Would Like to Meet

I seriously doubt that, though I change my mind when Joel walks me along the road to the place where Claire has parked her car.

“Ta-da!” he says, gesturing at the windscreen, or more specifically, at the windscreen wipers. Each now carries a succinct message – from a sock.

* * *

I still think that Joel’s anonymous message to Theo and Claire was so funny that I tell Dan about it when I get up this morning and find him in the kitchen, drinking coffee, but he doesn’t laugh at all. He just gives me a wan, half-hearted smile, and then makes polite conversation about nothing until the time comes for me to leave.

“Shouldn’t you have left already, if you’re not going to be late for work?” I say to him as I pull on my boots, then start to button up my coat.

He shrugs, then says, “I’ve got a few things to do before I go.”

He looks at me with a really weird expression – and for what feels like a very long time – and it’s as if he’s trying to convey something desperately important, though he doesn’t say a word. I’m going to be late myself, if I don’t leave now, but I’m not comfortable going while he’s looking at me like this.

“What is it, Dan?” I say.

There’s a long pause, but whatever it is, it can’t be that important, because then he just shakes his head and says: “Nothing, Hannah. You’d better go.”

I do, in case the Fembot sacks me for poor timekeeping like the woman Esther was brought in to replace, but tonight, I’m not going to bed until I’ve had it out with Dan, once and for all. This whole thing’s ridiculous, and it can’t go on.

* * *

I can’t settle all day at work, even though Esther tries her best to cheer me up. As this mainly takes the form of telling me how unlucky in love she’s always been, it doesn’t actually serve its purpose, and nor do the cupcakes the Fembot brings in “as a treat” – not once she announces what she intends to do with them.

“We’re all going to take it in turns to bake cupcakes every evening from now on,” she says. “Then we’re going to photograph everyone holding their own cakes and upload the pictures to our social media streams. It’ll help our users get to know us, and to feel they’re a part of the team here at HOO.”

“Well, that’s our credibility shot,” I say to Esther, later on. “Now the whole world will find out that we’re part of the team at HOO – and they’ll know what we look like, too. I’ll never get a proper job as an artist, if prospective employers find out I’m responsible for that stupid ‘thumbs-up, happy face’ thing.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Esther, with a rare flash of humour. “I should think the Fembot will find an excuse not to use our photos. You’re too old and I’m too fat.”

Esther can’t be more than a size 12, so I do wish she wouldn’t keep going on about her weight, but when I tell her so, she just says that, even if fat isn’t an issue, her acne is. She’s only got one or two spots, as far as I can see, but she’s right about one thing, anyway: the Fembot isn’t going to use our photos.

At the end of the day, she calls us both into her office, and says, “I know you guys are busy, and you have a lot more personal responsibilities than the younger ones, so don’t feel you have to join in with the cake-baking thing. You can contribute in some other way.”

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind but, although I’ve got Joel and Pearl to think about, Esther’s only got a rabbit, and just wait ’til I tell Dan about it! There’s no way he can keep claiming his job’s worse than mine – not after this.

Oh, I forgot, he probably won’t be claiming anything, will he? Not if he’s still being as uncommunicative as he was this morning when I get back home. I shall just have to keep talking to him, until he starts talking back. Meaningful looks never solved anything.

* * *

Oh, my God, Dan’s moved out. He snuck out today while I was at work, the bloody, bloody coward. This whole separation thing was his idea and then he hasn’t even got the nerve to face me when he’s bringing our life together to a sudden end. No wonder he was giving me funny looks this morning: he must have been riddled with guilt and, if he wasn’t, he damn well should have been.

“Thought it might be easier on both of us this way, Han,” says the note he’s left on the kitchen counter. “I’ll be in touch about collecting the rest of my stuff, and money for outstanding bills, etc. Look after yourself.”

He’s underlined the last sentence and scribbled over something that followed it. I try scratching the ink off with my fingernails, and then with the edge of a paring knife, but I still can’t tell if Dan added kisses or something, by mistake. My eyes have gone blurry all of a sudden, which is also why I don’t immediately realise that he’s left his keys on the counter, too.

