Six Months to Get a Life (18 page)

There was a spring in my step when Amy dropped me back home this afternoon. If I could whistle I would have been whistling. I have had a good few days. And nights.

I have only had sex with one divorced woman so my study of what it is like to have sex with divorced women isn’t statistically significant. But having sex with a divorced woman is different from the passionate but clumsy fumblings that characterised my experiences of sex in my youth. In my youth I would always be worrying that someone’s mother would come in and interrupt us, that my condom would split or that the person I was having sex with would change her mind at any moment. Foreplay was therefore pretty absent in those days.

Sex with a divorced woman is also different from the going-through-the-routine type sex I had with my wife. Even in our early days, our marital sex was little more than functional, the aim being either to produce a baby or to shut me up.

Amy and I have both got baggage. Actually she would say she has got experience, I have got baggage. We didn’t rush headlong into it. We knew we had all night. We sat on her huge leather sofa and drank wine from each other’s glasses. We cuddled, we kissed, we talked about what we like and
what we don’t like in bed, all very reasonable stuff. We drank some more and then I nearly broke my neck carrying her up her winding stately-home-style staircase to her bedroom. It was a bloody long way.

She freshened up in the bathroom while I lay on her fourposter drinking more wine to stop the feelings of self-consciousness from creeping back in. When she opened the door of her en suite dressed in only her knickers to cover her modesty and climbed on to the bed next to me (not Spurs, not Liverpool but Manchester City. Or even Real Madrid), things just worked. They weren’t rushed. Nature just took its course. It was just, what’s the word, right. There was even an encore.

The following morning as I was sitting in Amy’s conservatory eating a late breakfast of melon and strawberries (I am more a bacon and egg man but I went with the flow today), Amy asked me what my plans were for the day. Normally I would have spent my Saturday with the boys but they are thousands of miles away. When I told her I didn’t really have any plans, she invited me to stay for a bit longer.

‘But isn’t Lucy coming back from her dad’s?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but we haven’t got anything to hide. She knows we are seeing each other, so why shouldn’t you stay?’

I have already admitted to being slightly nervous around Lucy. This isn’t because Lucy is a particularly hard character to deal with. It is just that I haven’t spent any time with teenage girls and conversation with them doesn’t seem to come naturally to me. But as Amy was inviting me to stay, I had to get over my awkwardness and make an effort.

But being a dad myself, I could see how Lucy’s dad might feel if he heard that she was spending time at her house with Amy’s new lover. One of my biggest fears when getting divorced was that my ex would meet someone else and that that man would take over my ‘dad’ role. Everyday dad
duties like making the breakfast, asking the kids about their day when they get home from school, beating the crap out of them on the sofa when they are watching some canned laughter sitcom, telling them not to hide their peas under their knife and fork, going to football with them on Saturday mornings and watching the odd over-age film with them when their mother isn’t looking would be taken over by someone other than me. I can’t stand the thought of that so I was very conscious not to muscle in on Lucy’s dad’s role. When I mentioned this to Amy, her response was fairly dismissive.

‘Graham, I am only asking you if you want to stay for another day or two. I am not asking you to move in. And besides, Lucy will probably spend the whole day in her room with her stereo on. You won’t even see her.’

Lucy came home at lunchtime. I stayed right out of the way when her dad dropped her off. When I say right out of the way I mean in the front bedroom peeking through the heavy velvet curtains. He has got a Porsche too. His and hers matching cars. It irked me to see that he was a good looking guy. He reminded me of someone but I couldn’t quite put my finger on who it was. He didn’t get out of the car so I didn’t get a good look at him.

Amy was right about Lucy. I didn’t see her much all day. From what I did see of her, Lucy is a good kid. Amy tells me that she has got more teenage attitude than Jack but I didn’t see any evidence of it. She didn’t seem to feel awkward having me around. She asked me how Jack was enjoying his holiday. I couldn’t offer anything other than that he had arrived safely. ‘Oh, I know they went on a boat trip yesterday and he got embarrassed when his mum sunbathed naked,’ she told me.

Over the course of the day I discovered that Lucy won’t want me to take her to the football so there are no worries on
that score. I refrained from beating her up on the sofa and she made her own breakfast this morning, so there weren’t actually too many difficult situations for me to worry about. I don’t think I crossed any boundaries but I suspect that if I was her dad I would still be pissed at me for spending the night with his ex and in the same house as his daughter.

