The Thirty List

‘Well, yes, those start off as pictures too.’

‘They’re on TV.’ Alex was sceptical.

I gave up trying to explain animation, largely because I couldn’t understand it myself. Alex fixed me with his dark eyes. ‘Will you do a funny picture for me, Rachel?’

I looked at my things, my Japanese paper inset with silk, my fine ink pens, my paintbrushes and easel. It would be the simplest thing in the world to pick them up and draw. After all, I used to make money from it. I knew I could do it. And yet I hadn’t lifted a pen or a brush since the Incident. ‘I don’t know, Alex. I …’

‘Oh, please! Max really wants one. He told me he did.’

I sighed. I had to start sometime, and no one else had to see it except a small child and a dog, after all. I selected a fresh sheet of card and lifted my favourite drawing pen, feeling it snug between my fingers. I took a deep breath. ‘What would you like a picture of?’

‘Max,’ he said immediately. On cue, the little dog emerged from round the door and took a leap onto my lap, putting his head on the table. Two pairs of dark eyes watched me. I’ve never really wanted to draw ‘straight’—which is why I didn’t go to art school and failed Art A-level—but I could do funny things, doodles and caricatures, and people seemed to like them. Or at least they had before the Incident. I quickly drew Max, a sad-faced dog, all droopy ears and big eyes. ‘There you go.’ In a thought bubble was a picture of some biscuits surrounded by hearts.

Alex’s laugh went right to my heart, the purest sound I thought I’d ever heard.

I held out my hand to him. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a biscuit ourselves. But you can’t eat it with your boots on.’

‘Why not?’ His hand was warm and sticky.

‘Um … it’s a very old rule. Bad manners.’

With this combination of bribery and lies, I persuaded him to let me rinse the Wotsits off his feet. Then I followed him downstairs, plucking up washing and toys as I did. I’d fallen into this routine in the two weeks I’d spent in the house, and it was a peaceful, ordered existence. When the kid was in bed, Patrick and I talked, getting to know each other, gently skirting around the topics of Michelle and Dan. It was so nice to have someone to cook for—for the past year or so Dan had rarely stopped working for dinner, or ate with his BlackBerry in his lap. Patrick was a real foodie, and when he cooked it was all seared scallops and marinated venison. My parents would have choked—Monday night was Dolmio and pasta for them.

‘Rachel!’ came an impatient voice up the stairs. ‘You said I could have a biscuit!’

‘Coming,’ I called, scooping up the disembodied face of James the Red Engine on my way downstairs.

Today was going to suck anyway, because I had to see Dan’s mum. Jane was everything I wasn’t—elegant, controlled, decorous. I had never once seen her without heels on, even round the house. She’d been a nice mother-in-law, I supposed—all thoughtful little gifts and cards in the post when I had an interview, or an anniversary, or it was the pot plant’s birthday, that sort of thing. But often I’d wished Dan had a gaggle of siblings milling about, so I wouldn’t have to go to that beautiful empty house and answer questions in strained silence as the clock ticked.

It was Saturday, so Patrick was at the kitchen table as I tried to leave, watching me flap about trying to find my shoes while he drank coffee from his posh silver machine. I was scared of that thing. It had more buttons than a NASA launch pad. ‘What is it today?’

‘Mother-in-law,’ I said miserably, lacing up my Converse with one foot on the stairs.

‘Ah.’ He winced. ‘Luckily, my in-laws are in New York. I had to ask Michelle’s father, the congressman, for permission to marry her.’

‘Isn’t that a bit medieval?’ Dan had suggested the same, and once I had stopped laughing I’d told him not to be daft. I hadn’t asked Dad for permission for anything since I was seven, and unless it was about Airfix models or Countdown, he wasn’t going to have an opinion.

‘She insisted. I keep wondering if I’m supposed to sign her back in again like a hire car.’ Look at him, making jokes about divorce while he ate those little teeth-shattering biscuits he liked. He had come on.

Finally, I was ready. A bit of dishevelment would probably help my case anyway. ‘I better go,’ I said reluctantly.

‘Good luck,’ Patrick crunched.

‘Thanks. I need it.’

Things that suck about divorce, number fifty-nine: having to prise yourself away from your in-laws.

