Page 55 of We All Live Here
Which is just as well. Because Lila has spent three days holed up in what was once her office, revising her opening chapter, which is now late, and which she has promised, absolutely promised, to get to Anoushka by Friday.
Two years ago I was a mostly teetotal, married woman, with two children, who hadn’t so much as looked at another man. I married for life, considered my family my world, and was probably a little judgmental of people who weren’t like me. So how did I end up on the floor of a workshop at the end of my first date with a younger man, sawdust in my hair, giggly with vodka, and having the best sex of my life?
She had called him J in the chapter, and not revealed his occupation, figuring that way he could be pretty much anyone. And she had avoided the whole taking-her-elderly-father-to-hospital episode beforehand, describing it simply as “a bad day at the office.” But the rest of it she had poured out almost verbatim: the way they had told each other about their lives at the pub, his lost keys, her determination to “get back on the bike,” the bit where she had realized she didn’t even know his surname, her terror and excitement and the thrill of getting naked again with another human being. She quite enjoys the process of writing it: it allowsher to relive the whole evening in detail, to remember things she had forgotten (his watch strap getting caught in her hair, the way he ran out into the rainy garden afterward to pee), and then to observe it at a distance—the story of a woman reclaiming her life and her sexuality. She had tweaked it a little, ramping up the emotions, changing his appearance to dark-haired, giving it a conclusive ending:“Well,” said my best friend. “That sounds like a perfect first attempt.”But she hadn’t had to change anything about how she’d felt in the moment, the unexpected ease of it all, the laughter, the sawdust, the smell of the paraffin lamps, and the endless drumming of the rain on the roof, the way, she realizes now, she hadn’t once worried about what she looked like or how she came across to him.
He was a great guy, and completely not my type, and he taught me that, unlike during my twenties when sex was always tied up with all sorts of sexual politics—what my then boyfriend might have said or done beforehand, whether we were “in” a relationship, how drunk I was, or how insecure I felt about myself—sex in my forties was quite different: me inhabiting my body fully, unafraid to ask for what I wanted, comfortable with the idea that just because I was having great sex with someone didn’t mean I needed to spend the rest of my life with them. In fact, the exact opposite: that I could go into a sexual encounter knowing I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him. It was my first moment of liberation, and worth every hour on those lumpy garden cushions, and the sawdust in my hair…
Suck on that, Dan, she thinks. She prints it off to check it for spelling and grammatical errors—they are always somehow easier to see on a printed page—and then, when she’s satisfied there are none, she puts the chapter into an email, types in Anoushka’s address, and presses send.Then she closes her laptop, feeling oddly satisfied. She is a grown-up, independent woman writing about her sexual escapades. She is moving forward, taking care of her family, and reclaiming her financial independence. She has not had to make anything up. Even the fact that Truant has weed on the stairs (because nobody except Lila ever walks him) cannot dent her good mood.
Sounds good! When did you have in mind?
Pretty flat out with work most of this week but how about Thursday eve? Lennie is going to my mum’s.
Thursday’s great.
She and Gabriel have been texting again, backward and forward most evenings, little snippets about the school gate or things their children have been up to.
How’s the finest-looking woman in the playground?
He comments specifically on her appearance, saying her hair looked nice in that style, or that she looked amazing in those jeans, often using Italian words she looks up afterward. He pays attention to tiny details that Dan would never have noticed about her. He is kind, considerate, clearly conscious of the psychodrama she goes through every day faced with Marja’s presence.
I know it’s not my business, but I can’t get my head round Dan choosing that girl. She has nothing about her, not compared to you.
She likes the “that girl,” as if Marja is someone insubstantial. The texts are unpredictable, and come at odd hours, sometimes two or three in an hour, and then no reply at all. She imagines the stress of his daily life as a widowed father and the difficulties of managing a job as a top architect while trying to meet the emotional needs of his daughter.
It can be lonely sometimes, can’t it?she ventures, late one evening, while she is in the bath.
His answer comes twenty minutes later. Her water has started to grow cold.
It can. I know you get it. x
He seems to see her in a way that nobody else does. It’s like having a secret ally, one who sees only the best of you. In person, they usually exchange only the slightest of conversation—of course nobody wants to be the focus of the school mums’ forensic gaze—but his looks are meaningful, and every time she gets a text from him a small thrill goes through her, and she reads and rereads it several times, relishing the warmth of his digital gaze.
I saw a woman who looked just like you at work today. I slightly wished it had been—we could have gone for coffee.
It was me. I’m hiding in your office in a million disguises. That’s how I roll.
You’re very funny. One of your many charms. Anyway, she wasn’t half as good-looking as you x
It is most days now, and definitely flirtatious. Lila feels a little giddy on the walk to school, their impending date a glowing pocket warmershe holds tightly, a secret source of heat and comfort. When Philippa gives her one of her vaguely pitying looks—the ones that manage to combineWe’re all so sorry for youwithBut it’s totally understandable why Dan would have wanted to trade you in for Marja—she meets it with a bland smile and walks over casually to stand in what she has come to think of as Gabriel’s corner, even on the days when he is not in it. Which is, annoyingly, most days. She’s in such a good mood that when a driver beeps at her to hurry up as she walks over the zebra crossing she stops and does just three jumping jacks in front of him, when really she would have been within her rights to do a dozen.
•••
“So where areyou going?” says Eleanor, who has popped round for coffee and to show off her new tattoo. It is a phoenix, apparently, rising from the ashes of her hip bone.
Lila wants to ask if it’s some kind of comment on osteoporosis but suspects this is not really the point. “Um…not sure yet.”
“He has confirmed the date, though?”
That was the thing. Gabriel had been annoyingly quiet for the last thirty-six hours. The last time he had mentioned it he said something about work, but that he was sure he’d make it, and now she doesn’t want to be chasing him for answers. She suspects the kind of people he surrounds himself with are far too cool to have to chase people for date details.
“I mean, pretty much, yes. He suggested Thursday.”
“When was that?”
“Um…Sunday?”
Eleanor gives her a steady look.
