Rebecca

I SLEPT WELL IN my new flat and awoke refreshed. I had put on some weight. ‘You look really well,’ my friends told me. ‘Relaxed, more your old self.’

Coco agreed.

That cowed look is just so last year.

And yet.

And yet what? Coco snapped. What’s there to and yet about? You’re free of the bastard.

Don’t call him a bastard.

What would you like me to call him?

I thought about it.

Oh I don’t know, just go away.

‘What do you mean and yet?’ Matilda asked.

We were sitting at the kitchen table; through the window I watched a pale autumn sun setting behind Albert Bridge.

‘Last week you were telling everyone that you’d never been more content. You said you woke every morning while the builders were in thanking God that you weren’t having to cope with Dominic going ballistic at every little thing, especially when they broke the teapot. The freedom, you said, not answering to anyone: you loved it. The relief, you said, of not being watched and harangued at every turn. What’s changed?’

I pushed one of the mugs of tea across the table top towards her and picked up the plate.

‘Iced bun?’

‘Don’t change the topic,’ Matilda said.

‘OK. I’m sorry. And I don’t suppose it’s him I miss, not exactly. But I miss something. Maybe it’s my dreams. The future is like a doily with all these cut-outs: the ski holiday planned for the new year, the weekends with his friends in the Cotswolds, his nephew’s wedding in France. I mean it’s not as if I can’t travel without him, it’s just, oh I’m not sure what the issue is exactly other than that I feel so very sad.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Matilda said, her hand hovering above the plate of sticky buns, retreating then swooping down like a bird of prey. She bit into the bun, eating fast as if that way there would be fewer calories. ‘But you will find someone else eventually, someone nice even.’

‘That’s part of the sadness, I reckon. I might well find someone, but then what do I do with him? Sleep with him, yes. And then what? Because eventually it would end the way it always does, in disillusionment and ugly strife.’

‘Come on, it doesn’t have to be like that.’

I sighed.

‘I wish I could believe that. I can’t work, Matilda. I can’t go on writing my nice books about nice people meeting other nice people and falling in love and living happily ever after. From where I am now I simply can’t imagine how I ever could. It all seems so long ago. But without my work I feel naked and chilly to the bone. No, worse, I feel pointless. I have no purpose. I can’t live without purpose. I wonder if that’s what you’d feel if you had lived all your life in Soviet Russia or Communist Poland when the whole idea of Communism collapsed? I’ve often wondered what it must have been like. There you are, having worked and sacrificed and suffered all in the belief that you were serving a higher purpose, creating Utopia for your children and their children –’

‘Did anyone actually think that?’

‘I think so. And then one day you’re told that actually it was all a huge mistake and, as if that’s not bad enough, you’re supposed to go out there and dance around the square or hacked-down wall or whatever, celebrating the fact that your entire life’s been a sham.’

‘I’m not sure I would equate romance with Communism.’

At midnight the phone went.

‘I know I promised not to call but, darling, I miss you.’

I sat up against the pillows.

‘Dominic.’

‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’

‘Yes, sort of. But it’s all right.’

‘I’m not all right,’ he said. ‘I know it serves me right. I’ve been a pig. I don’t deserve you but, darling, I’m just lost without you.’ His voice was low and intimate. It was the voice of a lover.

I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing.

He continued, ‘Darling, don’t you miss me even a little bit?’

‘Yes.’ And with that yes I stepped back into my life and the time away seemed just like a dream.

I opened the door and watched him stride up the stairs. At the sight of me he paused then he smiled, penitent, jubilant, his arms wide open to clasp me to him.

Coco appeared in front of me frenetically rowing a lifeboat, calling my name. I turned my back on him and led Dominic inside. I opened a bottle of red wine. I wasn’t sure why I did that when I knew perfectly well that he preferred white.

He looked at the red liquid as he took the glass from me.

‘Red. Very nice. Thanks, darling.’

He stayed the night in my bed. Coco spent the night locked in the walk-in-wardrobe.

