The Good Divorce Guide

‘Dad gave it to me,’ Kat sighs. ‘Hush money, I suppose.’

Chapter 5

Babette Pagorsky’s smile casts the soft and comforting glow of a child’s night light. I feel as if I am sitting on Kat’s or Freddy’s bed, waiting for them to fall asleep. ‘What brings you here?’ Babette asks in her deep man’s voice. I’m brought back to reality. I’m not with my children in their cosy bedrooms but with my soon to be ex-husband in a marriage counsellor’s room. In the month between Babette making her assessment of us, during which she asked a million questions—how had we met, what did we do for a living, where did we live, how many children, and when had our ‘problem’ arisen?—and her managing to slot us into her busy schedule for our first appointment, Jonathan and I have started proceedings on our friendly divorce.

‘So,’ Babette repeats as she looks across to us, ‘what brings you here?’

Jonathan and I sit side by side (but at least two feet apart) on a capable brown leather sofa. Babette sits in a squat armchair across an Oriental carpet from us. The room, painted the palest shade of green, looks elegant rather than cosy: antiques and silver ornaments, silk throw cushions, and two lamps on side tables rather than overhead lights. It’s brilliant sunshine outside, but heavy green curtains are drawn against all that.

Babette had already briefed me over the telephone about the ‘counselling process’: we could have several joint sessions and then, if desired, we could meet with Babette one on one. Every case, she’d warned, is different, and she could give me no guarantees, or even time frames.

Jonathan looks at Babette. I look at Babette. Babette smiles at both of us. She is an elegant plump woman, in her fifties, with soft dark hair and eyes. She has a colourful silk scarf draped over her shoulders, in the continental fashion.

Jonathan clears his throat. ‘We’re getting divorced, and want to make it as painless as possible.’

‘Oh?’ Babette looks a bit put out. ‘People usually come here because they want to avoid divorce.’

‘Well, we know what we want.’ Jonathan gives me an encouraging smile. ‘We just want to take all the proper steps.’

‘So you know what you want…’ Babette echoes Jonathan, and her tone is ever so slightly ironic. Her dark eyes settle on me: ‘You too, Rosie?’

‘Yes,’ Jonathan interrupts. ‘The divorce is a mutual agreement.’

‘Mutual?’ Babette raises a well-arched eyebrow. ‘You rolled out of bed one morning, one on the right, the other on the left, and said, “Hey, let’s get a divorce”?’

‘Well…’ Jonathan begins.

‘This divorce,’ Babette’s voice is warm and intimate, ‘is your idea, Rosie?’

‘No…’ I sound uncertain. I shoot a look at Jonathan beside me on the couch. He smooths down the linen of his trousers. I’m suddenly conscious of feeling uncomfortably hot in this elegant but airless room. ‘But…but the separation was!’

‘I see.’ Babette grants me a smile so small you’d think she had to pay for it. ‘And so the separation didn’t work and you now want to go down the divorce route?’

‘I…agree that this is the best way to go.’

‘Best for whom?’ Babette asks, readjusting her silk scarf.

‘Best for…’ I begin lamely, looking around for Jonathan’s support.

‘Best for us,’ Jonathan weighs in, ‘best for the children.’

‘You think so, Rosie?’ Babette again looks at me. She’s spotted the weakest link.

‘Hmmm…?’ I’m scared of being caught out.

‘Are you succeeding’—Babette speaks slowly and articulates carefully—‘in keeping your divorce painless?’

‘Oh yes.’ I try to sound enthusiastic, but it’s difficult when Kat’s sobs last night woke me up and brought me to her bedside: ‘Oh, Mummy, will Daddy and you really never be together again?’

‘Not together as before,’ I attempted to comfort my daughter. ‘But still friends.’

But my twelve-year-old kept sobbing.

‘Yes, we’re making great progress.’ Jonathan’s optimism sounds forced. His mother hung up on him when he announced he was moving out, and she’s refused to speak to him since. When he told the children Linda would be coming along to Dim Sum last Sunday, Freddy kicked him in the shins, screaming ‘I hate her I hate her I hate her!’ And Kat very ostentatiously hugged and kissed me on the doorstep, in full view of the car waiting down below.

‘Amicable divorces rely on both parties feeling that their needs are being met equally.’ She smiles, pauses, turns to me again. ‘You, Rosie: you don’t feel bounced into the decision to split?’

