‘Scotland,’ Joel replies.
‘Whereabouts in Scotland?’ Fin squints, as if having trouble with the concept.
Joel emits an audible sigh. He grew up in the furthest reaches of east London, in a suburb so dull it makes his scalp itch to think of it. Apart from their annual family package holidays to Spain or Greece – and that long-ago excursion to Glasgow when Shelley had to sit down on the old-lady chair in John Lewis and ask for water – he has barely been out of London at all. As far as he is concerned, the UK is divided into two sections: ‘London’ and ‘Outside London’. The latter, he can’t see the point of at all.
‘Someplace in the middle of nowhere,’ he replies, although he doesn’t really know.
‘Why’s she gone there?’
‘Don’t know. Just an urge, I suppose.’ With a snort and an eye roll, Joel tries to engage his son in a silent man-to-man exchange.Women, eh?But Fin isn’t biting. ‘Why don’t you go and watch TV?’ Joel suggests impatiently.
Fin blinks at him. He doesn’t ‘watch TV’; he gains all of his visual stimulation via his laptop and phone. His dad might as well have suggested he pop off and listen to the wireless. But he leaves the kitchen anyway, and soon Joel becomes aware of a mumbled conversation between Fin and Martha in the living room.
Feeling weighted down by having to care for his kids, Joel boils enough spaghetti to fuel a football team and grabs a jar of sauce from the cupboard.Sun ripened Isle of Wight tomatoes and fragrant basil. Made with love,the label reads. Joel isn’t making dinner with love. He slops out ill-tempered spaghetti for his near-silent kids, slumped gloomily at the table. It’s a relief when dinner is over, and first Fin heads out to his mate Ajay’s, and then Martha announces that she too is meeting ‘people’, no further information supplied.
Alone now, Joel prowls around the Victorian terraced house that they almost bankrupted themselves to buy when Shelley was pregnant with Fin. It’s as if he needs to reassure himselfthat no one is hiding away in any of the rooms or cupboards. He even checks the tiny downstairs loo and the cupboard under the stairs. Although he is often alone here during the day, when Shelley is at work and the kids are at school, tonight’s aloneness has taken on a different quality.
There’s something almostthrillingabout it. It’s like those rare occasions when his parents went out to meet friends at the pub, a fake Tudor monstrosity with a terrible font on its signage close to Epping Forest. Left home alone, the teenage Joel would raid their drinks cabinet and concoct audacious cocktails incorporating all the spirits, topped up with the sangria they’d brought back from Lloret de Mar in a bottle shaped like a bull.
Tonight’s aloneness is like that. It feels shiny, like a gift. Because for one thing, it’s evening; the start of the last weekend before Christmas. Better still, Joel doesn’t have any outstanding work to do, and he isn’t about to tackle the dishes. Why should he clear up after his kids, like a servant?
No, tonight Joel has another plan. Leaving the dirty pasta bowls on the table, he bounds upstairs for a swift shower and then, in the bedroom, surveys his naked form in the full-length mirror. He has definitely trimmed down in the belly region and he’s not in bad shape for fifty-two. In fact, if he stands up straight to his full six feet and sucks in his stomach, he’s actually still pretty hot.
Shelley might not think so, judging by the way she clambers into bed in her flowery pyjamas that remind him of his late nan’s curtains and immediately pops her reading glasses on. But someone else does. Someone who seems pretty impressed by his semi-fame as a top graphic designer and who would never wear spectacles in bed.
The thought of this person triggers a spontaneous stirring of Joel’s loins. That’s what she does to him. It’s as if he’s a teenager again, hair-triggered to respond to the slightestsexual provocation: watchingTop of the Pops; glimpsing the bra section of his mum’s Grattan catalogue. Even Margot fromThe Good Lifecould set him off when his hormones were at a rolling boil. But tonight, determined to keep himself for the delights ahead, he tries to dampen his ardour by focusing hard on decidedly non-sexual things: the damp patch on the bedroom ceiling; Shelley reminding him to sluice out the black wheelie bin because something is rotting in the bottom of it. Yep, that’s done it. He picks out a plain dark-blue shirt and putty-coloured trousers and his favourite new trainers. Having dressed quickly, he squirts on the new fragrance that was gifted to him, as an extra thank you for his packaging redesign.
Frowning, he messages his kids to say he’s meeting a friend for a drink tonight. Do they have their keys?
Yes,replies Fin.
Ye,says Martha.
Thus settled, Joel steps out into the dank December night, mentally adding an extra point to his secret list.
Shelley’s fucked off to Scotland – five days before Christmas! – without even clearing it with me. So what does she expect?
11
Shelley is wary of the over-praising of men for doing ordinary things. The fanfare and wild applause when, say, a father helps his young daughter up onto the slide and then waits to catch her at the bottom. ‘Aren’t you a marvellous dad!’ an elderly lady exclaimed once, when Joel had done precisely that. ‘You deserve a medal!’
What about me? Shelley thought. What about the millions of times she’d brought Martha and Fin to the park in the rain, and pushed those swings while Joel stayed at home, having said he had ‘stuff to get on with’? Why hadn’t anyone rushed over and saidshedeserved a medal? Yet despite this, there is something about Michael and the way he seems to run things here – singlehandedly, it appears – that Shelley can’t help but be impressed by.
‘So, if guests want the dinner option, we eat here all together,’ he explains as they rejoin him in the kitchen. ‘But you don’t need to do that. It’s your weekend and you’ve come a long way for this. Just come and go as you like?—’
‘We’d love to eat with you,’ Shelley cuts in, turning to her friends. ‘Wouldn’t we?’
‘Of course,’ Lena says. ‘But only if it’s no trouble…’
‘Only if you have space for us,’ Pearl adds. ‘And if you let us cook.’
‘Yes, just tell us what to do,’ Lena insists, even though her culinary skills are decidedly limited. All those years with her faithless ex-husband, she had vowed to crash-course her way through Jamie Oliver’s early works in preparation for the family they planned to have. However, she had never quite got around to it.
‘Honestly, it’s no trouble,’ Michael says firmly. He hands them generous glasses of wine and pours a small one for himself. ‘I’ve been doing this for so long, it pretty much runs like clockwork. I have my systems,’ he adds with a smile.
‘So how many will there be tomorrow night?’ Pearl asks.
‘Um, the Sampsons are a family of three, and then there’s the single guy, Niall-someone – a hillwalker, I’m guessing – and you three, and me. So that’s eight. That’s pretty normal. There aren’t many other options for eating around here,’ he explains, turning away to tend to their supper.
