The Birthday That Changed Everything: Perfect summer holiday reading!

Had Simon and I ever reached those levels of sexual athleticism? Maybe – but if we had, we’d been too drunk to notice. I was only twenty-one when we met, and sex at that age is all about enthusiasm, not expertise. And, in our case, it was also all about the contraception. Or lack thereof. Before long I was puking my guts up on morning rounds at St Sam’s, realising I was pregnant with the blob of cells that would become Lucy. She was a lot less trouble then.

I spent the next four weeks vomiting. Simon spent the next four weeks planning our wedding – or at least his mother did, as soon as she found out what was going on. She was a force to be reckoned with and we weren’t left much choice. Within minutes of peeing on the pregnancy test, she told us when and where we’d be getting married. I was too tired to care really, and Simon – well, he’d come from money, and respectability, and having a bastard child in his twenties was never going to be part of the plan.

Up until now I thought we’d made the right choices. For everything I’d given up, I’d gained tenfold. A good man, two healthy children, a nice home. It was more than most people got, and I’d been content. On the whole.

But maybe I’d got it all wrong. Maybe I should have spent more time getting blow-job lessons at the local College of Sex. Seven times a day? Really, was it possible?

Simon had texted me to say he’d be round at eleven, so he must be taking a break from his BJ schedule for at least an hour. He was always on time for everything; it was a point of pride with him, so I had exactly ten minutes left. Ten minutes left to rehearse speeches I knew wouldn’t come out right, as I didn’t have a clue how his side of the script went. I didn’t know if Diane was right about there being someone else, or how I’d cope with it if there was.

I’d got up early, exhausted after a disjointed and dream-ridden night’s semi-sleep. My eyes were swollen and stinging from fatigue and tears. I’d walked the dog, cried, had a shower, cried, done the ironing, cried, and had a Force Ten row with Lucy, all before calling Diane. I’d also tried on three different outfits and rearranged my hair several times before giving up in disgust. I mean, where are the style guides on How To Look Good Dumped? Or What Not To Wear While Confronting Your Probably Cheating Husband? You never see that on bloody telly, and I bet it’s not just me who needs it.

Physically, I’m not in bad nick considering I am, as my kids charmingly put it, ‘halfway to dead’, but I’m definitely at the stage in life where the perfection of youth is a distant memory.

I’m in a gym, but in all honesty the only pounds I lose are from my bank balance. I had been hopeful that the sheer effort of carrying round a membership card in my purse would reinstate me to my size ten glory days, but apparently not. What a con.

I still fit into a size fourteen, or at least most of me does. But I have a wobbly blancmange tummy that never left after childbirth, and my derrière is, diplomatically speaking, comfortable. My boobs are too big for their own good, and need an awful lot of help from a very strong push-up bra fairy. I’d ‘let myself go’, as my gran might have said.

Eventually, after a load of fretting that did nothing but get me hot and bothered, my hair had ended up in its usual slightly unruly shoulder-length bob, and I stuck with jeans and a T-shirt. I had no idea what to go for – seductive, dignified, aloof? All I felt was shattered and confused. And I knew the fact that I was focusing so hard on clothes and preparations was just a way of avoiding the ugly truth: the fact that my marriage, and life as I knew it, could be over.

I heard the key in the door, accompanied by an inappropriately cheery ‘Hello!’ as Simon arrived and let himself in.

He was wearing a pair of new jeans – at least jeans I’d never seen before. Skin-tight on the thighs and boot cut. His fair hair was styled slightly differently, swept straight back and gelled rather than parted in his traditional ‘trust me I’m a doctor’ look. And he smelled – a lot. Of some quite powerful cologne or aftershave that he’d never used around the house. He looked younger, and cooler, and actually pretty damn handsome. It was him – but not him. It was his sexier evil twin.

‘You’re having an affair with some little tart who gives you seven blow jobs a day and treats you like God, aren’t you?’ I said immediately.

I just knew – from the second he walked into the room, I could tell. It wasn’t only the new style and the new smell – it was the new swagger.

He was trying desperately to hold a serious and sympathetic expression on his face, but I could see it there in his eyes: a newfound confidence, self-belief…happiness, I suppose. The bastard.

