I checked my emails, and there was yet another one from Mum complaining that Dad was being anti-social. I didn’t know why she was surprised by my father’s tendencies to lock himself away – they’d been together for forty-five years now.
Your dad refuses to try line dancing with me. He says he’s too busy but it’s pretty obvious that he’s just hiding away. I never thought my life would be so lonely.
Mum was prone to being dramatic. I could empathise as I could clearly see that there was very little to recommend getting old (unless you were rich and old). They lived in a different part of London, I rarely saw them. It took me two and a bit hours to travel from Acton to Beckenham where I’d grown up. It was quicker to take the Eurostar to Paris. Dad was usually tinkering in his shed with his model railway. He’d retired five years ago and had a history of depression. Maybe it wasn’t depression but was just low mood. He’d set the railway up so it ran around the garden. Mum was a social animal and needed to be around people. Dad was happiest when he could spend uninterrupted periods alone. Mum was constantly experimenting with a range of different evening classes, from watercolour through to Mandarin. They were relatively healthy but each time I spoke to either of them there seemed to be the arrival of another ailment. It was hard to see how there could be much of a silver lining.
Both my parents had always instilled how important it was to work, to have a dependable income, to have financial stability. Sometimes I wished they hadn’t.
And I went for a walk this morning and another big, frightening dog attacked Puddles. He’s shaking with fear whilst I type this. I am at my wit’s end.
Love Mum
Mum was often at her ‘wit’s end’ and Puddles was my parent’s Yorkshire terrier. Puddles was an unhappy dog that shook when he went for a stroll (or more accurately a ‘shake’), shook when he took a dump, and shook when you offered him a treat. He was constantly being attacked by mean dogs and lacked confidence (something we had in common perhaps?). I made a mental note to ring Dad. We usually talked about the weather at great length and then I’d ask him how he was really and he’d say he had a cold (which meant his depression was mild) or the flu (which meant it was pretty bad) or a stomach bug (which translated to needing more antidepressants). We never used the word depression and yet this time I was worried about his reclusiveness. At the same time, I envied the fact that he could avoid people for long periods of time with nothing but Classic FM blaring out of the old ghetto blaster that had resided in my teenage bedroom. He didn’t have to get crammed onto a train or listen to sad men swearing in meetings and he could amuse himself fixing little carriages together with glue and drinking tea (he even had a kettle in there so Mum had enabled him to be more of a recluse). He’d spent his working life in academia and this was how academics were. They pootled and liked quiet. This behaviour was not out of the ordinary.
Lunchtime arrived, and like every other work day I walked listlessly round the local boutiques trying to dispatch the sad feeling that lived inside me. It was cold and windy, so I bought a bobble hat. A scented candle. A new pair of gloves. None of these items were satisfying, and I went back to the canteen upstairs, bought my protein and salad lunch, and hunched over my phone, trying to see what was going on in the world of Instagram. It seemed that everyone else was doing far more interesting things than I was. There were a lot of motivational quotes about how today was the day where my life would finally take off. Others were preaching the benefits of feeling good about our bodies (which felt rather obvious, I thought, but these posts always proved popular). I spent ten minutes trying to think of something witty to fling into the mix, and then gave up. I called Pete instead. He worked at a catering company that provided posh lunches for corporate clients. He hated it but was good and rarely moaned. He accepted that part of life was doing a job you disliked. We were both very different in that regard.
‘What’s up?’ he said picking up after the first ring.
‘Not much. I just had lunch. Are you having a good day?’ I asked. ‘The nursery texted and said Bella fell off the climbing frame again.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘I think so. No she’s definitely okay or they would have sent another one. How’s work?’
‘Bit of a pain. There’s a massive order in for a conference tomorrow. I’ve been on my feet all morning but I’m going to buy some tinned tomatoes on my way home and make a nice prawn pasta for dinner.’
‘Did you take the prawns out of the freezer?’
‘I think so.’
‘If you didn’t take them out then we can’t have prawn pasta can we?’
‘If they haven’t thawed I’ll do that sausage pasta thing Bella likes.’
‘I don’t think the sausages are still okay,’ I said.
‘I’ll check when I get in,’ he replied.
There were a lot of conversations about freezing and defrosting these days. I wondered if all couples were the same.
Yet I knew I was lucky to have Pete. He made delicious food. He still took pride in his appearance and hadn’t lost his teeth and hair. He did more on the domestic front than many other men – in fact some weekend mornings, it was a race to see who could get the washing in the machine first. There was sometimes a tinge of passive-aggressiveness to it. We had sex every two months but there were also long periods where we didn’t do it all and watched TV. Yes I needed to practice more gratitude. The problem was it was hard work, this long-term relationship stuff. The practicalities of life took over and you were left with two people exchanging functional information on how to get from A to B. A bit like when you ask someone directions and then don’t listen and walk the way you originally intended anyway.
An image of Pete popped into my mind. The night we’d first met in a bar in Ladbroke Grove. It had been back in the days before mobiles, before screens, when people looked at each other a lot more (I’d heard from younger colleagues at work that this rarely happened much anymore). I’d had quite a lot of beer to drink (back when beer was trendy for girls to drink), and a friend had introduced me. He was tall, had a mop of dark hair, and an Irish accent.
‘He’s bad news,’ my friend had said. ‘He just goes from one girl to the next.’
I was a woman that loved a challenge and I treated getting Pete like a project.
We’d spent that first night kissing in the corner. We kissed a lot. I tried not to think about it now because it felt like two different people. It had been. Two people without a kid, without the stress of paying a mortgage and bills each month, without all the domestic hum drum that took over, without acres of TV to get through each day.
Just two people that really liked one other.
In the beginning our relationship had been exciting. Like all couples, who fancy each other, we’d taken every opportunity to have sex. We’d had sex in a park, in a toilet, in my old bedroom when I took him to meet my parents (my parents weren’t there for the sex part). Pete had never been a massive talker and had grown up in a family where his mum talked enough for the entire family – the rest of the family nodded or shook their heads. Nevertheless we had that initial phase of getting to know each other, sharing key childhood experiences, music we loved – all that stuff.
Then, like many couples who have been together a long time, we stopped asking those questions. Pete often said things like ‘You told me that story already,’ or ‘I know how this one ends.’ And it was true, there wasn’t much original content. And he hated my work chat. Initially I’d come back full of venom and stories about my day, I’d download them the split-second I came through the door. I had that need to get it all off my chest. Pete was oftentimes looking to provide a basic solution to these problems,