‘It’s like coming home,’ Dominic said after we had made love again the next morning. ‘Oh my darling. Oh my love, my life.’

Back in the early days he used to whisper those words and I had felt like a special being, anointed by love. I wanted to feel that way again. I tried hard. But instead I felt as if I were watching a love scene in the company of my mother.

As it was Saturday, I suggested we visit the local farmers’ market. I was in two minds about those markets. I enjoyed the experience of walking between the stalls with a hand-woven basket in the crook of my arm. I liked the open air and the way the other shoppers bustled around smiling instead of shuffling and shoving their way along crowded supermarket aisles. Yet in some way I felt I was just a victim of another trend. ‘Darling, how lovely, shit-covered eggs straight from the hen’s bottom.’ And, ‘Unpasteurised cheese with real flies, how marvellously geniune.’

As a rule I valued solitude, but weekends on my own had made me feel lonely. Walking around the market with Dominic I enjoyed being part of a couple again, shopping for lunch for two, handing him a taster of cheese and discussing how much was needed of the Beaufort and how much of the Stilton. Other than the cheese we bought a couple of dressed crabs, which led me to wonder, as always, why a shellfish broken into its constituent parts was known as ‘dressed’. As usual, I decided not to ask. I had a feeling there was an obvious answer that everyone knew but me.

Dominic disappeared only to return a few minutes later with a bunch of red roses.

‘Roses for a rose,’ he said, laughing at his cheesy joke, and all around us people were smiling. Babies in prams, puppies and lovers were all part of a delightful breed adored by, well, by most people, other than those who found the sight of any of these quite sick-making.

On our way home we passed the Bathroom Shop.

I stopped.

‘I need one of those shelf things you put across the bath tub for soaps and sponges and stuff,’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’

He said he would wait outside in the fresh air.

‘Leave the basket with me,’ he added.

Inside there were several of those shelves to choose from. There was also an entire section with soaps and one with soap dishes and toothbrush-holders and such like. I went to the door and signalled to Dominic to join me but he shook his head and held up a lit cigarette. Following a very interesting discussion with the shop assistant about soap versus gels I was given two samples of each kind. I then bought a soap dish, a rose-scented soap and a honeysuckle shower-gel.

Outside Dominic was finishing a cigarette. He glared at me as he flicked the butt to the ground.

‘Have you no idea of time?’

‘Why didn’t you come inside? There were some lovely things.’

‘You know I don’t share your love of shopping. Anyway, I had this.’ He picked up the basket and the bags from around his feet. ‘So can we go now? I’m cold and I’m hungry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said as I tried to relieve him of the basket. ‘They were just so nice in there and had such nice –’

‘You said.’ He glanced at the small bag in my hand. ‘So did you get the bath-tub shelf, or whatever you call it?’

I looked down at the bag myself.

‘No, no, I didn’t.’ I laughed. ‘Silly me.’

He sighed, a sigh so deep it could be heard above the roaring traffic on Chelsea Bridge Road.

Once we had eaten the crab and cheeses Dominic was in a better mood.

Looking around him he said, ‘You really have done well with this place, darling.’ He sat down next to me on the sofa with his mug of coffee. ‘I feel really at home.’

My smile froze. My back stiffened and I put my mug down on the table.

Dominic leant back against the cushions with an air of belonging.

Was that banging I heard from my bedroom? One final smash and Coco came bounding past, out of breath and with his hair in disarray, carrying a half-closed suitcase with a pair of striped trouser-legs trailing the ground.

Save yourself while you can, he called over his shoulders.

Dominic opened his eyes and smiled fuzzily at me.

‘Yes, I really feel at home here.’

I got to my feet.

‘I have to go out now,’ I told Dominic. ‘I’ll lock up behind you, shall I?’

*     *     *

When I saw Charlotte Jessop next I was anxious to find out whether she believed that my decision to break up with Dominic and not to rekindle our relationship might be a result, not of logic or even the dictates of the heart, but because of the clown.

