Page 23 of Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?
‘Maybe we can have a dinner party for your birthday?’ Emma suggests, trying to cheer me up. It’s about a month away but the thought alone is exhausting. Thirty-one. It’s such a nothing age. It’s miles away from forty but marks some depressing ascent into being an adult. Dinner would be very grown up, even civilised, but dull. I know Emma. There’d be matching placemats, a bread basket, and she’d whack on some Norah Jones.
‘YES!’ cries Lucy.
‘Maybe?’
‘Just nothing like your thirtieth,’ Meg says, nostrils flared from recalling the horror. Even Emma stares into the distance like she’s still not over the shock. Lucy and I just look at each other smugly. It was my last fling with youth and itwasepic. There was a sensible element – afternoon tea with my parents – but after that it was a frigging free-for-all. Gracie was here. But so was her husband, Tom, who’s since passed away. It was just before his diagnosis so we went out like some motley crew without a care in the world. We wreaked havoc in a Mexican restaurant where Will drank tequila shots and licked salt off my cleavage. We got Emma so drunk that we lost her and Meg found her passed out in front of a betting shop sleeping next to a tramp, using his Labrador as a blanket. Meg and Ems flaked on us after that but us young ’uns and a group of my friends went on to an electronic music festival in Victoria Park. Yes,thatfestival. I think about scattered flashes of pastel light across my sister’s faces as we jumped in time to the beat of the music. We danced so hard. Will was abnormally sweaty as he came in to hug me.
‘You’re old now,’ he said.
‘Piss off. You’re thirty in seven months.’
‘I love you so much. I really want to have sex with you,’ he yelled over the throb of the music.
And I knocked my head back and kept on dancing. Well, not really dancing. Just this wild prancing around with dancey spaghetti arms and Will did that move he does where he looks like he’s repeatedly tossing pancakes. We had sex back at our house share in Brixton. On the sofa. Our housemate, Georgia, caught us at it and shamed us all the next day by leaving a note on the communal fridge and asking us to sanitise the area. I look down at the little baby staring up at me, his chin moving up and down as he squeezes more milk out of me.That’s how you happened. I’ll save that story for when you’re eighteen. You were quite the birthday present, little one.He looks up, smiles for a moment and milk pours out the sides of his mouth.
Track Five
‘Daddy Cool’ – Boney M. (1976)
One of my favourite memories of Will is when we were sitting on the steps of the monument at Seven Dials in Covent Garden on one of our first dates. The weather was just starting to warm up so he bought me a drink and we sat outside and got to know each other. He liked that I drank beer, I liked how he took his parka off and draped it over my shoulders when the weather got a bit cooler. That would teach me to go out in just a denim jacket. The conversation was mainly peppered with musical references. We spoke about bands and festivals and I hit him hard with all my music trivia in an attempt to impress him. Like how Finland has more metal bands per capita than anywhere else in the world and how Lucy once went out very briefly (briefly equates to a day) with the drummer from The 1975. I loved the way he rubbed the back of his head when he was nervous, how he had dark brown eyes like chocolate buttons and how he gave me an architecture lesson about how the streets converged around that point in Central London, by taking out an old receipt in his satchel to draw the angles out. The drawing made me kiss him. He kissed back. It led to three men next to us telling us to ‘get a room’ jokingly. One of them shook Will’s hand and then told him he was ‘punching’, the other asked when the wedding was. It was date three. We both blushed and laughed. Will then took me for chips. We ate them outside, clouds of grease shining through the paper, licking the salt and vinegar off the nooks and crannies of our fingers. We talked about foods that one can batter. We agreed battered cheese should be a thing. He also told me he had recently come up with a litmus test when it came to dating women. He had started asking them what their favourite Stevie Wonder songs were. If they didn’t know who Stevie was then they were out on their ear. If any of them said ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ then he never called them back. He hadn’t asked me yet because he’d pinned quite a lot of hope on my answer so he didn’t want to be disappointed. ‘Golden Lady’ off theInnervisionsalbum, was my response. He smiled. I was allowed to stay. Of course, I slept with him afterwards. I brought him back to the flat share I lived in. It was a hole. I remember the letter box was held together by gaffer tape and my curtains were old batik wraps. We had sex. Sex so loud that a housemate knocked on my bedroom door and said I was an awful human being as I was reminding him that it had been four months since he’d last slept with anyone. That was eight years ago.
Everything I liked about Will was dictated by how easy it was to be with him. Pre-baby, we’d be watching television and then one of us would suggest what was for dinner, the other would say takeaway and forty-three minutes later, one would be at the door, usually delivered by Sanj, who we’d come to know by name, which is why Will thought we always got free naan. We’d then open an extra couple of beers and pass out together on the sofa, only waking to switch off the telly. We both worked, we socialised, we travelled and we partied and we had moments where we’d fall out of gigs with his arms around my side, and we’d roam the streets of London searching for chips and things in batter.
