Year of Being Single (3 page)

Frankie had arrived home at ten this morning and it was like she’d never been away. Actually, it was worse than if she’d never been away. She had let herself quietly in the front door. Shoes had littered the hall. A child’s padded jacket had been flung on the second stair up. A congealing, pink plastic cup of milk had been randomly placed on a windowsill.

She’d walked into the kitchen. There had been remains of a Saturday night takeaway strewn all over the table, an empty styrofoam burger box open on the floor like a Muppet’s mouth, an almost-empty bottle of lemonade on its side on the worktop, a sticky dribble coming from it and dripping down the under-counter fridge. Cupboard doors and drawers were gaping; there was a sink full of dishes and empty tins filled with water, and an overflowing bin. For God’s sake!

‘Rob!’

Silence. There had just been the slight rustle of the white plastic bag the takeaway had come in, left redundant on the table and flicking in the chilly January breeze coming through the wide open back door.

‘
Rob
!’

‘In the garden!’

They had all been out there. Rob, in his bright red fleece and Timberlands and, despite the weather, those bloody shorts she detested, the ones with the tar stains on the knees. Harry and Josh, duelling with cricket bats. They duelled with anything these days: light sabres, plastic pirate swords, and if it came to it, rolling pins and tubes of tin foil and cling film. At least they were doing it in the garden; they usually fenced at the top of the stairs when she was trying to come down with a massive basket of laundry. Tilly was doing cartwheels on the wet grass in double denim, and three-year-old Alice was plomped on her bottom on the overgrown lawn (where was the waterproof-backed picnic blanket?) and noshing on a very unseasonal choc ice. Half of it appeared to have exploded over her face, and all the children looked overexcited and under-dressed.

‘Mummy!’ Tilly had hollered, mid-wheel, and Alice had run over to Frankie and wiped her chocolatey cheeks on her mother’s leg. Frankie hugged Alice, waved ‘hello’ at the other children then retreated back to the kitchen, where she’d started tidying up. Within ten minutes, Harry had come into the kitchen for something and ended up telling her she was ruining everything, as always (she had dared ask him if he had finished his science project for school tomorrow) and Rob had stormed into the kitchen demanding to know where his phone was.

‘How the hell should I know?’ said Frankie, swiping at a ketchup splodge on the table with a sodden yellow sponge.

‘It’s been moved,’ growled Rob, ominously and incorrectly, and he marched off upstairs, huffing about ‘turning this place upside down until I find it.’

‘Oh, bog off!’ Frankie had mumbled, under her breath, then felt her spirit die a little as she remembered she’d promised them a big Sunday roast this weekend.

She’d only just got back, but she wanted out again.

Frankie gave a deep sigh as she peeled a Brussels sprout off the floor with one hand and scraped a strand of frizzy hair off her face with the other. The blissful night at the GetAway Lodge was becoming a distant memory. As soon as she’d stepped through the door and seen those littered shoes and the congealing cup of milk, the wife and motherhood juggernaut had started its engine and it was now rumbling again at full, reluctant pelt as she cleared up the aftermath of the roast dinner. She scraped more dishes in the bin, wiped the table, put the table mats away, swept the kitchen floor, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. She still wanted out. She wanted her P45. She’d had enough.

She shook her head and tried to rally, which was quite difficult as she’d just stood on a squished, half-chewed potato and nearly slipped over. She’d
chosen
this life! She’d wanted this husband, these children. She’d not said ‘no’ to any of them, when she had the chance. They were hers and she was theirs. She just had to get on with it.
Embrace
them. Continue to smother them all in love and roast potatoes…

It was no use. She felt worse than before she’d escaped. Crisis point had been reached and there was only one solution. A solution that would give her time on her own, like those blissful hours at the GetAway Lodge, at least every other weekend.

It was radical. It was major. It would cause a hell of a lot of upheaval. But it could be done. She knew a school mum who had this very set-up. Free, blissful time on her own every other weekend. Every other Friday she’d have a chilled night with her girlfriends. Every other Saturday she’d go out and get wrecked. Alternate Sundays she’d lie on the sofa until 5p.m., her shoes from the night before still toppled together on her (Frankie imagined) white, fluffy rug. She wanted some of that and there was only one way she could get it.

Frankie chucked the flattened roast potato into the bin and kicked the dishwasher door shut.

She could leave Rob.

Chapter Three: Grace

Grace’s silent scream was at the side of a Sunday morning football pitch whilst having a bit of mindless small talk with Charlie’s mum.

‘Oh bless, look at my Charlie, one of his socks has fallen down.’

‘Oh yeah. Yeah, look at him. Oh bless.’ Grace smiled and put her hands in the back pockets of her skinny jeans. She didn’t really know where to put them. She barely knew where to put herself.

That bastard! How could he do this to me?

‘At least they’ve got good weather for it. It was chucking it down yesterday.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. It’s cold, but it’s nice to see the sun.’ Another smile, another platitude. Grace didn’t really know what she was saying.

Cheat! Liar! I’m never going to let him come back. Ever.

‘Goal! Yes! Go on Charlie!’

‘Yay! Brilliant. Well done, Charlie.’

No man is going to hurt me like that again.

Grace grinned in what she hoped looked like happiness, or at least something that didn’t look like her soul had been wrenched from her body, and she and Charlie’s mum walked towards the brick changing rooms.

Anyone glancing at her would think she was a normal, contented football mum enjoying the bright, crisp January day, the white clouds scudding across a chilly marine sky and her son’s hat-trick. That the worst part of her day would be cleaning muddy football boots and scouring the freezer for what to cook for tea. To a casual onlooker, Grace knew she would look
perfectly
at ease.

