‘Do you know what I think?’ he asked softly. She shook her head, not looking at him, just staring blankly at the wall. ‘I think we should have a baby.’
She sat up suddenly.
‘What?’
‘You could chill out. Stop all the superwoman stuff. I earn enough for both of us. If you’re not spending money on clothes, that is.’ He tried to joke. ‘I mean, if you really mean what you’re saying, and you’d be happy to slob out in leggings—’
Before he could finish his sentence, she dealt him a stinging blow around the head.
‘You’re taking the piss out of me!’ she shouted. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I don’t want a bloody baby. That’s the last thing I want. Don’t you see? I’m a useless mother. I’ve already ruined Mimi’s life. Why ruin another?’
‘Hang on a minute. You haven’t ruined Mimi’s life. She’s perfectly happy.’
‘Only because of you. Not because of anything I’ve done.’
‘I’ll be here for the next one.’
She seemed almost possessed as she pressed her face close up to his and screamed at him.
‘There isn’t going to be a next one!’
George backed away, not realizing he had hit such an incredibly raw nerve. Victoria threw herself back on the bed, sobbing wildly.
‘For heaven’s sake, Victoria. You’re being totally irrational. Let’s talk it through.’
He remembered pleading with her. He honestly thought a baby would help. Would stop her senseless pursuit of self-destruction. Would give her something to live for. She’d called him naive.
‘It’s hell!’ she’d screeched. ‘Motherhood is absolutely hideous. Why do you think I’m such a mess? I can’t stand the responsibility. I can’t stand the fact that however Mimi turns out, it’s down to me. That she’s living proof of all my mistakes.’
‘But you love her, don’t you?’
‘Of course! That’s what makes it worse. It would be so much easier if I didn’t. No guilt. No regret. No fear. No burden of duty that I keep trying to escape from, but can’t, because she’s always there. That’s why I drink, and get totally out of it, because for five minutes I can be the person I would have been if I’d never had her. And at least now I know that you’ll be there to look after her.’
‘Bloody hell.’ George was appalled.
‘You don’t understand, do you?’
‘I don’t know why it has to be so complicated. I don’t know why you can’t just . . .’
He wanted to say grow up, but he didn’t dare.
‘Well, there you go. Now you know what a horrible person I really am. And that I’m using you.’
She wiped her nose on her sleeve, staring at him defiantly. He felt rather sick at her admission. Was that all he was to her – some sort of father figure for Mimi who would absolve her of any responsibility? He realized then that having a baby really was the last thing Victoria would want to do. And he had to admit that made him feel sad. He’d become increasingly attracted to the idea of fatherhood lately. He’d thought about it, had even decided which room in the house would make the best nursery. Well, after today, that was obviously one fantasy that wasn’t going to come true. He couldn’t trust Victoria, for a start. She was so fragile, so vulnerable, so volatile. He didn’t have the strength or the wisdom to withstand all the fury inside her. She needed breaking, like a wild horse, and maybe he wasn’t the man to do it. He wouldn’t mention the baby subject again. All he hoped was that having broached the matter of her drinking, and brought it all out into the open, she might take a step back and think about it.
If anything, she became even worse. Impulsive, impetuous. Her clothes became wilder: her skirts shorter, her heels higher, the fashion more extreme. George became increasingly worried. He noticed a slight tremor of her hand as she poured milk into her morning coffee, as if what she really wanted was a slug of vodka.
Mimi, meanwhile, had undergone a metamorphosis from a plump, sweet-faced twelve-year-old to a rangy nymphet. And although the two of them still got on like a house on fire, George found the fact that she was growing up so quickly very disconcerting. The girls at her school were a precocious bunch, mostly with wealthy parents who didn’t seem to worry what they got up to as long as it didn’t interfere with their own social lives. They had large disposable incomes and few rules. George didn’t feel comfortable with their topics of conversation, their taste in music or their dress sense – Mimi’s attire had become more and more outlandish; she dressed somewhere between a ragamuffin and a streetwalker. Victoria didn’t seem perturbed.
‘She’s just looking for an identity. She won’t be dressing like that when she’s twenty-seven. Just go with it.’