‘What do you think?’ Charlotte Jessop asked.

‘My gut instinct tells me that it’s common sense and self-preservation kicking in at long last. But then again, is it just coincidence that Coco reappeared during this time?’

‘I would like you to consider the possibility that Coco’s reappearance was a necessary component in the process of you freeing yourself from what was, in fact, a textbook toxic relationship.’

‘You mean he’s some sort of enabler?’ Like most clowns there was nothing Coco liked better than to be taken seriously.

Right now he was sitting on a stool in the corner of the room, his stripy legs crossed, a pair of spectacles perched on his red nose, and as Charlotte and I spoke he rested his chin in his hand and nodded.

‘As long as we are both clear that he is simply another facet of your personality, another side of your internal dialogue,’ Charlotte said.

I smiled and nodded.

‘Of course.’

It was the end of the session and as I walked out of the room Coco followed me, crowing three times and hissing, Judas.

The cockerel crowed three times to Peter, not Judas, I told him. And, Coco, you are an imaginary clown, not the Messiah.

There, I thought, Charlotte Jessop had nothing to worry about on my account.

At lunch later on that day, Bridget said in a voice elongated with thought, ‘You really have been very clever, Geraldine.’

‘How do you mean, I’ve been clever?’

‘Because you have it all before you to enjoy… for the third time: new love, sexual excitement, setting up a home together. It’s as if you are living a romantic groundhog day.’

I didn’t know Bridget’s husband’s cousin very well but I remembered Angel-face telling me that she had recently got married again. It was hard not to notice that, at fifty-one, the same age as Bridget, Geraldine looked much younger. Not because she was especially unlined, although she did have a good complexion, but because of the light in her eyes, the easy laughter, the languid movements, which all spoke of a woman who had woken up next to her lover that morning. Bridget, on the other hand, had woken up next to her very nice decent husband of almost thirty years. As for myself, I exuded the nervous energy of someone in turmoil. I had noticed that morning that this was not so good for the complexion.

‘Do you think Robert Mugabe is at peace with himself?’ I asked. ‘There he is, tyrant of the year, destroying his country, impoverishing and imprisoning his people, torturing his opponents and yet, and yet he has the most incredible skin for a man in his mid-eighties.’

The other two ignored me; rightly so, I supposed.

Geraldine said, ‘But I always envy you, Bridget. There’s something intensely romantic about a lasting love affair.’

‘I wouldn’t say that your cousin and I are in the throes of a love affair; I mean I can’t believe that anyone is after thirty years, other than in books.’ As she said ‘books’ she gave a perfunctory nod in my direction. ‘But we do get on very well; I mean I wouldn’t change him. OK, perhaps for George Clooney. No, we rub along very well, we really do. But … well, I suppose it would be a more unusual couple than Neil and I who could still surprise each other at this stage. So it’s predictable. We know the answers to each other. That’s comfortable and secure, but …’ Bridget’s voice trailed off.

‘… The problem is, it’s the questions that are so exciting,’ I said.

‘Are you working on a new book?’ Geraldine asked.

I nodded.

‘Trying to.’

‘Oh but you must hurry up and finish it. I’m such a fan. You know it’s partly through reading you that I plucked up the courage to get out of my first marriage. You feel very lonely when you’re unhappy, don’t you? And I was unhappy. Not because Charles was nasty, or a bully like your ex-boyfriend … no’ – she raised her hand to stop me from speaking – ‘you don’t have to say anything. As I said before, Bridget’s told me everything. No, Charles was, is, a nice man, and he’s the father of my children, but it wasn’t right. For a long time it wasn’t right. I felt such a lack at the very centre of my life, a big void where there should be warmth and comradeship and sex … and your books, well, they put into words what it was that was missing; it’s as simple as that.’

‘Oh my God,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘It makes me feel responsible to think that someone made such an important decision based partly on my books.’

‘You put your stories out there in the public domain for people to read,’ Bridget said. ‘Of course you influence people.’

