When I left that night, slightly tipsy and falling over my biker boots, I’d agreed to follow Emma and Cynthia’s ten-step plan for the post-split, pre-divorce lady of a certain age (thirty). I must have dozed off on the tube from Acton, because I woke up at Tottenham Court Road in a panic—when was my last train? Did I miss it?—then I remembered I lived here now. In the city, not the sleepy suburbs. Back at the house, I struggled to get my newly cut key in the lock and, to my embarrassment, Patrick was still up in the kitchen. He had a bottle of red wine and the paper spread out on the table, classical music on the stereo. He was wearing dark-rimmed glasses and a red jumper. I felt myself relax as I stepped in. It was warm, and it smelled like flowers and beeswax polish.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said to Patrick automatically.
He looked puzzled. ‘You can come and go as you like, Rachel. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.’
‘Oh. OK.’ I realised I’d taken my shoes off, and it made me sad suddenly, all the nights I’d had to sneak back in beside Dan, cold and tired, and pretend I hadn’t enjoyed myself. Waiting to hear the inevitable accusing voice. You’re late. I take it you had a good time. Praying he’d be asleep already. ‘First night out,’ I explained. ‘Since … you know.’
‘I don’t think I’ve been out since. Alex was so … I wanted to make sure he was OK.’ He looked up. ‘Would you like a glass of wine? I haven’t talked to anyone in a while, at least not about more than Lego or walkies.’
At the magic word ‘walkies’, a little head popped up from a basket by the door. Max was awake. ‘Woof!’
‘Not now, silly dog.’
I sat down and Patrick got me a glass, patting the dog as he did. ‘Thank you.’ I was keen to hold on to the fragile, slightly drunk air of intimacy from the evening, so I took a big swallow. ‘Can I ask—when did she go?’
‘Michelle? A month ago.’ He said the rest quickly. ‘A month and three days.’
‘Not seven hours and fifteen days?’
‘Longer than that.’
‘No, it’s a song … Never mind.’
He smiled thinly. ‘She just left. There was some big job in New York—she’s from there, you see, and before Alex she was high up in banking—and we were fighting a lot, because I’d just found out about her and Alan from next door, and that was it. Sometimes it takes forever. Sometimes it all falls apart in what feels like days. Supposedly it’s just for a few months, the job, but I don’t know what will happen with us.’
‘We were the opposite.’ I was rubbing my finger where my wedding ring used to be. ‘It feels like it was on life support for years—just dying day by day.’
‘Sounds awful.’
‘Yeah. But even with that, there’s only one last time, you know? Like the last time he makes you a cup of tea or you watch Mad Men.’
‘Like the start of a relationship, but in reverse.’
‘Just like that.’
We lapsed into a sad silence.
He said, ‘You had fun tonight?’ And he actually meant it. Not like Dan’s ‘I can see you had fun without me’ version of the question.
‘I did. I saw my friends, and we had a curry.’
‘What are they like?’
‘Oh, insanely bossy. One’s a lawyer, one’s a teacher, and her boyfriend’s a social worker. They sort of manage me.’
‘Can’t you manage yourself?’
‘They think not. Look.’ I fished the book out of my bag. ‘Can you believe this? They’ve actually made me a list of things I’m supposed to do to get me through the post-split slump. They’ve even already booked one—supposedly we’re doing a tango class next week.’
He peered over. Unfortunately, it had opened on the page that said ‘sleep with a stranger’. ‘Um … that one’s just a joke.’ I turned over hurriedly to ‘do stand-up comedy’.
‘Is that something you’d like to do?’
‘I don’t know. I used to rant about it, when we were at uni. How the comedians in clubs were always racist and sexist. And with my cartoons—I try to be funny with them. But I’d never have the guts to get on stage and be heckled.’
Patrick was looking thoughtful. ‘I think this is a really good idea, you know. I used to do lots of things, before I met Michelle. She was so organised, really had her life planned out, so there wasn’t time for hobbies. Then before I knew it I was married, and she was having Alex, and we were buying this place. I feel like I haven’t done anything fun for about five years.’
‘It’s lovely though. The house.’
His face softened. ‘You know I remodelled it myself? I don’t know if I said, but that’s what I do. I’m an architect. When we bought it, ivy was growing through the windows—the previous owner had been in a nursing home for years, no family to keep it up. So it was a wreck. Michelle wanted to gut it, put in beige carpets and take the walls down. But I wouldn’t. Only time I managed to stand up to her. It took months, but it was like … finding hidden treasure. Those windows—I found them by scraping off the dirt. And the garden—there were all these roses among the weeds.’ He stopped, as if realising he’d said a lot more than he meant to.
‘Well, it’s lovely,’ I repeated. ‘You should be proud.’ Silence fell again, and I racked my brains for something to say. ‘So what would be on your post-divorce list, if you had one?’
He frowned and got up to wash his glass. ‘Oh, who knows. Don’t get divorced, I suppose.’
‘It doesn’t work that way. If you can’t go back, you have to go forward.’
‘Is that a quote?’ He dried his hands on the tea towel, then straightened it neatly over the oven door.
‘Mmm … dunno. A quote from my dad, maybe.’
‘I like it.’
‘So what kind of things did you used to do?’
He was thinking. ‘I used to be quite into extreme sports—skiing, climbing, that sort of thing.’
I was trying to suppress a shudder. ‘You can do that again. Easy.’
‘I haven’t since Alex.’
‘He could go skiing, couldn’t he? All those French kids do. I went once. I felt like I should be on a Zimmer frame.’ Dan had taken me—he was into snowboarding, or he had been before he stopped being into anything but TV and pizza. I’d fallen over on the first slope and spent the rest of the trip mainlining mulled wine while being jumped over by disdainful European tots on skis.
‘He can’t go skiing.’ Patrick was surprisingly firm.
‘Oh. OK.’ Silence fell between us again. The wine was gone, and I felt the loneliness settle on my shoulders again, like a cat that had been lurking on a wardrobe all day (bad memories). ‘You could come to some of it,’ I heard myself say. ‘When we do the dancing and the comedy and all that. Not the sleeping with strangers part … er, that’s a joke, but the rest. I mean, if you want to.’
He turned from the sink, leaning on it for a moment, and I thought how sad he looked, how tired. I wondered if I looked the same, after years of trying and failing, trying again, failing differently.
‘Maybe,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a long time since I did things like that. And there’s Alex.’
‘Does he have a regular babysitter?’
Again, Patrick looked annoyed. ‘There are a few people, but … I don’t like to leave him. It’s