Jane was early. She was always early for everything and, as I was always ten minutes late, this stressed me out. I could see her through the window of the café, her hair perfect, her suit pressed, looking anxiously at her watch. For a moment I was tempted to run away, never have to see her again in my life—wasn’t that what divorce was for?—but I remembered what I had to do, took a deep breath and jiggled open the door.

She put on a strained smile. ‘Rachel, darling.’

‘Hello.’

There was an insanely awkward moment where she reached to hug me and I backed off, so her Chanel lipstick smudged on my cheek. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Oh, you’re not—’

‘Well, I am—’

‘Well, that’s all right. Would you like coffee?’ A slip-up, rare for Jane. She must have been nervous. I don’t drink coffee and never have, and she’d been pointedly remembering this since I first came to her house aged twenty, in my muddy red Converse that I’d drawn on with fabric pen.

‘Tea, please,’ I told the waiter.

Jane and I looked at each other. ‘I—’ I reached into my bag and took out the lump of cotton wool. ‘Before I forget.’

She coloured. ‘Oh, thank you. You didn’t have—’

But I did. When someone gave you a family heirloom for an engagement ring, you couldn’t keep it when they decided they no longer wanted to be married to you.

She unwrapped it—why, I wasn’t sure, to check it was there, or more likely just for something to do—and the wink of diamond and sapphire filled my eyes. I couldn’t believe it when Dan presented me with this rock and I was supposed to put it on my nail-bitten, ink-smeared left hand. Jane stowed it in her expensive bag and I said a brief farewell to the ring that had weighed me down for three years.

‘So. Are you all right, dear?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s been hard. It wasn’t easy to find a place, but I’m settling in now. It’s been tough trying to find a new job, but I have a few interviews lined up and …’

Jane’s face had tightened. Like many people who didn’t lack for money, she hated talking about it.

‘How’s Dan?’ I asked carefully.

‘He’s— I’m not sure. Won’t talk, but he’s working a lot and eating junk food. I worry. It just seems such a shame,’ she said. I stiffened. ‘You seemed so happy. I was looking at your wedding photos this morning. It was such a nice day. And of course, Michael was so happy …’ Her eyes filled with tears and I felt my own nose sting. Dan’s father had died six months after we got married, another sudden stroke carrying him away for good. It had been a lot to take so early on in our marriage.

Our drinks arrived, and I stared at the poncey infuser that came with my tea. I’d been doing my best to block out our wedding, how much I’d loved my dress, how the sun shone even though it was only April, how my mum got drunk for the first time in her life and danced on stage to ‘Tiger Feet’.

I could feel it rising up in me, that wave of dark that drowned out even tears. I gasped for breath and said with difficulty, ‘We were happy then. But we changed.’

‘People don’t change, darling. He’s still the same Dan he was. I know his silly job has eaten him up, but maybe a holiday …’

‘We had a holiday.’ A few months before, we’d gone to Antigua on a last-ditch ‘making the effort’ trip. It was a disaster. I could almost hear the pounds cascading out of our bank account with every suck and hum of the air conditioner. We were miles from anywhere in a package hotel full of Russians in thongs—and that was just the men. The drinks were watered down and the evening buffet gave Dan raging food poisoning. He stayed in the room for days, groaning, and I walked listlessly between the bar and the pool, trying to avert my eyes from Vladimir’s hairy nether regions. I don’t think I’ve ever been as unhappy in my life as I was on that ‘luxury’ holiday.

‘What about couples counselling?’

We’d actually tried that too, for two sessions, which ended when Dan had stormed out kicking the door and calling me a particularly horrible name. I know he was … upset about what happened, but still.

Jane was speaking very carefully. My heart began to thud. ‘You know, people can forgive a lot. I’m sure this thing now, with the girl … it won’t last. He’s just upset. I know him.’

I kept my face very still. What girl? What girl?

‘So maybe if you both could get past … everything that went on, give it another try …’

I had to get out of there. My voice came from my stomach, weary and desperate. ‘No, Jane. People don’t get past it. I tried. He kicked me out. So no. I’m sorry. He said there was no chance.’

She dabbed at her lips, leaving a red stain on the napkin, like a tiny ruined heart. We jostled awkwardly over the bill, and then I abruptly left. I could see her through the steamed-up café window, the woman I’d thought I’d know for the rest of my life. Now I’d probably never see her again. Things that suck about divorce, number sixty-seven: wondering whether you’re pleased about that, or hurt, or somewhere in between, and what that says about you.

