The worry may have always been there, but was there a day when it struck me that there was something I really did need to worry about? Something more than the usual adolescent anxieties? I can’t remember, but I’m always drawn back to the day of my niece’s wedding. Perhaps, underneath my camouflage of denial and pretence, I knew then.
At times I blame myself that Jo hit those difficult teenage years just as I was learning to play out my new role as a single mother, still raw and bleeding from the pain and confusion of divorce. Yet if only Jo had accepted the separation as easily as her younger sister had, then maybe we could all have held hands and taken the journey together, as a family, as one. Now I understand that we each had our own journey to take and that sometimes our paths would run parallel, sometimes converge and sometimes divert onto very different courses. And when Jo’s path led her off into what I believed was completely the wrong direction, I tried to pull her back onto mine. And yet that direction was wrong too. For her.
So perhaps the story really started with me. With me being plucked out of my comfortable existence, relabelled and thrown back into something unknown, frightening even. And as I struggled to make sense of my new life, I soon realised that my old life had been fraught with difficulty as well: that I had been hiding behind a veneer of perfect wife and mother, hoping that if I pretended long enough it would all come true. But it hadn’t really been a life after all.
As a sixteen-year-old teenager teetering from childhood to the brink of womanhood, Jo had every reason to be finding herself, breaking away to discover who she was and where she was going. But what on earth was I doing, in my forties, suddenly questioning what I, Lizzie Trounce, was all about? For somewhere along the way I had left myself behind and had carried on living with no real identity, just a few useful labels so that people would understand what I did—mother, sandwich maker, wife (now ex-wife), friend, neighbour, occasional beer drinker, part-time film buff.
I remember working at the sandwich bar alongside Trish the day before the wedding. Even then, I was trying to change direction, perhaps even hoping to find myself by looking somewhere different. But you can only change direction when you know exactly where you are in the first place and, unknowingly, I was lost.
‘The first rush is over—time for our own sustenance,’Trish said, pouring out a couple of coffees.
‘You know, this place would be better if we had room for more tables and chairs. It would make it more of a café than just a takeaway sandwich bar.’
‘There’s five stools.’ Trish nodded towards the long bar with the stools for any customers who might want to eat or drink on the premises. ‘And they’re usually empty.’
‘That’s because they’re not comfortable and the room is so narrow you have to drink while being pushed and shoved by the queue. The chances of getting an umbrella in the ear and being slapped around the bottom with a briefcase are extremely high. If only we had bigger premises.’
‘Yeah, great. So we have to serve tables as well. Twice the work for the same money,’ Trish pointed out. She was only ten years older than me but was content to float easily towards retirement.
‘But if we owned the café…’
Suddenly I saw myself as a businesswoman with a chain of restaurants to oversee, bank managers grovelling at my feet, power suit, shoes clicking authoritatively across the restaurant floor.
‘If only I’d done that business course Roger suggested,’ I sighed.
Trish laughed. ‘I really can’t see you on a business course. It’s not exactly you, is it?’
But what exactly was me? I’d been bright at school with three good A levels to my name, but then I took a gap year, before gap years even existed, and that turned into a gap five years as I happily drifted from job to job, travelling the world in between, until I met Roger. The next thing I knew, I’d given up my flat with the giant sunflowers in the window box and was trimming the privet hedge in a neat, four-bedroomed cube in a convenient location on the edge of town, with favourable commuter services into London. Desirable, quiet, sought after, practical. And dull.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I acknowledged, After all, how could I possibly run a business when I was struggling to make sense of the electricity bill, the car insurance, tax credit and all the things Roger had dealt with until six months earlier when everything, just everything, had been turned upside down and given a shake I could measure on the Richter scale. Of course, I thought, Roger’s new partner Alice could probably quote her National Insurance number at will, juggle bank accounts around like oranges and get a tax rebate on…well, whatever people got tax rebates for. I still cringe when I think of the first time I met her and described myself as a sandwich designer and beverage entrepreneur. And I’m still trying to convince myself that her stiff smile was one of admiration.
As Trish and I started to prepare a fresh supply of sandwiches for the lunch trade, I realised that my job was the one constant, unchanging, predictable event in my shaken-up life and I needed to keep it exactly as it was. So I set about losing myself in the routine of the day and shoved everything else to the back of my mind.
I got home from work that day feeling exhausted. Exhausted by responsibility, regret, bitterness and the intense love I had for the children I thought I’d let down. It was as if I had been pulling everything together so hard that my limbs were aching and my resolve slowly breaking down. My neighbour waved at me, and then stared at my overgrown lawn and the triffid-like borders of nettles and determined weeds. I waved back and shrugged my shoulders. It had hardly been an accusation from her and it wasn’t much of an explanation from me, but I sensed we understood each other. I would deal with the front garden when I could, but as yet I had no idea when that would be.
When I got to the front door, I turned round to look at the small wilderness behind me. There was something rather pleasing about the wild garden which somehow distracted from the predictable box of a house which stood symmetrically between two identical boxes. I liked it, and decided to put a bird table and sundial somewhere among the long grasses. It seemed rebellious and slightly daring, and I went into the house feeling a little better about myself.
I put the Chinese takeaway I had collected on the way home on the table and called the girls. Eliza danced in and gave me a hug.
‘Chinese—great,’ she enthused, and started pulling the lids off the cartons.
The dishwasher was packed full and I had forgotten to switch it on before work. I rummaged around in the cupboard and found some paper plates left over from Eliza’s birthday tea some months earlier.
‘Great, like a party,’ Eliza said, and as I waited for Jo to make an appearance, I reminded myself never to compare the two of them.
‘Shout up for Jo, would you, darling?’ I asked Eliza.
Eliza and I were halfway through our meal by the time Jo drooped in, wearing pyjama trousers and a baggy jumper which looked like an old one of Roger’s. She hung her head like a soft toy with no stuffing.
‘Not another bloody takeaway,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll get something later.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’ But Jo was gone, leaving behind a large helping of guilt for me to digest with my dinner.
‘I can’t wait for the wedding tomorrow,’ Eliza said, helping herself to more spare ribs.
‘Yes, it should be fun,’ I tried to enthuse, but my voice sounded like a nervous children’s TV presenter.
My niece was getting married the next day and it would be our first big occasion as an incomplete family. Part of me was looking forward to it, part of me dreaded it. I knew I would be dying to announce to everyone that the breakdown of my marriage