He sat down next to me on the sofa, taking my hand in his and looking at me with that same sympathy. The look I’d seen on his professional face so many times over the years. The one that said: ‘I am the bearer of bad news, but don’t worry, I’m here for you.’

‘Don’t lie, Simon – I can see it all over you. There’s somebody else, so don’t deny it. How long has it been going on?’

‘Oh, Sal,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry…I never wanted to hurt you, I really didn’t…I wasn’t looking for this. It just happened. We’ve drifted apart so much in recent years. I honestly don’t think you’re happy either…’

I slapped his hand away and looked straight ahead. I couldn’t bear to see that sparkle he was trying to hide, the way he was sad about destroying me, but unbearably happy for himself. The emotional conundrum of the newly freed male.

‘What do you mean you weren’t looking for it? Did you accidentally fall into another woman’s vagina, then?’

‘There’s no need to be crude about it, Sal; it’s not like that! It’s not just the sex…’ – the never-ending, headboard-pounding, scream-out-loud sex, I added in my own mind’s eye – ‘it’s more than that. I’m in love with her. You have to believe me when I say I’d never do anything to intentionally make you suffer, or the kids. I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t serious. But I just couldn’t go on like we were any more. You must know what I mean!’

Uhm…no, actually. I’d been perfectly happy the way things were. Or, at least, definitely not unhappy. I obviously had a much higher boredom threshold than he did, and significantly lower expectations of how exciting family life in the suburbs was supposed to be. Simon, though, seemed to mean what he was saying, and appeared confused that I didn’t ‘get it’ – he genuinely thought we’d both been unhappy, that this was somehow inevitable or necessary, a natural progression rather than a thunderbolt from the blue.

‘So who’s the lucky woman then?’ I asked, focusing on the mistress straight away. The other issues – the fact that he’d seen our marriage in a totally different way to me – were too complicated to tackle just then. The fact that he was shagging someone else was, in a twisted way, more palatable.

Even as I spoke, I recognised that my tone of voice could curdle milk. I sounded like a bitter old hag, and might as well buy seven cats and stop washing right now.

‘Her name is Monika,’ he replied, intonating the name with such reverence that he could have been talking about the Virgin Mary. Except not in this case, it would seem, unless the Blessed Mother had taken a very unexpected turning in life. ‘We met in a…in a hospitality venue I visited when I was on that Ortho conference in London in March.’

‘The one you said was full of cranky old men talking about hip replacements over their peppered steak? And what’s a “hospitality venue” anyway? Is it double-speak for a pub or a…’

The light slowly dawned as he started to shuffle slightly nervously next to me, casting his eyes down for the first time.

‘A strip club? A strip club. You’re running off with a fucking stripper. My God, Simon – could you be any more predictable? You’re giving up your wife, your home, your kids and your bloody dog, all for the sake of someone who shakes her tits for a living?’

His head snapped up again, and I could see I’d hit a nerve. ‘She’s not just some slapper, you know! Back in Latvia she was training at catering school, then the opportunity came up to travel to London. She’s a really intelligent girl, I’m sure she’ll do very well for herself once she goes back to college!’

‘In Latvia? Back to college? Please tell me you mean as a mature student…how old is she?’

A beat of silence. He didn’t want to tell me. This was going to be bad – very bad.

‘HOW OLD IS SHE?’ I yelled in his face.

‘Nineteen,’ he mumbled, jerking his head back in shock, ‘she’s nineteen, all right? But that means nothing. Where she’s come from, that’s mature. She’s been through more than most people have already. It’s not easy growing up in Latvia, you know. There wasn’t much money, no jobs, no way out. She needed—’

‘She needed a really stupid man, Simon, that’s what she needed. A really stupid man with a bit of money and his brains in his balls. And it looks like she got exactly that. It’s pathetic…Ollie and Lucy are losing their father because you can’t keep it in your pants? Have you any idea how much this is going to hurt them?’

‘But it won’t,’ he replied, edging away from my anger. ‘They’ll understand, even if you don’t. They’re older now – we’ve done a good job raising them. They’ve had a solid start in life, and they don’t need us to be together for their sakes any more. They’ll know I deserve a chance to be happy and in love – and so do you. And there’s no problem with the house – obviously you’ll keep that for as long as you all need it – or with money. I’ll make sure you’re all provided for…’

I was momentarily struck dumb by his use of the phrase ‘together for their sakes’. Was that how he’d been feeling? Is that what our marriage had been? Had I been so stupid I hadn’t noticed – or was Simon rewriting our history to justify current actions he must be ashamed of, deep down?