Blimey, she was good at this, she acknowledged. She should maybe have been an actress, instead of someone who worked in a hat boutique. No acting required there. Well, maybe a bit. She sometimes had to tell old battle-axes they looked nice in their pink mother-of-the bride hats or
anyone
they looked good in a fascinator.

Charlie’s mum had certainly fallen for her act this morning. She had no clue that Grace’s husband of twelve years had admitted to her before football this morning that he was cheating on her.

Grace had kicked him out. Kicked him to the kerb. He’d talked to the hand ’cause the face wasn’t listening. They used to watch programmes like that together.
Jerry Springer
. At the weekends. They loved trash TV. They’d laugh smugly at all those pathetic people airing all their hilarious, dirty laundry in public. The affairs, the drama, the grubby awfulness. Awful Jerry. The terrible people with mullets and missing teeth. Those appalling beefed-up bouncers hamming it up and marching around. It was the sort of programme you could really enjoy for an hour or two, before it started making you feel ill.

She now felt
really
ill: sicker than she’d ever felt. A terrible, grubby drama had played out in her own kitchen and James’s dirty laundry had flapped everywhere like filthy pigeons’ wings, whacking her in the face and making her fight for breath.

He’d talked to the back of her head as he’d packed his bag. Each time he’d tried to wheedle his way out of things, she’d turned her body. Every time he tried to say it wouldn’t happen again, she’d edged further away. Eventually, she’d found herself in a corner of the kitchen, by the bin, facing the tiles and thinking they needed a good scrub.

She’d heard the front door close. She’d turned round to find James gone and Daniel standing by the fridge, with his football bag. Grace had to find a way to tell him.

That his father had done the dirty on her and wouldn’t be coming back.

Grace smiled again at Charlie’s mum and nodded at a story about the funny thing Charlie had said at dinner last night. Her silent scream was nowhere near loud or long enough.

The Wednesday before, at about half past seven in the evening, she had grabbed James’s phone to check the weather for Daniel’s district cross-country rally the next day. She needed to know exactly what to bring: fleeces or raincoats or both. (James wasn’t coming of course; too busy.) She wanted to get the bag of water and energy-boosting snacks packed and ready for the morning. She wanted to be organised.

Grace kept a pristine, and ridiculously tidy and organised home. Everything had its place. If things didn’t work or weren’t needed, they were gone. If there was a mess anywhere, it was eradicated immediately. Her friends always teased her and said that you needed to hold on to your handbag in that house; if you put it down on a table for longer than five seconds, Grace would chuck it out.

Her phone was upstairs. James’s was on the hall table. As she’d picked it up, she saw there was a thumbnail photo on the screen. It looked like a breast. A naked breast! She quickly clicked on the photo and made it full-size. Yes, a breast. A big one. Bigger than hers, certainly. With a really dark, erect nipple. It was just the one. Not a pair. Sender:
work
. The breast looked like it was lying on a bed, on its side.

Grace had been so startled. What the hell was this and who’d sent it?
Work
? That was a bit vague. She swallowed and threw the phone back down on the table. Oh God. Was James cheating?

‘What the hell’s this?’ she’d said, furious and unnerved, as James came out of the downstairs loo, fiddling with his tie. He’d looked at the phone and laughed.

‘It’s nothing,’ he’d said. He said a friend had sent it to him, that it was just a photo doing the rounds: one of those photos blokes pass around ‘for a laugh’. Hilarious, she’d thought. He did always think it all a laugh, that sort of thing – looking at girls on the street, gawping at
Baywatch
-type beauties on the telly. She’d catch him at it and he’d say, ‘What?’, all laughing innocence.

She accepted his explanation, but still, she wondered about it, after he’d slid his phone into his briefcase, kissed her fleetingly on the lips and left the house. He had a very important meeting that day: he was high up in oil. They’d met when he’d been further down in oil and Grace had worked in the millinery department at John Lewis in Oxford Street.

The photo wasn’t especially porn-y. The breast wasn’t edged in black lace or peeping out of red PVC. It didn’t look sensational enough to be something shared over and over, however pervy and childish the men were. It looked like a real woman’s breast, on a real woman’s bed; it looked
personal
. But, she’d really wanted to believe him. She liked a quiet life. Her, James and Daniel. The three of them. She was desperate to believe him and for life to carry on as normal.

So it had. For four days she’d bought it.

Until this morning. Way before her alarm was supposed to go off so she could wake Daniel for football, Grace had been woken by a random truck clattering down the road. She couldn’t get back to sleep so lay there for a while. James was sound-o. Over his sleeping body she could see his phone on his bedside table. He’d been a bit funny with that phone since the breast episode – protective. He’d even started taking it into the bathroom with him.

She’d got up and, careful to avoid all the annoying creaks in their new-build floorboards, had tiptoed round to his side of the bed and picked it up. She knew his password, tapped it in and swiped. There was a message on the screen.

Bleach!

Bleach
? How strange. What did that mean? And who would send that? His mother? Why? James didn’t
clean
– and neither did his mother, actually. Was it a random message sent by mistake?

Then she saw it was from ‘
Work
’
.

Her heart pounding, she clicked open the message thread. From the top of the screen, in their jaunty speech bubbles, the messages went like this:

Great night on Thursday!

Mmm. Great, great night! Thank u

Did you get that gravy off your blouse?

Blouse? When was I wearing a blouse? ;-)

At dinner, sexy!

Oh yes I remember! Briefly. Yes, I managed to get it off.

With a lot of scrubbing? Friction?

Funny. Ha.

Then in the same grey reply bubbles:

No.

Bleach!

James stirred in his sleep, made one of his little noises. Grace carefully placed his phone back on the bedside table, walked into the en-suite bathroom and quietly threw up.