Do I? I ask myself, almost surprised by the question. Babette Pagorsky’s put her finger on what has been bothering me all along. I may no longer be in love with my husband; I may no longer see my future in terms of his; but the timing of this divorce is not of my choosing. We’re not moving towards a parallel situation: Jonathan’s moving straight to Linda; I’ve got no one of my own. If I’d been able to choose, we might well have parted—but not until the children were grown up.

‘No one,’ Jonathan volunteers before I can say anything, ‘is putting any pressure on Rosie.’ He crosses his arms. I can see from the slight flush that has spread over his features that he’s annoyed.

‘That’s true.’ I nod. I give Babette a quick, uncertain smile. ‘I agree with Jonathan that there was something missing in our marriage.’

‘What’s missing, then?’ Babette gives a little tug at the scarf round her neck. ‘Have you identified the problem area?’

I sit, completely silent. I’m stumped. What was the problem? We agreed on how to raise the children. We agreed on how to spend our money. We had great sex once a week…

‘We’—Jonathan gives me a quick look—‘don’t have the same sense of fun.’

I’m stunned by Jonathan’s betrayal. ‘OK, OK’—I hold my hands up—‘I admit it, making a list of all our DVDs—alphabetically—is not my idea of fun.’ I shake my head. ‘But apart from Jonathan, is it anyone’s?’

Jonathan looks shocked. ‘I thought you found it amusing!’

‘What about talking?’ Babette seems to be studying the oil painting of a vase of roses behind our heads. ‘Do you talk in your marriage?’

We answer in unison.

Me: ‘Always.’

Jonathan: ‘Never.’ Then, with a sheepish look in my direction: ‘I mean, of course we communicate at some level.’ He shifts uneasily in his chair. ‘Rosie and I talk about the children, about the house, DIY, the garden…’

I feel a lump in my throat. It sounds so banal, so dreary, so boring.

‘The problem is,’ Jonathan won’t look at me, ‘Rosie’s never been able to understand what I do. Which makes our relationship rather limited. I can’t discuss a lot of things that are important to me.’ He is looking only at Babette. ‘It’s frustrating.’

Babette raises an eyebrow. ‘Please can you give me an example? We have to learn not to generalise but be specific.’

‘I love reading—proper, serious books. About my work—or general knowledge. Rosie doesn’t.’

‘I do read. Just not about hair follicles or the height of the Himalayas.’

‘You feel your interests are being ignored?’ Babette is asking Jonathan.

‘He ignores me ALL the time,’ I snap back.

‘Only talk about “I” not him,’ Babette chides me gently. ‘Remember that “he ignores me” is not the same as “I feel ignored”.’

‘I feel ignored, too, you know,’ Jonathan mutters.

‘You know what I’m hearing in all this?’ Babette tucks her legs to one side, and clasps her hands as if about to start storytelling. ‘I hear: “I want attention!”’

I open my mouth to deny this, but then I shut it again. Because maybe she’s right, maybe that’s what I feel Jonathan has been withholding: he’s good at noticing what I wear, the scent I’ve got on, the new haircut. But when did he last notice what I say—and what I don’t say?

‘When did you last notice me?’ Jonathan asks. And suddenly he turns directly to me. ‘Really notice what I’m up to, or what I’m saying?’

Hold on a second. I’ve played out the whole of my life reacting to, or predicting, Jonathan’s moves. I didn’t leave HOME for the course on substance abuse at Bristol because he said he couldn’t bear the thought of commuting to see me. I didn’t go with Jill on her round-the-world, year-long trip because he kept hinting that he was about to propose. I put my training as a counsellor on hold when he convinced me that to leave the children when they were young would jeopardise their well-being. It seems to me I pay very close attention to his needs.

But what about him?

‘What about YOU?’ I cry out. ‘You don’t notice anything any more. I had to remind you that we’d sent our deposit for the cottage back in February, that I changed my office days from Tuesday to Wednesday and that your mum not mine was hoping to come at Easter. You’ve been sleepwalking for months now. Sleeping with her and walking away from us.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Are you going to lie about this as well?’

‘Am I’—Jonathan is suddenly furious—‘supposed to spend £00 an hour to listen to your insults?’

‘No, the insults are free,’ I shoot back.

We both take a deep breath, look away, then back to one another. Somewhere a clock chimes: 5.30. We’ve been with Babette Pagorsky only half an hour and already we’re getting hot and cross and forgetting all about our good divorce.

‘This is not very constructive,’ Jonathan says in a meek, low voice.

From her chair across the room, Babette shakes her dark head wisely. ‘I think airing issues like this is always constructive. You can see what you need to work on.’ She folds her hands neatly in her capable lap. ‘Look at the way you’re sitting!’ She raises both hands in our direction. ‘What does this say about you?’