George, realizing how important identity was to Victoria, didn’t feel equipped to argue. But he really couldn’t cope with Victoria’s passive acceptance, indeed almost encouragement, of certain aspects of Mimi’s behaviour. It seemed to be the norm for girls of her age to go out to clubs and parties, and drink and smoke. Although Mimi remained sweet-natured and happy to hold a conversation with him, unlike a lot of her friends, who were incapable of stringing two words together, George disapproved strongly of her lifestyle.
Victoria shrugged it off.
‘It’s up to her.’
‘She should be warned of the dangers.’
‘She knows the dangers. She’s not stupid.’
‘How long is her rein, Victoria? Would you let her sleep with somebody? Take drugs?’
Victoria looked at him as if he was mad.
‘You don’t seriously think she’s
not
going to do those things, do you?’
‘I think she needs some guidance. But I’m not sure it’s my place to give it to her.’
‘Feel free.’
George awkwardly tried to tackle several of the subjects with Mimi, who patted his hand and told him she knew exactly what she was doing. Which he didn’t find in the least bit reassuring.
The crunch came on Mimi’s birthday. George had booked a table for her and three friends in their favourite restaurant, which basically served burgers and pizzas but in a slick environment, all white leather and glass with gorgeous young waiters who indulged their every whim. Mimi had insisted that she wanted George and Victoria to come to her meal as well – unusual in itself, as all her friends seemed to despise their parents and spent as little time in their proximity as possible. But George and Victoria, it seemed, were cool.
That evening, Victoria outshone Mimi and her friends and looked no older than they did. Her outfit was shorter, tighter and more outrageous. George thought he might once have felt pride, but now he felt uncomfortable. It felt rather like a wedding guest upstaging the bride. He watched as Victoria slugged down three Cosmopolitans in quick succession, then became more and more animated, giggling with the girls and flirting with the waiters, who were falling over themselves to serve her.
Despite George’s discomfort at Victoria’s behaviour, he told himself to chill out and enjoy the evening.
The
pièce de résistance
was going to be the birthday cake. George had been in and arranged it with the manager the day before. Just as it was due to arrive, on a given signal, Victoria upstaged it by producing tickets for the opening night of a new club. There were shrieks and squeals of excitement.
‘Uber-cool!’ shrieked Yasmin.
‘The others are going to be so sick on Monday!’ crowed Leyla.
‘Your mum rocks,’ Joo announced to Mimi.
‘We need to leave
now
,’ Victoria announced. ‘If we’re not there by eleven, they won’t let us in.’
‘Hang on,’ said George. ‘Mimi’s cake . . .’
Victoria waved a dismissive hand.
‘Cake?’ she snorted. ‘These tickets are like gold dust. Get them to put it in a doggy bag.’
She swept out, followed by her phalanx of followers, just as the manager appeared with a tower of chocolate brownies interspersed with balls of ice cream, scattered with silver sugared almonds, sparklers and candles. George sat alone at the table and stared at it.
‘I’m still going to have to charge you for it,’ said the manager.
‘I’m sure you are,’ said George drily. ‘Give it to another table, with my compliments.’
He paid the bill and went home.
At two o’clock that morning, Mimi called him in a panic.
‘George – I don’t know what to do. Yasmin’s throwing up in the toilets, Leyla’s got her hands down some guy’s trousers and I can’t find Joo anywhere.’
‘Where’s your mum?’
There was a small silence.
‘Um – I haven’t seen her for a while either.’
‘I’ll come and get you.’
Twenty minutes later, George waded his way into the club, having threatened the bouncers that they had let a group of underage girls in and if the place wanted to keep its licence longer than their opening night they had better let him in. It took him half an hour to round up Mimi’s friends, who were in varying states of inebriation and undress. Mimi was tear-stained and exhausted.
‘I’m sorry, George,’ she kept repeating. ‘I didn’t really want to come in the first place.’
‘You didn’t get much choice,’ replied George grimly. ‘Where
is
your mother?’
There was an awkward silence.
‘I think she’s in the VIP area,’ Yasmin finally ventured.
George had another terrible battle trying to get past a bouncer standing with his arms crossed in front of a red rope, but eventually found that a twenty-pound note did the trick. The VIP area was crammed with Bath’s most influential faces; faces he’d been doing his best to avoid in recent months. He kept his head low. Eventually, in a dark corner, he found Victoria straddling the lap of a blond man in leather trousers. He stood over them for a moment before Victoria looked up.
