Crappily Ever After (15 page)

‘Probably,’ Polly mused. ‘I mean, Dad won’t want him in the family business now. He won’t have use of the apartment in Chelsea, no family home, nothing. In fact, I’d be amazed if he even got another job in Management. From what Dad says, it’s loyalty and not skill that keeps him there at all.’ She gives an ironic snort.

It’s my turn to choke.

‘You mean it’s not Alfie’s family that own the business and properties?’ I splutter.

Polly laughs. ‘So, he said it was all his? Why, after all this, am I surprised?’

 ‘He’ll have half anyway, if you decide to split,’ I shrug.

‘No, Dad made him sign a prenuptial agreement,’ says Polly, swirling her wine absent-mindedly around her glass, a catch in her voice. ‘I was loved up and stupid. Maybe Alf would have left me by now if he knew he was guaranteed half, but he gets nothing. Well, access to the kids, but no monetary entitlement. He doesn’t even seem to care too much about the kids. I mean, he missed Chloe’s birthday last week due to a business trip. That’s why he took her bowling today. He promised her when he called last Tuesday.’

So, he really had no intention of staying with me this week. It was all pre-arranged. He also cared so little for his eldest child that he’d miss her birthday to go away with his mistress. God, I hate that word. That’s
me
! Albeit by default, but I still was his mistress for more than a year.         But what warms the chill in me most is that, for what Alfie has done, he ends up homeless and jobless. It’s difficult for me to feel devastated; rather, I feel I’ve had a lucky escape. Like I’ve narrowly avoided being hit by a car. Shock, relief and counting my blessings – it could have been a whole lot worse. The Alfie I know now is not the Alfie I loved. He doesn’t exist; he was an illusion. I feel strangely elated. Sick but elated. It’s as if he has been erased completely.

‘Will you try and make things work?’ I ask Polly.

‘No. To let you understand, Lucy, I see him two nights a week if I’m lucky. I’m practically a single parent. I’d be better off just me and the kids, without the financial leech. I’ve always worn the trousers in our relationship. He’ll do as he’s told. He even has my number in his phone as ‘Boss Mobile’ and ‘Boss Home’. Besides, there is a very cute single Dad at school making eyes at me every pick-up. I may just make eyes back.’ Polly smiles weakly and stands up.

I stand too.

‘I really am so sorry,’ I say.

‘No, I’m sorry that my shit of a husband put you through this. Good luck, Lucy. I do wish you happiness, but right now I have a soon-to-be-ex-husband to kick out.’ Polly gives me a quick peck on the cheek and disappears into the early evening haze.

I down my wine and head back to the Bed and Breakfast. The girls stand up immediately on seeing me. Hugs all round. Jill pulls off my coat and Amy guides me to a chair.

‘I’m fine,’ I laugh off their concern, sounding slightly hysterical. ‘Get this. The best bit of all is that the money is all Polly’s. He has nothing. She has a pre-nup and he’s out on his ear. He even had her in his phone as ‘Boss’ so that I would think it was his real Boss. I’m sorry,’ I laugh loudly, ‘I just can’t believe he has nothing now.’

‘What goes around comes around, Luce,’ smiles Jill.                        

The next morning I receive a text from Alfie informing me that I owe him somewhere in the region of one year’s rent.

‘Get lost, if I owe anyone, it’s Polly and I’m sure she won’t ask for it. Contact me again and I’ll send some big burly mates round to sort you out!’

‘Don’t think Em and Amy could take me,’ he replies.

I laugh, but it’s immediately replaced with anger that I can still find him funny. He doesn’t deserve that. There is nothing funny about what he has done. I throw my phone across the room with an angry shout – and instantly regret it. I can’t afford a new phone. I walk to the furthest away wall and reach down behind the dressing table to find it and inspect the damage. There’s

none apparent. I need to know just one thing. It will bug me forever if I don’t ask him. I type out a simple question.

‘Why?’

Less than thirty seconds later, the phone beeps his reply.

‘Because I could!’

I kind of wish I hadn’t asked.

He doesn’t contact me again, but is occasionally spotted by friends. These days his suits are more Man at C&A than Armani. It does appear that what comes around goes around. Amy found out that the second her divorce came through, Polly married again. I can only assume cute Dad from the playground had won her over.

                                                            Chapter Eleven
       

So there we have it, just a few of my biggest disasters relationship-wise. There have been others, but I won’t bore you with them – barely worth mentioning really. But let’s get back to where we started. This Christmas-time, and my family’s disillusionment with, and amusement at, my love life. We are in the middle of a noisy Christmas dinner. I’m currently being harangued by the females in the family about the fact that I am a complete failure in the romance stakes.

‘What you need,’ insists Mum, putting down her knife and fork, ‘is to have a chat with Gran. She’d sort you right out.’

Betty and Sarah nod in agreement.

‘I don’t want to risk upsetting you,’ I say, chewing thoughtfully on a Brussel sprout, before realising what it was and pulling a disgusted face at Mum. She patiently holds out a holly-decorated napkin for me to deposit it in. Some things you never grow out of. It must have been hidden under the mash. I shudder.

‘We had the misfortune of losing Gran twelve years ago,’ I continue.

‘No, stupid,’ says Betty. ‘The big psychic telephone. Go see a medium.’

