The Mum Who Got Her Life Back

Never-fucking-mind, I think tearfully as I stride onwards now, my breath forming clouds as I exhale fiercely into the crisp evening air. I’m being silly, I know. It’s only Christmas, and Molly is home with me already; she arrived yesterday. But then so have her friends, so I’ve just seen her as a blur who’s darted in and clogged up the loo with an avalanche of paper before rushing back out again. She found me later, trying to unblock it with a wire coat hanger. ‘What’re you doing?’ she asked.

‘Panning for gold,’ I replied.

‘You’re pretty handy, Mum,’ she said, grinning. ‘Let me know if you find something we can sell.’

The thought of my daughter’s audacity lifts my spirits as I glance across the shimmering river. Christmas will work out okay, I tell myself. Perhaps I should be more like Danny, who never gets in a state about stuff like this; to him, the festive season merely represents an interruption to his work schedule. He spends time with the kids, and sometimes he even pops round to see me – minus Kiki, with whom I have a polite-but-distant relationship. She’s fine, actually. I only tend to see her occasionally, in passing, and apart from her obvious gorgeousness there’s absolutely no reason to feel iffy about her at all.

Anyway … sodding Christmas. It’s up to Alfie where he spends it, I guess, and I just want to kick back and enjoy the holidays with my family. I’ve been working flat-out lately, finishing jobs in the early hours, sometimes tumbling into bed when the birds had started to tweet outside. On top of the textbooks, I’ve completed a series of greetings cards, a travel guide to Scotland and a department store’s stationery range recently. When I finally cleared my workload, and with Molly and Alfie’s homecoming imminent, I scrubbed the flat from top to bottom (as if they’d notice and praise my efforts!). I even bought them new bed linen, as if they’ve been at sea for six months. I don’t plan to spoil our precious time together by moaning about their toast crumbs or tendency to lie in till noon, or constantly demand to know where they’re going and what time they’ll be home—

‘Hi! Excuse me?’

I stop and glance around. At first I’m not sure who called out, assuming it wasn’t directed at me anyway. But then I see a man in running gear striding towards me. As I pat my pockets instinctively, thinking I must have dropped something, and he’s kindly picked it up, it dawns on me that it’s him: the man I encouraged to buy numerous unnecessary products for his daughter.

Oh, God, he’s going to say he knew all along that I was a phoney! And he’ll ask me if I have any other hobbies, apart from impersonating the salespeople in Lush …

‘Hi,’ he says again, smiling hesitantly now as he approaches.

‘Hi,’ I say brightly.

He stops in front of me and wipes his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Erm, you probably don’t remember me, but you helped me in—’

‘Yes, I do remember,’ I cut in quickly as various thoughts dart around my brain, such as: Shall I admit I don’t work there, and how can I do so without sounding mad? And: How is it possible for a man to appear so attractive in jogging bottoms and a running top, all claggy with sweat?

‘Well, um,’ he says, ‘I just thought I’d say hi. Nice to see you again.’ He shuffles from foot to foot. ‘Guess you’re looking forward to your break?’

‘Er, yes. Yes, I really am.’ Because it’s exhausting, being trapped in the back room, slicing up soaps! I’m aware that my smile has set.

‘Pretty hectic in there, isn’t it? In the shop, I mean …’

‘It is, yeah.’ I laugh in a tell-me-about-it sort of way.

He looks up and down the riverside walkway and clears his throat. ‘So, erm, anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for helping me choose all those—’

‘Oh, it’s fine, really …’

‘Just doing your job, of course …’

‘Yes!’ I beam at him, wondering how my cheeks can possibly burn so hotly on a cold December night.

There’s a moment’s pause. ‘Er, so, are you heading straight home now?’ he asks.

‘Erm, yes, I s’pose I am.’

‘To wrap presents?’

‘All done …’

‘Well done you!’ We laugh awkwardly and look at each other, and now I’m thinking rather hopefully: yes, I am going home, but I don’t have to stay there all evening. I could come out later as Molly’s bound to be out again, and my son has chosen to be with his girlfriend whom he has known for all of five minutes instead of his family, and—

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ he adds, ‘but you seemed a bit upset just then.’

Christ, he noticed? ‘Oh, that was just my son,’ I say quickly, ‘telling me he won’t be coming home for Christmas with me after all.’ I shrug.

‘Really? That’s a shame.’