‘Proust influences people,’ I said.

Geraldine, who was a very pretty woman with her creamy complexion, black hair and bright blue eyes, beamed a smile at me.

‘I’m happy now, though.’ She grew serious. ‘But one must never forget how hard a divorce is for everyone involved, children in particular. My three have come out of it all in pretty good shape but there was a lot of heartache along the way. I have to ask myself if it’s been worth it, causing such pain and upheaval.’

Looking at the light in her eyes and the way her lips turned up at the corners even when she was serious, I said, ‘Do you, though, do you really ask yourself that?’ Charlotte Jessop had told me that being forthright was not the same as being rude. I wasn’t sure that this was true but I felt that paying a hundred pounds an hour to ignore someone’s advice was just plain foolish.

It seemed the therapist was right because Geraldine did not take offence, instead she thought for a moment before saying, ‘No, that’s the thing, I don’t. I am genuinely sorry for the pain I’ve caused and it’s been pretty hard for me too. In fact at times it’s been very hard, but if you asked me if I’d do it all again, I’m afraid the answer would be yes. Which, no doubt, means I’ll go to hell.’ Speaking of hell she turned to me. ‘What about you, Rebecca? Any regrets?’

The other day I had read an interview with a famous actress, who lived off the land at her huge ranch somewhere in the US. When she wasn’t cultivating her vegetable garden she rode, bareback, no doubt, through the wilderness or hiked the eight miles to the nearest small town. She had said, ‘Regret is a completely wasted emotion.’ I lived off takeouts and walked on tarmac and my life was definitely too short for all the regrets I was beginning to harbour.

‘Regrets,’ I said. ‘Now and then.’

Bridget went into her kitchen and fetched the main course.

While she was away I said to Geraldine, ‘Just after Zoe got engaged, I took her out for lunch and I’m afraid I upset her. She was worried about things, mainly about the chances of her marriage, actually any marriage, lasting more than a few years. She turned to me for reassurance, because of my books, and I let her down.’

Geraldine nodded.

‘I heard about that. But she’s a grown woman, who makes her own decisions, so you shouldn’t feel responsible.’

‘I do, though. But the other day I had an idea of how I could make things better. Instead of inventing stories about happily ever after, I would go out and find some real-life examples, talk to people who had made a really good go of it and write down their stories for Angel-face to read and be inspired by. Recipes for a Happy Marriage: A Small Book of Inspiration. Something like that. If it works I might even show it to my publisher.’

‘What a good idea.’ Bridget had reappeared with a laden dish. ‘No, I mean it. Almost everything you read these days that purports to be real life is unrelentingly miserable: miserable marriages, miserable childhoods. No, I really think it’s a wonderful idea and something that will be a real help and inspiration to Zoe.’

Basking in the approval (it had been a while), I helped myself to two lamb chops from the dish held out to me.

‘Now all I need to do is find some happy couples.’

I got my chance a few days later. I was being interviewed for an Internet book page and the journalist, Nick Fuller, was wearing a wedding band and looked old enough to have been married for a good ten years. He had a sleek, contented look about him and he referred to his children on a couple of occasions. We spent quite some time on the interview itself and as darkness fell outside and the street lights were reflected in the river I opened a bottle of wine.

‘I enjoyed your book,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I didn’t expect it to be my thing but I enjoyed it. It’s cheery.’

‘Off the record and all that,’ I said, ‘I haven’t really lived the way I preach. I told myself that I had, but I was deceiving myself, and others, including my newly engaged god-daughter. Not good. So I’ve set myself a task: I’m going to find ten happily married people whose stories I will write down and give to my god-daughter as a pre-wedding present to inspire and encourage her.’ I paused and glanced meaningfully at his wedding band. ‘You’re married.’

He gave a joyless bark of a laugh and twirled the ring.

‘Force of habit.’

‘No! You’re not serious? You’re meant to be my first selected-at-random happily married person.’

