When it all went to cust.., p.22
When It All Went to Custard, page 22
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Um, yeah, not too bad. Hi.’ He seemed oddly taken aback at seeing us. And – and he could easily have dropped in over the weekend. I’d been telling myself for the last two days that it didn’t matter, and I didn’t mind . . . But I do mind, I thought, relaxing my desperate grip on optimism with almost a sense of relief.
‘Your dog bit Tessa,’ Nathan informed him.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s alright,’ said Nathan graciously. ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Tessa did a big spew by my bed this morning, and I standed in it.’
‘Damn,’ said Andrew. His eyes met mine, crinkling in amusement. ‘I hate it when that happens.’
‘Terrible start to the day,’ I agreed, smiling.
And just then his wife came around the corner, saying, ‘Babe, did you get hummus?’
Toni Faulkner was very thin and very fair, and she wore a pale grey jersey T-shirt dress and white canvas slip-on shoes which accentuated both thinness and pallor. I was struck, as I’d been struck before, by how tired she looked. How she’d ever managed to exert herself sufficiently to get off with my husband was a mystery.
Her eyes widened just the merest fraction as she saw me, and then slid away sideways.
‘Hi,’ I muttered, and bolted.
‘Mum,’ cried Lily, behind me. ‘Mum!’
I slowed and came to rest halfway down the next aisle. ‘What?’
‘What about the cheese?’
‘What?’ I said stupidly.
‘You didn’t get any cheese!’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Um, we’ll go back that way. Do you guys want some chips?’
‘I want to choose them!’ Nathan cried.
‘You can both choose a packet.’ And as they dashed off I took a long, shuddering breath. Where was I? Salsa, taco shells, two-minute noodles . . . Did we want any of this stuff? No. Okay. Moving on.
‘Jenny,’ said Andrew, appearing beside me.
Frowning in concentration, I selected a jar of salsa. ‘Hi.’
‘It’s not –’ he started, and then stopped. ‘Toni just turned up. We’ve got to go and see a lawyer tomorrow . . .’
I tucked the salsa tenderly into my trolley between a leek and a box of eggs, straightened up and smiled at him brightly. ‘Hope it goes well.’
‘Jen . . .’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Can we have these ones, Mum?’ Lily called, running back down the aisle with a tube of Pringles in her hand.
‘Yes. Sure.’
Suddenly Andrew put his hand over mine on the handle of the trolley. ‘Please – please don’t write me off just yet,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I whispered.
‘Thank you.’ He squeezed my hand, took his away and vanished swiftly back the way he’d come.
‘Mum, what did he mean?’ Lily asked.
‘What? Oh, he – he was going to do something for me, but he hasn’t got there yet,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You look funny.’
I made a face at her. ‘Not as funny as you. Nathan, my sweet, I said one packet of chips.’
* * *
As I put away the groceries I noted sadly that although I’d brought home salsa, which none of us liked, I’d forgotten both the peanut butter and the cheese. To make up for this, however, I had purchased two heads of broccoli, bringing the total in the fridge to four.
Chicken and broccoli stir fry? I mused, running the bath for the kids. But it’s so much better with peanut butter . . . Broccoli and cheese sauce? Nope. What about that nice broccoli salad with bacon and toasted almonds . . . and cheese. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
‘Can we have some chippies?’ Nathan asked.
‘What, in the bath?’
‘Yes!’
I kissed his shorn head. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re the best mum ever,’ he said, throwing his arms around my neck. ‘Lily! Lily, Mum says we can eat chips in the bath!’
I was making chicken and broccoli stir fry (without peanut butter) to cancel out this debauchery when a vehicle came down the driveway. Andrew, I thought breathlessly, hastening to the door. It won’t be him. It won’t be . . .
It wasn’t.
‘Bloody Toni’s turned up,’ Harry called, coming across the wet gravel. ‘So I ran away.’
‘When did she arrive?’ I asked.
‘This afternoon sometime, I suppose. I’ve been out topping thistles in the middle hay paddock.’
‘On Sunday? That’s above and beyond the call of duty.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m amazing.’
