Page 24 of We All Live Here
•••
Sometimes, if she’sin a particularly self-punishing mood, Lila thinks of how her husband’s relationship with Marja must have formed at a point when he was supposedly being his most helpful. He had taken a three-month sabbatical from work—Get Ripped!magazine gave this to all employees of more than ten years’ standing and his had coincided with the deadline for her book. So, for what she had thought of as three precious months, every weekday afternoon, instead of having to leave her screen and race to the school gate, she had been able to sit at home and write—an unheard-of freedom—while her husband hung around with the school mums, waiting for their fractious children to trail out of the red door. Sometimes he had even taken them to the park after school—“To give you more writing time,” he had said, and she had felt almost giddy with gratitude and love. Until, of course, it had become clear that Marja must have hung out at the park on all those occasions too. And that during that three months something more than the usual staving-off of parental tedium, of the normal park-bench companionship with its shared paper handkerchiefs and cartons of juice, itschildish complaints and scraped knees, had taken place. Perhaps Marja had made extra efforts to look nice, arriving in her yoga gear to show off her lithe silhouette, spritzing herself with expensive perfume before heading out to pick up Hugo. Perhaps Dan had made extra efforts too—she hadn’t noticed much at the time, except her daily word count, her panic at getting it all done.
There must have been a day on which, seated on a park bench, or watching Violet on the swings, Dan had confided in Marja that he felt unhappy, or ignored, or that he had simply fallen out of love. Perhaps they had discussed sex, or the lack of it. Marja would have turned her limpid gaze on him, placed a beautifully manicured hand of sympathy on his arm. Perhaps she portrayed herself as brave, the single mother whose partner had moved back to the Netherlands and now did almost nothing to help her. She would have smiled. Leaned into him. How admirable she must have seemed, compared to the grumpy wife in sweatpants at home who moaned because he had yet again failed to buy the dishwasher tablets on the way home.
And then, one day, a whole new boundary would have been crossed. Lila still doesn’t know exactly when that was, perhaps after his sabbatical had ended, during a “work” lunch or on one of the many evenings he had claimed to need to stay late at the office. She doesn’t know when he and Marja had begun sleeping together, or when they first expressed their love for each other. She knows only the leftover bits: the date on which he told her, with almost comical formality, that their marriage was over. The date, sometime after that, when she understood—after she’d glimpsed them sitting, foreheads touching, in a parked car on Garwood Street—why that was.
She occasionally wishes someone would acknowledge her fortitude in simply turning up to the school gates every day, at least without a flame-thrower and a small army of mercenaries. She thinks she’s done pretty well to stay standing. She thinks she might deserve a medal for makingher legs walk to school every day, for standing and smiling and acting like it hasn’t all half killed her. No, from the outside, she thinks it’s possible that nobody would even notice any more.
Though she still hasn’t managed to go back to the play park. Not once.
•••
Lila arrives atthe school at nineteen minutes past three, the very latest she can get there before they turn them out. Violet had begged her to get her a cinnamon bun from the nice Scandinavian bakery, and she’s feeling mildly guilty that she’d been unable to resist buying one for herself as well and eating it outside the shop. Since Bill had arrived she and the girls eat sugary treats urgently and surreptitiously in the car, or outside shops, like junkies getting a fix.
Marja is standing with the other mums, clutching a Tupperware box of cupcakes for some bake sale for which Lila has no doubt missed the email, someone is discussing future play-dates, and Lila immediately moves to the other end of the waiting area and stares determinedly at her phone.
She has thought a lot about what Eleanor said, tried to reframe her life more positively. Every day I do this, she tells herself, I am moving one step closer to a better life. Every day I do this is one day closer to when Dan and Marja’s and my little psychodrama is going to become yesterday’s news. She has repeated this to herself over the several hours that she should have been writing. Except, she thinks suddenly, once the baby arrives, it will be coming here every day too. Marja will be pushing Dan’s baby past her every day, with all those women cooing over it. Maybe Dan will come with her on the first day, like husbands often do, full of pride and protective of their amazing partner,who was so brave, and so strong. Honestly, I’m in awe of her.
“Excuse me.”
A man is standing in front of her. He is tall and slim, with floppy, tawny hair, and sad eyes behind glasses. He has the kind of shambolic sexiness that was catnip to her before she met Dan. She blinks. She realizes he has said something that she couldn’t make out. “Sorry?”
“I wondered where you got that.” He is pointing at the bag with the cinnamon bun. “My daughter loves those things. We’re new here so I don’t really know where the good places are.”
“Oh.” She peers down at the bag. When she looks up she guesses, uncomfortably, that she has probably gone a bit pink. He has a remarkably direct gaze. “It’s Annika’s.”
“Is that your daughter?”
“No. No. The bakery. It’s called Annika’s. I don’t think there’s an actual Annika working there. They chose it because it’s a Swedish name. Just so we all know it’s Swedish. And does cinnamon buns. This one is just at the end of the high street. I’m pretty sure there’s another in Finchley, also called Annika’s…” She tails off. “So which class is your daughter in?”
He says something but it’s not Violet’s class and everything has turned into a kind of humming sound around him. She realizes almost straight away that she hasn’t properly listened to him so she just smiles and nods. And then nods again, just in case.
“When did she start?”
“Last week. She’s finding it all a little tricky so I just wanted to cheer her up.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “It’s—uh…She’s had a lot of change in her life over the last eighteen months.” He stares at his feet.
Lila can’t think of what to say. So she thrusts the bun at him. “Take it.”
“What?”
“For your daughter. I can get another on the way back.” It’s half a mile in the other direction.
“No…no. I can’t do that.” He smiles and is briefly elevated from shambolically attractive to devastatingly gorgeous. “That’s incredibly sweet of you, though.”
“I insist.” She is now pushing the bun at him, forcing it into his hands. “Please. I shouldn’t give this to Violet anyway. We—we normally just eat fish and lentils.”
“We’ve lived off so much Deliveroo lately I probably have their equivalent of gold status.”
Why is he living off takeaway? Does that mean there’s no woman in the house?Lila curses herself for her internalized misogyny. This man looks too cool for internalized misogyny. She tries to think of something to say about Deliveroo but Violet is coming out through the doors. “Violet! Oh, God, don’t let her see it. She’ll never forgive me. I’d better—Bye. Nice to meet you…”
“Gabriel.”
“Gabriel. I’m…” She struggles to recall her name. “…Lila! Hah! So much for fish as brain food. Forgot my own name!” She lets out a strange high-pitched laugh she has never heard before, turns and walks briskly toward Violet, cursing herself.How can I be behaving like I’m fifteen when my neck is old enough to be growing an actual wattle?
