Lizzie wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “But Tessa, he says he wants out. He says he’s not interested in patching things up. And d’you know what? I get the distinct feeling that he just doesn’t give a flying f-feather anymore.”
“Listen, Lizzie, I don’t believe it. Not for a moment. Maybe he thinks that right now, but he’s dead wrong. You used to be the happiest couple I’d ever seen. Love like that, it doesn’t just go up in a puff of smoke! And he’s not involved with anyone else, and neither are you, so . . . Lizzie, I don’t like to kick a person when they’re down, but I do have a theory. You see, the way you are right now? Well, you’re not really the same girl he married. You — you used to be so
interested
in everything. You used to care about your clothes and your makeup and your hair. You used to watch the news and — and read the papers and have opinions. You used to laugh a lot! But now? Well, your main topic of conversation is the kids and, to be honest, that’s, well . . .”
“Boring?”
“ N-oo. Just, maybe, not as fascinating as you think. Oh God, I’m sorry. Don’t cry! Look, I really think you should go and see that therapist I’ve been talking about. My friend Petronella says she’s great. What harm could it do?”
“Not a chance, Tessa. I may be a bit of a wreck, but I can sort myself out. Really, I can.”
“Lizzie, don’t be obstinate. You’re depressed and you need to do something about it. Seeing a therapist doesn’t mean you’re mental. It just means you’re ready to move on! Ready to be proactive about your, you know, issues. Oh Lizzie, I just want to — to grab you by the scruff and shake some life back into you.”
“Well,” said Lizzie lifting her chin, “I
am
doing something about it, if you want to know. I went running this afternoon. Didn’t you say exercise is good for depression?”
“You went running?” Tessa shrieked. “Good grief! That’s — that’s
wonderful
. How did you feel afterwards?”
“Like hell. What do you expect? I’m sore all over. But do you know what? I’m going to stick with it. Does your offer still stand to — you know, train with me? Could you bear it? Because I think I can get the teenager down at the barn to babysit.”
“Does my offer still stand? Lizzie, it does a lot more than stand. In fact, I can guarantee that I’ll be up at your cottage every day,
forcing
you into your trainers. This is progress, Lizzie! Progress!”
Lizzie gave a quivering sigh and took a final bite of the carrot cake she was eating for supper. “I don’t know, Tessa. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s just running, for heaven’s sake.”
From: [email protected]
Sent: 02 June
You get yourself a GOOD lawyer. Take him for every penny, the bastard.
Janie
H
i Lizzie, how’s life?”
Lizzie glanced up from the magazine she’d brought as protection against looking lonely and pathetic as she waited for the children to be let out of school.
One of the nursery school mothers was smiling at her cheerily. Several others were looking benevolently on.
She cleared her throat. “Life?” she squeaked. “It’s all right, I suppose. How’s yours?”
Something odd had happened since yesterday’s tête-à-tête with Mrs. Kirker about the children. The mums were talking to her. She’d noticed it at drop-off, too. They were also staring at her quite a lot.
She didn’t know why her stock had suddenly risen at Chipstead nursery, but it had.
Another funny thing — Mrs. Kirker didn’t seem to bear a grudge against her. In fact, Mrs. Kirker was friendlier than ever; she’d made a point of crossing the floor that morning to ask how Lizzie was getting on. In the face of such behavior, Lizzie was going to find it difficult to go on bearing her own grudge, which she’d meant to drag around like rolling luggage for the rest of her children’s career at Chipstead.
Last night, after her conversation with Tessa, Lizzie had extracted a promise from Alex that he’d never bite another child at school again. She’d been restrained enough to bring up the subject only when everybody was bathed, fed, and ready for bed. Then, quite calmly and rationally, she’d settled herself on the bedroom floor and remarked, “Alex, Mrs. Kirker says you’ve been biting children at school again.”
Alex picked up a toy car and spun its wheels against the palm of his left hand. “Vroom, vroom,” he said.
“Alex. Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he flicked his eyes at her for a second, then turned his attention back to the car. It was a very noisy car, apparently.
“Alex, please look at me when I’m talking to you. And stop that noise. This is serious.”
The blonde head continued to bend over the toy car. “Look at me,” she said through gritted teeth. “Brum,” he said.