‘The lure of the girlfriend. I suppose I don’t blame him really …’

‘Yeah. Hard for you, though …’

‘I’ll just have to manage without him.’ I smile, aware of that flat-toffee feeling ebbing away rapidly.

The man grins, rather shyly, and I sense that neither of us wants to move on. ‘Um, I don’t suppose you’d like to meet for a drink sometime?’ he asks, pushing back his sweat-dampened hair.

‘Oh.’ I realise I am beaming now, and wonder if he’s noticed the absence of a wedding ring – or perhaps it’s the way I said ‘Christmas with me’ and not ‘us’? ‘Yes, that’d be lovely,’ I say, even as I’m wondering what on earth I’m going to do about the Lush issue. How would I keep up the pretence, if he we did meet up? But what the hell – it’s just a drink he’s suggesting, and if the subject comes up, I’ll swerve him off it …

‘You’re not free later this evening, are you?’ he asks.

‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ I remind him.

‘Yes, it is.’ He gives me what I can only interpret as a hopeful smile.

‘Don’t you have plans?’ I say.

‘Um, well, my daughter’s at her mum’s tonight. Some friends of mine are meeting up later, but it’s nothing definite, nothing important, I mean …’ He pauses. ‘I’m Jack, by the way …’

‘I’m Nadia.’

So we agree to meet. I sense a surge of delicious anticipation as we exchange numbers and say goodbye, with me heading for the subway and Jack jogging home.

Back at the flat, I shower and blow-dry my hair, then rake through my wardrobe, dismissing pretty much everything as being either too scruffy or try-hard. Why don’t more outfits fall into the ‘middling’ category? Now, I’m wishing Molly was here, to vet my outfit (she just knows when things are right). But she’s out on the lash, as far as I can gather – she’s pocket-dialled me twice. All I could make out was a load of exuberant people shouting.

So I end up fishing out a dress that must be eight years old; mid-blue, bias-cut, hovering just above the knee and perhaps a tad dull – but at least it doesn’t scream ‘date’ and is infinitely flattering across my ample bottom and hips. Make-up is applied – twice, as I mess up my first attempt due to being in a fizzle of nerves. Finally, cutting it fine time-wise now, I am ready.

Christ, I reflect, checking my reflection once more: I am meeting a man I wasn’t set up with by my friends. He wasn’t picked for me in a well-meaning attempt to coax me ‘out there’ again; I chose him by myself. I have texted Corinne, who replied, simply, Yesss!! And then Gus, who sent me a selfie with an enthusiastic thumbs-up, captioned GET IN.

I virtually skip out of my flat and into the waiting taxi. And when I step into the thronging pub and see Jack waiting at the bar, all my hurt and upset over the nut roast seems to have miraculously disappeared.

Chapter Seven

Jack

My God, but she’s lovely. I’d thought she was gorgeous in her work clothes, all casual, but in her simple blue dress she really is something else.

‘Are you sure your friends won’t be missing you?’ Nadia asks as – miraculously – we find a tiny table tucked away at the back of the pub.

‘I’m sure they’ll cope without me,’ I tell her as we sit down. ‘So, what else would you have been doing tonight?’

She smiles. It’s a lovely smile: generous and open, but a little hesitant. Her eyes are an incredible shade of green, her skin glowing, her hair long, dark and shiny, falling around her shoulders in soft waves. ‘If Alfie had come home, we’d probably have watched some Christmas movies together,’ she explains. ‘We’d have cracked open the snacks – the nuts, the Twiglets, all the festive delicacies.’ She chuckles, and her eyes seem to actually sparkle, which does something peculiar to my insides. ‘We really know how to have a good time,’ she adds.

‘Alfie’s your son?’ I ask, unnecessarily.

‘Yes – he’s a twin. Molly, his sister, is home already, but I’ve hardly seen her. And Alfie’s spending Christmas at his girlfriend’s parents’ hunting lodge up in the wilds of Aberdeenshire …’

‘A hunting lodge?’ I repeat.

Nadia sips her white wine. ‘That’s kind of misleading. You’d think it might mean a little wooden shack out in the hills, wellies piled up at the front door …’

‘That’s exactly what I’d think,’ I agree, although I can’t say the subject has ever crossed my mind before.

‘Yes, well that’s what I assumed. Alfie keeps insisting they’re not that posh, but I managed to coax him into telling me the name of their place – this lodge – and of course I googled it immediately …’

‘Of course! Who wouldn’t?’