When I do eventually spot his keyring, the one containing a photo of us on our honeymoon, my eyes get a whole lot blurrier and my chest gets tight, and I think I may be about to have a stroke. I call Joel’s name, but there’s no reply, not even when I shout it at the top of my voice, so he must be out and I’m all alone, which makes things even worse.

I spend ten minutes breathing into a paper bag until I don’t feel quite so dizzy, and then I crawl up the stairs and spend the next three hours curled up on the floor of our – I mean, my – bedroom, sobbing and hiccuping into one of Dan’s old shirts. I found it at the back of his wardrobe, and it still smells of him.

I don’t even know why I’m crying, for goodness’ sake. If Dan doesn’t want me any more, I’m buggered if I’m going to want him either. I’m just being stupid and pathetic with all this crying, and I need to get a grip before Joel comes in and sees me in such a state.

I know, I’ll go and plant the viola from the garden at “Abandon Hope”, and see if it survives its change of circumstances.

If it can do it, then so can I.

* * *

Joel’s just come in and woken me up.

“What time is it?” I say, completely befuddled.

“Almost midnight,” he says. “Are you okay? I was in the pub with Izzy when Dad sent me a text telling me what he’d done, so I came home because I was worried about you. I had no idea he was planning to move out today. Did you?”

“No,” I say, though I’m not sure if Joel hears me, as the word comes out more like a hiccup than a “no”, so I shake my head, for clarity. Then I roll myself into a ball on the sofa and start to cry as if I’ll never stop.

“Oh, Mum,” says Joel, in an unusually quiet voice.

He sounds so sad, it makes me cry all the more, and then he tries everything to make me stop, from patting me ineffectually to pushing a large glass of neat vodka into my hand. It must have been left over from when he and Izzy were “pre-loading” before they went out tonight.

Once I’ve drunk the lot, wincing at the taste, Joel leans over me, slides an arm under my shoulders and pulls me to my feet.

“Come on, Mum,” he says, “I’m taking you upstairs to bed. Everything will seem a lot better if you get some sleep.”

“Will it?” I say, as we make our way up the stairs. “Are you sure?”

Joel doesn’t answer until we reach the landing, and then he just says,

“It has to, doesn’t it? It can’t get worse.”

Chapter 6

Well, it’s been two weeks now since Dan left home and my mission to prove to Joel and Pearl that I’m coping is going well. Being single’s a doddle so far, even if I do seem to have signed up for rather more weekly evening classes than there are evenings in a week. In fact, I’m so busy that Joel told me to “take a chill pill and calm down a bit” last night, when I arrived home after mistakenly going to the yoga studio when I should have been at French conversation class. He doesn’t seem to realise that all I’m doing is “getting myself back out there”, like the self-help gurus advise you to – and if you keep busy, there’s no time to think, which is an added bonus.

The Fembot doesn’t know about the lack of thinking, but she does approve of the busy part.

“You’ve been coming into work unusually early, Hannah,” she says, first thing this morning. “I’m impressed. That’s what I expect from a dedicated member of the team. Are you after a promotion or something?”

“God, no,” I say, “I just can’t sleep, so I thought I might as well make myself useful rather than sitting around on my arse at home.”

The Fembot stopped listening at “God, no”, judging by her unamused expression.

Mine is more panic-stricken than unamused, as I probably should be chasing promotion, in case Joel doesn’t pay his new, realistic rent at the end of the month (the one he described as “extortionate” last time I mentioned it), but it’s too late now. The Fembot’s gone off to upload photos of her latest batch of cupcakes to the company blog. They’re owls, with faces made of chocolate icing and chocolate buttons, though I’m not sure about the Fembot’s claims that they denote the wisdom of our users. Most of their opinions aren’t worth having, as I discover when I scroll through the site while eating my lunch.

An hour later, I’ve finished my sandwiches and written a load of answers to questions asked by women worried about ageing, such as, “I don’t think my husband fancies me any more – what do I do?” It’s a lot easier helping other people who are crushed by insecurity than dealing with the same thing in yourself. Even the Fembot’s impressed by the shameless lies I’ve told, of which the most outrageous is “love conquers all”.

