God, we were happy that autumn. I suppose I should just speak for myself and let Dawn tell you how it was for her, but even though she did this thin-lipped smile all the time, doing her best to pretend she was unconvinced, I could tell. I’d catch her singing out of tune as she hung the washing out, or laughing with a friend on the phone. Even her cooking improved.
As for me, I felt suddenly at ease, as if I was finally the person I’d always meant to be. For the first time since I was a kid, my panic attacks stopped too.
They’d been ongoing – the attacks – since I was fourteen, and through seeing the school shrink when I was sixteen I’d worked out exactly where they stemmed from. Not that I’d told him. No way I was ever going to tell anyone about something likethat.
But sadly, it turned out that knowing why wasn’t enough to make them stop. What, unexpectedly, did make them stop was being with Dawn.
In the meantime, the therapist had taught me how to calm myself down. He’d called it counting in threes. ‘One, name something you can see,’ he’d say. ‘Two, name something you can smell or hear. Three, name something you can touch.’
‘Sunlight, woodsmoke, corduroy,’ I’d reply. ‘Window, aftershave, button…’
And it worked almost every time. After three or four rounds I’d find myself re-centred there in that room instead of lost in whatever childhood horror my brain had chosen to revisit. My heart would stop pounding and the oxygen would seem to return to the room.
My three, back then, were always,Dawn, Lucy, happiness. Yes, my happiness seemed solid enough to touch.
At first, the sex got better, too. Sex was perhaps the thing that made me feel the most panicky of all, but slowly, surely, we got there. I don’t think I ever became the world’s greatest lover, but Dawn knew what she was about and wasn’t too embarrassed to explain. So within a month, I knew both to hold back as long as I could, and to carry on even after I’d caved in. ‘Slowly, but surely,’ she’d say, ‘that’s it. A slow and steady rhythm. Don’t speed up… I know you want to, but just don’t.’
That September was what people call ‘an Indian summer’ and I switched to working Saturdays so that on Mondays I could join my ladies on the beach. They liked to picnic near the clock-tower and on Mondays Dawn’s mum was free, too.
Tracey was dating a new man back then, a hippy guy called Alan who’d had a ponytail since long before he’d started going bald. He was a weird-looking bloke with a beaky nose and slate-grey eyes. He wore cowboy boots, flares and patchwork shirts that Tracey seemed to be forever darning. I thought his grey, half-bald ponytail and white pointy beard made him look, for some reason, a bit unsavoury.
Still, Tracey was happy with him for a while, and they spent one very giggly summer stoned off their heads on Alan’s home-grown weed.
‘Funny-looking bloke,’ I said to Dawn as we drove home after a picnic one day. It seemed strange to me that Dawn never commented on her mother’s choice of men.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it won’t last.’
‘How’d you know?’ I asked. ‘Experience?’
‘Nothing ever does,’ she said, sounding thoughtful.
‘You mean for anyone,’ I asked, ‘or for her?’
Dawn giggled a bit at that – she’d taken a few hits of Alan’s joint as we were leaving. ‘It never lasts for anyone called Weaver,’ she said, sending me a cheeky wink. ‘There’s a curse on the Weaver surname. You’ll see!’
‘We’d better get on with changing that surname, then,’ I said. ‘We’d better change it before the curse catches up with us.’
She started to frown at me but then understood what I was suggesting, and laughed so much that Lucy started to make gurgling noises too. ‘Yeah,’ Dawn said, when she could speak again. ‘Like that’s gonna happen.’
We got married in March ’92.
It was a quick and dirty ceremony at Margate registry office followed by a meal in Giorgio’s Italian, after which we went for drinks in a wine bar overlooking the bay.
Tracey, who was single again by then, ended up sexy-dancing with a DJ half her age, but other than that it was all pretty low-key. I wouldn’t have been opposed to a more imposing wedding, but as I only had three friends I wanted present, and as we weren’t exactly rich, any of us, it was enough. I was satisfied with our mini wedding. I was more than satisfied – I was chuffed.
Back home, I carried Dawn, who in turn was carrying Lucy, across the threshold.
‘Your palace, MrsHavard,’ I said, and she laughed. ‘MrsHavard!’ she said. ‘Sounds ridiculous!’
Out of nowhere, for no reason I could name, the thought came to me that this couldn’t last. It was too good to be true, wasn’t it?
I kicked the front door closed behind us and my breath caught in my throat. I wondered if I was about to have an attack.
‘The sofa, please, MrHavard,’ Dawn said, thinking my pause came from the fact that I was hesitating about where to dump them. So I carried them into the lounge, and laid them gently on the sofa.
House, wife, daughter,I thought.Security, love, joy. And the feeling faded, and my chest loosened and I thought,perhaps we’ll be OK after all.
* * *