It was as though I was talking to a stranger – and one who certainly didn’t understand at least one of his children.

‘If you think for a minute that Lucy is going to accept this in any way,’ I said, ‘you’re even dumber than you look in those sprayed-on jeans. She’ll hate you for it. And I don’t blame her.’

I don’t know how he’d expected this conversation to go, but I was clearly not reacting the way he’d expected. He looked almost afraid as my voice rose. He stood up, retreating by several steps and taking refuge by the bay window – presumably so he’d have witnesses if I whacked him round the head with a paperweight.

‘Don’t worry, Simon, you’re not worth it. If I’m not what you want any more, that’s your choice. Before you came here today I was really hoping we could patch things up. That we could put things right – that I could try and be more like you want me to be. But without the aid of a time machine, that’s obviously not going to happen. I can’t believe you’re leaving me for someone who’s not much older than your own daughter. We’ve gone through all these years together and you throw it away like it means nothing…’

My quieter tone calmed him, and he took a step forward, holding out his hands in supplication. How could somebody so familiar, so beloved, suddenly be a complete alien? I suppose we’d taken each other so much for granted over the years that it seemed unbelievable that anything could change. Now here he was in front of me, as a totally different person. Amazing what the love of a bad woman can do for a man.

I wanted to kill him, and spit on his bleeding corpse. And I wanted him to take me in his arms and tell me he’d stay, that everything was going to be all right. I wanted the whole damn mess to just go away. I wanted my husband back. I wanted to sleep for ever. The shock of it all was starting to really kick in, and I didn’t know where to put myself. The anger of my words was real – but the changing landscape of my future life was now becoming a hideous reality, a poisonous shift that I could do nothing to control or avoid.

‘I’m sorry, Sal,’ he said, sounding genuinely regretful. ‘If there was anything I could do to make you feel better, I would…but I belong with Monika now. If I don’t try and make a go of this, I’ll never forgive myself – and I won’t be much use here with you, either.’

I gulped back the sobs I could feel coming. I needed to weep and wail and beg God to help me, but that was between me and the Almighty. I’d never forgive myself if I broke down in front of Simon.

‘You’d better go then,’ I said, waving him towards the door. ‘Leave the keys behind. Call to arrange a time to see the kids. Your bag’s in the hall. And yes, I did pack your five freshly ironed work shirts.’

With five freshly burned holes through the backs, I silently added. But he didn’t need to discover that until Monday morning, did he?

Chapter 3

Oxford is a beautiful city. Full of beautiful people, leading beautiful lives. On a good day it’s an inspiring place to be; surrounded by ancient, ivy-clad colleges, woodland walks, quaint bookshops and the sense of being somewhere truly special.

This, however, was not one of those good days. I’d driven into town with Lucy, planning to do some shopping, but we’d almost come to blows within minutes of arriving at the Covered Market. She wanted her nose pierced. I said no. She said I was a boring bitch. I said thank you very much Lucy and headed for the Ben’s Cookies stall. She stomped along behind me, knocking dangling pigeons out of the way as we passed the butchers’ stands, sizzling with fury.

Erring on the side of caution, I went for the ten-cookie box – you can never have too much chocolate chip in a time of crisis. I passed one to Lucy, hoping it might shut her up for a minute, and wandered over to a stall that was selling fresh lardy cake and tiffin as well.

‘For God’s sake, you’re disgusting,’ she said, attractively spitting out tiny chunks of chocolate as she hissed at me. ‘All you do these days is eat. So he’s gone – so fucking what? Did it ever occur to you that eating yourself to death might not be the answer? It’s all your fault anyway…’

This was a rehashed version of one of her very favourite theme tunes of the last few weeks – a catchy ditty known as ‘You Drove Him Away (You Stupid Selfish Cow)’. She launched loudly into an extended remix, and I noticed small crowds of backpacked tourists edging around her nervously, as though she was a terrorist attack in Emo form – a weapon of mass destruction who could go off at any minute, taking all our eardrums with her.