The trouble is, I don’t believe a word I’ve said and now I feel a bit depressed, so when Esther asks if I’d like to go salsa dancing after work, I say, “yes”, even though I’ve never been before. It’s got to be better than what I did have planned for this evening: attending a talk on the lifecycle of the electric eel. Much better, when you consider that in a couple of hours, I’ll be salsa-ing my butt off with loads of good-looking, snake-hipped men.

* * *

Esther’s got two left feet, which I know for a fact because she’s the only person who’s asked me to dance all night. The ratio of men to women at this salsa class is 1:20, whether you’re counting ones with snake-like hips or not, and I’m still ranting about why they all refused to dance with any women they weren’t married to by the time Esther drives me home.

When she drops me off, I walk inside and promptly start to rant again, though this time about men in general, not just the salsa-dancing kind. Joel’s broken the tumble dryer and left a mountain of wet washing inside the drum. He’s also left me a note telling me that he’s “just popped out”, together with a totally-useless explanation of what happened to the dryer: “It started rattling like mad, so I turned it off.”

My first thought is that Dan will sort it out, until I recall that he’s not here. At that point I get even crosser, and then I start to cry. Once I’ve stopped, I watch a video about repairing tumble dryers on YouTube and then I have a go myself. It’s not easy when your only equipment’s a knife and fork.

Joel’s obviously been raiding the toolkit I bought from Ikea after Dan moved out because, when I open it, the only things left inside are a full set of screwdriver heads without a single screwdriver to attach them to. Meanwhile, the tumble dryer’s not rattling any more – now it won’t turn on at all.

* * *

“Haven’t you solved the problem yet?” asks Joel, when he walks in at 10pm to find me on my knees, my head virtually inside the drum.

“No,” I say. “And if that’s supposed to be so easy, then maybe you should try.”

“Already did,” says Joel. “Why haven’t you heated this up?”

He points at a pan containing some dried-out pasta sauce he must have made before he went out. It’s the only thing he knows how to make, so I probably shouldn’t keep leaving the cooking to him. The trouble is that Dan always used to do it and I don’t get hungry since he moved out.

I shrug, in answer to Joel’s question about the sauce.

“For God’s sake, Mum,” he says. “You have to eat. I’ll cook you some spaghetti now, and heat this up to go with it.”

While the pasta cooks, Joel explains that he spent several hours trying to repair the dryer but then had to abandon the attempt because he was late to meet someone.

“Who?” I ask, though I’m not really listening any more.

I’m burrowing in the cupboard under the stairs, where the meter is. Maybe the dryer just blew a fuse.

“I met Dad,” says Joel. “Whoa, be careful, Mum! Are you okay?”

No, I’m not. I’ve just banged my head on the shelf that holds the iron and a pile of miscellaneous household goods – all previously broken by Joel – and I banged it so hard that now I’m seeing several Joels, all at once. It’s like looking at a young Henry VIII through a kaleidoscope. After he first grew his hipster beard.

“Did you say you’ve just been for a drink with your dad?” I ask, a few minutes later, while Joel chucks a load of ice cubes into a plastic bag, then hammers the hell out of them with the mallet Dan bought to tenderise meat. It’s the one with pointy edges, so now there’s crushed ice everywhere, except inside the plastic bag.

Joel pauses, picks up the bag and holds it to the light, then nods with satisfaction. He always likes to know why things don’t turn out as expected, though he never seems to retain that information long enough to make practical use of it.

“Holes,” he says, as he scoops the ice up off the counter, wraps it in a tea towel, and then orders to me to press it against the giant bump that’s been forming on my forehead while he’s been considering the physics of the situation.

“You look like one of those body-modification loonies,” he says, when he removes the ice pack ten minutes later, then stands back to admire the effect. “Except they prefer holes in their bumps, so it looks as if they’ve got doughnuts in the middle of their foreheads.”

“Don’t change the subject,” I say. “Tell me about your father.”

“Well, I told him about the dryer,” says Joel. “And he said if you call him tonight, he’ll arrange to pop round and fix it tomorrow if that’s convenient for you. I said it would be, seeing as you never go anywhere, other than to boring evening classes and to Pearl’s.”

Honestly, that’s so not true – and how did Dan know I wouldn’t be able to fix the dryer? I’m not totally incompetent, and I can manage perfectly well by myself, thank you very much. Or I could, if I didn’t have to share a house with the number one tool thief in the country. I’ll prove it, now.