When I eventually made my way home this afternoon, the flat seemed really quiet. I spent a few minutes tidying up. That included chucking the dirty clothes that the boys had left in their two-tone room in to the washing machine. At some point I should invite Amy to visit me but I am a bit conscious of the difference between her Wimbledon Village architectural masterpiece and my Morden ex-council flat. She has seen the outside of the flat but I haven’t invited her in. I reckon it is about time I did.

‘It’s a bit small,’ Amy said as we lay in bed naked.

I think she was talking about the flat but I didn’t dare double check.

I had succumbed and invited her round for dinner last night. Lucy was spending a couple of days with a friend in Brighton. I spent the day buying and then using a Hoover, a duster and a toilet brush. I was dusting the bedside table when the doorbell rang. I shoved the duster and polish under the bed and went to let Amy in.

As well as cleaning the flat, I had prepared a pork and Stilton dish that my mum used to cook for the family when we were growing up. Amy seemed impressed by my culinary skills.

It didn’t take long for us to end up in bed. I still can’t believe I am writing that. For Amy, lying in bed and looking at the ceiling was probably preferable to looking at the dirty walls and dark recesses of my sitting room. Whatever the reason for her haste to get me in to bed, I wasn’t complaining.

After a lazy breakfast this morning and further taking advantage of there being no kids at home, Amy stayed in my flat writing an article for the magazine for bored housewives while I took the dogs for a walk (yes, I had two dogs in the flat last night despite not being allowed any pets).

When I got back from the park, I got a bit of a shock. Amy was standing at the door dressed only in my England cricket shirt. It wasn’t that that shocked me though. It was the fact that she was talking to my ex.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Antigua?’ I asked as I climbed the last flight of stairs to the door.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ my ex replied, acidly.

Introductions were duly made. My ex, meet Amy. Amy, meet my ex. Then my ex told me she had left me loads of messages on my mobile asking me to pick them up from the airport because they were coming home early. I hadn’t turned my mobile on in ages because I didn’t want my mates phoning me up and disturbing me at any vital moments.

As Amy made a swift exit for the bedroom to get dressed, my ex started berating me for letting Sean break his foot, for ruining their holiday, ruining her relationship with Mark (Mr comb-over) who had apparently refused to travel back to England with them and for generally being crap. I decided that this probably wasn’t the best time to mention that I had reduced her maintenance payments while she had been away too.

I said an awkward goodbye to Amy, leaving her in the flat to gather her things together, and went back to the detached house in Surrey with my ex and gave Sean and Jack a big hug. Sean told me he was glad he was home. Jack repeated his accusation that Mark is a dork. My ex, who was standing in the doorway presumably because she wanted to overhear what her son had to say about the holiday she had arranged, didn’t disagree.

I should be careful what I wish for. I didn’t tell my ex but I am now feeling guilty that I didn’t want the boys to have a good time.

The drama never seems to stop. I wasn’t present at today’s drama but I have certainly heard about it.

Jack wanted to see Lucy after his aborted holiday. He arranged to go over and see her at her house. They were planning to go to Westfield shopping centre for some ‘retail therapy’. Personally I would need some proper therapy after spending the day at Westfield. Until now I thought Jack was the same but Lucy’s influence is changing him. Anyway, my ex offered to give him a lift to Lucy’s. I suspect my ex wanted to get a sense of who her son was seeing, and maybe meet her mother. It didn’t occur to Jack that this might cause issues.

Needless to say, when my ex saw Amy she was bemused (that’s one word for it. Others might be ‘fuming’, ‘foaming at the mouth’, ‘spontaneously combusting’ or ‘going fucking bonkers’). Jack didn’t know the two women had seen each other a couple of days ago.

The first I heard of this encounter was when my ex phoned me from her hands-free in the car. She ranted at me for a full fifteen minutes – the time it took her to drive from Wimbledon Village to her detached house in Surrey. As far as I could work out from her thousand-word-a-minute monologue, she made the following salient points:

1. It is good to see that you and the boys have got yourselves a ready-made new family.
   
2. Why didn’t you tell me you knew Jack’s girlfriend?
   
3. What does Sean do when you and Jack are holding hands with your girlfriends, or is there another sister that Sean can have?
   
4. I bet you all go there for sleepovers whenever you have the kids. What sort of example are you setting to your children?
   
5. If you think I am accepting less maintenance from you when you are off shagging some rich bitch then you’ve got another thing coming. (Says she whose bloke owns a villa in Antigua. If, that is, he’s still her bloke.)
   

