‘Like you needed any more wee in the house,’ Corinne laughed.
‘Mais oui!’ said Annie.
‘Bugger evening classes – though I have to admit I went to a macramé one,’ Corinne said to Vita. ‘What you ought to do is have a fling.’
‘That’s what Michelle says.’
‘Well, she’s right. Don’t look so appalled!’
‘I just can’t imagine it. I don’t think I’m interested. And anyway, how will he find me?’
‘He won’t,’ Corinne said. ‘You’ll come across him – and that, my dear, will be that.’
Annie looked at Vita. ‘You don’t believe her, do you?’
‘Nope,’ said Vita, ‘but I’m just going to nod – like I do when friends like Michelle say, You’ll so be OK, babe. Nodding’s good.’
‘How about the sappy half-smile I fix on my face at the start of an evening like this?’ said Annie. ‘When you’re not actually talking to anyone and you feel like a beacon but you don’t want people homing in on you and thinking, Aw, poor woman, all on her own, better go and talk to her.’
Corinne drained her glass thoughtfully. ‘It’s not easy,’ she said quietly, ‘but it’s OK. It always turns out OK.’
Though Vita thought, I don’t think I’ll bother with evening classes and flings and things, she was comforted that these women had been through much that she was going through. Their lexicon was so similar, they understood each other perfectly, despite very different circumstances. Best of all, they’d come through the other side without turning into boorish man-eating harpies or bitter man-hating harridans. And, for the first time, Vita thought that perhaps the task of getting over it was not so much an uphill struggle with no visible summit within reach, as some sort of crazy ride which, if she just held on tight, would be worth it.
Sipping Coca-Cola and taking a couple of Nurofen before bed to ward off a hangover, Vita thought to herself that, actually, none of this felt like a game. To see it as such demeaned the enormity of the journey, the rigours of the process. She thought about how she felt but she balanced it with what she’d thought about Corinne and Annie.
Actually, it wasn’t a game. It was a storm. A mighty one.
She heard her Dad’s words again. It’ll pass, sweetface.
‘Perhaps I’m currently passing through the eye of the storm. I’m like a scrap of torn paper being carried along and there’s nothing I can do about it. Corinne and Annie – they were once like me but they weathered it, they made it through. They emerged the other side, no longer scraps of plain paper – but colourful and vibrant now.’
It was OK to let a tear drop.
‘I’d like that to be me.’
She reached for pen and Post-it.
Calm after the storm
The Thorpe Arms
Vita had only had to travel twenty-five minutes to the George and Dragon. For Oliver, however, although the Thorpe Arms was over an hour’s drive, in the next county, he wouldn’t have wanted it closer.
‘Jonty – this party –?’
‘Told you, it’s at Mark’s. His mum’s going to be there – us downstairs, the olds upstairs.’
Oliver knew Mark’s mum. Much younger than him, so if the kids considered her old, they must think him positively ancient.
‘Would you like a lift then, Jont?’
‘Er – sure. Thanks, Dad.’
‘We’ll leave in half an hour?’
‘But it’s only three o’clock? Actually, that’s cool – I can help him set up. I’ll just give him a call.’
Oliver heard his son talking to Mark in a weird language of abbreviations and odd inflection.
‘Cool!’ said Jonty to his father which Oliver took to mean, Yes, please, I’ll have a lift in half an hour.
‘OK. Oh – and no smoking.’
‘I know, Dad. I don’t – you know I don’t – and I haven’t, not since I puked.’
‘OK – and no booze. Alcopops included.’
‘OK!’ Jonty was gently exasperated. There’d be contraband – they both knew it. But since the time that Jonty threw up his guts after half a litre of cider and five cigarettes, they both knew he wasn’t impressed by the effects of either.
Would DeeDee have let him go? Of course she would. If anything, Oliver was more disparaging of Mark’s mother than she’d ever been. A single mum, cool and sassy, with a tattoo on her arm and a nose ring and a groovy job in the music industry – all the kids loved her open-house policy and MP3 players in every room. She’s a really sweet girl, DeeDee had told him. Oliver had argued with her about suitable environments for Jonty to hang out in. And DeeDee had argued back that a rather nice home, not too far away, of a mother she knew from the occasional mums’ night out was a preferable location to some dodgy bus shelter or chippy.
As Oliver locked up and watched Jonty ambling over to the car, plastic bag containing his clothes and things slung over his shoulder like a nonchalant Dick Whittington, he thought how sometimes, co-parenting and the heated debates it incurred had been more fraught than setting the boundaries, establishing the ground rules and doing all the worrying solo.
‘Will you be all right then, Dad?’
‘Me?’
‘I don’t have to stay over. I could come back?’
‘Nonsense! It’s a party, it’s not a school night. And anyway – I have, well, not plans exactly but I’m off to meet someone about some work ideas. And then I have plenty of stuff I’ve been putting off which I’ll do. Including hoovering.’
Usually, Jonty would help without being asked. And he never minded evenings in with his dad. But recently, it had occurred to father and son that Saturday nights oughtn’t to be spent with one’s dad. So Jonty felt equally grateful to Mark’s mum and to his own father.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow then.’
‘OK. Maybe we’ll do something in the afternoon. I don’t know – bowling? Cinema?’
‘OK, Dad. Cool.’
‘Do you have your phone?’
‘Yep.’
‘And it has enough battery?’
‘Yes, Dad. Yes.’
‘Have a great time, then.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Enjoy.’
‘You too.’
It had been an unspoken request, initiated a couple of months ago, not to be dropped off outside a friend’s house. So Oliver had pulled up at the end of Mark’s street and though he didn’t wait until Jonty had disappeared from sight, he did turn the car very slowly so he could surreptitiously check his son’s whereabouts in the rear-view mirror. He watched him lope off and turn up the path to Mark’s.
Have fun, he thought quietly. Don’t smoke, kiddo – though a little booze won’t kill you. Have a laugh and party.
Oliver couldn’t listen to the radio. Every station had a presenter who sounded inane and the news was so depressing not even Radio