Page 47 of We All Live Here
“Is he taking me to get a tattoo?”
“Hey…” She feels his hand on her arm and her head shoots up. He is smiling at her. His face is kind, his gaze intent. “I owe you a text.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she says, with a smile that is not quite a smile. “No problem. Got to go. See you!” She almost pushes Violet past him, ignoring her protests, her repeated demands to know where Grandpa Gene is taking her.You know he doesn’t like me calling him Grandpa. He said we should call him Gene. I told him it was a girl’s name and he didn’t even care.
Lila burns, barely registering Violet’s monologue for the entire length of the walk home. His kind, untroubled face. The way he looked at her with faint bemusement, as if he’d done nothing wrong in not responding. The way all their texts, their conversations in the playground, have clearly meant nothing to him.
When she gets home Bill is in the garden talking to Jensen and gesturing toward the house crossly in a way that suggests Gene has done yet another thing to offend him. Lila hands Violet two chocolate biscuits from her secret stash in the hardware drawer and runs upstairs to her room.
She has four new emails. One is from the dentist, reminding her that Violet has a follow-up appointment next week, one from the emergency plumber, reminding her that the last unblocking is still to be paid for, one is from British Gas, a new bill, and the last is from Anoushka.
Darling, when can I tell them they’ll have the new chapter?
Lila glances behind her at the sofa-bed that Gene—despite his promises—has failed to make up. Through the open window she canhear Bill remarking loudly and repeatedly, “Cigarette smoke is wafting into the kitchen.”
And then Gene’s yelled response that he is “halfway down the garden, for Chrissake.”
Lila cannot do another supper between these two old men.
She looks down at her phone again. She thinks for a minute.
You know you said I looked like I needed a drink, shetypes.
Chapter Sixteen
The pub is in Hampstead, halfway down one of the tiny pedestrian streets that lead off the main road, where antique books jostle for space with delicatessens selling exotic salads, made with aubergine, for fifteen pounds a pot. Lila has to edge past a huge, angry-looking man with two Pomeranian dogs to enter, but once inside the pub is reassuringly shabby, all dark scuffed walls and wonky wooden tables, the kind of place she used to frequent all the time before she had children, and has barely visited since. Jensen is already there, somehow cleaned up in a blue shirt and dark jeans, and she feels momentarily awkward that she has not bothered to make up her face or even brush her hair. But what’s the point? She just needs to be out, in company. She needs to be away from her house. And her gardener was literally the only man who might be available.
Violet had looked mildly outraged when she said she was going out.But where?And then:Why can’t I come?
Lila had glossed over her question, announced breezily that theywould all be fine without her, and walked out of the door before anyone had a chance to protest. She had strode the twenty minutes up the hill with a kind of grim determination, not looking at her phone, as its intermittent buzzing told of the slew of questions and protests that inevitably followed her departure. No, she is an adult woman, and she is allowed to do as she likes. Occasionally.
Jensen turns and sees her, and motions to a table where his battered canvas jacket sits on the back of the chair. She slides in, gazing around her at the other drinkers, deep in animated conversations that have already been lubricated by several drinks, or staring in silence into their pints. She inhales the yeasty air, trying to slow her pulse.
“So what do you want?” Jensen appears at the table and puts his drink down on a square coaster.
“Oh. Diet Coke. Please.” She is grateful that he doesn’t question it. When she and Dan had first got together, he had told her she was admirable for not drinking. He even gave it up himself for a while, especially when the kids were small. He had been anxious about something happening to one of them, and not being able to drive them to a hospital. He had been a surprisingly overprotective parent when they were little. But for the last few years of their marriage Dan had started drinking again—only “clean” drinks like vodka and slimline tonic, as he spent increasing amounts of his free time in Lycra on his carbon-framed bicycle—and from then he seemed to see her failure to drink as a kind of rebuke, or maybe a symptom of her joylessness. He would offer her one in front of friends, even though he knew she would say no, and roll his eyes when she did as if showing them what a trial it was to be with her. She wonders absently whether he drinks with Marja, whether before she got pregnant they would ease into their evening with an expensive bottle of wine and…
Jensen hands her a Coke, smiling. “I was kind of surprised when you—”
“This isn’t a date,” she says quickly.
He blinks. “Okay.”
“I mean—sorry—not that you aren’t a very nice man. I just want to make sure we’re straight from the off. I just—I just needed to get out of the house.”
He contemplates this for a moment. “And I’m the only person you could think of?”
“No. I have friends. Lots of friends.”
He looks confused.
“I mean I would normally meet my friend Eleanor. But she’s going to a sex party in Richmond. No, Rickmansworth. Somewhere with an R. Actually maybe that’s tomorrow.” She takes a swig of her drink. “I mean I do have other friends. But—actually—it’s got so awkward since Dan left that I find everyone exhausting. Everyone who knows us, I mean. I’ve sort of pulled in my horns. It’s like I have to explain everything, and talk about what happened, and I’m still getting used to the idea of him impregnating the Bendy Young Mistress so I can’t face explaining about that either. I’m so tired of the head tilt, that godawful look of sympathy. Or maybe it’s just their relief that it’s not them. And you already know. I just wanted to come out for a relaxing drink and not to have to…explain.”
She stares at her Diet Coke. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve just realized I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
Jensen appears to consider this. “Have you been on many non-dates?” he says. “Because you may want to work on your opening.”
“Was the sex party too much?”
