‘Yes, of course.’
‘And you’ll tell me if you get any messages on Facebook?’
I promise but I know it’s a promise I won’t keep. I am as alone as I’ve always been with all this. Polly still hasn’t been in contact since I told her about Maria, and I can’t let Sam in enough for him to help me. I don’t want it to be the way he slips back in. I pour myself another glass of wine and he pushes his own towards me hopefully. I fill it. What difference does it make?
‘So, how’s everything else anyway?’ he asks. ‘Work?’
‘Work’s good. I’ve got another job on for Sue Plumpton – remember Sue?’
‘How could I forget La Plumpton? Has she still got that awful little dog?’
‘Lola? Oh yes, she’s still going strong. If strong’s the right word for what’s basically a dog/rat hybrid. In fact I had to make sure I integrated her basket into the design for Sue’s living room.’
‘No!’
‘Yep.’ As soon as I start to relax into the conversation, it hits me that in spite of everything, I miss this. Before Henry was born, we would sit down together every evening at this table with a glass of wine and share titbits from our respective days. This tailed off in the early months of Henry’s life, replaced by me walking up and down the flat in a haze of exhaustion, trying fruitlessly to soothe Henry as he screamed on my shoulder. Sam would retreat to the bedroom with his laptop and an attitude. We never got it back, that easy togetherness, even when Henry started sleeping through the night. Moving from a unit of two to one of three where one member was utterly dependent on the other two, shifted the balance of our relationship entirely.
I keep the conversation bubbling, asking him first about his work and then about some mutual friends that I’ve lost touch with since the divorce. Obviously there’s an enormous elephant in the room that I am absolutely resolved not to mention, but unfortunately Sam strays onto the topic when I ask about his mum. By the time he and I got together she was back in Sam’s life, up to a point, but we never saw a lot of her, even after Henry was born.
‘She’s totally obsessed with Daisy, much more so than she was with Henry. I don’t know, maybe it’s because she’s a girl. Spoils her rotten.’
I think with a pang of my little boy: his intense love for his cuddly toys, as if they were real; his dedicated application to any task he takes on; how seriously he takes the world. Can she really love this other grandchild more, just because she’s a girl? Perhaps it’s not that though. Perhaps it was me that was the problem. I had always sensed that Sam’s mum was not a fan of mine, and I wonder, though I dare not ask, how Catherine is faring in that department. Now he’s mentioned Daisy though, I can’t skate past the subject completely. ‘And how’s that all going second time around? Fatherhood?’
‘Oh great, great. She’s wonderful, growing up fast, into everything.’ He’s saying all the right words but there’s an edge to his voice that I recognise. I wait, refusing to fill the gap. ‘Quite tiring though,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t leave much time for… well, for anything else.’
I must have made a face of some kind, because he goes on.
‘I know, I know, poor man, feeling left out, baby’s taken his place. Quite the cliché, aren’t I?’
He laughs, expecting me to do the same, but the story is so familiar to me that I can’t even pretend.
‘I’m sure it must be hard,’ I manage, and then can’t resist adding, ‘Probably not as hard as being left on your own with a two-year-old.’
‘Ouch. I guess I deserved that.’ He runs a hand over his head, all the way from his forehead to the nape of his neck. ‘I’m sorry, Louise, I really am. And I know – well, it must have been hard for you last year, to hear that I’d had another child.’
Hard doesn’t even begin to cover it. We went through so much to get Henry. All those bloody injections, the endless appointments. And my God, the waiting: total inability to concentrate on anything else; trying to hold off testing, because if it was negative I wouldn’t know whether it was just too early or if it was a true negative. It was all so exhausting. And the pain of dealing with other people’s pregnancies; at one point in my mid-thirties it had seemed like barely a day went by without a scan picture appearing on Facebook, or a group email coyly entitled ‘News!’
‘I’m happy for you,’ I say, trying to mean it. I don’t want to be this person, this caricature, the bitter ex-wife. ‘It’s given Henry a sister, and we always wanted that.’
‘Hmm. Be careful what you wish for.’
‘Oh Sam, don’t say that.’
‘No, no, I don’t mean Daisy, of course I love her to bits, that goes without saying. But… it’s not easy, that’s all. Maintaining a relationship, or a life at all, when you’ve got a young child. I don’t know, it didn’t seem this hard with you.’
Of course it wasn’t hard for him because I went out of my way to make things easy, to smooth his path. I went along with everything he wanted, I never said no, even if what he was asking was unreasonable. I made sure that his life carried on as normal, as far as was humanly possible. He was the only person in my life who really knew me, who knew what I had done and loved me anyway. I can suddenly see so clearly how much pressure that was for me, to be with someone to whom I always felt indebted. I had been grateful that he had chosen me, stayed with me.
‘I’m sure it’ll get easier as she gets older,’ I say, knowing nothing of the sort.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure it will.’ He sounds equally unconvinced. ‘Anyway, let’s not talk about that. Do you remember Rob McCormack?’ He launches into a story about a colleague, a man I met many times when Sam and I were together.
An hour later we’re still at the table, halfway down our second bottle. It’s as though I’m watching myself from a distance, unbalanced by a combination of wine and nostalgia, tinged with a longing that I don’t want to think about. Part of me yearns to let go, to lose myself, to melt back into him as I’ve nearly done before, but at the same time I know I must hold back if I am to keep myself safe, to retain any trace of the equilibrium I’ve achieved over the last two years.
The conversation turns eventually and inevitably to Henry, reminding me of the other huge loss I suffered when Sam left me: I lost the only other person in the world who understands how wonderful, how perfect Henry is. The only other person who really gets him. We are laughing about the time he got a tiny plastic ball stuck up his nose when Sam glances at his watch and gives a start.
‘God, look at the time. I really should go.’
I jump up immediately, putting the glasses and bottle on the side.
‘Yes, of course, you’d better get back. I’ll get your coat.’ I hurry out into the hall to retrieve his jacket from the pegs by the door, and he follows.