Separate Lives (26 page)

“I think too. You have children?”

“Yes, a girl and a boy. Nearly ten and nearly six.”

“I would very much like to meet.”

“That would be lovely. So how did you and Bridge . . . ?”

“I put an ad on Gumtree for an au-pair and I got Vladimir,” said Bridge, as casually as if that sort of thing were par for the course for a recently separated middle-aged mother of three. “Would you two mind very much if I disappeared into the shower for five minutes? Coffee's ready and there are croissants somewhere too.”

“I will make warm the cressents,” said Vladimir, turning on the oven and indeed everything else in his orbit. I was conscious that I was wearing an expression with my
eyebrows hovering in my hairline, calling to mind Caroline Quentin in a primetime BBC sitcom.

“So, how are you enjoying England, Vladimir?”

“Very much am enjoying your country; I am very lucky to be much enjoying Bridget.”

It was too much.

“Yes, Bridget is very enjoyable.”

“I think she is wonderful woman and mother. And her husband is idiot.”

“Absolutely, couldn't agree more. Now, where are those cressents?”

Five minutes later Bridget reappeared with her freshly washed hair under a towel turban, wearing pedal pushers, a Breton-striped jersey and Tods. This Bardot-Bridget was unrecognizable (not to mention unstained)—at least compared to the previous Bridget, who had herself been unrecognizable in relation to the Bridget of old. I was suddenly feeling quite tired.

“Now I must enter the shower also,” said Vladimir.

“OK, Vee,” said Bridget, her tone indefinably intimate.

“So,” I said as Vladimir's footsteps receded, “things not as bad as they might be then, Bridge? What with Vladimir?”

“No, things are very much better than one could ever have expected, obviously.” Bridge met my wide-eyed gaze with a large smile and I noted that she had particularly fine teeth. I'd never noticed before. Perhaps I'd never really seen her smile? “Vee is great with the kids, and with me. I'm having the best sex I've ever had in my life. So, bit of a result really.”

I choked lightly on some cressent, and coughed politely. “Understatement. And sorry if I'm over-stepping the mark but, Jesus, Bridge—he's hot.”

“Insane, isn't it? When we first spoke on the phone, after he answered my ad, I'd already decided he sounded perfect—in terms of the job, I mean—so when he said he was emailing me his full CV and a picture I just thought, fine, great, whatever. And even though the picture didn't remotely do him justice I could see he was fit and I thought ‘Shit! My dormant inner cougar may have just been unleashed.' But obviously being a fat, recently separated thirty-eight-year-old mother of three, I banished the thought to the back of my mind. At least until I picked him up from Gatwick.”

“I'm surprised you didn't pass out when he walked through Arrivals.”

“I nearly did. And then I decided that of course he must be gay because no Eastern European manny could ever be that stupidly handsome and actually be straight. And if he were then he'd be wearing snow-washed denim and a mullet. And I carried on believing he must be gay right up until the point when it was clear that he wasn't.”

“Would you mind very much telling me how that manifested? Broad brushstrokes if you'd prefer?”

“Well, it was about five days after he'd arrived, and the kids—who took to him instantly, it must be said—were finally in bed and I had made lasagna and was opening a bottle of wine and planning to watch re-runs of
Location Location . . .
like a saddo, when Vladimir came into the kitchen and apologized for being there and asked would I mind if he stayed for a chat because he was feeling lonely and missing his family. Apparently he had only decided to au-pair in the UK on a whim to help him recover from breaking up with Monika, his fiancée, whom he had been with since school, and blah-blah.

“So I said ‘Of course,' and ‘Breaking up is very hard, and I should know.' And I asked him about Monika and he showed
me a photo of her on his phone—and she looked like Katie Price with a Kate Middleton makeover, absolutely gorgeous—and apparently she'd dumped him for a Ukrainian football player. So we talked about broken hearts and I tried to reassure him that all might not be lost and if it was meant to be it was meant to be, and other clichés. And then we had a couple of glasses of wine—he'd never really drunk wine before, which may have had something to do with it—and we were on the sofa watching the ten o'clock news when he just sort of lunged. But in a really sweet way, like a nerdy teenager. And, ah, that was sort of that, really.”