She chuckles. ‘Yep, well, it’s actually a Baronial mansion with twenty-four rooms and a dedicated annexe for falcons.’

‘Falcons. Wow.’

‘Someone’s specifically employed to be the falcon keeper. I mean, that’s all they do.’

‘They probably involve quite a lot of care and attention,’ I suggest.

She laughs and pushes a strand of hair from her face. ‘Sorry. I’m really going on. It’s the time of year, y’know. It’s all a bit … heady.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say, thinking: heady is precisely the right word, and I want this kind of headiness to stretch on and on. I do hope she’s in no hurry to go home.

‘So, what are you doing for Christmas?’ she asks. ‘You mentioned your daughter …’

‘Yeah, Lori’s fourteen – she’s my only one – and me and her mum take it in turns to have her on Christmas Day.’ I grimace. ‘Have her. I mean, enjoy her delightful company …’

‘And this year?’ Nadia asks with a smile.

‘I’ll see her on Boxing Day when I’m back in town. I’m off to my parents’ first thing in the morning. They’re up in Perthshire, near Crieff but out in the country. They have a dairy farm …’

‘Is that where you grew up? You’re a farmer’s boy?’

‘That’s right.’ I smile, reluctant to bore her to death with my entire life history – although her interest seems genuine. ‘But I moved here when I was nineteen,’ I add.

‘Desperate to get to the big city,’ she suggests.

‘God, yes. No doubt I still smelt of the farm …’

Nadia flashes another smile. ‘Do your parents still have it?’

‘Yes, incredibly – they’re both seventy this year.’

‘Pretty young parents,’ she remarks.

I nod. ‘Yeah – they were still teenagers when Craig, my big brother, was born. He and his wife handle a lot of the day-to-day now.’

‘And there’s just the two of you? You and your brother, I mean?’

‘Erm, we had another brother,’ I murmur, ‘but there was an accident …’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ Nadia exclaims.

‘A long time ago now,’ I say briskly; Christ, the last thing I want to do is heap all that stuff on this beautiful woman whom I’ve only just met. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it’s Christmas Eve, she is utterly lovely and I’ve somehow swerved onto the subject of death … ‘So, how about you?’ I ask quickly.

‘Um, you mean … my background and stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘God, where to start?’ She laughs, and her eyes meet mine, and there seems to be a kind of … moment between us. An understanding, perhaps, that we will talk about other, deeper things; not tonight, but later on, when we know each other better. Because there will be a later on, I’m sure of it already, and I sense she feels it too.

‘I grew up in Ayrshire,’ Nadia is telling me, ‘and we moved to Glasgow when I was a teenager. There’s just me and my sister, Sarah – she’s the truly grown-up one. A fully formed adult by the age of ten. Then I moved to Dundee, went to art college …’

‘You’re an artist as well as working at the shop?’ I cut in.

She colours slightly. ‘Well, um, I kind of … dabble.’

‘Right. I have to say, I can’t even draw stick men. So, how long’ve you worked in—’

‘Would you like another drink?’ she asks quickly.

‘Oh, erm – yes, but I’ll get them …’

‘No, it’s my round.’ She has already leapt to her feet. ‘Same again?’

‘Yes please.’

I watch her as she wends her way through the crowds towards the bar. Fair enough, I decide; she probably doesn’t want to be quizzed about her shop job right now. Maybe she’s just picked up some seasonal shifts.

‘Whereabouts d’you work, Jack?’ she asks as she returns with our drinks.

‘I manage a charity shop,’ I reply.

‘Really? Which one?’

‘We’re just a small operation really – half a dozen shops across Scotland, but just the one in Glasgow. The charity’s called All For Animals, we fund sanctuaries – it’s a bit of an unfortunate name as it’s often referred to as AA …’

She chuckles. ‘I know your shop. I’ve been in a couple of times, actually. It’s lovely. I mean, I know charity shops have raised their game, displaying things nicely, organising the clothes in colour groups – but yours is a cut above.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, surprised and flattered by her enthusiasm.

‘I bought Molly a Biba-style top and some vintage magazines for myself,’ she continues. ‘I was chatting to the guy who was manning the till – a tall man, very chatty, said he’s in charge of the book section …’

‘That’s Iain …’

‘He seemed lovely.’

I smile. ‘He is. He has his issues but he really does care about the shop, and the other volunteers. Makes everyone coffees …’

‘How kind of him.’

‘… with water from the hot tap,’ I add with a smile.