An unreasonable fury took hold of Lizzie. She leaned forward, snatched the car out of his hand, and threw it as hard as she could against the wall. It hit the plaster with a clatter and fell to the carpet, spinning its wheels stupidly in the air. Lizzie noted that part of the bodywork was smashed.
Great, Lizzie, she said to herself. What a fine job you’re doing, showing your son that violence is not the answer.
At least she had his attention now. He was staring at her with wide eyes, his determined little chin trembling ever so slightly.
“You are not to bite your friends, do you understand? Biting is naughty and it hurts. Do you want to hurt other children?”
Alex started to nod his head and then quickly turned it into a shake. He was watching her as you might watch a volatile dog capable of occasional savagery. His expression infuriated her.
“If you bite one more child, I will take away your fire engine. Got it?”
“Naughty Mummy,” he suddenly wailed, pointing an accusing finger. “I woll tell
Daddy
on you! Daddy
gived
it to me. Daddy won’t
let
you take it away!”
“Daddy will take it away himself if he hears that you’re biting your friends,” Lizzie snapped back. “You
know
biting is bad. Why on earth do you keep doing it? Would you like it if I bit you? Would you? Would you?” She bared her teeth at him and made violent gnashing noises.
He shrank away and gazed at her nervously. His face seemed to go small and triangular.
But still she couldn’t stop herself. She grabbed him by his narrow, pajama-clad shoulders, feeling her fingers sink into his soft flesh. “Don’t you
ever
bite anyone again. Do you hear? Do you think I like being the Mummy of the nasty little boy who bites people at school? You just clean up your act or you’ll be lucky if I don’t smash every one of your toys into little bits. Do you hear?”
Ellie, sitting on her bed “reading” a book to Panda, gave a sudden hysterical giggle. Lizzie turned on her like a wounded she-elephant. “That goes for you too, Eleanor Buckley. You behave yourself at school or I’ll take Panda off you and give him to the starving children in Ethiopia. Understand?”
Ellie nodded.
Alex’s eyes glittered with tears. He wore an expression of deep concentration; possibly he was trying to suck the tears back inside through sheer willpower. Lizzie knew how that felt. Then, in a whisper, he said, “No more bitin’. Pwomise.”
She’d had to rush out of the room then so that she wouldn’t break down in front of the two of them.
Thank goodness none of the mums who were now being so friendly knew anything about this shameful incident.
Maybe they weren’t such a bad crowd after all, even if their kindness was based mostly on a relish of scandal, and that strange kick people get out of the misfortunes of others.
A week after James’s phone call, Lizzie still hadn’t looked up a lawyer in the yellow pages. Instead, she found herself sitting in a shabby waiting room in a Victorian house in Sundridge, watching a youngish receptionist read a paperback horror story and pick her teeth.
Lizzie glanced at her watch, then dug a tissue out of her bag and dried her sweating palms.
Just at that moment, a buzzer sounded on the receptionist’s desk. She glanced up from her book. “Ms. Buckley? You may go in now. Through that door, and turn left.”
The therapist didn’t look as scary as Lizzie had expected. Just a bit
older
than she’d expected. Not that she’d been expecting someone in her twenties, of course, but this woman had probably been around at the onset of the Second World War. She was definitely of the same generation as James’s mother, though poles apart in appearance. Unrepentantly old-school in her iron-gray sheep’s curls and woolly sweater, and blessed with an unusually big bottom, she didn’t look as if she’d ever heard of microdermabrasion, let alone Botox. The word “contemporary” didn’t spring to mind when you looked into the reflective surfaces of her spectacles.
How on earth was Lizzie going to talk about sex in front of her? If only she hadn’t let Tessa push her into doing this. But the image of herself as a dreary whinge-pot had struck home. Besides, she was tired of unplugging the phone at night for fear of breaking down in messy tears if she spoke to anybody even halfway sympathetic once she’d had a gin and tonic.
And maybe Tessa was right. Maybe she’d have half a chance of winning James back if she could just find her old self again.
The woman stood up as Lizzie came in and held out her hand. “You must be Lizzie,” she said. “Call me Ivana. Take a seat wherever you like, my dear.” She indicated three possibilities: a wooden kitchen chair, a fold-up office chair, and a beanbag.
