You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) (28 page)

“It’s
okay, Anna,” I said. “It’s just nerves, I guess.”

She
brushed a tear off my cheek with a warm, gentle finger. “All right, Laura. If that’s
what you say. I know you’ll do your best tonight – I know you have it in you to
be brilliant. Have you eaten anything today?”

“Not
really,” I said.

“You
need to keep your strength up.” She reached into her bag and handed me a cereal
bar. “Eat that, keep warm, and do your relaxation exercises. And don’t you dare
let me down!”

I
managed a smile, thanked her and left the studio, running up the stairs to the
roof in search of Felix. But he wasn’t there – there was only the faintest
smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the freezing air.

I
dreamed the dream I had so often: that Owen was crying, and I couldn’t find
him. He wasn’t in his bed, or in Darcey’s room. I thought she was asleep, but
when I nudged the duvet aside, I discovered a nest of fluffy ginger kittens
curled up on her pillow. Panicking now, I ran downstairs, but the ground floor
of our house had been transformed into the forest from
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream
. I could hear Owen’s cries growing louder and louder, and ran through
the trees searching for him, trying to call his name, but no sound came out.
Then a powerful pair of arms grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms against my
sides. I struggled, but couldn’t free myself. The forest was hot, humid as a
tropical jungle. The air was thick and difficult to breathe, cloying my lungs
so I couldn’t fill them enough to scream, and all that came out was a strangled
croak.

“Laura!”
Jonathan’s voice woke me at last. “Jesus. That was quite a nightmare. I tried
to hug you but you just thrashed about.”

I
opened my eyes, briefly disorientated before I realised – we were in New York,
in our hotel room, and I’d taken a sleeping pill the previous night to try and
stave off jet lag. It had left me with a banging headache and a foul taste in
my mouth – not a great way to start a holiday.

“I
dreamed we’d lost Owen,” I said, shivering at the memory, even though the room
was so warm. “And our house was all weird, with trees growing in the lounge,
and there were kittens, I think.” The memory of the dream was dissipating even
as I spoke, fragments drifting away as I tried to recall them, elusive as
smoke.

“Laura,
the kids will be fine,” Jonathan said. “You know that, don’t you? They were as
happy as anything when we dropped them at Sadie and Gareth’s yesterday.”

“Owen
was crying,” I said. “He was crying when we Skyped them last night.”

“Laura,
he threw a strop when we told him it was night-time here and we were going to
bed, even though they were just having breakfast,” Jonathan said. “He was
making a principled objection to the existence of time zones, toddler-style.
He’s fine. They’ll both be fine.”

“I
know,” I said. “I know they’ll be okay, and Darcey couldn’t stop going on about
how excited she is about the kittens” – that must be why they’d made an
appearance in my dream, of course – “and the pony. They’ll have a great time. I
just hope Sadie doesn’t let them eat too much junk.”

“Or
what?” Jonathan said. “Relax, darling, five days of fish-finger sandwiches
won’t give them type two diabetes or scurvy or whatever you’re imagining.”

“Don’t
take the piss.” I knew he was trying to cheer me up, but I still felt anxious
and irritable. “How do we get coffee here, anyway?”

“I
ordered it last night, remember?”

Of
course – when we got in from dinner, Jonathan had painstakingly filled in the
room service card while I got ready for bed, but by the time he’d hung it on
the door my sleeping pill had kicked in and I’d been unconscious. There had
been no enthusiastic first-night-of-holiday sex for us.

“That’ll
be it now,” Jonathan said, wrapping himself in a white towelling dressing gown
and answering the knock on the door. “Thanks very much. I can manage.”

He
put the laden tray down on the coffee table – our room was huge, more like a
suite, really – and tipped the chambermaid.

“Now,
we’ve got bacon, pancakes, toast, pastries, melon, orange juice and, of course,
coffee. Name your pleasure, darling.”

“Just
coffee, please. I’m not hungry – I might have something to eat later, when I’ve
woken up properly.”

I
watched as Jonathan dressed and breakfasted simultaneously, putting on his
shirt, then crunching his way through a couple of slices of toast with bacon
between them before doing up the buttons, stepping into his trousers, drinking
a cup of coffee then knotting his tie. He always did this at home – reading his
emails while he shaved in the mornings, pausing while doing the garden to
practice his golf swing with a spade.

He
called it multitasking, but for some reason I can’t put my finger on I’d always
found it intensely irritating. It was irritating me now, so much that I went
and had a shower so I didn’t have to watch.

The
hot water and lavish hotel toiletries made me feel more cheerful – Darcey would
love the miniature bottles of shower gel, shampoo and moisturiser, and I made a
mental note to steal a generous supply to take home.

“So
what’s the plan for the day?” I asked, emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a
fluffy towel.

“We
could do something together this morning,” Jonathan said. “A museum, maybe?
Staten Island? Whatever you fancy. Then have lunch, then I’ve got meetings all
afternoon, I’m afraid, but we’ll meet this evening for cocktails and dinner
somewhere fabulous – I’ll get the office manager to make a reservation. I’m
sorry to have to leave you on your own so much, but you’ll be okay, won’t you?”

“I’ll
be fine,” I said. “I’ll go shopping, or something.”

“Great,”
Jonathan said, but he, too, was looking at his phone, not really listening to
me. “That’s weird.”

“What’s
weird?”

“Email
from Wanda in the office here – she’s saying something about the DBMG account.
We’ve not had any business from them for years. Just some admin fuck-up, I
expect – I’ll clear it up when I meet with them later.”

“What’s
DBMG?” I asked, more to appear interested than because I really wanted to know.