‘And anyway,’ she screeched, crumpling up her cookie wrapper and throwing it on the floor, ‘it’s all so fucking embarrassing! Why did he have to bugger off with some teeny trollopy Iron Curtain whore, for fuck’s sake? My mates will piss themselves laughing when they hear about it! Why couldn’t he just shag his secretary like any other self-respecting middle-aged fuck-up?’

I often wonder why my kids are so foul-mouthed. I’m not. Very. But Lucy is in the Premier League when it comes to swearing. We were called into school when she was six because she called the dinner lady a ‘bastarding shit’ for giving her beans instead of spaghetti hoops. When she was forced to apologise she said, ‘I’m fucking sorry’, kicked me in the shin, and ran away laughing. Simon always blamed the Liverpool side of my family, and he may be right. I suspect those Scouse Irish genes definitely play a part in it.

She was still going great guns, lecturing me on how I was a bloated pig, a nightmare to live with, and completely bereft of any redeeming qualities. For her finishing touch she told me, and the other few hundred people in the market that Saturday afternoon, that a blow-up doll had more personality than I did and was probably better in bed, too. Nice. I can’t say it didn’t hurt, but I understand the way Lucy ticks – loudly, and like a bomb about to blow.

She was missing her dad and hurting like hell and, short of kicking the dog, which would contravene her moral code, Ollie and I were the only victims in sight. Ollie didn’t listen, and occasionally punched her in the kidneys anyway, so she was wary of him. I did listen, and as a responsible adult tried to avoid the kidney-punching thing, so I made a much better target.

I let her finish, then pointed at the wrapper on the floor. ‘Pick that up and find a bin,’ I said quietly, walking away. I heard her scream – full throttle – in the background. Priceless glass objets d’art probably shattered across the city, and shocked poodles in parks covered their ears with their paws.

‘I’m going home!’ she yelled after me, oblivious to the mounting concern of nearby stallholders, and strode off. Hopefully in the direction of the bus stops on Cornmarket, but entirely possibly to the nearest stockist of voodoo dolls, air rifles or nose piercings.

I clenched my eyes against tears, and reminded myself for the millionth time that she didn’t mean it. Most of it. That I was the grown-up, the mother, and no matter how much I was crumbling inside, she was hurting too.

It might have been stress-induced psychosis on her part, but she was right about one thing at least – it was time to stop seeking solace in the biscuit barrel. I’ve never been the kind of person who loses her appetite due to heartbreak. I’m far more likely to go the other way. At tough times in my life, a multipack of Penguins has often been my only friend. If I carried on like this, I’d put on masses of weight, be the size of two Latvian lap-dancers, and feel even worse about myself than I did already.

Since Monika-gate broke, Lucy had, predictably enough, refused to see her father, and had given no consideration at all to meeting the new love of his life. Or the ‘teeny trollopy whore’, as she affectionately called her.

Ollie had done both and, bless him, reported back hilariously on how Dad was now dressing in Bart Simpson T-shirts and pink Crocs in an attempt to look younger. I’d tried hard not to pump him for too much information, but he’s a bright boy – he gave me a full run-down before I had the chance to even consider interrogating him. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘I can’t lie – she’s not a munter. In fact she’s pretty fit, if I’m honest, which feels wrong when your dad’s holding her hand. But she talks weird – like a Russian villain in a spy film. With this really deep voice. So there’s always the chance that she’s actually a man and Dad just hasn’t discovered her internal willie yet.’

Which I must admit I found strangely comforting.

I wandered along Turl Street and out on to the High, narrowly avoiding a collision with a pack of cyclists waging guerrilla warfare on pedestrians. No, this definitely wasn’t one of those good days in Oxford. It was the new Oxford, setting for the new me, and my new, vastly unimproved life. The one where I felt completely and utterly alone, adrift in a sea of misery.

In fact, all the beautiful people and the beautiful buildings were just making me feel worse. For the first time I could understand the urge to take a semi-automatic weapon, climb the stairs of St Mary’s Church tower, and just let rip.

I stopped outside the travel agent’s, looking at the offers in the window. We hadn’t booked anything for this year. Simon had been reluctant to commit to our usual two weeks in France. He said he was getting bored of it. Now I knew he wasn’t just bored of France. He was bored of his entire life. He’d been gone for six weeks now – which equated to 294 blow jobs by my reckoning. That probably made things a bit less boring for him.