I attack the dryer with renewed vigour, adding a carving fork and a pair of kitchen tongs to my arsenal of tools, along with a pack of bamboo skewers. None of them succeed in removing the back of the machine, but the skewers keep snapping off inside it so that, before long, it starts to resemble a porcupine. Then the carving fork skids off the plate hiding the motor, causing a shower of sparks to fly and me to get an electric shock.

“Phone Dad,” says Joel. “Please, Mum. Before you kill yourself.”

He picks up my phone, keys in a series of numbers and then passes the phone over to me. I sit and fume, while I wait for Dan to answer.

“Hello,” says a voice, after what seems like hours. “Daniel’s phone.”

Since when is Dan called Daniel? And, more to the point, it may be Dan’s phone, but why’s a woman answering it?

Chapter 7

It’s all very well for Joel to say the sex of Dan’s landlord makes no difference, but it makes all the difference in the world to me. She’s one of Dan’s colleagues, after all – he told me so – and I bet he only left me because he wanted to get involved with her. Maybe he didn’t even wait ’til then? He could have been having an affair with her behind my back for months, or even years. I can’t remember how long it’s been since he stopped paying me any attention, so it could have been decades for all I know.

“Well, that would make more sense,” says Esther, when I ask her opinion during this morning’s coffee break. “I mean, if Dan was having an affair before he moved out. Seems logical to me.”

Sometimes, you can go right off Esther. I preferred Joel’s opinion, the one he gave me when I went a bit nuts last night after I finally managed to speak to Dan.

“Don’t be stupid, Mum,” he said. “His landlady’s a right dingbat, and fugly too. I met her earlier on tonight, so I should know.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me about her, then?” I said, “That would have saved me from sounding like a nutcase when I spoke to her.”

Spoke isn’t really the word, though screeched quite possibly is. I blame that on the shock.

“What do you mean, Daniel’s phone?” I said to the mystery woman in the aforementioned screechy tone. “He’s not called Daniel, and who the hell are you to be answering his phone?”

“I’m his landlady,” said the woman. “And there’s no need to be so rude. I can only assume you’re his wife? Or ex-wife, should I say?”

That last bit stunned me into silence, but by the time I felt able to reply, intending to be ruder still, there was a scuffling noise and the woman said, “Oh, all right. If you’re sure?”

She must have handed Dan the phone straight after that, because then he began to speak.

“Hannah?” he said. “Are you okay?”

Oh, my God, I hadn’t realised how long it had been since I’d heard Dan’s voice. Maybe that’s why it sounded so different to how I remembered it. Different, and better, too. Dan’s always had a nice voice, but last night it sounded smoother, and deeper, and – oh, I don’t know – warmer somehow. It was hard to listen to, whatever the reason, so I made Joel take the phone.

“You make the arrangements,” I said. “I’ve got something urgent to do.”

When I’d finished dealing with the emergency – which mainly involved crying myself into a state of semi-asphyxia, due to shoving my face so far into my pillow to muffle the noise – it was past 3am, and Joel was sitting on the floor outside my bedroom door, as if he was my bodyguard, except for the fact that he was fast asleep. I woke him up when I fell over him on my way to the loo.

“She really is just Dad’s landlady, Mum,” he said, “so be cool when he gets here tomorrow night to mend the dryer. Please.”

I agreed, but Joel looked unconvinced by my reply.

“Cool is my middle name,” I said.

* * *

I make it home from work in a panic just before Dan’s due to arrive. I don’t know why, but it seems important to look my best tonight, despite the fact that he hasn’t noticed what I look like for years. Even when I’d really made an effort, the best he could usually do was, “You look fine.” That wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, if he hadn’t always qualified the compliment by adding, “for a woman of your age.”

That’s such an insult, isn’t it? I think it’s even worse than I used to now, because of a question I read at work today, from a man who wanted advice on how to save his marriage. It only needed saving in the first place because he said he couldn’t face having sex with his wife any more, because her appearance now “repels” him. That was bad enough, but then loads of other men joined in, saying they had exactly the same problem, because their wives had also aged so much! I scrolled through hundreds of their horrible comments before I finally found one from a female user. “Do you guys look the same as when you married your wives?” it said.