I would be the first to admit that some of these points are fair enough. Why didn’t I tell her? Because I knew what her reaction would be. But I know I should have told her. I hadn’t even thought of some of the things she raised though. What do we do when it comes to sleepovers? I guess it will be difficult as I don’t want Jack to think that because I am sleeping with Amy, he can sleep with Lucy. I am not even sure he would want to yet, but that isn’t the point. And what would Sean do? I don’t think I had quite realised the full implications of mine and Jack’s relationships. To be fair to my ex, I know that if Jack had been seeing Mr comb-over’s daughter, I would have ranted too.

Immediately after my ex finished damaging my eardrums, Amy called. She alternated from anger at the way my ex spoke to her to concern that Lucy and Jack had overheard. They shouldn’t have to concern themselves with grown-up stuff, and Jack in particular tends to feel responsibility for his mother’s welfare. In my book it is really important that our children don’t feel responsibility for their parents. They have enough to worry about being kids. Amy was naturally
a bit perturbed by this morning’s events.

The third phone call I received in the space of an hour was from Jack. He was speaking quietly so I could tell he was trying to hide his call from Lucy and Amy. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘Mum has only given me twenty quid. I think Lucy has got fifty. Can you meet us at Wimbledon station and lend me some more money?’ He was obviously deeply affected by the encounter then.

This afternoon’s big event was my latest job interview, for that council job. I got radical yesterday and bought a new suit and tie. Despite Katie’s advice to push the boat out on snappy work clothing I stuck with M&S, but did go for the next price bracket up from the bargain bin.

So I turned up at the ugly 1960s office block that dwarfs the surrounding Morden terraced houses feeling quite dapper and inwardly confident. How hard could a council job be? All the papers say that public sector workers are over-paid and under-worked. Well, I could cope with that. As an added bonus I know a thing or two about performance management. And following a couple of days of research mainly spent reading lefty publications like the Guardian, I now know a thing or two about what councils do too. I have quite a few applications in for jobs at the moment but this one is the one I have really pinned my hopes on. It is a job I can do, and it is only based a five minute walk away from my flat. And the pay is on a par with what I was getting in my previous job. If I got this job, my rent payments would be manageable and I would have enough left over after paying the ex her slice to buy the kids the occasional treat.

The interviews were running late so I had to wait in a reception area for half an hour. They gave me a better quality
cup of tea than I ever drank at my previous job. Who says the public sector isn’t as good as the private sector?

I was interviewed by the assistant director of something, the group manager of something else and the head of human resources, the only man on the panel. First impressions were good – I was dressed smarter than them. The bloke from HR didn’t even have a tie on.

I think I gave a pretty good account of myself in the interview. I had worked out that it would take about twenty houses’ council tax for a year to pay my salary. Basically, at the end of each year, if I couldn’t demonstrate that I had helped bring about changes that improved things or saved more than my salary, then it wasn’t worth them employing me. I wasn’t sure whether I had overdone it when I outlined this theory because I could see the cogs going round in the assistant director’s head. She was trying to work out how many streets’ council tax would pay for her salary.

They were particularly impressed with my voluntary work with the tigers and with Richard Branson being the person I put down to give me a reference.

I am feeling quietly confident about this one. I am not on cloud nine yet though, partly because I may be wrong about my chances but also because when I phoned Amy to tell her about the interview, she was a bit distant, a bit non-committal with me. She has been a bit less warm with me since the encounters she had with my ex, first on my doorstep and then on hers. I haven’t actually met up with her since then but we have spoken on the phone a few times.

Amy doesn’t need the hassle of more family rows and I worry that she is weighing up whether our relationship is worth the trouble. I have been doing some more thinking too. I don’t like to give ground to my ex but I have been trying to work out in my head how my relationship with Amy can work in a way that doesn’t adversely affect the kids.

If I do spend more time with Amy, and I still very much hope I will, then I reckon I should see her more on the days that I haven’t got my children with me. But even then, Lucy spends most of her time with her mum so she will be around. What will Jack think if I am at Amy’s? He will probably want to be there too. With school starting soon, it wouldn’t be right for Jack to spend his weekday evenings at his girlfriend’s.

Whole family sleepovers just seem totally impractical. Although Sean doesn’t seem to give a monkey’s about my relationship with Amy or Jack’s liaison with Lucy, he would probably come to resent being at Amy’s with me when Jack is spending all his waking hours with Lucy. And then there is the teenage experimentation with sex issue.

And what about when Jack and Lucy split up? Presumably Jack wouldn’t want to see Lucy again. He wouldn’t want to go to Amy’s with me then.

At the moment, all I have are a lot of unresolved issues.