I walked back to the house past the shops of Hampstead, the dinky baby boutiques and upmarket clothes shops. Everywhere were yummy mummies with Boden tops and knee boots, crunching biscotti while adorable toddlers ran about in yellow macs. I was alone, adrift. I walked and walked to try to stay ahead of that wave inside me. I knew what it was like when it hit—the black water filled with rocks and debris, the suffocating slap of it. I walked until I was almost running, panting, not sure of what it was I was trying to get away from. What was I even running to? I had nowhere to go.

I was trying not to think about what Jane had said, wrapping the words in cotton wool like the ring I’d given back. Dan had a girl. Who was she? Who was she? In my mind I rifled through his Facebook friends. Someone from work? Most likely, he practically lived there. So who?

I couldn’t believe he was ready to see someone else. I was nowhere near it. I was like an emotional octopus—legs everywhere, suckers desperately trying to attach onto anyone I could find. Just trying not to get swept away. He was moving on, swimming happily in the ocean of single life, and I was belly-flopping on the beach. I needed to work on that metaphor too.

Patrick was still in the kitchen. Damnit. I wanted to eat a thousand Jaffa Cakes and curl up to cry. ‘You’re back early.’

I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘I thought I might walk Max.’ Anything to keep moving.

‘I walked him earlier.’ He saw my face. ‘Was it rough?’

I could only nod, and then the wave hit and my voice was drowned in thick, choking tears. Patrick did what any man would do when a woman started crying in front of him—looked awkward. ‘Oh. Let me get some tissues.’ I managed to get a hold of myself while he was searching for the lavender-scented, balm-infused tissues Michelle bought—no Kleenex for that lady—so when he came back I was just staring at my hands, callused and bare, and snivelling a bit. He made me tea and found biscuits, until finally there was no more displacement activity and he had to talk to me. ‘Did you fight?’

‘No—she’s very kind. Always has been. That’s what makes it hard, especially when I don’t de-de-deserve it.’ I blotted my leaking eyes. I tried to think how I could explain. It’s hard to tell your worst, darkest secrets to a stranger. ‘During the end of the marriage, there were … things … things that made it worse … you know … and now she says he’s seeing someone, already, and I guess it’s my fault …’

He was standing behind me and, for a moment, I felt his hand on my shoulder. ‘You mustn’t beat yourself up. A failing marriage is like a war, Rachel—you’ll both do terrible things, and neither of you will win. Even if your ex is seeing someone, it’ll be a rebound thing, a disaster. You know that.’

‘Hmm.’ I stared at my hands, thinking—he wouldn’t say that, if he knew.

‘I know,’ he said brightly, ‘why don’t you plan something off your list? I’ll get it.’ He took his hand away and I got a whiff of his sharp citrus smell, and it flashed into my head—number five: sleep with a stranger.

‘Sounds good,’ I said shakily, making a mental note to avoid that page. ‘But which one?’

He was leafing through the book, which I kept on top of the fridge. ‘How about stand-up comedy?’

I smiled. ‘Yes, I’m hilarious right now. Would you suggest the routine where I cry hysterically, or the one where I blow my nose loudly?’

‘I think you’re very funny. You always make me laugh when you’re talking to Max.’

‘Thanks. But I really can’t. Look at me, I’m not fit for anything right now.’

Patrick looked at me helplessly, like a gadget that he didn’t know how to fix. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

I blew my nose. ‘You’ve let me live here. That’s a massive thing. I know I’m not much fun, moping around listening to Magic FM, songs for saddos, eating all the biscuits …’

‘I’ve got an idea.’ He leapt up. ‘You sit here a minute.’ He went into the living room and I heard him scrabbling around. ‘Have you seen my iPad?’

‘It’s on the dock there.’

‘Great. Now wait a second.’ I heard more fiddling. ‘Oh, what’s wrong with this bloody thing? “Device cannot sync at this time”. What does that even mean?’

I sniffed. ‘You know, they said that about the Titanic too and look how that turned out.’

‘Hey, that’s good! See, you are funny. OK, it’s working. Wait there a minute.’

I waited in the kitchen. My eyes felt red and sore and I was starting to be embarrassed about weeping in front of him.

‘Hey, Rachel, what video is this?’ Patrick was standing in the doorway. He wore a black polo-neck jumper, and on top of his head was a pale-coloured swimming cap, making him look bald if you squinted. Music began to play from the dock. He opened his eyes up really wide and started to sing along. ‘It’s been some-thing hours and I don’t know how many dayyyys … since you took your love awa-a-ay.’

