Page 11 of Where Do We Go From Here?
Pretty!Fiona replies instantly.But go easy on the Chardonnay.
How did my kids get to be so puritanical?Wendy wonders.
Jill, whose bank clerk son, Michael, is also surprisingly restrained for a youngster, claims it’s a generational thing. Jill says alternate generations are boring, but her son’s kids will drive him crazy by becoming rebels. And Jill may well be right about that. Wendy doubts that it has even crossed Fiona or Todd’s minds to pop an E and dance till sunrise. Oh, the summer nights she and Harry used to spend dancing. Truly some of the highlights of her life.
And Harry? She sighs. What to say to Harry?
I still love you/I still miss you/I still hate you?
I don’t understand what went wrong. We used to be so good together?
Hi Harry, I’m fine, she types.But thanks a lot for asking. xx
FOUR
HARRY (PART 2)
When I moved out, it was meant to be temporary. That’s what we told ourselves anyway.
Fiona, Todd and Harry were locked down in their Covid-free house while I had to leave every day to work in just about the highest-risk environment in the country. Colleagues were coming down with the illness all the time, and patients were dying every day. It was unfair to put the kids at risk, Harry said, and it was impossible to disagree. Plus, if I’m being totally honest, I’d been finding the atmosphere at home exhausting anyway.
It was obviously nowhere near as ‘exhausting’ as being at work but in a way, that’s my point. By the time I got home Ineededthings to be relaxed. All I wanted to do was slump in front of the TV with a glass of wine. I didn’t want to be hassled about drinking too much or smoking too much or what risks I may or may not have taken whilst at work. I didn’t want to be asked to wear a bloody face mask in my lounge either, because I’d had one on all day, and I didn’t want to listen to my family’s whingy – comparatively insubstantial – lockdown woes at all.
So when Jill suggested that I use her empty Airbnb placefor a break, ‘until it all blows over’, I jumped at the opportunity. And I enjoyed it there, for a while.
The studio, which was tiny but pretty, was situated at the bottom of her garden. I could drink and smoke and watch crap TV without complaint. I slept better, I found, without Harry’s snoring, and didn’t miss his complaints about my hours, Fiona’s laziness or Todd’s smelly trainers either.
Sometimes Jill and I met in the garden (at a distance) for a ciggy and a glass of wine and on sunny days when I could fit him in, Harry and I would walk around the park. But he was stressed, too, so our conversations became increasingly brittle. We felt more like strangers every time we met and I remember having a vague premonition that rather than saving our marriage we might be breaking it.
We were a month into lockdown before either of the kids deigned to meet me. It was Fiona who agreed first, so we met at her favourite place – Vinters Park.
As we walked, we chatted about the pandemic and whether it was the Chinese who had manufactured the virus, a theory Fiona insisted was ‘gaining traction’. And then I asked her the dreaded question: I asked how things were at home.
‘Oh, good, actually,’ she said. ‘Everything’s quite shockingly chilled.’
It was such an unexpected thing for her to say that I could only assume the missing words were ‘since you moved out’. I was so shocked I stopped walking.
After a few paces, Fiona paused too and turned back. ‘Mum?’ she said.
‘I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean,’ I told her.
‘God, I knew you’d be like this,’ she said, instantly leaping into combat mode.
‘Like what?’
‘You’re always… Oh, you know what you’re like.’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’
‘You’re waiting all the time to jump on something. It’s like you’re on the lookout for something to be upset about.’
‘I am not! Where’s this coming from? I really have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I told her.
‘Look I don’t mean anything… you know… bad… by it.’
‘Oh, well, that’s a relief!’ I said sarcastically.
‘But even you’d admit your… um… energy… has been a bit off lately.’