‘Darling,’ she cooed, not a trace of guilt on her face. George could tell by her eyes she was totally bombed. ‘This is Nick. Nick owns a share of this gorgeous, gorgeous place.’
‘Lucky Nick.’ George managed a glimmer of a smile and held out his hand. ‘George Chandler.’
‘Right.’ Nick held out one hand for George to shake, and caressed Victoria’s thigh with the other.
‘Victoria’s husband,’ George added helpfully.
George steered Victoria out of the club and into the night air, where the girls were waiting, pale-faced and rather subdued, and virtually shoved her into the waiting cab. Mimi clutched at his sleeve.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Hey, it wasn’t your fault.’ He hugged her. ‘I’m just sorry your birthday’s been spoilt.’
‘The meal was great. Thanks.’
He held Mimi tight, realizing that this was probably as close as he was ever going to get to having a daughter. He must have been mad to suggest having a baby to Victoria. For a moment he felt his throat tighten, and he swallowed hard. It was weird. He’d never really seen himself as a family man, but now it had become something unobtainable he suddenly wanted it very much indeed.
The next morning George stood over Victoria as she drifted into consciousness. He’d slept in the spare room, he was so livid with her. He couldn’t have stood her comatose body next to his, her total oblivion.
‘I’m only going to say this once.’ He could barely control his voice, it was shaking with so much rage. ‘You are totally irresponsible. I don’t know what you were on last night, but you can cut it out if you’re going to stay under this roof a minute longer. You were in charge of those girls last night, but it didn’t occur to you to keep an eye on them for a second. In fact, if it wasn’t for Mimi . . .’ He trailed off as he realized Victoria had drifted off to sleep again. Enraged, he pulled a sheaf of lilies out of a nearby vase and threw the water over her lifeless form. She sat up soon enough, spluttering.
‘Bloody hell, George.’
‘Your fifteen-year-old daughter’s got more common sense than you have. And don’t ever, ever humiliate me like that again.’
Victoria blinked at him, her hair hanging in rat’s tails round her face.
‘For God’s sake, George. Get a grip. When did you have such a sense of humour failure?’
‘When I found my wife with her legs wrapped round another man’s waist?’
‘We were talking business.’
‘There was only one business you looked like you were doing, darling. And to be honest, you’re getting a bit long in the tooth.’
He knew that would hurt. Any dig about looking her age would gnaw at Victoria for days. It was the only way he knew how to get at her. And he was right. As he left the room, he heard the empty lily vase smash against the wall behind him.
When he discovered her affair with Nick Taverner less than a month later, he didn’t put up a fight. Maybe that was cowardly and gutless – what kind of a man didn’t fight for the woman he loved? But he was battle-weary.
He had, however, asked her why.
‘Because he doesn’t nag me,’ said Victoria simply.
There was a small pause while George took this in.
‘Yet,’ he replied. But he didn’t try and dissuade her.
He wasn’t surprised. Nick Taverner was older than him – forty-something – but devilishly good-looking in a hair-dresserish sort of way. He had fingers in more pies than Mr Kipling and a dreadful reputation as a womanizer. Quite the opposite of George. Nick Taverner, whenever he met him, made him feel like a square. A plodder.
It wasn’t Victoria leaving him that had broken his heart. It had been broken long before, when he’d realized they could never be the family unit he longed for. He was left with a dull, empty ache, and a longing for what might have been if he’d had the courage to face her full on. But then, would a tamed Victoria have been what he wanted? Had he broken her spirit, the appeal might have gone.
He watched as Victoria and Mimi drove off like Thelma and Louise in her open-topped BMW, then spent the whole weekend scrubbing the house bare of any evidence of either of them. He took down the pretty Jane Churchill curtains in the bedroom, replaced them with a dark wood Venetian blind, and bought a new set of bedlinen in a sober masculine stripe. He repainted Mimi’s bedroom, brushing over the pearlescent lilac that he’d chosen with her a few months before with a deep red, and lined the walls with bookshelves. He threw out any vestiges of femininity from the bathroom, bundled up cushions and throws and vases and shoved them in the attic, chucked out all their magazines. Until the house was austere. Clean lines. Masculine. They didn’t need him. And he didn’t need them.