It was the video for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, which I’d been playing on a loop since I moved in. I smiled. ‘All right, I take your point.’

‘I’d just like to know though, what doctor is this she’s been going to? She’s already said she goes out all night and sleeps all day, and he’s advising “girl, you better have fun no matter what you do”? Fun is the last thing she needs. I’d like to know who this doctor is, so I can have him struck off.’

‘Yes, yes, very good. I’ll write it down for my comedy routine.’

‘OK, well, how about this? Up the tempo a bit.’

He fiddled with the dock, then took off the swimming cap, fluffed up his hair and pouted, dancing around by himself. ‘What are the words again? Something about working in a cocktail bar? Duh-duh duh-duh baby! Duh-duh duh-duh wo-oh-oh-oooh!’

‘Actually, we prefer the term “mixologist” these days. “Waitress” is kind of demeaning. I’m waiting on a callback about a part in EastEnders anyway.’

The swimming cap had left a red line around his forehead. ‘Are you cheered up at all?’

I thought about it. ‘A little bit.’

‘Good!’

‘Will you put the swimming hat on again though?’

‘I knew it. Latex—works every time with the laydeez.’

‘This explains a lot to me about why you’re single.’

‘Ha ha. So listen, will you think about the stand-up comedy? It must be on the list for a reason, and it’s a good place to start.’

I heard myself say, ‘I’ll do it if you do.’

Chapter Eight

‘Now, I’m recently single, so if you have any nice available friends … or brothers … or dads … granddads … I’m not too fussy. Seen all that stuff about Fifty Shades of Grey, eh? The trouble is, they don’t make erotica for bookish ladies like me. My idea fantasy would be this—I’m a librarian. A man comes in wearing braces and glasses. Hey, got a copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel? Which version? The one her damn husband didn’t butcher, of course. Then we roll around in the stacks discussing gender politics.’

I crossed all that out with a big X and wrote a little note to myself: THIS IS RUBBISH.

‘So, I’m recently single and I listen to a lot of Sad, I mean, Magic FM. You know in the song “Nothing Compares 2 U”? How great is Sinead O’Connor’s doctor, advising her to have fun no matter what she does? All mine ever says is, “Really, are you sure it’s just two to three units a week?” and “Come back in a week if it’s still itching.” Although I can’t help wondering if in her emotional state Sinead is confusing “doctor” with “low-rate pimp”.’ That was better. Maybe I could do a whole riff on how when you have a break-up you spend all your time listening to maudlin pop songs, and overanalysing the lyrics of them.

I think it was the promise of Patrick on stage that had made me say yes to the comedy. His uptight English manner making jokes and performing—I couldn’t picture it. So now I was neurotically writing down ‘comedy’. What was funny? I was getting divorced and effectively homeless and had no money—hilarious stuff! I’d have my own sitcom by the weekend.

Things that suck about divorce, number one hundred and forty-eight: there’s no one who knows you better than you know yourself, to tell you when, actually, you really can’t do something and should just stay at home and watch TV.

Patrick, with his annoying Type A personality, had already booked us into a weekend course by tapping two buttons on his iPad. He was as bad as Cynthia for actually making things happen. By lunchtime, all I had was a page of crossed-out phrases like ‘loose women—tight women, more like’ and stupid lists like ‘things you leave behind when you move out of your house after divorce (KT Tunstall CD, lemon juicer)’. I decided to go downstairs for lunch. All my cartoon work was sitting undone, it was past Doctors time and I hadn’t even started on any of the moving admin I still had to do (change address, file for divorce, buy laundry basket).

Patrick was at the kitchen table, his drawing board sitting unused beside him. He’d decided to ‘work from home’ that day—i.e. sit about obsessing about jokes. He was staring at a piece of paper and muttering to himself. I recognised a fellow comedy casualty. ‘Struggling?’

‘Is it just me, or is nothing funny any more? Literally nothing?’

‘I doubt I would even laugh at a video of a cat running into a wall right now. That’s how bad things are.’

‘Why are we doing this, Rachel?’

I spooned Darjeeling into the tea infuser. ‘Because if you can’t go back, you have to go forward.’