‘You are. Come on in.’
Pausing in the doorway to kick off his shoes, he shouted, ‘Hi guys!’ in the direction of the bathroom, whence came sounds of revelry and song.
‘Hi, Harry!’ the kids yelled back.
‘I thought this was your ex’s weekend to have them,’ he remarked, closing the door behind him.
‘It was, but he cancelled on Friday morning so he could go up north with his new girlfriend,’ I said.
‘What a guy.’
‘Indeed. Would you like a drink?’
‘Be rude not to,’ he said.
I opened the fridge door and hunted for beer, which I had also forgotten to purchase. ‘Export Citrus?’
‘Anything else?’
‘Milk?’ I suggested.
‘Export Citrus it is. Cheers.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘How’s Toni?’
‘Buggered if I know. I left them to it.’
‘To what?’ I said tightly.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You okay, Jen?’
I smiled at him and nodded.
‘I think they’ve got a meeting with a lawyer tomorrow. Andrew’s being extra nice to her in the hope she’ll give up on this instant sale idea of hers.’
‘Is he?’ I said stupidly, opening a drawer at random and hunting fruitlessly for a bottle opener among the tea towels.
Harry frowned at me for a second, and then light dawned and he said, ‘Shit, sorry. You don’t want to hear about her.’
‘No, it’s fine. Hey, Harry, how come you dislike her so much?’
‘Because she sucks all the joy out of everyone and everything around her.’
I blinked. ‘That’s harsh.’
‘You’d cook dinner, and she’d announce she was wheat- and dairy-free and she couldn’t eat it. She didn’t like any of Andrew’s friends, but he wasn’t allowed to see them without her. If they were out somewhere and he looked like he was having a good time, she’d suddenly get a terrible migraine and have to go home.’
‘Wow. She sounds delightful.’
‘She is bloody funny when she’s in a good mood,’ Harry conceded. ‘She’s an incredible mimic.’
At which point I discovered that, although I quite enjoyed hearing about Toni’s failings, her merits were an entirely different kettle of fish. Better change the subject before I gave myself away. ‘Are you staying for tea?’ I asked. ‘Although I warn you, it’s nothing flash.’
‘Yeah, why not?’ he said. There was a shriek and a mighty splash from the bathroom. ‘What on earth is happening down there?’
‘I hate to think. I suppose I’d better go and investigate.’
‘Sorry, Mummy,’ said Lily in a very small voice as I appeared in the bathroom doorway.
‘That’s okay, chicken,’ I said, surveying the lake at my feet. ‘How about getting out now?’
The noise of the bath emptying covered all sounds of approaching vehicles, and when Dave said, ‘Holy heck, Nath, what happened to your hair?’ from just behind me I spun around so fast I almost gave myself whiplash.
‘Mummy cutted it!’ said Nathan, hurling himself at his father and nearly falling flat on his face as he collided with Tessa, who was rubbing herself ecstatically against Dave’s shins.
‘So I see. Hang on a tick, mate, you’re sopping wet.’ He held Nathan up with one hand and opened the cupboard under the sink where the towels lived with another.
A short, plump, sweetly pretty girl with smooth brown hair and lovely skin appeared in the doorway behind him. ‘Oh,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Nathan, sweetheart, your beautiful curls!’
‘He had a really big knot,’ Lily explained, trailing the end of her towel in the puddle on the floor.
Dave wrapped Nathan in a towel and pushed him towards the girl behind him. ‘You sort him out, babe, while I organise Lily,’ he said. ‘Settle down, Tessa, would you?’
‘Dave, I’ve got this,’ I said, intensely irritated by this takeover, and then even more irritated with myself for sounding sour and ungracious.
Dave ignored me, relieved Lily of her towel, dropped it on the floor and began briskly to dry her hair with a fresh one. ‘Had a nice weekend, baby?’
‘Yes,’ Lily said, slightly muffled by the towel. ‘But it was a bit boring.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to see if we can fix that next weekend, won’t we? Maybe we could go to the movies. Or the beach.’