Nadia laughs kindly. ‘So, it’s not all volunteers, then? I mean, you’re not one?’

‘Nope, the managers are paid.’ I smile. ‘Honestly, it is a proper job. I also do some freelance proofreading for publishers and authors …’ I pause. ‘I’m sure you’re wildly impressed,’ I joke.

‘I am. I really am.’ And so the evening goes on, with both of us covering vast swathes of ground, personal-history wise, and the-state-of-our-lives-now wise: our families, our work (she happily tells me that she models occasionally for life drawing classes, but still seems reluctant to talk about her job at the shop). There is barely a lull, and every now and then, one of us breaks off to apologise for ‘going on’.

‘You don’t really want to know about dairy herds,’ I tell her, noticing now that we have pulled our chairs closer and are leaning towards each other, across the table.

‘I do,’ she says. ‘All the books I loved as a kid were set on farms. I longed to sleep in a hay barn and collect eggs. Did you have sheepdogs?’

‘Well, yes, because we had sheep too …’

‘The ones with black faces?’

I can’t help smiling at that. ‘Yes. We still have them. Scottish Blackface …’

‘Is that what they’re called? I love those!’ She grins at me. ‘Any other kinds?’

‘Um, a few Shetland and Hebrideans. They’re good if you want to do things organically. They’re smaller, very hardy, coming from the islands originally—’ obviously ‘—so they’re not as reliant on feed, they can graze on rough ground, on heathers …’ I break off and chuckle. ‘I’m telling you about the dietary needs of sheep.’

‘But only because I asked.’ We laugh, and she touches my hand across the table, which has the effect of shooting some kind of powerful current through my body. I want to lean over and kiss her beautiful mouth right there. I don’t, of course, because you can’t just swoop on a woman like that, can you? I catch her studying me with an amused glint in her eyes, and there’s a small pause in conversation that feels anything but awkward.

Because we know, I think, that this is definitely the beginning of something. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sure of anything in my life.

Of course I’ve dated women in the nine years since Elaine and I broke up. There was Amanda, who was a regular customer to the shop, but it never really felt as if it was going anywhere, and eventually she moved away down south. My thing with Zoe last year was more fiery – she collected Mexican death masks and painted pictures with her menstrual blood. She was striking, passionate and unpredictable; one minute, she’d be insisting that we should move in together and the next, that I wouldn’t see her for six weeks as she was off to some Pagan drumming thing on a remote island. When we broke up, she egged my car. ‘What a waste of eggs,’ Lori chuckled as we sluiced the windscreen down.

For a brief period, I succumbed to my mate Fergus’s nagging that Tinder was the way forward. It wasn’t just for young people looking for casual hook-ups, he insisted. ‘Old fuckers like us use it too now,’ he enthused. Although I met a couple of perfectly lovely women, it felt terribly random, and I couldn’t be doing with all that swiping business. I know everyone meets online these days – Elaine’s had a couple of relationships that started this way – but it wasn’t for me. I started to think that perhaps nothing was for me.

But now, as the evening rolls on, I wonder if this was what I was holding out for: just a lovely, normal night in a pub with a gorgeous, sparky woman.

‘What about your kids’ dad?’ I ask, having given her a brief summary of the Elaine business.

‘We get along fine,’ she replies. ‘Even the break-up wasn’t that traumatic, not really. It was my decision, finally, but he didn’t fight it. Danny said he almost felt cheated that no clothes had been torn up, no prawns stuffed in curtain poles, not a single incident of screaming.’

I smile. ‘So, you’ve divorced now?’

‘Oh, we weren’t married. But we were as good as, of course. The kids were eleven when we split …’

‘And their dad really was okay about it?’ I ask.

‘It seemed like it at the time,’ she replies. ‘I mean, he started dating fairly soon, and he met his current partner a year or so after we broke up. They’re still together – very happy, by all accounts. But maybe …’ She shrugs. ‘Later on, Danny told me he’d been devastated. I said, “Really? I didn’t think you minded that much.” And he said, “You make it sound like you just put an old armchair out for the council collection men.”’

I can’t help laughing at that.

‘Have you heard of Danny Raven?’ she asks.

‘Yes, of course …’

‘Well, that’s him.’

‘Really?’ For some reason, this feels like a punch to the gut. Her ex is Danny Raven, fêted film-maker, for Christ’s sake. So why’s she spending her Christmas Eve in the pub with the manager of a—

‘Jack?’ Her voice cuts into my thoughts.