I look down at my arms, and then at Jonathan’s, crossed protectively over our respective chests.

‘Oh dear.’ I feel miserable.

‘Defensive,’ Jonathan mutters, with a half-smile of recognition.

‘Yes. That’s a good word: “defensive”.’ Babette nods. ‘Why are you defensive with one another?’

Silence. I squirm on the sofa.

‘I feel uncomfortable,’ I manage to say. I do: this room is suddenly oppressive, with its plump inquisitor, subtle lighting and drawn curtains. I had wanted to study Babette Pagorsky and take some tips from her counselling style. I had planned to learn from her, professionally even more than personally. Instead, I’m finding the whole exercise intimidating, as if someone were pinning me down in order to examine me carefully. Counselling may lead to a better understanding, but getting there is awfully painful. Am I going to be capable of guiding someone else through this process? Am I going to be capable of doing anything at all, after more gruelling sessions like this one?’

‘You feel uncomfortable,’ Babette is repeating my words. ‘Uncomfortable because of Jonathan, or because of this meeting, or…?’ Babette’s gaze rests on me. Why does every sentence of hers hang in the air?

‘Well…’ I feel at a loss. I’m out of synch with everyone these days. I keep mistaking people’s intentions: the driver of the Chrysler Grand Voyager in front of me was not turning left, as I presumed, but trying to park; Lech the plumber was not trying it on as he pressed against me in the tiny guest loo—just trying to manoeuvre his way to answer his mobile; Dr Casey was not cross with me when, as I sloped in late after taking Kat to the dentist, he asked me what time I thought it was—he’d simply forgotten his glasses on Mrs S’s desk and couldn’t see his watch.

‘I’m not feeling my usual self,’ I explain to Babette. ‘Awkward.’

‘When did you start feeling awkward in Jonathan’s presence?’

Was it when he explained to Kat and me that Prada came from praeda, the Latin word for loot, and she and I burst into disrespectful giggles? Was it that night at the dinner party of some old school chum of his, when he wouldn’t laugh at my joke about how do you recognise a blonde at a car wash? (Answer: She’s the one on her bicycle.) Was it when he told me that he really didn’t want my shepherd’s pie for supper and that actually, if he was being truthful, he’d never liked it…

‘I don’t know,’ I answer, eyes picking out the vine-and-flower pattern on the carpet.

Babette turns to Jonathan. ‘Can you see why Rosie might feel uncomfortable with you?’

‘It’s not me. It’s that’—Jonathan moves forward on the sofa—‘from the first, Rosie has never fitted in my world. Do you remember when I took you to our office party?’

I wince at the memory of the wine-soaked Christmas party, when Jonathan’s ‘team’, as he likes to call his colleagues, stood about stiffly under festoons of holly and mistletoe, looking awkward and impervious to seasonal cheer. The conversation moved from what mead did to our ancestors’ liver to whether the side-effects of Rollowart warranted an FDA ban. At ten o’clock, just as I thought it would be perfectly acceptable for me to ask Jonathan if we could go home, I was cornered by some bearded professorial type banging on about how German pharmaceutical companies were beating British ones in R&D. After 35-45 minutes of his monotonous monologue, and after four glasses of Rioja, I yawned: ‘What about some party games to liven this lot up? Sardines? Charades?’ The prof gave me a vicious look and turned on his heels. A moment later, Jonathan came up, ashen-faced: ‘What did you say to Emory Watson? He’s my new boss. He organised tonight.’

Why would I wish to fit into this world? I ask myself now. Eggheads, formulae, labs, white smocks and smoking glass vials: Jonathan’s work has always struck me as an extended chemistry class. And I never did do well at chemistry.

‘The children,’ Babette interrupts my musings, ‘how are they taking your separation?’

Again we answer in chorus:

Him: ‘They’re fine.’

Me: ‘They’re gutted.’

‘Explain.’ Babette turns her gentle smile on me.

‘They’—I gulp, cross my arms again—‘seem in a daze. They don’t believe that their father is really leaving. They keep asking me if there is something we can do to get him back.’

‘Rosie, they are perfectly fine when they’re with me,’ Jonathan interrupts, scarlet with indignation. ‘Honestly, Dr…er, Mrs Pagorsky. They are quite old enough to take on board that grown-ups can change their mind about whom they want to spend the rest of their life with.’