“Wow. But what about the kids?”

“Oh they have no idea. We're very careful about that. They miss their daddy, but God knows I don't. The Mad Bitch is welcome to him.”

“Well yes, I can see that Vladimir would definitely help fill the gaps. But in the long term?”

“One day at a time, sweet Jesus. But you know what? I have a funny feeling this one may be a keeper.”

Had poor (and yet not so poor) Bridge lost her mind?

“Really? Are you sure? I mean he's obviously the perfect rebound, but he's how old?”

“He's not a teenager, he's twenty-four. And OK, fourteen years is a bit of a gap, but he's asked me to marry him.”

“OK! But that's because he wants to stay in England, surely? I mean . . . Fuck, sorry Bridge, don't get me wrong—you're definitely a catch—but frying pans, fires?”

“I know. I sound like a lovesick teenager, right? But we're good together.”

At which point Vladimir reappeared in the kitchen, now dressed—though barely—but far from clamming up, Bridge reached out a hand toward him and said: “Vee, I was just
telling Susie how good we are together but I'm not sure she believes me.”

So Vladimir slipped one of his (lovely, strong, lightly tanned, well-muscled) arms around Bridge's rapidly decreasing waist and kissed her tenderly on the forehead.

Later on Saturday afternoon and still ever-so-slightly stunned, I was pottering round the house and cruising property websites while pondering the fact that one's life (or in this case Bridge's) can take an unexpected turn at any moment, and not always for the worse, when the phone rang. I didn't immediately recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Susie, it's Joan. You'll remember me? The woman who wasn't your mother-in-law but who nonetheless still treated you like a daughter? Your children's grandmother?”

Her tone was hard to read until I suddenly twigged: it was gin-and-tonic-o'clock. I would have to tread carefully. This could go anywhere.

“Hello, Joan.”

“Yes, well, hello to you too, young lady. And what do you think you are doing, leaving my son, apparently on a whim? I have always known you were selfish, though that's probably not your fault, seeing as you were an only child. But this beggars belief. What on earth are you thinking? We don't do ‘divorce' in the Fox family.”

Fire with fire? Hm. Maybe not.

“Well, as you have just pointed out, Joan, I'm not actually in the Fox family so there won't be a divorce. And while I may be leaving the house, your son is the one who suggested it.”

“You know exactly what I mean. Selfish,
selfish
girl. Breaking Alex's heart like this and destroying those children's lives!”

“Hang on a minute, Joan, you might want to run that idea by Alex because I think you'll find I'm not doing anything of the sort. And as for ‘destroying the children's lives'? What a thing to say. Parents split up all the time. Nobody seeks it out, children do suffer, but ‘destroying their lives'? There's no chance of that while they have two parents who love them.”

“Don't patronize me, Susie.”

“I wouldn't dream of it, Joan. But what on earth are you doing calling and saying this stuff now? Alex must've only just told you himself.”

“I'm in the garage. I had to call. Alex was crying earlier, Susie. Crying over the pavlova, in front of the children.”

“Really? I'm surprised. He's seemed very cool about it all so far. Are you sure he wasn't actually crying
about
the pavlova? Look, Joan, I would be grateful if you'd let me and Alex work this out for ourselves like the adults we allegedly are, rather than ranting at me as if I were a naughty child. Splitting up was his idea. And all may not be quite as straightforward as you think, in that respect . . .”

“And what precisely does that mean?”

There was a definite slur. I could picture Joan and her G&T swaying around the garage. All she needed to set her off on the full Joan Crawford was to stumble across a wire coat hanger.

“It means that your son may well have been having an affair. So I wouldn't bother being quite so judgmental, frankly.”

This was cheap of me, given that I wasn't exactly blameless, but needs must.

“Affair? You are an impossible girl, Susie Poe—the Foxes don't do affairs. I think we ought to meet over lunch and discuss this properly.”

