You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?)

“Shit,”
I whispered to Jonathan. “The buggers have packed Green Rabbit. They must have
done. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find him.”

I
looked helplessly around us at the piles of dun-coloured cardboard boxes, all
securely and immaculately taped shut, and the even larger pile of tea chests,
their tops locked. Even as I spoke, the movers were beginning to carry our
belongings out to the waiting van. Somewhere, buried beneath a pile of folded
bedding, maybe, or lost within a heap of toys, was my son’s beloved comfort
object, without which a horrendous meltdown, featuring uncontrollable wailing
and rivers of tears and snot, was guaranteed. And Owen would be inconsolable,
too.

I
was feeling pretty fragile anyway. My ankle hurt from endless trips up and down
the stairs. My final, frantic decluttering session the previous night had led
to the unwise conclusion that there was no point packing and moving two bottles
of gin and one of vodka that were nearly finished, so I’d improvised and drunk
a couple of rounds of vesper martinis while I prowled through the bare, forlorn
rooms of our flat, wondering too late whether this move was going to prove a
terrible mistake, and my head hurt too.

“For
God’s sake, Laura,” my husband said. “Why didn’t you… Never mind. There’s no
point rowing over it. Don’t say anything to him; he might not notice until
we’re on our way.”

But
he’d reckoned without our daughter’s uncanny ability to overhear conversations
not meant for her five-year-old ears, and her newly discovered power to make
her little brother cry.

“Owen!”
her voice rang out over the sound of the removal van’s engine idling by the
front door. “Owen! Mummy’s lost Green Rabbit! She thinks he’s in a box. Poor
Green Rabbit, shut up in the dark. And he might not even be there. He might
have been taken to the charity shop by mistake.”

“Darcey!”
I tried my best to sound calm yet firm, but I heard my voice rising to a shriek
as Owen started to sob. “How many times do I have to tell you that it’s not
nice to be unkind to your brother? And it’s not true, darling. I’m sure Green
Rabbit is perfectly safe.”

Owen
wailed, “I want Green Rabbit! I want him now!”

I
picked him up from the car seat where we’d strapped him half an hour before
with the distraction of my normally off-limits iPad, to prevent him unpacking
and unwrapping even faster than the relentlessly efficient movers could pack
and wrap.

“Darling,
shhh,” I soothed, but his cries increased in volume, and his legs hammered
against my thighs. “We’ll find him, I promise. As soon as we get to the new house,
we’ll unpack your room first and there he’ll be.”

I
thought of my master spreadsheet, planned to the last box, with meticulous
details of what boxes were to be opened in what order. So much for that – for
the two-and-a-half years of his life, Owen had succumbed reluctantly to sleep
only thanks to the soothing presence of the ever-tattier neon green plush toy.
The platoon of tasteful John Lewis teddies, the adorable smiley monkey his aunt
Sadie had given him for his first birthday, the cuddly hippo Jonathan had
brought back from a business trip to South Africa – all had been shunned in
favour of his precious bunny.

I
stroked his blond head, but he ducked away from my caress and yelled even
louder, fighting to escape.

“Find
him, Daddy!” he commanded.

Darcey
watched, biting her thumb, looking as if she might be about to cry too as she
realised the extent of the carnage she’d caused.

“Now,
come on, Sausage,” Jonathan said. “You know what rabbits do if they get a
fright? They jump into a hole and wait until it’s safe to come out. Green
Rabbit’s hiding in one of the boxes where it’s quiet and dark. He’s quite
happy. And tonight, in your new bed, there he’ll be for you to cuddle.
Promise.”

Owen’s
cries abated for a second.

“And
look what Mummy’s got here,” Jonathan said, rummaging in my handbag. “Chocolate
buttons! Who’d like a chocolate button?”

“Me!”
I lied. “And I bet Darcey would too, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? And Daddy. Are
there enough for Owen to have one too?”

Owen
hiccupped and stretched out a grubby hand. “Me!” he said, his trauma for the
moment forgotten.

I
blew a grateful kiss to Jonathan, wiped Owen’s nose with a soggy tissue
extracted from my jeans pocket, and parked him back in the buggy, where he
began to savour his treat, smearing chocolate over his face, fingers and
clothes with fierce concentration.

I
looked again at the moving spreadsheet on my phone.

“Have
you put the box with the chargers in the car? And the overnight bags?”

“All
sorted,” Jonathan said. “And the kettle and stuff. We should be good to go in
half an hour.”

“And
my crusader costume,” Darcey said. “You said I could wear my crusader costume
when I sleep in my new bed, didn’t you, Mummy? In case there are dragons? You
promised.”

“There
won’t be dragons in Battersea,” I said automatically, for the thousandth time.
“Not in our house, anyway. But if there were any, I know you’d protect us all,
because you’re such a brave girl.”

