, fine. I could do with a break.’ It’s a good job I did, because that was the night I met Lauren.

‘Rumour has it you’re the hardest-working employee at the company,’ she said, taking a seat next to mine. Her accent was English, Home Counties to be exact, which wasn’t that much of a surprise given the international make-up of companies like Benson-Lawless.

‘And you are?’ I hadn’t meant to sound abrupt. I was genuinely interested. The Benson-Lawless people had been coming into our offices for months for various meetings and consultations and I’d never had a conversation with one of them that wasn’t work-related.

‘Lauren Murray, strategic analyst for Benson-Lawless.’ We shook hands and although her grip was firm her hands were soft. For some reason this took me by surprise.

‘Nice to meet you Lauren,’ I replied, ‘and yes, I can confirm that rumour.’ ‘You don’t think much of us do you?’ she asked, scrutinising my face. ‘You think consultants are a waste of time.’