Separate Lives (17 page)

I wrote that in a rare piece of non-food-related freelance for a women's magazine, one of a series of monthly columns entitled “Living the Dream.”

I wasn't entirely sure this was the angle they were looking for, but hey. And never mind the interior-decorating
triumphs, it turned out not to count for much when your friends—your real, warts-'n'-all, two-decades-and-counting mates—pitched up at your place for the obligatory seaside weekend break (which, believe me, only happens in the months after the clocks go forward, because between November and March you may as well have moved to Kyrgyzstan). And after they'd piled out of the 4x4 it was mere moments before they were falling into predictable raptures over the Grade 2-listed cornices and infinite sea-views and cute shell collection on the loo windowsill . . . And how awesome it was that you'd now got THREE loos to choose from in your to-die-for house that (OMG!) cost the same as a two-bed flat in . . .

So yes, for a few weeks after we moved into the Dream Home at the beginning of April, we were the most popular people we knew. For our beloved visitors (because we were genuinely pleased to see them—and then equally pleased to see the back of them) it was presumably a pleasurable mini-break. However, after about six weeks of relentless socializing, it became a bit like running a boutique seaside B&B. Weekends that could—probably should—have been about finding our own place in the Random-on-Sea “community” were spent making sure we had sufficient duvets and blow-up mattresses, travel cots and baby bottle sterilizing equipment, not to mention cupboards full of the kind of organic wheat-free snacks and raisin permutations that our own children wouldn't touch anymore.

It's not that we didn't have fun, exactly—especially when the kids were asleep and we were cooking, cracking open the wine and catching up with our guests' lives in the Smoke—but were you really meant to wake up exhausted every Monday morning and then spend hours stripping
beds and doing two loads of washing before rounding up your visitors' discarded dummies/cuddly toys/memory sticks/underwear and getting them to the post office asap because so-and-so's child would “probably die of grief if they don't have Bunny by Tuesday, at the latest?”

Pretty soon we were exhausted even before we were allowed to start our own week. Actually, I was exhausted, because the new Real Ale-drinking Alex was suddenly proving himself to be predictably, if depressingly, male when it came to domestic trivia. Either way, it's not as if we were being paid to run Random-on-Sea's newest B&B.

My fortieth birthday at the end of April was a case in point. I quite fancied having a party but, frankly, didn't really feel like organizing it. Dropped hints—hints dropped so loudly, indeed, that they sounded like a canteen of cutlery hitting a stone floor—apparently fell on Alex's selectively deaf ears. For about a millisecond I entertained the fantasy that this was because he had a thrilling Secret Plan, something that conceivably involved being whisked away (for isn't “whisking away” always a good thing in relation to Secret Plans?) to a place of loveliness for a weekend of middle-aged pampering or relaxation or indulgence or hot thongy sex—or even all of the above . . . but in my more sanguine, sensibly middle-aged moments I recognized that this wasn't going to happen.

Because even though I felt I deserved a fortieth Do (five years ago I'd arranged a fantastic surprise party for Alex) I was slightly terrified by the idea that if I waited for him to take the initiative he wouldn't and we could end up in our local pub, The Horse and Groom (inevitably “The Doom and Gloom”), drinking bad red wine and eating Golden Wonder crisps with Heinous, Phil and Bridge. Clearly, this was not
to be countenanced. Clearly I deserved better. But, equally clearly, I figured the only way I was going to get anything better than a night of carbs-and-ale in a pub with too many beams-and-beards was to organize it myself.

Which is how we ended up hosting a party in the Dream Home that was as exhausting as it was chaotic. Not that it wasn't also fun but, after every sofa, bed, and sofa-bed had finally been vacated, it was also the tipping point vis-à-vis running the Dream Home as a B&B.

About thirty friends and relatives came down from London, about two-thirds of whom checked into proper local B&Bs, while the remainder ended up scattered around the house, with the result that the morning after looked like a modern-(un)dress version of
Caligula
.