He seemed to find this cheering. ‘That’s good. And I can’t go back, can I? Neither can you. But do we actually have to go so far forward? I mean, we’ll be on stage. The last time I did that I was nineteen and rocking out with my band, The Corduroy Underground, at my university summer ball. We were awful.’

‘What did you play?’

‘Bass. I sang too. It was sort of my band.’

‘Do you play now?’

‘Oh, no. Michelle made me put the guitars in the attic. They were cluttering up the place, she said, and Alex might fall over them.’

I thought about this as my tea brewed—I believe that was why it was invented, in fact. To let your thoughts infuse slowly as the leaves did. ‘Patrick? Have you thought any more about doing your own list? They say divorce is the time to do things—you know, experiment. Take back all the parts of yourself you put away for the person you were with.’ As I said it, I imagined bits of him locked in an attic—music, a sense of fun maybe, his laugh, which I hadn’t heard since I moved in. ‘So what would be on yours? You said extreme sports before.’

‘Oh, I don’t have time for a list.’

‘You’ve got time to watch all five series of Breaking Bad,’ I pointed out.

‘Hmm. You have a point.’

‘Go on, write it down. It’ll free you for comedy at least. Get the brain moving, that sort of thing. Tell me one thing you wish you’d done in the past five years.’

‘Get drunk,’ he said right away. ‘That sounds bad, I know. I just used to really enjoy going to the pub, chatting about nothing, getting into stupid rows about who was the best Batman, that sort of thing. Since Alex I’ve been too scared, in case he needs me.’

‘Couldn’t someone babysit?’

‘I don’t know who I’d trust.’ I wondered why he was so reluctant to leave Alex with anyone—had he and Michelle just been really overprotective? ‘I’ll think of a way, I promise. No divorced person should have to do it without the aid of alcohol.’

‘Glad to have you in my corner.’

‘What else?’

‘Skydiving is a definite. I’ve always wanted to try it.’

‘OK. We have getting drunk and skydiving. Maybe not at the same time. More?’

He was on a roll now. ‘I’d like to go to a festival. Michelle never would—she hates camping, and she’s not much of a music fan.’

‘A festival is on my list, so you can’t have it, but you could certainly go. Alex could go to that,’ I said, scribbling it down.

‘Hmm, yes, he probably could. Max too.’ I was getting another mental image—the little dog at Glastonbury, watching a field full of posh hippies dance about with no clothes on.

Patrick’s suggestions were coming fast now. He also wanted to buy a really nice car, take Alex overseas for the first time, learn to fillet fish—I know, of all the things you can do in the world he wanted to handle fish innards; I guess the gut wants what the gut wants—take up climbing and enter Max in a dog show. These were getting more outlandish now. I could more easily imagine Max skydiving than obeying dog commands.

‘You should put that you want to play in a band again,’ I said. ‘That was the first thing you mentioned, remember?’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve sort of lost touch with most of my mates. Been so busy with work and Alex, you know.’

‘True friends don’t mind if you don’t see them for a while.’

‘I’d be rubbish now. I haven’t played in years.’

‘You think I was any good at dancing? The idea is to be slightly terrified at all times.’ I rapped the list with my knuckles. ‘If I can offer my opinion as a professional listmaker, these are too safe.’

‘Skydiving? Climbing?’

‘Yeah, but you’re not scared of those, are you? I mean, no more than a normal person who isn’t mad. You don’t mind heights?’

‘Not really.’

‘Then it’s too safe. So what’s your idea of hell? Like the most terrifying thing you could do of an evening? Nothing with sharks though, please,’ I said quickly.

‘Why not?’

‘I am really, really afraid of sharks.’

‘You know they only cause about ten deaths worldwide per year? More people die from bee stings. Are you afraid of bees?’

‘Bees don’t come up from underneath you and bite you in half.’

‘Or lightning, that’s pretty dangerous. Are you scared of that?’

‘Again, not likely to chomp me.’

‘Tigers? They can be pretty chompy.’

‘I’d see them in time to run away.’

‘I see. So it’s the element of surprise that frightens you?’

‘A bit. Mostly though, it’s the chomping. Now, pick something scary, that isn’t about sharks.’

‘I suppose … go on a date sometime.’ He said this last very suddenly. Almost shyly. ‘I mean, I don’t want … you know. Your number five.’

He was referring to ‘sleep with a stranger’. ‘Er, neither do I.’