Lily fought her way free of the towel. ‘Can we go fishing?’ she asked eagerly.
‘Well, maybe. Anaya hasn’t surf-casted before; we’ll have to show her what to do.’
‘Will you teach me, Lily?’ Anaya asked, smiling. A fake, sickly sort of smile, I thought, although honesty forces me to admit that she was probably just trying to be nice.
‘Yes,’ Lily said.
Anaya turned her smile in my direction. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You must be Jenny. It’s lovely to finally meet you.’
‘Hi,’ I said, trying hard to look nicer than I felt. ‘Did you have a good weekend?’
‘Lovely, thank you. Although we missed these little people.’
I smiled mechanically and bent to gather an armful of sopping towels and drop them into the bath.
‘Anaya, can you come and see my room?’ Lily asked.
‘And mine!’ Nathan put in.
‘I’d love to see both of them,’ Anaya said, following the children along the hall into Lily’s bedroom.
I picked up a wet towel and began to wring it out.
‘How often is he here?’ Dave murmured, pushing Tessa out of the way and spreading Lily’s towel across the puddle on the floor.
‘None of your business,’ I murmured back, losing the unequal struggle with my better self.
‘If he’s hanging around my children, it’s my business.’
I straightened with a jerk and turned to face him. ‘Do you honestly think I’d let someone who might hurt the kids anywhere near them?’
‘I’m just –’
‘Just trying to throw your weight around. Yes, I noticed.’
‘I’m just worried about you,’ he corrected evenly.
This was the Last Straw. In capitals, no less. ‘Go away,’ I whispered savagely. ‘Take your dippy little girlfriend and go away.’
‘Don’t take this out on Anaya,’ he hissed.
‘Then don’t bring her around here and rub her in my face!’
Dave smiled at me kindly. ‘Jenny, you’re going to have to accept that she’s a part of my life, now.’
I stood up. ‘Get out,’ I said softly, my voice shaking. ‘I do not want to shout at you in front of the kids, and if you say another word I fucking will, so help me God.’
Dave retreated before me into the hall. ‘Babe,’ he called, eyeing me warily, ‘we’d better go.’
Anaya appeared in Nathan’s bedroom doorway. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much for showing me your beautiful rooms.’
We all proceeded up the hallway to the kitchen, where Harry was cutting an onion into thick slices, which the children would undoubtedly refuse to eat.
‘Mm,’ Anaya said, smiling at Nathan. ‘It looks like you’re going to have a yummy tea.’
Dave gathered up both children and hugged them. ‘Bye, kidlets. See you on Wednesday,’ he said.
‘Bye, Daddy,’ said Lily sadly, and I fought down another spike of rage. Damn Dave. Maybe he hadn’t called in to flaunt his new girlfriend in my face – maybe he’d genuinely only wanted to see his children – but the effect was the same. It just reminded the kids yet again of the difference between life now and life the way it used to be, in the days when home was home and they weren’t handed constantly from one parent to the other like human bargaining chips.
Harry looked up from his onions, winked at me and looked down again, and that small gesture of support and solidarity enabled me to smile at Anaya and say, ‘Lovely to meet you. Thanks for calling in.’
She smiled back, obviously pleased that I was being reasonable. It seemed a shame that her pleasure was only going to last for about a minute and a half, until Dave delivered his verdict on my manners and morals in the car.
* * *
‘Mummy?’ said Nathan at bedtime, as I tucked the duvet in around his shoulders. He liked to sleep firmly wrapped.
‘Mm?’
‘Would a T-rex beat a lion?’
‘I expect so,’ I said. ‘It’d be lots bigger. But I think a lion might run faster, so it could probably get away.’
‘What about a shark? A big one?’
‘Well, hard to know. Maybe the shark. I don’t know if T-rexes were very good at swimming. In fact, I bet they weren’t. Imagine trying to paddle with teeny little arms.’ I did a tyrannosaur dog-paddling impression using only my index fingers, and he giggled.
‘What about a . . .’
‘Sh,’ I said, bending to kiss him. ‘Sleep time.’