‘Sorry, no can do.’

‘Damn,’ I said, pouring us each another glass of wine. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Nick Fuller said again.

I sighed.

‘What happened?’

‘God, I don’t know. Women, I suppose. It’s this chimera thing.’

I laughed.

‘Being a fire-breathing monster – part lion, part goat, part serpent? You’re sure you weren’t thinking of a chameleon?’

He grinned.

‘Probably. Whichever, it’s bloody confusing.’

There was a Lion, a Serpent and a Goat …

We met at work, a local paper in North London. Vicky was PA to the editor and I was a reporter. I was living with someone at the time but we weren’t happy. Vicky was bright and pretty and funny, up for anything from white-water rafting to antique-hunting. And she seemed to really get me. She even liked my collection of cartoons – I’m not talking comic books here but framed pictures. We laughed at the same jokes, liked the same books and films; it was as if we really had that soul-mate thing going on. We started talking about having kids, in the abstract at first, and she said she wanted them but not so much that it was a deal-breaker if I didn’t. So I told her I didn’t. I just don’t have the paternal gene, I guess, and I thought the responsible thing was to make that clear from the outset. And she was cool about it, saying how it was her idea of hell to spend her weekends picnicking in Battersea Park with a baby in a Baby Bjorn sling.

As our relationship developed she didn’t give any indication of having changed her mind about having kids; in fact if anything she seemed even more against the idea. There was one time we were in a country pub and suddenly there was braying and crashing and banging and this group arrived: daddies in Barbours and yummy bloody mummies clunking past our table with pushchairs and bottles and wellington boots shaped like frogs, the whole catastrophe, and within minutes a peaceful Sunday lunch had turned into open day at kindergarten. You know the kind of thing. Try saying something like, ‘Please could you tell the little guy that if he has to scream could he maybe do it a little less piercingly or else go outside?’ or, ‘Yes I do mind junior having his nappy changed on the table next to me while I’m trying to enjoy my mussels,’ and you might as well have been dining on hamster fritters the way they react. Vicky and I completely agreed that these people symbolised everything we didn’t want to be.

Anyway, we got married and no more than six months later I had the first intimation of what was to come. It was Sunday afternoon in London: July, warm but not hot, hazy sunshine, lazy side-streets and all the residents at the pub or in the country. We’d had lunch at this French fish restaurant around the corner from where we lived and we were walking back home, my arm round her shoulders. I was thinking sex.

She snapped to a halt then retreated a couple of steps, pulling me with her.

‘Oh look, how cute. Isn’t that just totally adorable?’ She was pointing at a shop window filled with baby clothes.

‘Very nice,’ I said. I reckoned there was some godchild or niece having a birthday but that wasn’t it at all.

She just stood in front of that shop window looking straight at it but with a faraway look in her eyes. When finally she decided to walk on she was really quiet. We’d had a fair amount to drink and white wine in particular could make her weepy or a bit aggressive so I decided that was all it was.

We got home and I tried to jolly her up.

Then I said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’

And she turned on me. Suddenly I’m a sex addict, juvenile, irresponsible, refusing to grow up. I didn’t make things better by saying that what she needed was a good fuck. I know that that makes me sound like the stereotypical crass insensitive male but usually she liked that kind of banter. It was one of the really good things between us: she liked that side of things as much as I did. Or she said she did. Now I wonder if that was all an act too.

Anyway, she calmed down, looking at me in this superior pitying way as if I’m a scruffy schoolboy she’s found with his hand down his trousers.

‘Have you ever thought, even for a moment, about what the sex act is all about?’

‘Well, there’s a question,’ I said, as I reckoned that whatever answer I gave would be the wrong one.

‘Procreation,’ she says. ‘It’s for making babies.’