The Foxes don't do affairs
. If only she knew.

“Fine, Joan. When you've sobered up and finished comforting your heartbroken son, why don't you give me a call sometime?”

And I ended the call. And (so much for putting up a feisty frontage) then I started to cry because Joan's tipsy rant was the moment that the finality of it all truly hit home. Though I had never technically been a member of the Fox family (even if we were linked in more ways than most of its members would ever know) this was clearly also the moment when any tenuous membership was now beginning to be unraveled. It was one thing to never really want to be “a Fox,” but quite another to have that opportunity removed forever. But of course this was how it would be now, if only because the matriarchal Joan never did anything by halves, at least not when it came to her family. Blood was of course thicker than water, but also infinitely stickier. Anyway, I had barely recovered from Joan's onslaught when the phone rang again. Great: my mother. It was a matriarchal avalanche.

“Darling, I just spoke to Bruce—” just? It must have been about 2 a.m. in Australia—“and he tells me you called and that you sounded as if you needed your mummy.”

I am absolutely sure I wasn't imagining the slurring. Was my “mummy” on a bender in Byron with Bells? As if my heart hadn't already sunk enough for one day.

“Mum. How nice to hear from you. But it must be very late where you are?”

“It is a bit, darling, but I'm off the leash for the weekend and a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.” (For the record, my mother is sixty-seven.)

“Well, OK, great. I hear you're in Byron Bay with Bells? That sounds fun.”

“It is so much fun. And oh how we wish you were here! Just before I spoke to Bruce, Bells and I had been talking about you, saying how much we missed you.”

This was increasingly surreal.

“Right, well, that's lovely and everything, obviously, but—OK, I don't know if now is the best time but I doubt there is ever a best time to tell your mother that you're splitting up with the father of your children. So that's about the size of it. Alex and I are no more. Or, at least, not as a couple. Perhaps we'll get to the ‘friends' stage eventually but it seems to be some way off.”

There was a pause. I hate phone pauses. Even ordinary conversational pauses can be hard to read, but with a distance of 12,000 miles and an echo on the line a phone pause is an impossible thing to read successfully. Inevitably we both started speaking simultaneously.

“No, go on, after you,” I said.

“I was just saying, darling, that it's terribly sad, especially for the children, but from what I can see it was always a relationship on borrowed time.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, darling. Terribly weak man, Alex, beneath all the bluff and bluster.”

“I never knew you thought that. I don't think I even thought it myself until recently.”

“It's not something one goes around saying to one's grown daughter, is it, darling? But he was never right for
you. Though from what I hear his brother—Will, isn't it?—may have been. So unfortunate that that never worked out, apart from your beautiful children of course. Then I suppose there was always the possibility of having your cover blown once you became involved with Alex? A successful relationship really needs a foundation of trust and honesty on which to build and you never had that, really, did you, darling?”

It was my turn to be silent for a while. I could almost hear the tumbleweed rolling through Main Street and the swing doors of the saloon squeaking on their hinges.

“OK, right, so how long have you known about Will? I suppose Bells told you?”

“Only about a year. And of course she did, darling. And I'm glad she did because there have been so many gaps I've needed to be filled. I feel I know so little about you as an adult, so who better to paint me an accurate picture of the woman you grew into than your best friend?”

“Quite. On the subject of whom, is she there?”

“She is. And I know she'd love a quick word. Bella, darling—I've got Susie on the line!”

“Soos!”

There was a definite tone to Bells's voice. Sheepishness or vodka?

“Bells.” I didn't feel the need for exclamation marks.

“Wassup, babe?!”

It was vodka. At the sound of Bells's voice, I melted a bit and felt a lump rise in my throat. My best mate. I missed her. “I miss you, you mad cow,” I said warmly.

“Squared.”

“But why did you tell Mum about Will? And why the fuck are you away with my mum anyway?”

“I told your mum because, because . . . shit, I know I shouldn't have, I know that, but we're so far away and it feels like another country.”