‘No, but what about a boy with a gun? If he shot it right in the head.’
I stood up. ‘You know, Nath, if you did happen to find a T-rex still alive, it’d be a bit of a shame to shoot it, don’t you think?’
‘But if it was going to eat you and Lily.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I’d let you away with it. Night, love.’
‘Mummy?’
‘That’s enough. Go to sleep.’
‘But – but – but can we have pizza tomorrow, and can I sprinkle the cheese with my fairy fingers?’
I smiled. Ruthless dinosaur assassin one second, dainty cheese sprinkler the next. ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Goodnight.’
* * *
‘Is it reasonable that I’m mad at Dave for showing up unannounced with the new model in tow?’ I asked Harry, going back up the hall into the living room and beginning to scrape the Lego littering the carpet into a pile with the side of my foot. ‘Or am I just being a bitch, and I need to get over myself?’
‘No, fair enough, I guess,’ said Harry, which wasn’t quite as reassuring as I’d have liked. ‘Hey, I took your advice.’
‘Did you? Very risky.’
‘You were right. If Chris wants to be with me, he can bloody well tell Ryan, and break it off with him. I told him he’s treating both of us like shit.’
‘Good on you,’ I said.
‘So I gave him an ultimatum. If I haven’t heard from him by tomorrow night, I’ll assume it’s all off and – and –’
‘Go online and meet someone fabulous?’
‘Hell, no,’ said Harry. ‘Probably just pine away and die. But at least I’ll do it with dignity.’ He smiled at me, then leant forward and extracted a large piece of the coffee cake I’d made that morning from its tin.
* * *
Andrew came over at half past eight the next evening, on foot. The air was fresh and spicy-smelling after a shower of rain, the kids were asleep and I was wandering restlessly around the garden in the dusk, hoping he would come, telling myself he wouldn’t and failing entirely to do anything productive in the meantime. I heard his boots crunch across the gravel in front of the house and emerged from behind the lemon tree.
‘Hi,’ I said.
He jumped and spun around. ‘Christ. Hi.’
‘Sorry to give you a fright.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, and there was an awkward silence.
‘Come – come and look at something,’ I said at last.
We went around the corner of the house and along the wide, wet grass path between orchard and flower garden to where a snowball bush covered in creamy globes of blossom, overhung the edge of the lawn. The flowers glowed in the dusk and a wood pigeon, settled for the night in a cherry tree above our heads, shifted uncomfortably and then left his perch to swoop down across the orchard with a noise like tearing silk. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’ I said, reaching up to touch a soft ball of flowers and dislodging a shower of raindrops.
‘Yes,’ said Andrew. ‘Beautiful. Jenny, I’m really sorry about yesterday afternoon.’
‘Did you really hurt your back?’ I asked, before I’d realised I was going to.
‘What?’
‘When I rang you on Friday you said you’d hurt your back.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. Bending over to spit out my toothpaste. Not the most manly injury.’
I smiled, albeit a little weakly.
‘I prolapsed a disc a few years ago. It’s pretty good these days, but every now and then I tweak it and it goes into spasm.’ He looked at me, frowning. ‘Did you think it was an excuse to get out of seeing you on Saturday?’
‘I wasn’t sure,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘For what it’s worth, which probably isn’t much, I was really looking forward to Saturday. And I was expecting to meet Toni at the lawyer’s office this morning.’
I looked at him for a moment, and said, ‘Alright. Fair enough.’
He looked so surprised that I smiled. ‘Did you manage to change her mind?’
‘Pardon?’ he said.
‘About selling the farm straight away.’
‘No.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘Such is life.’
‘When will it be sold?’
‘March, I think.’
‘Any idea what you’ll do then? I’m sorry, I’m interrogating you . . .’
‘That’s alright. I’ll look for a manager’s job, I guess.’ He pulled a leaf off the snowball bush, and a whole drift of tiny white florets spiralled towards the ground. ‘It’ll have to be farming; I don’t know how to do anything else.’
‘I think you could do anything you wanted to,’ I said.
‘I don’t want to do anything else.’