We also managed to round up about twenty or so locals. Besides Heinous and Phil and Bridge, there were now a few new people we had met (at Heinous's, at Phil and Bridge's) whom we found were not too piratically beardy, or rune-castingly-weirdy. People, in fact, with whom we appeared to have quite a bit in common and therefore who seemed kind of promising in the long term, for it turned out that Random was awash with other DFLs who had also sold their houses/warehouses/flats in Muswell Hill/Hackney/Dulwich and decamped to the seaside for a “better” life. Or, at the very least, a life with a lot more sea in it. They were also the kind of media/creative types we'd known at home (and yes, I still referred to London as “home”: thirty-nine years is a lot of habit to break) and though we'd never actually known any of them when we lived in London, we were all about one degree of Kevin Bacon away from each other and now drawn together by a shared set of circumstances/coincidences—and the fact
that Random was a very small town with a higher-than-average incidence of beards.

Making new “friends” in a small town in early middle-age was, I discovered, a lot like making friends in London in one's teens, when the tribal shallowness and sheer ignorance of youth means a “friend” can easily describe either your same sex soul-mate or simply somebody who is toting that week's coolest 12″ single and wearing a pair of shoes you covet.

But while friendship is a pretty mutable business when you're young, over time it's fair to say the definition becomes a bit more stringent. Nonetheless, when you move out of your comfort zone all bets are off again. Suddenly you take your “friendships” where you find them—even if you find them at the bar in the “Doom and Gloom” or in the loos tooting a line of charlie at Phil and Bridge's hedonistic New Year's party, in the first flush of enthusiasm for all things Random, when over-heated acquaintanceships really do look like proper friendships. And when the wine is flowing and a dinner party is underway, you find yourself surprised by how easily you allow for the differences of opinion, those tiny, jarring moments which highlight how little you really know these new “friends”—and perhaps also why you never knew them in any of your previous incarnations.

So . . . my fortieth was “fun,” and drunken and in many respects well worth the effort involved, but there were more than a few WTF? moments. The moment, for example, when Sean, a successful and amusing illustrator who was married to an edgily modernist architect of Balkan extraction with an entirely unpronounceable name, decided to engage a group of reluctant DFLs on the subject of Zimbabwe. I was just refilling everybody's glasses when he said:

“So many things are inaccurately reported. In many respects Mugabe has always had exactly the right idea.”

The intakes of breath were so sharp it was a miracle nobody ended up in A&E. I peered at Sean to see if he was aiming—and misfiring—for blackly comedic effect . . . but no, he was smiling blithely, alongside his equally toothy wife. Apparently still oblivious as the small group fragmented around them, he turned to me and said:

“Really, Susie, there's just too much misinformation.”

Yeah—starting right here, I thought to myself. But instead of slinging them out on their ears, I bottled it, smiled and said, “More wine?” before mentally crossing them off the short list of potential new soul-mates.

“Alex,” I hissed, interrupting his tête-à-tête with a—hold the front page—freshly beardless, fleece-free and therefore rather dapper-looking Phil. “I've just overheard the most appalling thing. Sean and his wife with the unpronounceable name . . .”

“What about them?”

So I told him, but instead of looking shocked and appalled, he just laughed.

“Oh come on, Soos. He's obviously joking.”

“Some joke. And anyway he wasn't.”

“Well, you know what? I really wouldn't go jumping to any conclusions if I were you. I like Sean and . . . thingy.”

I stared at Alex, gobsmackery written all over my face.

“Are you serious?”

“Actually I'd rather not be serious at the moment, if it's all right with you. It's a great party. Lighten up.”

Then Alex—a card-carrying member of the labor party—patted me on the bum (yes, really) and in that moment was lost to me. Up until then I'd had no idea I was living with Woody Allen's
Zelig
.