A year later Eddie was born. And I was happy. It wasn’t what I had planned but when he arrived of course I loved him. And Vicky was really happy, as if this, having Eddie, was what she had been waiting for all her life. So for a year or so everything was good. And I’m not one of these pathetic guys who gets jealous when his wife’s attention goes to the kid. I mean obviously the baby has to come first. But with Vicky it was as if she was becoming a different woman. This new Vicky lived on Planet Baby and there was room for Eddie and Eddie’s little friends and their mothers and her mother and the whole bloody playschool parent committee but not for me or for any of the things we used to like to do together. If I suggested we get her mother to look after the baby while we had an evening out or, dare I say, went away for a few days, just the two of us, she would look at me as if I had asked her if we could have a threesome with her best friend.

My mother told me it was natural: Eddie was still a baby after all and Vicky would get back to normal eventually. And I didn’t need anyone else to tell me she was a great mother. So when she suggested another baby I thought we might as well get that stage over with in one go, more or less. And obviously it would be great for Eddie to have a little brother or sister. Ben was born and I spent more time with Eddie because Vicky was busy with the new baby, so we bonded and I really enjoyed the whole experience. And this time I knew what to expect so I just got into the whole family thing and if I wanted to do something else, like catch an exhibition or something, I did it on my own.

For our fifth wedding anniversary I booked a trip to Paris. Not very original but we’d never actually been to Paris together. And it was not too far so we could be away for just a couple of days. I had it all organised, the boys staying with my mother, the neighbour feeding the cat, so that there could be no suggestion that I assumed she could just drop everything and take off.

When I told her she seemed pleased. We got on the plane and she started asking me if I had told my mother how Eddie had no road sense and that Ben could only eat the white of the egg and so on. I told her we had written the list of instructions together and that last time I checked my mother could both read and write, quite apart from the fact that she had brought up three healthy, well-adjusted children. But Vicky just pursed her lips and I noticed this little double chin she’d developed. And before you say anything, I’m not that shallow. I accept that a woman’s body changes with childbirth and I had no problems with the stretch marks and the varicose veins or the weight gain; I realise she went through all of that for the two of us. Of course a busy mother doesn’t have time to look like a centrefold but couldn’t she just make an effort now and then, for me? A bit of lipstick, a skirt and some heels, just to show I was maybe worth it.

We sat there on the plane, not talking, and I hated her. I hated her smug complacency, the single black hair that grew from a mole on her neck that she always forgot to pluck, hated her wash-and-go crop and the fact that she thought baggy brown cords and a sweater with sheep on was a nice outfit to go to Paris in. Some men might think all that’s great: a woman who doesn’t waste hours in the bathroom or hundreds of pounds on clothes and shoes and stuff. But you see, I wouldn’t have minded that. I’ve always had a soft spot for high-maintenance women. Vicky was one of those when we first met. It probably makes me a complete Neanderthal but part of me always fancied being that guy in a 1950s comedy, shaking his head in mock exasperation as his wife comes home looking cute and guilty with her arms full of bags and boxes. Just so I can take her in my arms and tell her she deserves it all and that I love her looking so pretty.

Then I felt guilty so I was extra nice and she cheered up a bit until the pilot announced that we were about to land. She started crying and when I asked her what the matter was she said she missed the boys. And I sympathised, but I have to admit I was pretty hurt as well. Sometimes I think women believe they have a monopoly on feelings. Anyway, we arrived at our hotel, which was bijou and romantic, and we had an OK evening and an OK day the next day but it was obvious she was fretting so we changed our flights and came back home a day early.

Life went on as before. Vicky agreed that two kids were enough, especially as we wanted to educate them privately. So when both boys were at school full-time I suggested she might like to go back to work. It’d be a great help. And she got really angry. What kind of father was I? Did I want our children to be latch-key kids? And all the time she had this aura, like she was the sacred keeper of the offspring. I argued that she could work part-time or we could get an au pair and she accused me of being obsessed with money. I told her too right I was, with an eighty per cent mortgage and school fees to pay for.

I felt I had gone along with pretty well everything. The kids, the estate car, the move out of London and the commute – but still I was the bad guy.