And
Darcey wasn’t the only one who was going to need to be a brave girl, I
reflected. In spite of all the time I’d had to steel myself for the new life
that awaited me, I still didn’t feel quite ready for it.

Six
months before, we’d completed our purchase of what the estate agents described
as ‘a delightful family home, with endless potential for improvement’ and moved
into a rented flat while the builders moved into our new house to begin the
process of gutting and extending it. A week later, I was made redundant from my
job at Flashpoint Communications. And that same day, in a freak coincidence,
Jonathan learned that he’d been made a partner in the financial consulting firm
where he’d worked since leaving university. Which made me feel just great, of
course.

I’d
been sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, having just managed to stop
crying, when he arrived back at the flat, which I was just beginning to think
of as home, bearing a bottle of Krug from the off-licence, and said we needed
to talk.

For
a moment I’d wondered if he was going to tell me he was having an affair, and I
was going to lose him as well as my job. But even the most callous of cheating
husbands wouldn’t drop that particular bombshell over a glass of fizz, and
Jonathan wasn’t callous at all – nor could I imagine him ever cheating.

Jonathan,
my sister Sadie once said, is the Ikea dinner service of husbands. Pleasant to
look at without being flashy, dependable, able to withstand the rigours of
family life. I like to think that’s what Sadie meant, anyway; it’s possible she
meant something quite different.

“Can
we sit down and have a chat?” Jonathan said, easing the cork out of the bottle
with his usual quiet competence.

“I
think we need to,” I said.

Then
he told me his news, and I told him mine.

“But
don’t you see, Laura,” he said. “It’s actually perfect timing. I mean, I know
you’re gutted, but it’s not like you loved working there, really, did you?”

“Well,
no,” I admitted. It was true – God knows I’d whinged extensively to him over
the years about the unreasonableness of my boss, the irrational demands of our
clients, the difficulty of juggling a full-time job with two small children and
a husband who worked longer hours than I did, for considerably more money, and
therefore couldn’t be summoned at the eleventh hour to do nursery pick-ups
because I was having a crisis over a staff newsletter deadline.

“And
we’ll be far better off now, even without you working,” Jonathan said. “You’ll
be able to keep the builders on track, which will be practically a full-time
job anyway, and once we move you’ll be there for Darcey while she settles into
her new school. And then you can look for another job, if you want to – but we
might decide it’s better for you to be at home for the kids, because I suspect
my hours are going to be even more crazy than they are now. It’s perfect
timing.”

Reluctantly,
I found myself admitting that he had a point. It was often the way with my
husband – when he decided he wanted something, the world seemed to organise
itself to fall in with his plans, and, incredibly, the world never seemed to
mind. Trains ran on time when Jonathan was on them. When we were buying the
house and the estate agent turned flaky and refused to answer my calls for a
week, all it took was one polite email from Jonathan to get them to reply with
a full update and a fulsome apology. Even Jonathan’s suggestion that it might
be time to try for another baby, because three years was the perfect age gap,
had resulted in Owen turning up nine months later to the day.

“Are
you getting hungry?” Jonathan asked. “I am, I’m starving. Why don’t we order a
takeaway? Thai or Indian?”

“Whatever
you want,” I said. “Either’s fine with me. I’m not that hungry, I had some
chips earlier with the children.” This wasn’t strictly true, but Jonathan
didn’t need to know that.

While
he rang the Everest Inn, I scraped the last few peas and cherry tomatoes off
the children’s plates into the compost caddy and poured myself a glass of
water. I went and checked on the children, silently opening Darcey’s door then
Owen’s, tucking Darcey’s duvet over her feet and picking Green Rabbit off the
floor so he’d be on Owen’s pillow if he woke in the night.

The
flat was silent, apart from Radio 6 Music playing softly in the kitchen. I sat
on the sofa, resting my chin on my knees, and listened. Jonathan was humming
along to a jazz saxophone, slightly off key as always. A radiator ticked.
Darcey cried out in her sleep and I lifted my head, ready to go to her if she
needed me. But she didn’t make another sound.

This
was it – this calm, this night-time peace that meant the end of another day,
another day added on to the end of the end of ten years. Ten years – more or
less, not actually to the day, because neither of us can remember the exact
date we met – since I’d begun to realise that, in Jonathan, I’d found something
I’d never expected to want. Ten years of weaving a web of security, strand by
strand, that joined us first to each other, then to the first house we’d bought
together, then to Darcey and Owen.

You
nailed it, Laura, I told myself. Back when you were twenty-two, you thought
your life was fucked beyond repair. But it wasn’t. Well, it was fucked – but it
was fixable. And now look at you. You’re thirty-five, and you’ve got it all
sorted. A house thirty seconds from one of the best primary schools in London,
which eventually won’t be a building site. Two gorgeous children. A husband you
adore, who has just had a shiny new promotion.