The Good Divorce Guide. Cristina Odone

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СКАЧАТЬ your husband’s lover.’ Jill takes a long sip, then twirls her flute pensively: ‘You should get your revenge. Leave them penniless.’

      ‘Jill, I don’t want a nasty, messy break-up. Neither does Jonathan.’ I finish my glass. ‘I believe we can separate in a really civilised, non-traumatic way.’

      ‘And I bet’—Jill leans over, up close—‘that you believe in Father Christmas too.’

      Mealtimes, I discover over the next few days, are tricky. Even though I’ve moved his chair into the garden shed, and leap in to fill every conversational gap with some innocuous comment about their school or my work, nothing can disguise the Jonathan-shaped hole at our table. I’ve taught myself to check the table setting before calling the children: if I’m not careful, I’m on automatic pilot to set for four, which then means I hurriedly whisk plate, fork, and knife away while Kat and Freddy look on, sad but silent.

      But mealtimes could be tricky with Jonathan around, too. There was hair: ‘I’d be very interested to see if Louis Vincent keeps that head of hair,’ Jonathan would say, raking a hand through his own thick dark curls. ‘He’s what—forty? Forty-one? It really is phenomenally full. Unusual in a fair, Nordic type. Far more common in a dark-haired Latin. Which is why Zelkin sales are not very good in France or Italy.’

      There was food: ‘Hmmmm…’ Jonathan would savour the mouthful of risotto, then cast me a suspicious look. ‘Did you make it with proper stock or is this a stock cube? I’m getting a slight aftertaste of monosodium glutamate…’ And I’d own up, feeling criminal for having failed to spend two hours boiling a chicken carcass with onion (four cloves stuck into it), bay leaf, carrot and two stalks of celery, as my gourmand husband insisted gave the best flavour.

      Then there was the ‘Quiz’: ‘Let’s see, children, who can tell me how many wives Henry VIII sent to the block?’ Or, ‘Can anyone remember what a coniferous tree is?’ While I’d roll my eyes at supper being turned into quiz night at the local church hall, the children enjoyed their father’s inquisition, giggling openly about their ignorance and looking admiringly as Jonathan answered his own questions.

      Without Jonathan, suppers were quieter but less testing.

      ‘Freddy, elbows off the table,’ I warn, ladling gravy over each plate. ‘Kat, put that phone away.’

      I watch the children eat. Freddy’s round cheeks fill as he slowly chews the chicken. His expression is serious, brows gathered in thought. Freddy hasn’t shed a tear over our separation, but he’s coming to my room every morning at five, a toddler’s habit he’d shaken off six years ago. Your son needs you, Jonathan, I mentally address my husband, it’s no good pretending a part-time dad will do. I turn to Kat as she pours herself a glass of water. She has my mum’s colouring, darker than mine, but the shape of her mouth, her profile, even some of her mannerisms are reminiscent of a younger, fresher version of me. As she sits now, head to one side, a faraway look in her eyes, I am reminded of my twelve-year-old self, sitting between Dad and Tom at supper, eager to join in the grown-up conversation. I took our family’s wholeness for granted; it was a given that Mum and Dad were together, and would stay that way for ever. No such givens in Kat’s life. And without them, can she grow up confident and happy and independent?

      A bleep brings me back to the supper table; under the table, I see Kat’s fingers busily tap-tapping away on her mobile.

      ‘Kat! The phone! It’s rude.’

      ‘OK, OK, it’s off !’ Kat sulkily switches off her mobile. ‘What’s the big deal?’

      ‘It makes us think we don’t mean anything to you.’

      ‘Mum…’ Freddy sets down his fork and turns to me, suddenly serious; ‘do you think that’s why Dad left?’

      ‘Apparently one in two marriages end in divorce.’ My mother sets down her weekend bag. ‘We’re getting worse than the Scandinavians.’

      ‘It’s not divorce, Mum,’ I explain patiently. ‘It’s a trial separation. We need some time to think.’

      ‘I don’t think he’ll be using the time to think.’ My mum extracts her flowery toiletries bag.

      We’re in the guest bedroom, once taken up by a succession of Latvian, Polish, and Hungarian au pairs. Now Otilya, our cleaner for the past ten years, has stemmed the flow of au pairs by offering to watch the children until I get home from work.

      ‘I never thought’—my mother shakes her head mournfully—‘it would happen in our family.’ She sighs. ‘It’s horrible. What am I going to tell your Aunt Lillian? And Cousin Margaret? Oh, it’s so…so embarrassing.’

      Embarrassing? I give my mother a look: ever since I was this high, my mother has managed to embarrass me. Other mums accompanied the class responsibly on school trips; mine got caught smoking with the sixth formers and led the back of the bus in rousing renditions of ‘The Good Ship Venus’. Other mums might gently query their child’s mark with the relevant teacher; mine would write them five-page letters warning them not to be so provincial in their thinking. Other mums would put off any talk of the birds and the bees; mine was drawing diagrams and labelling them with rude words and inviting my friends to have a look ‘and see what’s what’.

      Embarrassing, indeed.

      With a huge effort I swallow my reproaches. She’s here and the summer holidays have not got off to a great start, as Jonathan has just announced that he thinks our usual fortnight in Devon would be ‘inappropriate’ this year.

      ‘Cup of tea?’ I volunteer.

      ‘I’ll come down with you, let me just organise my things,’ my mum says as she starts unpacking. Quickly and methodically, she hangs up her summer dresses and places her shirts and underwear in neat rows in the chest of drawers (I must have been looking for my mum when I married a neatness freak). She is always organising things: her house in the little village in Somerset she and Dad retired to; the members of her local Ladies’ Lawn Tennis Club; my dad’s life as a GP; mine and Tom’s as their none-too-ambitious children. She didn’t organise Dad’s untimely death, though, or my brother’s marriage to an Australian, who insists on Tom staying in Oz. And these failures spur her on to be even more in control of what is left.

      ‘I’ll come right over,’ Mum had said when I rang to tell her about Jonathan leaving home. ‘You need your mother at a time like this.’ She would brook no argument, and rang me within half an hour with station, platform and arrival time. Exhausted from days of poor sleep, I was too tired to argue—or remember that my mum’s assistance is not quite the balm to human suffering she believes.

      ‘I always did worry about your different backgrounds.’ Mum shakes her head as she hangs up her dress.

      I haven’t forgotten the scene she made when she found out I was marrying a working-class boy from Leeds: ‘You are mad, barking mad! He won’t know how to hold his knife and fork!’

      ‘Mum, he’s lovely and so clever. His boss says he’s got a brilliant future ahead of him.’

      ‘I bet they have illuminated reindeers on the porch at Christmas.’

      But Mum calmed down when Jonathan impressed my dad by confessing that he read the BMJ for pleasure. My parents’ grudging acceptance turned into positive praise when Jonathan made money with the СКАЧАТЬ