It all came to a head one evening. She was always telling me I should be home in time to read the boys a story. I could make that on a Friday but the rest of the time it was not an option. While we were living in London, which incidentally is where I had wanted us to remain, I could be home by seven-thirty most of the time but with an hour and a half commute it just wasn’t possible. Anyway, I had received an invitation to the preview of this really interesting exhibition and of course I hadn’t been able to make it, rushing to catch the early train instead.

But this evening, at the end of a really tough week, I walked past the gallery and saw that it was the last day. I decided to go in. I just thought, why the hell shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I spend some time on something just for me, nothing to do with work or Vicky or even the kids but just for me? I mean Vicky had ‘me’ time every Wednesday night but apparently my ‘me’ time was all day every day at work.

OK, so I’m getting whingey, but that’s how I felt: hard done by and put-upon.

Anyway, this exhibition … one of the artists was actually there and we got talking and it turned out we both liked these two really obscure French cartoonists. I was really enjoying myself talking to this guy. I told him about my collection and he asked if I had any of his; I told him they were a little out of my league. Before I know it he’s gone off to have a word with the gallery owner and then they come out and offer me one that I had been admiring for what amounted to half-price.

The train was packed, the carriage smelling of the usual mix of BO and cheese-and-onion Pringles but, as I stood there with this small package under my arm, I actually felt happy.

I continued to feel good right through the saga of how the boys were getting naughty, probably in protest at not seeing their father enough, and how the tumble dryer had broken down again, which was just perfect, wasn’t it, with the weather being the way it was and Ben having started to wet the bed again, and did I have any idea how tough it could be being at home all day with young kids and no adult conversation or outside stimulants?

I did sympathise, I really did, which is partly why I had suggested she go back to work.

Anyway, we were about to eat and I brought in the picture to show her, and she lost it. How could I tell her to go back to work because we needed the money and then go and spend a fortune on a bloody cartoon? And how come I had time to mooch around galleries but couldn’t make it home in time to say goodnight to my own children?

I tried to explain that I had missed the train anyway – which was true, and that the picture was practically a gift.

‘And I thought you’d be pleased: you’ve always liked my cartoons.’

I tell you, she gave this complete pantomime-villain laugh, tossing her head and flashing her eyes.

‘Like them?! I can’t stand them. Never could. God, if you want to know what I really think, they’re a juvenile waste of space and money and if I had my way I’d get rid of every last one of them.’ With that she leapt forward and grabbed the picture from my hands, smashing it against the edge of the sink, breaking the glass and gashing the actual paper.

I remember kneeling on the floor picking up the broken glass. Then I heard Eddie calling down to us, asking what was happening. The speed with which Vicky turned from gimlet-eyed harridan to soft mummy as she moved to the bottom of the stairs and called back that everything was fine, silly old Daddy had just dropped a glass was extraordinary. And I watched her, her broad back and low-slung arse in those goddamn awful corduroy trousers, and listened as she spilled out her convenient little lies. I thought, is that all she does, to all of us, lie? She turned back and walked right up to me, this triumphant little look on her face. I could count the flakes of dandruff at her temples, just where some grey was coming through. I took my picture and brought it with me up to the spare room.

Of course we didn’t split over that. We muddled along for a while. Then I had an affair with a woman at work. It wasn’t that serious for either of us but Vicky found out. Some note of Sarah’s in the pocket of my suit jacket, the usual cliché. Vicky confronted me and I realised that she wasn’t actually that upset; if anything she seemed almost gratified. She stood there, arms folded across her chest, telling me what I was jeopardising: two fabulous boys, a great wife and mother, our beautiful home. Then she listed her conditions for forgiving me. I would make sure ‘the Trollop’ left the office. I would have to start playing a ‘proper part’ in family life and, when I pointed out that paying the mortgage and the school fees is playing quite a big part, she told me I was a bloody idiot if I thought that was what mattered in life. The list went on and I listened and then, when she’d finally finished, I went upstairs and packed my bags.