Peter was fine about it – he likes dogs too – and of course the children were thrilled, though Katie, who wants to be a psychiatrist, thinks I ‘mother’ Graham too much. She says I’m projecting my frustrated maternal desires for another child onto the dog. I know … ridiculous! But you have to take teenagers very seriously, don’t you, otherwise they get in a strop. Anyway, Graham’s the baby of the family. He’s only three. He doesn’t have a pedigree, but he’s got bucketloads of class. He’s a collie cross of some sort, with a feathery red-gold coat, a white blaze on his chest and a foxy, elegant charm. We take him almost everywhere with us, though not to restaurants, of course. So this evening Peter settled him on his beanbag, put on the telly for him – he likes Food and Drink – and said, ‘Don’t worry, old boy, Mummy and I are just going out for a quick bite.’
But Peter had no idea what I’d really planned. He thought we’d just be having an impromptu dinner, tête à tête. I’d told him I’d booked a table, but he’d assumed it was just for two. So when we got to the restaurant, and he saw the children sitting there, with his mother, Sarah, he looked so surprised and pleased. And I’d invited Mimi, an old college friend of ours, with her new husband, Mike.
‘It’s like This Is Your Life!’ Peter exclaimed with a laugh, as we took off our coats. ‘What a great idea, Faith,’ he said. To be honest, I didn’t do it just for him. I did it for myself, too, because I felt like marking the occasion in some way. I mean, fifteen years. Fifteen years. That’s nearly half our lives.
‘Fifteen years,’ I said with a smile as we sat down. ‘And it hasn’t been a day too long.’
I’ve been very happy in my marriage, you see. And believe me, I still am. For example, I’m never, ever bored. There’s always loads to do. We don’t have much money, of course – we never have had – but we still have lots of fun. Well, we would do if it wasn’t for the fact that Peter’s working so hard: Charmaine’s got him reading manuscripts most nights, and I have to be in bed by half past nine. But at weekends, that’s when we catch up and really enjoy ourselves. The children come home – they’re weekly boarders at a school in Kent – and we do, ooh, all sorts of things. We go for walks along the river, and we garden. We go to Tesco for the weekly shop. Sometimes we pop down to Ikea – the one in Brent Cross, though occasionally, for a bit of a change, we’ll try the one in Croydon. And we might take out a video, or watch a bit of TV, and the children go and see their friends. Well, they would do if they had any. They’re both what you’d call loners, I’m afraid. It worries me a bit. For example, Matt – he’s twelve – just loves being on his computer. He’s an addict, always has been; he was mouse-trained very young. I remember when he was five and I’d be putting him to bed, he’d say, ‘Please can you wake me up at six o’clock tomorrow, Mummy, so I can go on the computer before I go to school?’ And that struck me as rather sad, really, and he’s still just like that now. But he’s as happy as Larry with all his computer games and his CD Roms, so we don’t like to interfere. As I say, he’s not what you’d call an all rounder. For example, his written skills are dire. But as well as the computers he’s brilliant at maths – in fact we call him ‘Mattematics’. And that’s why we sent him to Seaworth, because he wasn’t coping well where he was. But he wouldn’t go without Katie, and it suits her very well too because, look, don’t think I’m being disloyal about my children – but they’re not quite like other kids. For one thing Katie’s far too old for her years. She’s only fourteen now, but she’s so serious-minded. She does nothing but read. I guess she takes after Peter, because for her it’s books, not bytes. She’s not at all fashion-conscious, like other girls of her age. There’s no hint of any teenage rebellion, either; she seems to be just as ‘sensible’ as me. And because I never kicked over the traces, somehow I wish that she would. I keep hoping that she’ll come home one weekend with a lime-green mohican or at the very least with a stud in her nose. But no such luck – all she ever does is read. As I say, she’s dead keen on psychology, she’s got lots of books on Jung and Freud, and she likes to practise her psychotherapeutic skills on all of us. And when we sat down at the table this evening, that’s what she was doing.
‘So, Granny, how did you feel about your divorce?’ I heard her ask my mother-in-law. I made a sympathetic face at Sarah, but she just looked at me and smiled.
‘Well, Katie, I felt fine about it,’ she said. ‘Because when two people are unhappy together, then it’s sometimes better for them to part.’
‘What were the chief factors, would you say, in the breakdown of your relationship with Grandpa?’
‘Well, darling,’ she said as she lowered her menu, ‘I think we just married too young.’
People sometimes say that about Peter and me. We married at twenty, you see; and so people do sometimes ask me – and to be honest I wish they wouldn’t – if I ever have any regrets about that. But I don’t. I never, ever wonder, ‘What if … ?’ because I’ve been happy really, in every way. Peter’s a decent and honest man. He’s very hard-working, he’s great with the kids, and he’s kind and considerate to his mum. He’s quite handsome, too, though he needs to lose a little weight. But then, funnily enough, this evening I noticed that he is looking a bit more trim. I expect he’s shed a few pounds recently because of all his stress. He’s well turned out at the moment, too – I’ve noticed he’s got a couple of lovely new ties. He says he has to be ready to slip out to interviews at the drop of a hat, so he’s been dressing very smartly for work. So despite his present anxieties, he’s looking pretty good. And after such a long time with Peter I could never fancy anyone else. People sometimes ask me if I do fantasy – sorry, fancy, anyone else – after fifteen years with the same man, and the answer is absolutely, categorically, definitively hardly ever. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m made of flesh and blood. I can see when a man’s attractive. For example, that chap who came round last week to mend the washing machine. He got my delicates cycle going again. And yes, objectively, I could see that he was a handsome sort of chap. Yes, I admit it – he was a bit of a hunk. And to be honest, I have been having some rather strange dreams about him recently. Quite vivid ones, featuring all sorts of peculiar items like a mobile phone for example, a TV remote control, and – this is really odd – a tub of blackcurrant sorbet! God knows what it means. I asked Katie actually, and she gave me this rather peculiar look and said it’s just my id, running wild. As I say, I always humour her. No doubt my dreams are just the product of my rather fertile imagination. So no, I don’t look at anyone else, although I do meet lots of attractive men at work. But I never fancy them, because I’m a very happily married woman, and sex isn’t everything, you know. And of course Peter’s very preoccupied right now. But yes, to answer your question, my marriage is in great shape, which is why I wanted to celebrate our fifteen happy years. So I booked a table at Snows, just down the road at Brook Green. We don’t eat out very often. Peter has to go out to dinner with authors and agents sometimes, he’s been doing quite a bit of that of late, but we don’t do much ourselves. We can’t afford it; what with the school fees – though luckily Matt got a scholarship – and of course publishing doesn’t pay well. And my job’s only part-time because I’m home by eleven every day. But I thought Peter needed a bit of a treat, so I decided on a party at Snows. It’s actually called Snows on the Green, which was rather appropriate because today the snow was on the green. More than an inch of it. It started to fall this morning, and by late afternoon it had built into gentle drifts. And I love it when it snows because there’s this eerie hush, and the world falls silent as though everyone’s dropped off to sleep. And I just want to rush outside, clap my hands and shout, ‘Come on! Wake up! Wake up!’ And snow always reminds me of our wedding, because it snowed on that day too.
So I was sitting there in the restaurant, looking out of the window for a minute, watching the flakes batting gently against the panes and idly wondering what the next fifteen