“No couch?” asked Lizzie with an attempt at a laugh.
The woman raised her eyebrows politely. “As you see,” she said. “No couch. But you may lie on the floor, if you like. I have a cushion.”
“Oh no, the beanbag will be lovely.” Lizzie sat down on it accordingly. Immediately Ivana picked up a clipboard and made a small note. Was she checking off that Lizzie had chosen the beanbag? And what did that mean? That Lizzie was childish? Had low self-esteem? Showed poor taste in decor? Put creature comforts above formality?
God, Lizzie could see this whole therapy thing was going to be a minefield.
“So,” said Ivana, settling her large behind into her own seat, a snugly upholstered armchair. “What brings you to my office, Lizzie?”
Lizzie glanced up into the woman’s kindly but dispassionate face and burst into tears.
She cried for a good thirteen minutes of her half-hour appointment. Very extravagant.
She almost wished she’d gone to someone through the National Health so she could have afforded to cry for the full half hour. But she didn’t want it on her National Health record that she was having a nervy breaker. Besides, Tessa had warned that she wouldn’t get an appointment with any sort of mental health professional at all unless she told her GP she was thinking of topping herself. Even then, they might only give her drugs. On the other hand, if she played up her nuttiness just a shade too
much
in an attempt to secure a referral, she’d run the risk of being carried off in a straitjacket without further ado.
No, going private had been her only option, and this woman came highly recommended by some seriously disturbed friend of Tessa’s.
Lizzie scrabbled in her bag for a clean tissue and blew her nose. “My friend thinks I’m depressed,” she muttered.
“Ah,” said Ivana.
“My husband left me,” said Lizzie.
“Ah,” said Ivana.
“He wants a divorce.”
“Ah,” said Ivana.
“And I want to know
why
,” said Lizzie.
“But of course,” said Ivana.
Then they sat in silence, Lizzie occasionally blowing her nose.
Bloody hell, thought Lizzie. What’s she up to now? Going through her diary? When is she going to start the flaming
therapy
?
“We had a lovely marriage,” Lizzie blurted out, hoping to bring the woman’s attention back to her case. “Nothing wrong with it at all. Except one teeny problem, but I’m sure — I’m pretty sure he didn’t know about it.”
Ivana glanced up. “Yes?” she asked absently.
“Yes. It was — you know, the bedroom stuff.” Lizzie was fiery red now, but it was okay because the woman wasn’t looking at her. “I’d sort of — gone off the bedroom stuff. After my babies were born, you know.”
“Babies?”
“Twins. A girl and a boy. Not identical. Obviously. Anyway, having them was a horrible shock. I mean, it was lovely, of course, but it was also, you know — a bit
gruesome
, to be honest. Nobody tells you how bad it’s going to be — that you’re never going to get any sleep, like someone being tortured in a medieval dungeon or something. And then there’s the blood and the spit-up and the pooh. Nobody warns you about
that
side of things.”
Good grief. Lizzie couldn’t believe she’d said the word “pooh” in a doctor’s office. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so hard to say “sex” after all.
“Ah,” said Ivana, and flipped a page in her diary or whatever it was. She hadn’t turned a hair.
Lizzie began to feel a little bolder. “So, anyway, I started sort of dreading the — you know, the — you know, going to bed with my husband.”
“What is his name?” Ivana asked mildly.
“Huh? Oh. James.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway. So I started losing interest in — in, you know. But James had no idea, of course. I mean, he says now that it wasn’t a one-way street, but . . . I think he was just saving face, or something. I mean, he certainly always seemed — you know — very keen.”
“I see.” Ivana took up her pen. “How often were you having the sex, would you say?”
Lizzie’s face broke into fresh flames. “Erm — how
often
? Let me see, oh, probably twice or three times a week.”
“I see. So, let’s think. You would have the sex on a Friday night, probably. That is the usual pattern. And then maybe again on Saturday? And then again midweek?”
Lizzie shifted uncomfortably in the beanbag. “Yes. Erm, most Friday nights. Except when he was away on business. Or if he fell asleep while I was in the bathroom.”
Ivana raised her eyebrows.
“See, Alex was a bit of a night owl. My little boy. I’d be up rocking him to sleep until past eleven most nights.”