“Energy
company. They explore large-scale oil reserves, mostly in South America. That’s
their version of it, anyway – mine is that they buy and then desecrate huge
swathes of rain forest, and when they’re done they walk away and leave
fucked-up ecology and loads of people without work. Nothing illegal, but highly
unethical and exploitative as far as I’m concerned, so I was quite happy to let
the account quietly slip away.”

“That’s
horrible,” I said.

“It
is horrible,” Jonathan agreed. “But they’ll carry on doing it regardless of who
their financial services firm is, so there was an argument for fighting to
retain the business, but…” he shrugged.

“You
didn’t fight too hard?”

“No,
I suppose I didn’t. But don’t tell that to Wanda in the Wall Street office.
She’s a seriously tough cookie – I’m a bit scared of her. Anyway, we should get
going, if you don’t want anything to eat?”

I
dressed hastily, gulping another cup of coffee while I did my make-up – Jonathan’s
habits were nothing if not contagious – and ten minutes later we were out in
the blazing hot morning, walking hand in hand up Park Avenue.

We
wandered through Central Park for a bit, until it got too hot, and then
retreated to the Museum of Modern Art and spent a happy two hours exploring the
galleries, together but not together. If I stopped to look at a painting,
Jonathan wouldn’t wait for me, but then a few minutes later he’d come and find
me and take my hand, saying, “Come here, Laura, you’ve got to see this.” And
I’d go, and we’d talk about what he’d found and then drift apart again.

It
was my favourite way to look round galleries with someone – there was nothing
worse than feeling you had to wait and stare at something that didn’t interest
you, or risk looking like a philistine.

 It
was also, I realised uncomfortably, a fairly accurate reflection of the state
of our marriage. But I didn’t want to think about that, not now, not when we
were happy and having a good time together. So I didn’t think – I just looked
at the beautiful paintings, and when Jonathan was out of sight, I sneaked off
to gaze at the ceramics display, which I knew would bore him. He found me there
half an hour later.

“I
knew you’d be mooning over cups and saucers,” he teased. “I don’t know why you
bother coming, when you could just go to John Lewis and do the same thing.”

“Fuck
off!” I laughed. “It’s Harrods, at the very least. Look at this, look at the
glaze.”

“Owen
would smash it in about a nanosecond,” Jonathan said. “It’s gone midday. We
should get some lunch and then I’ll have to head off for my two o’clock.”

I
realised I was starving, and thirsty, and my ankle was hurting from standing
for so long. But when we drifted back out into the hot streets, we found
ourselves doing The Dance of Lunch.

When
you’ve been together as long as Jonathan and I have, even the things that annoy
you about each other become games – become mythologised almost. So it was with
us and lunch. We’d been out to dinner together countless times, and it was
always fine, bar the occasional overdone steak, upselling sommelier or minor
row. But lunch was another matter.

The
first time it happened, we’d been going out for just a few weeks and I’d stayed
over at Jonathan’s for the first time. We did all the usual stuff – woke up,
had coffee, had sex, showered, and then Jonathan suggested going for lunch, so
we strolled down his local high street and assessed the options.

“What’s
this place like?” I asked as we passed an organic salad bar.

“No
idea whatsoever,” Jonathan said, “and I don’t intend to find out now.”

I
was slightly taken aback, but thought, fair enough, maybe salad isn’t his
thing.

“How
about Thai?” Jonathan said.

“Really?
For lunch? All that rice?” I objected. “There’s a nice looking café there
across the road.”

“No
fucking way,” Jonathan said. “It’s always rammed with families with screaming
kids at weekends.”

Little
did he know that one day, we’d be one of those families. But back then, I had
to admit he had a point.

And
so it went on. Jonathan put in a bid for Nando’s; I said no because their
chicken wasn’t free range. I proposed a Vietnamese place, but he said the last
time he’d been there the waitress was so rude he’d vowed never to go back.
After half an hour of this, we decided that the next place we passed would be
the one we went to, even if it turned out to be horrid, as of course it did.

And
time and time again over the years, the scenario repeated itself, until we came
to recognise and fear the Dance of Lunch, which always ended in disappointment
and ill temper.

And
now, here in New York, city of about a zillion restaurants, it was happening
again. Jonathan wasn’t in the mood for sushi. The queue at the falafel cart was
too long. I didn’t want to go to a burger place because I was worried about
hormones and antibiotics in the meat. A pleasant-looking Mexican restaurant
turned us away because we hadn’t booked. And all the time, I was getting
hungrier and hungrier and we were both getting crosser and crosser.

I
found myself turning to passive aggression.

“Look,
we can go to the burger place if you want. I’ll just have something else – they
probably do a vegetarian option, even if it’s not very good.”

“No,
Laura, don’t be a martyr,” Jonathan said. “This is your holiday, you must eat
something you’ll like.”

“It’s
too late now,” I said. “We’re doing the Dance of Lunch. Wherever we end up will
be minging, let’s just cut our losses and not be too late to eat anything at
all.”

“I’m
sure there was a place just down the road here that I read about,” Jonathan
said, getting out his phone.

And
then I gave up all hope. Once Jonathan started Googling, I knew we were well
and truly fucked.

When
eventually we found the restaurant Jonathan had read about, I was feeling sick
with hunger and suspected my face was getting sunburned. Jonathan was looking
hot and cross in his suit, and snapping at me whenever I feebly suggested that
we just pop into the next place we passed.

“Here
we are!” he said. “Thank God for that.”

But
it turned out to be closed for lunch on Tuesdays.

We
looked at each other, both equally pissed off, and then we started to laugh.

“Look,
this isn’t going to happen,” I said. “You grab something on the way to your
meeting and I’ll head back to the hotel and eat there, okay?”

“Hold
on, there’s another place we can try just down here…”

“Jonathan!
No! In about five seconds we’re going to have a row if we carry on like this,
and I don’t want to have a row.”