The rest of their life. Till death us do part. I can almost hear the officious vicar at St Swithin’s intoning those words in the flower-filled church near Castle Cary where we were married. It had seemed so certain back then, among family, well-wishers and lilies. My father had had tears in his eyes, as did Jonathan’s parents. My mum had spent most of her time elbowing her sister Margaret, trying to direct her attention to the groom’s pews, where not one (’not one!’ she would repeat later at the reception, fuelled by a few glasses of champagne, to anyone who would listen) of the women wore a proper hat. But even Mum had proclaimed us a perfect couple, that perfect spring day. ‘They’re just so much in love,’ she had sighed, dabbing prettily at her eye with a white hanky.

‘People change. They grow apart…’ I listen to Jonathan’s platitudes, watch him shrug off our twelve-year-old marriage as if it was the wrong beach towel. ‘I’m not the only one who knows we need to move on. Rosie’s heart hasn’t been in this for years.’

‘Maybe not, but I’m not the one sneaking around with a lover from work!’ I jump up from the sofa, grab my handbag.

‘I wasn’t sneaking around! I was going to tell you everything!’ Jonathan jumps up too.

‘Only once I caught you!’ I try to stomp off, but Jonathan grabs my arm.

‘Please, Jonathan, Rosie, sit down.’ Babette’s dark eyes grow round in alarm.

‘Will you stop picking a fight?!’ he’s yelling. ‘What are you fighting for? We haven’t had a real marriage for years.’

‘What’s a REAL marriage?!’

‘We weren’t in love. We hardly ever had sex…’

‘Last time I checked, once a week was considered pretty normal!’

‘Please,’ Babette calls out again from her armchair across the room, ‘will you sit down? The session is not over—’

‘Oh yes it is!’ snaps Jonathan as he stomps off.

I wake up and stretch out my left arm and leg, and feel the rest of the large double bed is empty. I take a minute to adjust to my new circumstances. It’s been like this every morning since Jonathan announced he wants a divorce. The little armchair in the corner of the room is half-hidden by only my clothes—not layers of his and mine. The bathroom door is ajar, but Jonathan is not standing there in his striped pyjamas brushing his teeth as he methodically adjusts the shower jet, lays a towel on the radiator to toast it, and hangs up a clean shirt on the back of the door.

What is he doing, this Sunday morning? Do he and Linda have leisurely lie-ins, when they have sex non-stop and then eat a huge breakfast and read the papers and then more sex? Or does Linda get them up and out for a brisk run and then a joint shower that leads to hotvolcanicsex?

I try to picture the room my ex wakes up in—spotless and spartan, or is Linda into Disney princess pink, with a bit of ruffle on the dressing table and a four-poster bed as big as this one? Stop it, I tell myself. Because I can spend hours, in fact have done so, trying to picture their room, and what they do and say. This divorce may be a mutual decision, but how can I help being jealous when my husband of twelve years lies in someone else’s bed?

I hear Kat moving about next door. I look at my alarm clock: 9.20. As I stir and peep over the white cotton waves, I see an unfamiliar red light blinking at me: I forgot to switch off the DVD player after watching When Harry Met Sally last night until 2 a.m.

I stir myself, and notice other unusual sights: clothes strewn across the chest of drawers and even on the floor. Jonathan would have gone mad. The curtains only half drawn and, on the bedside table, yesterday’s mug of tea. It’s as if every bit of our bedroom announces that Jonathan’s gone.

It’s the same downstairs. In the sitting room, the bookshelves look like an elderly East European’s teeth: rows with huge black gaps where Jonathan has pulled out his must-have volumes: Hair Growth, Folliculitis Prevention, Baldness is Not for Life. In the kitchen, the Sabatier knives are missing, and half the Le Creuset set. Newspapers and tins and glass bottles spill out of the bin in one vast, unecological jumble.

I’m thirty-eight next year. I feel as wary of time passing as I do of crossing a motorway: I’ve made enough mistakes already, I daren’t trust my instincts to get me safely across. I want to see the break-up of my marriage as a beginning; but right now I feel it only as an end.

I turn on my other side: my gaze meets Jonathan’s in an old photo. It’s taken at uni, he’s nineteen, maybe twenty, and staring with a solemn expression into the camera lens. I know that expression so well: full of determination. Jonathan was the first Martin to finish school, the first to go to university, and the first to make any money. His parents were incredibly proud, and Jonathan could do no wrong in their eyes. Well, except marry a London girl from an uppity family. Thankfully, my dealings with the in-laws were limited by geography, so that I only had to hear about ‘Mary Mullin up the road, she always had a soft spot for you, Johnny’ every now and then.

