Page 17 of A Midlife Marriage

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Back home, Helen dumped her handbag in the hall and her Tesco shopping bag on the kitchen table. In the bedroom, she pulled off her work blouse, threw it on the bed and picked up at-shirt from the floor. As she pulled it over her head she laughed. She was turning into her son.Jack,she yelled, ready to share the joke. But the name echoed off the walls.Jack,she whispered.Libby?No-one answered. Jack was still in Florida, and Libby was in her own home, with her own baby.

She wandered back into the kitchen and stood looking at the glossy white cabinets and quartz worktops, the mirrored surface of the induction hob, the gleaming stainless-steel hood. All those years of piled dishes and sticky surfaces, how often had she wished for a kitchen as clean as this. Now she had it, she wasn’t remotely interested in using it. She went to the fridge, opened it and stood staring at the contents. With no Jack and his abhorrence of anything fish related, and no Lawrence with his high protein/ low carb demands she could have whatever she wanted for dinner. She didn’t, she found, want anything. She shut the door and as she turned once again to face her empty flat,it felt to Helen like she was waiting for something. It felt like the flat was waiting too.

I could run a vaccination programme standing on my head,she said. Was that it? Was that what this unspoken air of anticipation was about?

Silence grew, snaking up her legs, tingling at her fingertips, brushing the back of her neck. Her fingers played at her lip. The flat looked different. Before her trip it had been full of exciting things like visa forms and hiking clothing, a stack of camping utensils she’d invested so much time researching and buying. Now it was blank walls, and unpacked boxes full of all the things she had walked out of her marriage with. Things that it turned out she hadn’t missed, wasn’t sure where she would put, and was beginning to wonder if she even wanted. The trip, it was clear, hadn’t so much as given her a focus, as bestowed her with tunnel vision. So much so that moving into this flat hadn’t even felt like a move. It had felt like a pit-stop.Helen.She dropped her hand to the table, tapping out a tiny gallop with her fingertips. Could she really run a vaccination programme?Helen, Helen, Helen.

She went back to the fridge, opened it, stared again at the contents and closed it. She had no idea what to do next, because (and the shock was extraordinary as the realisation dawned), she had never done this before. No, that was ridiculous! Wasn’t it? Arms crossed, she went to stand by the window, her brow creased with concentration.

Had she done this before? At eighteen, she’d gone from her parents’ home, to university halls of residence, to a shared flat, to another shared flat in London, to living with Lawrence, to living with Lawrence and their children and, at various times, three dogs, one cat and an indestructible rabbit. So astonishing as it was, it was looking like she really hadn’t done this before: never completed an ordinary day, at an ordinary job before coming back to an empty home, with nothing more to lookforward to other than repetition. The weeks leading up to her trip didn’t count, then she had a destination, then she knew where she was going. Now, she didn’t have a clue. She tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. How had she not anticipated this? All those months battling for a divorce, looking for her escape, how had she not seen, or at least prepared for this? How (and the thought was a hammer), had Caro done this for so long?

Caro led to Kay, and Kay she remembered anew, was retiring today. Immediately, Helen went to her bag, took out her phone and called. But the number rang out. She cut the call. It would have been a tough day for Kay, and the last thing she would want, or need, was to listen to Helen regurgitate how awful her own day had been. Tapping the phone on her chin, she looked at the clock. It wasn’t too late to try Caro. She could test out the Bolivia idea. But Caro’s phone rang out as well, and sighing Helen cut that call too. Caro would be out digging carrots or something. Her children were off living their lives, and she could hardly call Lawrence. Who could she talk to? A lump caught in her throat. Where had everyone gone? Standing in the middle of her sunny living-room, it felt to Helen as if she had turned her back for five minutes and everyone had vanished.I could do it,she whispered, went back to the kitchen, uncorked a bottle of wine, poured herself a giant bowl of crisps and, ice-cubes sloshing in the glass, went out to the balcony.

Across the road in the park, she watched as a woman laid out a blanket. Nearby a man played football with a tiny boy. They were obviously a young family, making the most of this glorious evening. She kicked her shoes off and stretched her feet out to the empty chair opposite, her toes waggling in the warm air. A year ago, during the dark days of trying to decide if she should stay in her marriage, or leave, this was the image that she had clung to. The view from this balcony across to the park. Picturing herself, with a coffee on a Sunday morning, a few potsof begonias and tomatoes, a stylish patio set and Radio Four burbling away in the background. Those had been the first baby steps to a new life. The images that had kept her floating when storms of guilt had threatened to capsize. But she’d learned to walk now. More, she’d flown across a continent, putting thousands of miles between herself and Radio Four, and images she couldn’t have imagined then, were opening now because shecouldrun a vaccination programme, she just knew she could.

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‘Congratulations, Kay!’

‘You can go to the toilet whenever you like now. Don’t have to wait for the bell.’

‘You know what happened to me? I got my coffee table back. No more piles of exercise books. Ever.’

Everyone wantedto talk to her, and she wanted to talk to everyone, of course she did. But her face was beginning to feel tight from smiling.

‘At least youwon’t have to deal with a husband. You know what mine did? First day of his retirement he came into the kitchen and told me I was loading the washing machine wrong.’

‘Mine started re-arrangingthe kitchen cupboards. I couldn’t reach anything. He didn’t think of that of course.’

‘So,what will you do? I heard Cyprus was on the cards?’

With every newconversation Kay found herself repeating the same lines: ‘Well I have a friend there. I’m going out in a few weeks; it’s just a reconnaissance.’ And every time the words sounded less real, as if she was reading a part in a play. If only she had kept them in her head, secret and safe from this universal enthusiasm she didn’t quite share. It made her feel like a fraud. It was making her face ache even more.

‘I’m just going to get a quick top-up,’ she said to a tall man with flushed cheeks and a single tuft of surprisingly long grey hair. Patrick, a retired history teacher who she’d always liked, but who she suspected was on the verge of launching into a long and extremely detailed explanation of the history of Cyprus.

‘I’ll get it.’ Patrick stretched his hand out for her paper cup. ‘Can’t have you serving yourself. It’s your party.’

‘It’s OK.’ In an awkward but swift movement, Kay drew her arm tight to her chest. ‘I have to check up on my dad,’ she said, turning way before Partick could insist.

But making her way across the room, was to battle through an onslaught of congratulations and hugs, so by the time she reached the drinks table, she really did need a top-up.

‘Over here,’ Craig mouthed, waving from where he stood at the far end of the table.

Kay smiled. He was pouring wine for a couple of the canteen ladies, chatting away as if he’d known them all his life. At the other end of the table, seated next to each other were her father and Lizzie, chatting away – Kay smiled – as if they too, were old friends.

‘So,’ she said as she reached Craig, and handed him her cup. ‘What do you think of the staffroom?’

‘Noisy, aren’t they?’ Craig said. ‘Teachers, I mean.’

Kay picked up a sausage roll, cupping her hand at her chin as she looked the nodding heads and waving arms of what, she had to agree, was an increasingly rowdy bunch of teachers.

‘I’ve been talking to your old headmistress. Lizzie.’ Craig handed her a full cup of wine. ‘She’s hilarious. She was telling me how she used to end parents’ evening.’

‘By getting the janitor to turn out the lights?’ Kay laughed. ‘That was last century, Craig.’

‘Can you imagine that nowadays?’

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