Page 92 of We All Live Here
Chapter Thirty
The unexpected telephone interlude with Gabriel makes the next few days bearable. Frankly, something needs to, because she still feels Bill’s absence in the house like an open wound. And the girls are starting to ask difficult questions about Gene’s absence. Lila wrestles her way through each day, finding reasons not to sit at her desk: tidying or accompanying Eleanor on dog walks or attending exercise classes.
Eleanor is cheerful, the previous months apparently wiped from her own mental slate. She has signed up to a dating app for minor celebrities—apparently her work as a makeup artist seems to have got her through the vetting process—and every time she sees Lila she is brimming with entertaining stories about former soap stars who have messaged her privately, or long-forgotten nineties pop stars whom she hadn’t recognized. “I mean half of them are apparently influencers or DJs from Ibiza I’ve never heard of, but it’s nice to have the interest.”
Lila tells her about the bath episode and she is delighted. “That’s great! As long as you aren’t intending to write about it.”
“I am absolutely not writing about it,” Lila says.
She cannot work out what to say to Anoushka. Any day now the contract will arrive and she will have to tell her that she cannot write the book as planned. She has considered hundreds of alternatives to suggest to the publishers, but even she is unexcited by half of them.
Moving Forward From Divorce—An Emotional Journey.
How to Find Inner Happiness Through Re-organizing Your Under-stairs Cupboard.
What I Discuss With My Dog in the Mornings When My Kids Have Gone Out Without Saying a Word to Me.
She calls Bill every day, but he no longer wants to discuss anything related to her mother, and she finds the conversation grows sticky after they have covered what the girls have done and what she is cooking for dinner. At night she has imaginary arguments with Francesca:How could you hurt Bill like you did? How could you choose Gene?The mother of her memories seems to have evaporated, replaced by someone Lila doesn’t know, and she is grieving her loss all over again.
Lila goes to school pickup wearing earphones. She seems to need a constant supply of words in her ears, drowning out her thoughts, like she did in the early days after Dan left. It doesn’t seem to matter what she listens to as long as it drowns out the competing voices in her head.
The playground is oddly empty when she arrives. It takes her a couple of minutes to register it. There is another mother she vaguely recognizes walking away from the school office door. As she passes Lila she raises a small smile.
“You too, huh?”
Lila frowns and removes her earphones. “I’m sorry?”
“You forgot the rehearsal this evening? Like I did?”
The rehearsal. With all the domestic shenanigans Lila has failed to open a single school email this week. But she has a vague memory that there was a run-through at some point. “It’s today?”
“There’s another hour to go.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Lila looks at her watch. It will take her twenty minutes to walk home and another twenty to walk back. This is the maternal time-vacuum, the endless hours lost to waiting, the slots of time that are never enough to do anything useful. She sighs.
“Yeah. Me too. Curse of the working mums. I can never keep up with the emails.”
The woman has blonde hair cut in a shaggy bob, and the kind of wardrobe that speaks of a professional life, even if part time.
“I’m going to grab a coffee up the road. No point going home just to come back again,” she says. And then she glances at Lila. “You’re welcome to join me if you like.”
It is a tentative offer, but apparently genuinely meant. Lila has always been wary of the other mothers, but she is pretty sure this one is not part of the school cabal. She has seen her on her own, lurking a short distance away just as Lila does. And she has a nice, friendly face. “Sure,” she says, suddenly grateful not to be alone with her thoughts. “That would be lovely.”
•••
The café isnearly empty at this time. It closes at five, and there are only a couple of people at laptops in the far corners, pretending not to notice the staff busily sweeping around their chairs. The woman’s name is Jessie and her son is in year six; she runs a shop selling art supplies a couple of miles away. She is a single parent and bought her own flat two years ago. When they sit down with their cups and a compensatory slice of lemon cake, she looks at Lila and says: “I’ve got to get thisout of the way. I don’t really talk to people in the playground, but I heard what happened to you and I just wanted to say…I’m really sorry. It must be very tough having to deal with that situation every day.”
There is not a flicker of guile in the way she says it. No subtle fishing for information, no sly judgment. Her gaze is clear and honest, and full of empathy.
Lila tries to meet it with equal openness. “Yeah, it’s not been the most fun.”
“My ex disappeared when Hal was a baby. Wasn’t cut out for fatherhood, apparently.” She rolls her eyes. “He does help with the money, though, so that’s something.”
They talk for a while about the exhaustion of doing it all single-handed, the fear that they are getting things wrong, that their children will grow up harmed by the lack of a full-time father in the house, the parallel pleasure in not having to consult anyone about your decisions, the lack of abandoned pants on the bathroom floor. Lila sees so few women apart from Eleanor that she has forgotten the casual joy of this kind of conversation: the trading of comic failures and frustrations, the sisterly commiserations.
Leaning forward, as if to shield herself from exposure to the rest of the room, Jessie tells Lila that she occasionally invents business meetings in far-flung places so she can persuade her parents to take her son and get a night off.
“Really? What do you do with it?” says Lila, charmed by the frank admission, the sheepish grin on Jessie’s face.