That shut the men up, and made me laugh, but now I want to look good when I see Dan – or as good as possible, anyway – but then Sod’s law ensures I don’t. I haven’t even managed to change out of my work clothes when the doorbell rings, and Joel shouts, “Mum! Dad’s here.”

There’s a whooshing noise inside my head, and I suddenly feel boiling hot (by which I mean hot hot, not sexy hot), and my legs start to feel all funny. I’ve got pins and needles in my fingers, too and I’m oddly breathless, again not in a sexy way.

I wish I could lie down until I feel a bit more normal, but I’ve got to go downstairs straight away. If I don’t, I’ll look as if I can’t handle seeing Dan – and then he’ll have the upper hand – so I make my way down very slowly. It’s not easy to appear nonchalant while you’re clinging for dear life to the banister, though I do my best.

“Hi, Hannah,” says Dan, at the same time as Joel says, “Well, I’m off out. See you guys later.”

He makes his escape so fast that I can’t stop him, and now I’m all alone with Dan.

“I brought my bike inside,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t want to risk it being nicked.”

“Bike?” I say, as if I can’t see a shiny new one right in front of me, blocking my path to the kitchen and the tumble dryer. The bloody tumble dryer that’s the whole reason I’m having to stand here, with my sort-of ex-husband, in my grottiest dress and shiny-kneed tights. And all while my legs are wobbling and I can’t seem to pull enough air into my lungs. Thanks, Joel. Thanks a bunch.

“Are you all right?” says Dan, moving the bike to allow me to wobble my way past. “You don’t look very well.”

That’s just great, isn’t it? I don’t look very well, when what I wanted to do was look stunningly gorgeous, absolutely irresistible, and totally on top of everything. Especially when Dan looks better than I remembered and has obviously taken up cycling, too.

“I’m fine,” I say, as I drag the tumble dryer out from under the counter. “Absolutely, completely fine.”

“Oh,” says Dan. “Oh, I see.”

He almost looks disappointed. As well as annoyingly attractive.

“How are you?” I say, because I feel I should.

“Um, I’m fine, too … I suppose,” says Dan.

There’s an awkward silence, and then he adds, “You can leave me to get on with this, if you like. If you’ve got anything else to do, I mean.”

He can’t bear to be anywhere near me, can he? Not even for a moment. I’m amazed our marriage lasted as long as it did, when he obviously finds me as repulsive as those horrible men on the internet find their wives. No wonder we hardly had sex any more, and so much for the excuses Dan made when I asked him why he thought that was, in the middle of one of our arguments. Repulsion’s a much more relevant factor than my going to bed later than him, and I’m sure he didn’t seriously think that I didn’t fancy him any more. I only mentioned middle-aged spread once, and I was joking!

Talking of middle-aged spread, maybe I should get a bike, or do something to get myself in better shape. It looks as if that’s what Dan is up to, and I really don’t want to think about why he’s only bothering to do it now. It’s certainly not for my benefit, is it? I think he’s lost some weight already.

I’m still trying to guess exactly how much when he finishes whatever he’s been doing to the tumble dryer, and stands back up.

“Found the cause of the problem,” he says, though he doesn’t look too pleased about it. Bewildered might be a better word.

“Someone’s cut through the wires to the motor,” he continues, “and removed some working parts. I’ll need to order replacements, so this could take a while.”

I bet he thinks I caused the damage when I was trying to fix the dryer, but I know I didn’t. It must have been Joel, the bloody idiot. I wondered why he’d stolen my wire-cutters, along with all my other tools, though I can’t imagine why he thought cutting through wires would solve anything. Dan says he can’t either, “though why Joel does most things is shrouded in mystery”.

We both laugh at that and, all of a sudden, I can breathe again. This is sometimes how it used to be: we could find the same things funny, as well as finding each other irritating.

Dan’s eyes meet mine for the first time since he arrived, then he smiles and says, “You can always send Joel to the launderette.”

“As punishment, you mean?” I say, at which the more relaxed mood evaporates abruptly. I have no idea why, but Dan turns round, grabs his bike and starts wheeling it backwards towards the door.