‘I still want us to be friends. I want you in my life. And Emma’s. She adores you.’
‘Well, the feeling’s mutual, obviously.’
Occasionally, I do reflect on how I would feel if I’d reached this stage of life without having left Josh, or had my daughter. Or even if I’d taken the pill, and then been unable to conceive.
If I’d not listened to the insistence in my heart back then, I would have so many more regrets now. I am sure of that.
I stare at the flames frolicking in the fireplace, trying to focus my thoughts on the stuffed stocking I will hang above the hearth in a few days’ time, the icing sugar footprints I will dust on to the stone. The half-eaten carrot and crumpled mince pie foil on a holly-and-ivy plate – all the things Dad kept doing for me after Mum left, so that Christmas stayed magical.
For a moment – I’m not sure why – I think Josh is going to mention the antidote again. But he doesn’t.
I gave him his Christmas gift earlier, made him promise not to open it before the big day. I unearthed it in a second-hand bookshop, a rare book for a rare person – a signed first-edition copy ofThe Remains of the Day. It cost even more than what I spent on Oliver this year, but I couldn’t resist.
I know it probably wasn’t fully appropriate. But, when it comes to Josh, I do have a tendency to forget myself. Which is probably why I hand-drew him a Christmas card, too. A penguin on a snowscape, in a bright red woollen hat and scarf, gazing hopefully up at the stars.
57.
Josh
June 2011
Darren summons me to his place. I try to pretend I’m busy, but then Giles turns up at my flat and practically headlocks me over there.
In Darren’s kitchen, I attempt to avoid the discussion I know they want to have by engaging Darren’s youngest, Blake, in a long and involved conversation about his Xbox. Unsurprisingly, though, sixteen-year-olds have better things to do with their weekends than explain gaming to Luddites, so he escapes at the earliest opportunity.
Darren’s phone buzzes with a message. He glances at it, smiles softly. ‘Last exam for Raffy yesterday. Three years down, two to go.’
His oldest boy is at uni in London, studying to be a cosmetic dentist. This kind of blows my mind, given that I first met his parents two years before he was born, and I’m pretty sure his first word wasbum.
‘Just wish that one would sort himself out.’ Darren tips his head in the direction of Blake’s bedroom. ‘I keep trying to tell him, playing Xbox isn’t a career plan.’
‘Is for some people,’ Giles mumbles, through a mouthful of Monster Munch. ‘They have tournaments now.’
I feel a flex of guilt for chatting to Blake just now – and, let’s be honest, for much of the past sixteen years – about exactly that. Still, I continue to find myself weirdly rapt by these vicissitudes of parenting. Even the stuff my friends tell me is hard, boring, challenging. I envy, oddly, everything.
You always want what you can’t have, I guess.
‘So, that’s it?’ Darren says to me, after tapping out a quick message to Raffy. ‘You’re officially divorced?’
I nod. ‘Solicitor sent through the decree absolute last week.’
In a nice little fuck-you from the universe, my divorce certificate came through a decade to the day that Rachel walked out. Ten whole years without her. Ten years of living a life that, sometimes, I struggle to recognise.
‘Sorry, mate,’ Darren says, putting his phone away. ‘But maybe this is what you’ve needed. Closure. Absolutely zero chance of you ever reuniting.’
‘Great, cheers,’ I say, offering him a slightly piqued thumbs-up.
Darren and Giles exchange a silent glance.
‘What?’ I say, a little more bluntly than I intended.
‘You should try to see this as a fresh start.’
‘Yep. Look to the future, pull yourself together and stop pining after Rachel,’ Giles chips in.
I wish it were that easy. Last month, walking past Pizza Hut, I happened to look up and see Rachel, Oliver and seven-year-old Emma at a table in the window. They were the perfect picture of a happy, messy family, all crayons and sticky fingers, half-finished refills of Coke, plates piled with abandoned crusts. Emma was giggling at something Oliver was saying, her whole body tilted sideways in the breeze of his quick wit.
I just stood next to a bin graffitied with expletives and watched them all for a few seconds, my heart racing and aching.