Tonight feels different, however. The usual ease I feel to be by Will’s side is gone. I am his plus one at his company night out and I feel like an imposter. I stand outside this organic pub in Angel, looking through the window. Will is surrounded by about ten people and they’re immersed in conversation, looking earnest. Oh, architecture: gables and architraves and buildings and… stuff. He’s a different Will, one that doesn’t quite look like himself. He’s buttoned his shirt up to the top and just looks so serious, not the laidback kid who I’m used to. If the conversation is earnest then so is the pub. It’s all organic, sustainable, and uber woke, confirmed by the sprightly folk soundtrack and the high level of punters in hats. I could play hat bingo and get a house in seconds: beret, trilby, newsboy, flat cap and I think that might be a loser in a bowler hat trying to be ironic or possibly trying to get me into his circus. Lucy would have a field day with him.
But I am trying. I am. I panic bought a floral wrap maxi dress and I’m wearing it with trainers and a row of gold chains Lucy lent me so I look like I vaguely used to be trendy. Does it flatter my figure? Who knows? But it contains me and that’s a start. I just need to remember to hold on to it on the Tube as it is floaty in every sense of the word and I almost took off like a parachute when a train pulled into the platform. Still, I came to support Will. I am here. But my mind is with Joe, my bed, the fact I don’t know who half of these people are. I also am very suspicious of Sam. Sam is the head director person whom Will has spoken about plenty but who I always assumed to be a man, probably because in between babies and sleeplessness, I don’t really process things with too much clarity. But no, Sam is a woman. And she’s the sort of woman I want to be when I grow up. She’s assured and confident, wearing a kimono-cut dress with gold shoes and she has that sort of natural minimalist make-up look that you know is really achieved with three products that cost the same as our monthly heating bill. She also calls me B which makes me wonder if she just initialises everyone to be super-efficient, or just because she’s the boss so she can get away with it. Will sees me outside and waves through the window. I excused myself to take a call and check in on Joe so I dive in my shoulder bag to find my phone and pretend to push some buttons, talking into it. Why has Sam got her hand on Will’s shoulder? Is she wearing a bra with that dress?
‘Hello? Hello?’ Oh flaps, I’ve actually dialled someone.
I look down at my phone and smile. I’m glad I fake dialled you.
‘Callaghan? To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘Maccers.’
Sean McGill. In modern terms, my work husband. We both went to university in Warwick and bonded as we were South Londoners studying education because we weren’t sure what else there was to do in life. We always stayed close to each other through placements and work, we shared houses at one point, and as luck would have it, we ended up applying to Griffin Road Comprehensive at the same time. He’s a friend, we share mugs, we cover each other’s playground patrols. We had a drunken fondle at university once but that’s as far as it went. I love him like a brother and I also know far too much about him. He’s a bit geeky and a religious football fan. He now lives at home with his mother, who makes him a cheese sandwich every day for lunch and he kicks off when she tries to give him brown bread. Back when I was at work and I’d call him of an evening to check about school stuff, it was common to hear him marking but also playingCall of Duty, asking his mum if his chicken nuggets were ready.
‘I butt dialled you, mate. Sorry.’
‘No worries. How’s tricks? Are you out? You sound out? Why aren’t I there?’
It dawns on me that this is the first communication we’ve had since Joe was born. Sean has kept his distance. I get why. Every time he saw my pregnant bump in the staff room, he’d look at it like a strange growth, an alarming sign of the times that we were now proper adults. He didn’t even send a card; his mum did and signed his name in it.
‘I am. Will’s work thing. First time since Joe was born. Currently outside the pub trying to figure out how to make conversation again.’
‘How’s the little one? How’s motherhood treating you?’
Like its bitch, but I don’t say that out loud.
‘It’s all good. How are things at Griffin Road?’
‘Same old. It was parents’ evening last week and I had at least five kids I have no recollection of ever teaching. Jane Kelsted is preggers.’
‘That’s good.’ Since joining this school three years ago, Jane had been obsessed with getting pregnant to the point where most of the staff room knew her fertile days.
‘But it’s dull without you. I have no one to make me tea. Please come back. Bring the baby. We’ll give him to the ladies in the library and he can ride the book trolleys all day.’
I laugh but feel immediate pangs of sadness. I do miss Sean. I miss the anecdotes about his failed attempts at finding love and how he’s fallen asleep teaching kids about tectonic plates. Once upon a time, I’d share moments on pub pavements with him, someone I actually liked. Instead, I’m surrounded by strangers.