I look at them cynically. I’m not as convinced as they are that this stuff works, though they swear by it. Regaling me with their tales of how the mediums they’ve seen could not have possibly known these things about them. But to me they sound vague, layered with a generous amount of guesswork. It doesn’t take a genius to see an engagement or wedding ring, even a mark where it should be if they’ve tried to disguise the fact. For example, I could spot a mother of young children a mile off, even without the kids in tow. The utterly exhausted, yet elated to be momentarily free, expression on their face. At some point, if you observed them long enough, a flash of panic would cloud the euphoria and they would frantically look around before relief set in. It’s a hazard of spending most of your time with children. Sometimes you forget that you shouldn’t have them with you, and terror sets in. I do it all the time – and I’m a nanny, not a mother. Right now, I am hearing these stories for, possibly, the third time from my family members, yet feel obliged to attempt to show an interest as if it’s the first.

‘Last time I went Mum predicted a promotion at work which would mean I could afford a new car,’ Betty points to the driveway and holds her hands out as if to say, ‘ta-daa.’

‘She told me we would move to the countryside and renovate an old farmhouse. However, she didn’t mention the roof would fall down and it’d take fifteen months instead of the estimated six,’ says Sarah, wrinkling her nose.

‘Your Gran told me I had two daughters to be proud of; one would have two children and the other was unlucky in love,’ mentions Mum.

‘OK, I’ll go,’ I give in. ‘Not here, though. It has to be someone I’ve never met who does the reading. Too many people know me round here.’

Satisfied with this, they all back off and re-join the conversation of the party. Current topic, Claire’s own personal dating disaster. My protégé, I often think. We join in halfway through the conversation.

‘So, we went to the Ball together, me in my gorgeous floor-length midnight blue gown – I tell you, those designer discount stores are great. Nowt wrong with the stuff, just end of line or last season’s styles.’ She shakes her head in wonder.

The others nod frantically. Get to the point, we don’t care what you were wearing they seem to say. Claire looks around, takes the hint and continues.

‘Yeh, anyway, so he said he would call me, and then…poof!’

‘Noooo! He was gay?’ asks an incredulous Sarah.

‘No! Oh my God, I did not turn him
gay!
’ Claire looks at Sarah in horror. ‘He disappeared,’ she says slowly, as if explaining it to a three-year-old. ‘I never saw him again. Wouldn’t answer his phone, reply to my emails…’

‘Cos you shagged him,’ announces Craig, shovelling his second heap of trifle in his mouth. ‘Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?’ He nods sagely.

‘I so did
not,
’ flushes Claire, glancing nervously at her Dad, who is now taking a sudden interest in the conversation.

‘I didn’t Dad, honest, you know I’m saving it for marriage.’

Several of us explode with laughter at this. Hmm… how many twenty-five-year-old virgins do you know? Still, it wouldn’t be Christmas Day without an argument.    

I’m back in London a few days later. Becky returned last night and is itching for a night out and a girly catch-up. She greets me at the front door with a squeal.

‘Oh my God, I’ve so missed you. Mum says hi, she’s coming over for the sales and wants us to take her clubbing again.’

Becky’s Mum, like mine, never quite grew up. Both still enjoy the thrill of being chatted up by young things, dancing, drinking and hanging out with the girls. They are great fun, but a bad combination together. The one and only time their visits coincided it was like Becky and me, but one hundred times worse. They got on well. Too well! For the safety of the residents of London, we have made sure they‘re never over at the same time again. It was the one and only time I’ve ever had to put my mother to bed.

As usual, we head out to the Frog and Bucket. We are greeted like heroes returning from war. These poor people have had no time off and are desperate for stories of what it’s like ‘out there’. We have a quick catch-up between the times the staff spend serving the crowds, and then retire to our usual corner. Thoughtfully, a ‘Reserved’ sign has been put on the table by one of our smart-thinking, bartending friends. I tell Becky about how I have promised to go and see a medium. She is enthralled.

‘I’ve never been to see a medium. I could certainly do with some spiritual guidance in my life right now. It’s about time I got back out there,’ she shrugs. ‘Put myself back on the market, so to speak.’

I have a flashback to before Christmas and my promise to be a better friend.

 ‘How are things now? I ask. ‘Do you still miss Bob?’

‘Not too badly,’ she replies. ‘I had a look through some old photographs of us when I was back home. It was more nostalgia, I think. I don’t miss him so much as miss a relationship. That’s why I want to get back out there.’
       

We book into our local Spiritual Church for a reading later in the week. I sit nervously as we wait for the medium to call us in. The church is peaceful, very much like a traditional church. Blue stars light up the ceiling and an altar is draped with purple velvet. It doesn’t look as if it’s been used to sacrifice a goat – or any other animal for that matter.

‘Lucy?’

I jump.

‘Sorry, yes,’ I say breathlessly.

‘First visit to us, is it?’ the woman asks gently. I read her name tag: ‘Brenda,’ it says. Should be OK, I reason. Brenda is not the name of a psycho serial killer, is it? She has a warm, homely, brown face and the ‘lived-in’ look about her of people comfortable in their own skin. She wears a purple tie-dye floaty skirt and smells of jasmine. She has a soft Caribbean accent that I find soothing and hypnotic. I feel safe. I follow Brenda to a pew at the back of the church and she indicates for me to sit. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply.

After around thirty seconds she begins to talk.

‘I have a lady present. When she passed she had a very sore left leg. It’s fine now. She passed over more than ten years ago in her mid-… no, early seventies. It’s Gran,’ she smiles, still with her eyes closed.

Spot on! I have said nothing so far, and don’t intend to.

‘I also have a handsome, young gentleman. Gran tells me that he is your Father. He sends his love. You look very like him but barely knew him. He will always walk with you through life, protecting you in a way he never could in his lifetime. He was taken before he was ready, he says.’ My throat constricts. I take a deep breath.