I wandered around the house for a bit, trying to forget about the increasingly unrecognizable Alex and mad Sean (presumably he hadn't always been a moron) before shrugging it off and going in search of Heinous, who had of course once been a moron but had Seen the Light. Or had she?

I found Heinous by accident. She was in the top-floor bathroom, which, thanks to the broken catch on the door, not only revealed her at a time when she very much didn't want to be revealed but also quite horribly compromised. Don't get me wrong, it would have been fine—if mildly embarrassing for both parties—had I merely stumbled across her sitting on the loo, but this was worse, for, there in the bathroom, illuminated only by the shaft of light from the bright full moon shining through the window, I could clearly see Heinous on her knees “pleasuring” a standing man who was—inescapably and without any shadow of a doubt—Phil.

And though I could only make out Heinous from behind (and believe me I was willing it to be Bridget not Heinous, though vis-à-vis arses there was no comparison, size-wise), Phil was facing the doorway, where my expression—shock, horror, amusement, disbelief, whatever—appeared to hasten the inevitable.

“Oh baby. Oh . . .
Oooooh
 . . . Susie!”

“What?” This from Heinous, whose “job” was clearly done.

“Sorry,” I blurted before shutting the door and retreating very swiftly downstairs to locate Bridget who, mercifully, was a full three floors below, in the kitchen, chatting to Lisa, with whom it turned out she'd once worked in her previous fashion-editing incarnation. I refilled both their glasses and gave a slightly surprised Bridget a tight little squeeze round the shoulders.

“How lovely that you two know each other! And can I just say, Bridge, that you are looking very gorgeous tonight. I totally love that dress; is it Boden?”

“Thanks, Susie—yes, clever you, it is Boden. Their stuff is very forgiving of the fuller figure, I find.”

And Bridget gave a nervous little laugh. Lisa, meanwhile, smiled the slightly baffled smile of the righteously and permanently slim and said: “I was just saying to Bridget that she might want to get involved with what we're planning on doing with the shop, which is to increase our online presence. I'm hoping she's still up for some styling.”

Bridget looked so much as if she might burst with joy that I could've cried. Instead, I gave her another little squeeze and said: “I think that would be a fabulous idea, Lisa. I think you need Bridget and Bridge needs to spend a bit more time up in the Smoke, hanging with the fashion crowd.”

And then I left them to it and escaped into the garden and stared up at the moon and thought: this place is properly mad-bonkers. And I am now forty. And I have no idea what to do—if indeed there is anything to do—about the Heinous/Phil/Bridge triangle so I'll just stick my head in the shingle and, at least for the moment, completely ignore it.

As our first summer kicked off by the seaside, aka officially “home,” I began to stop thinking about some of the things I never imagined I wouldn't care about for the rest of my life, such as Selfridges. And to those friends who made the effort to come and visit and then left us, sighing, it was probably best to pretend that yes of course it was worth turning around and driving back up the Highway to Hell, if only because there wasn't enough room for all of them here.

On a beautiful Monday morning in June, just after the weekend clear-up and a handful of days before Lisa and
Guy's wedding, I was sitting on our front steps with a pint of coffee, staring at the glimpse of sea between the trees, and I realized I'd had enough of hotel-keeping, at least for a while. At that moment Alex was somewhere inside the house, drilling, having recently developed an unexpected but increasingly OCD interest in Dream Home-related DIY. Last week Charlie had started calling him “Dad the Builder,” but Alex hadn't been amused.

“There's a lot of work involved in maintaining a house like this, you know,” Alex had explained to Charlie, totally seriously.

“Can Dad fix it? Yes HE CAN!”

“For God's sake, shut up, Charlie,” barked Alex, then swung round and pushed his son away. Chuck—unused to being called Charlie—looked shocked and then his face crumpled into tears.

“Alex . . .” I shouted and then marched off, a sobbing Chuck in tow.

“Daddy's mean, Mummy.”