Seeing Other People (24 page)

As for the kids I didn’t like to think too much about what they were making of the frosty silences and obvious resentment. Mostly I hoped they were still so young that it was all going over their heads but I’m not sure I ever believed that even at my most optimistic.

The only bright light on the horizon was work. With the rumours of job cuts at the
Correspondent
meaning that everyone from upper management right through to the post room was fearing for their livelihoods, I reasoned the best thing I could do was concentrate on making myself invaluable and so I started getting in early and leaving late and for the first time in years felt as though I was actually on top of things. Moreover, unlike every other part of my life, here at least I knew how to deal with the problems that came my way. A month into this new regime I began to feel as though I was getting my confidence back but then I came home one evening to find a thick, crisp white envelope waiting on my doormat amongst an avalanche of pizza takeaway menus. I tore it open and read the contents and on white, heavyweight paper Penny’s solicitor, a Ms T.L. McNally, informed me in perfect legalese that Penny was suing me for divorce.

The letter hit me like a wrecking ball. Divorce. I couldn’t believe she’d gone through with it after all. I’d known she was hurt, I’d known she was angry, but the idea that she would be willing to give up on the life we’d built together so easily hurt like nothing else on earth. Couldn’t she see I was a changed man? Couldn’t she see I’d never do it again? Wasn’t she factoring the kids into any of her decision making? After all the time that had elapsed I’d assumed it had just been an idle threat issued in the heat of the moment but now I knew better.

I called Penny’s mobile half a dozen times but each time it went straight through to voicemail. I toyed with the idea of going round to the house but knew I couldn’t trust myself to keep calm. I called her number again but again it went straight through to voicemail. She was ignoring me, she had to be. I poured the first of many glasses of Jack Daniel’s and wondered if her solicitor had told her to avoid making contact with me. I looked at the letter again and drew a mental picture of the hard-faced, bitter woman being paid by the hour to pull my life apart. I imagined her making notes as Penny revealed the story of what had happened, handing her a box of tissues at appropriate points. The final paragraph of the letter advised me to ‘appoint my own legal representative’ – as if this would make any difference at all to the outcome. I’d get screwed if I found a solicitor and I’d get screwed if I didn’t and given that I was happy for Penny to have everything as long as I could carry on seeing the kids all I really stood to lose was a couple of grand in legal fees that I couldn’t afford to pay anyway.

I had to talk to Penny. I had to stop Ms T.L. McNally from ruining both our lives. Setting down the drink in my hand I picked up my phone and tried Penny’s number once more but when I got her voicemail yet again I was so angry I nearly threw the phone against the wall. I stopped at the last moment and tapped out the following text:

Just got solicitor’s letter. Well done! Obviously you enjoy playing the victim so much that you’d rather screw over this family than move on from the past. Hope you’re happy now, Joe x.

I thought I might feel better once I’d sent it but like so many things done in haste I actually felt a lot worse. In retrospect I could see it was a stupid, selfish, and spiteful thing to do and perfectly illustrated why Jack Daniel’s and despondency should never mix but it was how I felt. Penny and I had come so close to getting back together, so close to making a new start, and I hated the fact that she was prepared to turn her back on that. Yes, I understood she was hurt but surely she believed our family was more important than her hurt or my own. I wanted things back to how they used to be and I thought that my short, sharp, shock-style text might bring her to her senses. I couldn’t have been more wrong however, a fact to which her reply by text perfectly attested:

If that’s what you really think then there never was any hope for us. It was you who caused this, Joe, nobody else. So let me be clear: I’m done with blaming myself about this. You were right about one thing. I do need to move on from the past. And your text has helped infinitely with that. Penny x.

I reread the text over and over again, and each time my eyes lingered over the last part of the sentence, ‘I do need to move on from the past and your text has helped infinitely with that.’ What did she mean? Would she ever speak to me again? Would she let me see the kids? All I knew for sure was that in one fell swoop I’d managed to eradicate any hope there was of us ever getting back together.

When I eventually met up with the Divorced Dads’ Club early the following week and told them what I’d done they all had their own horror stories to share. Paul recalled how at one point his ex-wife was talked into labelling him as unfit to look after the kids by her solicitor so that she could get full custody. Paul got so angry that he went as far as purchasing two bagfuls of manure to dump in the reception area of the solicitor’s office but chickened out at the last moment. Stewart told us how after receiving a bill from his first solicitor even though he hadn’t had so much as a postcard from his kids he’d torn it up and posted it back to them. And Van revealed that when his ex told him she was divorcing him he set fire to his entire record collection because it was the only thing he thought was worth any money. ‘The worst of it was,’ he added sadly, ‘when we started getting into who got what she didn’t mention my vinyl once.’ The message was clear: of the top ten things that will make a normally sane person crazy divorce was there right at the head of the list.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ asked Van. ‘Hire yourself a solicitor? Those buggers can be mega expensive.’

‘And it’s almost impossible to find a good one,’ said Stewart. ‘I’d give you my bloke’s number but I reckon he’s only got a couple of weeks left before I sack him and find someone new.’

‘My guy was the business,’ said Paul, ‘but he cost a fortune. Ironically the only reason I could afford him was because my ex was absolutely loaded.’

I told them my plan to do the whole thing on my own and not fight Penny on anything other than access to the kids.

‘That’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Van, ‘but I get where you’re coming from. I get it completely. Sometimes when you’ve made such a colossal mess of things it’s better to own up to everything just so you can get it all over and done with.’