My own parents’ reservations that Jonathan was not one of us—comfortable middle class—were carefully concealed behind polite smiles and dry little coughs.

‘Your parents,’ Jonathan would say the moment he was behind the wheel and we were pulling out of their gravel driveway in Somerset, ‘think you’ve married beneath you.’

‘They don’t,’ I lied. ‘What did they say to make you think that?’

‘They look at me as if I were the gamekeeper and you were Lady Chatterley.’

My parents’ class-consciousness melted in their enthusiasm for Zelkin, Jonathan’s profitable venture; but maybe their son-in-law never forgot it, or forgave them—or me.

Perhaps, I muse, Jonathan’s humble beginnings have played a role in his infatuation with Linda. My ex-husband has complete faith in meritocracy, and thinks that Britons have a great deal to learn from their American cousins. ‘If you’re bright, ambitious and hard working you can do anything there,’ he would enthuse after his professional trips to the States. ‘No questions asked about who your family is or what school or university you went to.’ Perhaps he sees Linda in the same way: someone who offers him a chance to be anything he wants to be. I, on the other hand, remind Jonathan of where he came from and what is expected of him. Linda is the stars and sky above, I’m a glass ceiling.

The door squeaks open: ‘Mum?’ Kat looks in. One day she almost looks grown up; the next, like this morning in her pink pyjamas, she looks like a baby. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Hmmm…’ I nod my head against the pillow.

‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ My tousled-head daughter peers at me anxiously.

‘No, yes, I mean…I should get up now.’ I stretch, and smile to reassure her.

‘No, you stay there, Mum.’ Kat tucks me in as if I were an invalid and she a nurse.

‘Sweetpea, sit down.’ I pat the bed beside me. ‘Did you sleep all right?’

‘Hmmm…n-n-n-ot really.’ My daughter’s pretty face crumples. ‘Mummy, it’s all so terrible!’ She dissolves in tears.

‘Come here, my darling.’ I take her in my arms, and Kat, now sobbing uncontrollably, slips under the duvet beside me. ‘Don’t cry, my little Kat…’ I try to comfort her by stroking her back; ever since she was tiny this would calm her down. I feel her silky warm skin, and keep up a soft soothing murmur.

‘Mummy, is Dad never coming back?’ she sobs, and presses up against my T-shirt. I’ve taken to wearing Freddy’s, now that Jonathan’s are in some flat in Bayswater, and today I’m in a Spiderman red and blue: it rides up, so that I can feel her against my naked stomach almost as clearly as when I carried her twelve years ago. ‘It’s really over?’

I stroke her hair. ‘Yes, if you mean is my marriage with Daddy really over. No, if you mean fun, and good things, and our family and friends.’

‘Mum, if break-ups are this bad, I don’t want a relationship, ever!’

‘Not every relationship breaks up. Not every relationship breaks up badly.’ I lift her hair and kiss the back of her neck: a hot sleepy spot that I always go back to. ‘And a good relationship makes you your best.’ I stroke her back again. ‘Are you thinking about someone in particular?’

‘Mungo.’ She nods shyly, looks away from me. ‘We’ve been texting.’ I can’t help smiling: as if I hadn’t noticed. ‘When he doesn’t get back to me immediately, I’m scared it’s because he’s broken it off.’

‘You can’t run a relationship worrying about it breaking up,’ I murmur into her neck. ‘You mustn’t think like that.’

‘The great thing about texting is you don’t have to say anything to their face.’ Kat’s voice is low and soft. ‘It’s not as scary.’

‘But not as satisfying either.’ I ruffle her hair. ‘Sometimes you have to take risks.’

‘But if you do, you get your fingers burned.’

‘You mean—like your father and me?’ Kat nods. She is crying quietly, pressed against me. Did I take a risk with Jonathan? My mum would argue that choosing a man from a different background was a risk. My dad worried about our different interests. But to me, our love was an insurance policy: there might be a setback along the way, but the outcome would always be in our favour. ‘Some risks are worth taking. Anyway, you can limit it to texting for now. But after a while you really need to be in each other’s presence…nothing else will do.’ I shut my eyes, and remember Jonathan’s daily letters to me over that first summer, when we were apart, me in Somerset, him in Edinburgh because he’d found an internship at a big hospital lab. How can I survive without you? Jonathan’s letters always began. I feel as if I’ve been asked to do without an arm, or a leg. I can’t work, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat: everything is pointless without you.