For me, it had been a torment of tedium combined with near paralysing anxiety. Six weeks of yo-yoing between ‘I can do this’ and utter desperation. Six weeks of total loneliness. Six weeks of watching mindless TV and doing household chores and wearing false smiles; my heart leaping every time the phone rang or the door was opened. Just in case he’d come home. Of worrying about the kids and worrying about me and worrying about a future I couldn’t quite get a hold of.

Six weeks of total crap, in all honesty.

Maybe, I thought, I needed a holiday too.

Ollie had told me his dad and Monika were heading off to Ibiza for a week. Clubbing in San Antonio. The thought of Simon waving his forty-one-year-old hands in the air and blowing a fluorescent whistle at a beachfront rave was one of the few things that had made me crack a smile in recent days. A lesser woman than I would hope he’d overdose on E and get trampled to death by a tranny in platform heels.

The door pinged as I wandered in, and I sat down, plonking the cookie box on the seat next to me. My new life-partner.

‘How can I help you today?’ said the sales assistant, who had ‘Nikki’ printed on her name badge. Nikki had disconcertingly huge bleached-blond hair, and skin that looked like it had been marinated overnight in a vat of Bisto.

‘I’m looking for a holiday,’ I replied. ‘I’m not quite sure what, but something special. We all need a really special holiday. So knock yourself out, Nikki – anywhere in the world, anything at all. Money,’ I added, safe in the knowledge that I still had access to Simon’s credit card, ‘is no object.’

‘Well, that’s the kind of challenge we thrive on in the travel consultancy business!’ she said, keeping a straight face. I was about to laugh but then I realised she meant it.

Her fingers started to fly over her keyboard, her face frowning in concentration. She was murmuring to herself as she worked; a steady subconscious flow that sounded something along the lines of ‘Yes! No! All booked up! No availability there…maybe…possibly…Ebola virus outbreak…border control…diamond mines…mosquito nets…’

‘Stop!’ I said, leaning over the desk to break her concentration. I had visions of ending up on a camel-back tour of Alaska or blue-tailed-skink-watching in Cameroon.

‘When I said anything, what I actually mean is a holiday with a beach. A swimming pool. Cocktails. Possibly the opportunity to do “Macarena”-style Euro-pop dances with waiters in restaurants. Lots of activities for the kids. Other teenagers, but nobody too scary who might teach them how to use flick knives or get one of them pregnant. And somewhere I can get a tan just like yours.’

Her face froze like a teak mask, clearly unhappy at this dull change of direction.

‘Well, my tan comes from the Boots in Summertown, but I presume you’re looking for somewhere a bit further afield than that?’

Suitably chastised for my lack of adventurous spirit, I watched her manicured nails go back into overdrive. Occasionally she paused to ask me a question, like how old the kids were (easy), if they liked water sports (um…possibly) and if I was into tennis (yes, if it involves watching men in tight white shorts at Wimbledon).

After what felt like a lifetime of waiting and watching, she finally looked up from her screen, a brilliant smile breaking out on her face. She had great teeth too – I wondered if they were from Boots as well but didn’t dare ask.

‘I’ve got it. It’s in Turkey, and there are just two interconnecting rooms left. Very nice, exclusive resort – lots of planned activities for young people, like sailing, windsurfing, water-skiing, as well as for adults. Tennis lessons. Golf if you want it. Beauty treatments, spa. If you don’t mind me saying, you look a bit tired – I think this is just what you need. A perfect holiday.’

She was right. I was tired. And more than a bit…A perfect holiday.

Now, that sounded even better than another cookie.

PART TWO

Chapter 4

‘You mean to tell me there’s no fucking hairdryer in this dump?’ said Lucy, stalking round our rooms as though she’d just been stranded on a landfill site and told to lick old tins of cat food for tea. ‘You told me there would be!’

‘I’m sure there is, somewhere, Luce, I’ll look later…’ I answered, puffing a bit as I dragged the suitcases through the door. Ollie followed, hefting the biggest case into the corner and kicking it straight.

‘I’ve got a solution, Lucy,’ he said. ‘When you’ve washed your hair, go down to the kitchens and stick your bloody head in the microwave.’