‘Yes?’

The smile seemed to illuminate her face as she leans more closely towards me. ‘It’s very, very over between him and me. We get along fine, and we raise our kids together. But I am most definitively on my own now. I mean, there’s no one …’ She pauses. It feels as if my heart has stopped. Even closer she comes, her beautiful face before me now. As she kisses me lightly on the lips, I feel as if I might topple off my chair.

We pull apart and look at each other. Somehow, our hands have entwined under the table. There’s so much I want to say to her, I hardly know where to begin. ‘I’d really like to see you again,’ is all I can manage, ‘if that’s all right with you.’

Nadia nods. ‘I’d really like to see you too. But, um, there is something …’

Oh, shit – here it comes: the ‘but’.

‘Uh-huh?’ I say, feigning nonchalance.

‘There’s, er … a thing I need to tell you.’

I inhale deeply, various possibilities already forming in my mind: she’s in love with someone. Or something’s wrong – maybe she has an illness? Or an issue with her kids? – and she doesn’t want to get involved with anyone right now. Fine, it’s been a lovely evening; but maybe I really should get home, seeing as I still have a pile of presents to wrap for my parents, my brother and sister-in-law …

‘What is it?’ I ask lightly, draining my glass.

She looks down. ‘I have to tell you … I don’t actually work in Lush.’

‘What?’

She reddens and nods with a closed-lipped smile. I’m baffled now; so why did she spend twenty minutes chatting to me about bath bombs? ‘I’m so sorry,’ I murmur, shaking my head. ‘I just assumed …’

‘Yes, of course you did.’ She is laughing now.

‘But I accosted you and asked you all those questions about skin stuff! Why didn’t you just tell me to leave you alone?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to leave me alone.’

‘But what must you have thought?’ I laugh, mortified by my mistake.

‘You didn’t accost me,’ she insists. ‘Look – it’s me who should be apologising …’

‘Why?’ I am genuinely bewildered.

‘Well, I, er …’ She looks down at her hands, and then, as her gaze meets mine, something seems to somersault in the pit of my stomach. ‘I let you think I worked there,’ she says, smiling. ‘Actually, I sort of pretended …’

‘You pretended? Why?’

She pauses and pushes back that wayward strand of hair. ‘Because,’ she says simply, ‘I just wanted to talk to you.’

Part Two

Sex and the Empty Nester: Things to Know

 • Your friends will go on about how you can ‘swing from the chandeliers’ – or your IKEA ‘Maskros’ pendant lamp – now the kids have left home. There may be an expectation that you are doing it constantly. You might feel obliged to say you are.

 • Even ordinary sex is better now that you don’t have to be silent.

 • You might find yourself being super-noisy and shouty – more than you ever were pre-children – just because you can.

 • Being able to wander about in the nude feels like a wonderful novelty of which you will never tire.

 • It’s important to enjoy this stage while it lasts – because it might not.

Chapter Eight

Four months later

Nadia

Molly once explained to me how a microwave works, how its radio waves ‘excite’ the atoms in food, causing them to jiggle about in a frenzy, making everything hot. I feel this way whenever I’m with Jack, even several months in – not hot in a menopausal sweat kind of way, but sort of shimmery and super-charged.

At certain times my setting switches to FULL POWER: e.g. during sex. To think, I’d almost forgotten what the point of it was, apart from making babies. Like knowing who’s number one in the charts, I’d begun to assume it belonged to a previous era of my life; something I could get along without quite contentedly.

The full-power thing kicks in even whenever Jack just happens to stroll nakedly across my bedroom. I should be used to him now, as we have been seeing each other regularly since Molly and Alfie headed back to uni after the Christmas break. But I wonder if the novelty aspect will ever wear off, as I still want to shout, ‘There’s a beautiful naked man wandering casually across my bedroom!’ And I want to take a quick snap of his luscious rear view with my phone and beam it onto a huge building. Yep, I want to objectify him, plus lots of other things, because the truth is – although he’d deny this to the hilt – he has a lovely body. It’s not intimidatingly buff, and that’s a plus, in my book, as I’ve always found the idea of a six-pack disconcerting (especially as, size-wise, I am a generous fourteen). Jack has more your casual runner’s-type physique: fairly slim, although he insists that’s just the way he’s built – ‘A bag of bones when I was kid’ – rather than due to his endeavours on the fitness front.