In spite of my initial fears, Penny let me have the kids to stay that weekend and in a bid to blot out everything that was going on I went all out to make sure we had a good time. I pulled a couple of strings through work and on the Saturday managed to get us tickets to Harry Potter World in Watford which the kids had been begging me to take them to for months, then on the Sunday we went into central London and mooched around Hyde Park for the afternoon followed by tea at the Rainforest Café. Those two days cost me a fortune but it was worth it to see them happy for a change.

‘Sounds like you had a lovely time,’ said Penny politely when the kids told her what we’d been up to. ‘Don’t forget to give Daddy a big hug and kiss for making it happen.’

The kids piled on top of me covering me in kisses before Penny finally called time and instructed them to get ready for bed. They reluctantly headed upstairs and as they did so I recalled the fact that my and Penny’s cordiality was merely an act for their sakes and currently we were still very much at war.

‘I suppose I’d better get off then,’ I said, unable to prevent the usual frostiness entering my tone. ‘Can you tell them I’ll call them tomorrow at the usual time?’

‘Of course,’ replied Penny, ‘but before you go could I have a quick chat with you about something?’

My gut instinct was to say no because the last thing I needed was for the whole weekend to be ruined by a row but then it occurred to me that perhaps I’d got it wrong, maybe Penny wanted to call a truce. Perhaps she was as tired of the arguing and acrimony as I was and wanted to make amends. I followed her into the kitchen with my fingers crossed. One quick conversation about how sorry each of us was for our behaviour these past few weeks, and maybe peace would reign once more.

‘Listen,’ I began, keen to make this as easy for Penny as possible, ‘I’m pretty sure I know what this is about and I just want to say that I’m sorry. I should never have reacted the way I did and that text I sent was awful. Being at each other’s throats like this is getting us nowhere. You were right, I—’

‘That’s not it,’ interrupted Penny. ‘That’s not what I want to talk to you about.’

‘So what then?’

She sighed heavily. ‘This isn’t an easy thing to say, but I think you’re best hearing it from me rather than anyone else: I’ve met someone new, Joe. I’ve started a new relationship.’

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all. All I’d wanted to do was drop off the kids, apologise to Penny for being such an idiot and go home. I certainly hadn’t wanted to be taken unawares like this by the news that the woman I loved, the mother of my children, the woman I was still legally married to, had taken a lover. This was not the kind of news I would ever be ready to hear, not in this world or any other.

I was determined not to let the emotions bubbling up inside me burst through the lid that I was tightly screwing down. After all, if losing my temper with Penny in a text was enough to make her start seeing someone new who knew what losing it in person might result in? Running away to join the circus? Getting a Mike Tyson-style tattoo across her face? The list of possibilities was endless but there was no way she could drop a bombshell like that and not have me say a word about it. And of the many words I wanted to say, there were three that were top of the list by some considerable distance.

25

‘Who is it?’ I asked once my wits had returned.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

It was as if I couldn’t hear her. ‘Someone from work?’

‘I’ve told you, it doesn’t matter.’

So it wasn’t someone from work. Where would Penny have met someone outside of work? At a bar? Through friends? At the school gates? That was it. The school gates. Jack’s friend Riley’s dad was a single parent and pretty good-looking too if you liked the whole stubble and olive skin look. When the kids were younger he was forever encouraging Penny to bring Jack round to his for a playdate even though Jack thought his son was a bit weird. Was that it? Had she hooked up with weird Riley’s dad?

‘You have to tell me, Penny. Who is it?’

‘Look Joe, can’t we just leave it for another time? The kids are upstairs and this is obviously something of a shock to you. Maybe it would be best for both of us if we slept on this and talked about it later.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it later. I want to talk about it now. I need a name.’

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘it’s Scott.’

She said the name like I was supposed to know who it was but I hadn’t got a clue. I personally didn’t know any Scotts, and I was pretty sure Penny didn’t either apart from her old boyfriend, the guy she had been dating before she met me at university . . .

‘You’re back with your ex?’

The embarrassment on Penny’s face said it all. I was right. The Scott she was dating was her ex-boyfriend from over twenty years ago.

‘I don’t understand. You haven’t seen him in at least two decades.’

Her gaze moved to the floor like she couldn’t bear to look at me. ‘He got in touch.’

Got in touch? Of course, it was the curse of Zuckerberg striking all over again. I had to laugh. A few years ago it felt like a week didn’t pass without some story appearing in the papers
about couples splitting up because one of them had hooked up with an old partner after accepting their friend request on Facebook. In the end it was happening so often that Camilla actually commissioned me to write a piece for
The Weekend
about it which I did with the help of a dozen couples who had been reunited thanks to the irrepressible rise of social networking.

I tried to recall everything I knew about Scott. He was two years older than Penny. His parents were quite well off. Penny had been fifteen when they met. He’d studied modern languages at Bristol. Five years into our relationship he’d sent a Valentine’s Day card to Penny’s mum’s house. Penny being the kind of person she is had shown it to me. He’d put his telephone number inside the card along with a message telling her he still thought about her. I asked her if she felt the same and she joked that if I thought I was going to get rid of her that easily I was mistaken. The last thing I heard about him was when Nicky, an old school friend of Penny’s, came to stay with us not long after Rosie was born. I overheard Nicky telling Penny she’d bumped into Scott and that he was teaching at a private school somewhere up north.

‘Are you really telling me that you’re sleeping with some guy you used to know a lifetime ago who contacted you via Facebook?’

Penny went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of wine. ‘I’ve said all I want to say, Joe. You’re obviously upset so let’s leave it.’

She was completely out of luck on that one. ‘Is that how things are now? Are we just jumping into bed with the first guy who asks and calling it a relationship to cushion our egos? He’s using you, Penny. He’s using you and you’re going to get hurt if you’re not careful.’