idealistic, with a head full of plans to change the world. I hadn’t always dressed in comfortable clothes and shoes. I’d worn lace, velvet and silk. I was inventive. I bought colourful vintage clothes and scarves from market stalls and charity shops. I’d looked interesting, not unlike how Debs does now, in fact. I’d searched for meaning, tried different gurus, done yoga, smoked dope and Gauloises cigarettes, even though they tasted disgusting. I had been one of the cool ones.
No harm in cleaning up my photos, whatever I decide, I told myself.
Once I’d finished my new improved gallery, I went back to Facebook requests. Should I? Shouldn’t I? What had I got to lose? And since when did I begin to always take the safe option? Tom and I had believed in seeking experience. Getting back in touch with him might put me back in touch with my younger, more adventurous self. I could find the ‘me’ I’d lost. What would be the harm in a few messages passed in cyberspace? When I’d been younger, I had never been afraid to take a risk, go with the flow and see where it took me. I’ve become old, I thought, stuck in my ways.
I glanced over at my bookshelf and my eyes went to the spine of a book given to me by Debs last year for my birthday. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Exactly the sort of thing Tom would have said. Exactly the way I’d tried to live my life when I was younger.
I went back to the screen, found Tom’s request and pressed Confirm.
There. Done it. Felt the fear and done it anyway.
A moment later, I had access to his page. His last posting had been a few days ago. He had put Majorca, LA and London as his homes. There was a shot on his timeline outside Harrods in Knightsbridge. I looked at the date on it: 23 May. Ah. So he was in the country, or had been recently. I wondered who’d taken the photo. I scrolled to his photo area where there were a few pictures of him with people I didn’t recognize. He’d aged, of course he had, but he looked in good shape and still wore his hair longish, though it was mainly white now, a mane of it and swept back from his face, which was craggy and lined like a man who spent time outdoors. A silver fox. He’d weathered well, as Lorna would say, only she wouldn’t say that if she saw his photo on my page. She’d say: what the hell do you think you’re doing?
Sorry. Too late, Lorna.
In one photo, he was in a tropical garden, looking very chilled, wearing shades, in a casual shirt and shorts. In another with an attractive woman on a beach. Not Chloe Posh Girl Porter. What happened to her? I wondered. Another photo showed him with his arm around a young man who looked like him. His son? Another at a birthday party with a young woman. His daughter? Should I leave a message? Hi. Hello. Long time, no see. God. No. What should I say?
I took a deep breath. What was I thinking of? Madness. Tom was in the past. Matt was my present. We’d get by. We’d ridden hard times before. OK, so this was a bad patch. We’d get through. It wasn’t too late. Having satisfied my curiosity, I could always unfriend Tom and that would be the end of it. Yes, I’d do that, just not quite yet …
Matt
Cholesterol: 5.8
Blood pressure: 155/95
Hangover: 5 star.
Woke up on the hall floor with a blanket over me and what felt like a troupe of Irish dancers giving it the full clog-stomp in my head. No idea how I got home. Glanced at my watch. Six a.m. Crawled into the sitting room, onto the sofa and slept for another hour.
Put clothes from last night in the washing machine. As the cycle started up, I realized my mobile was still in the pocket of my trousers.
Went out to get some air, clear the cobwebs and post a letter. Only when I got home and tried to open the door with the letter did I realize that I’d posted my keys. Luckily Cait was in, though not impressed.
‘Cholesterol’s higher than we like. Blood pressure’s a bit up as well,’ said my doctor later the same morning. ‘No fry-ups. Take more exercise, cut down on alcohol and eat more greens.’
Lose the will to live, said a voice in my head, which was still pounding after last night. A big fry-up was what I needed. It was too early to return home and Cait would be around. She’d given me the silent treatment and the fish eye before I’d left for the surgery this morning, but then she’d never been good first thing. I learnt in the early years of our marriage to be quiet and avoid eye contact until at least after 10 a.m. Clearly I am in the dog house; I don’t think I saw Cait last night when I got home, but it must have been her who put the blanket over me at some point. I can’t remember much. My brother Duncan had called round early evening and insisted that we go for a drink to ‘cheer me up’, and one glass had turned into a bottle, then another, and a few shots of whisky, I don’t remember how many. Not something I do normally. Never again, I thought as a fresh wave of nausea hit me.
After seeing the doctor, for lack of anything else to do, I walked to the newsagent’s and bought a paper.
Had tea in the builder’s café. The aroma of fried bacon filled the air, so I ordered the full English and made a resolution to follow the doctor’s advice another day. Checked watch. Told myself that I must stop looking at my watch. Read paper. A headline on page four caught my eye. Divorce rates for the over-60s reaches 40 per cent year high. Great.
What happens to drive people to separation? I wondered. One huge disagreement, or the culmination of many small ones that have built up over time? A mutual decision or one unhappy party? An old mate, Richard’s wife, left him last year. He didn’t see it coming. ‘Men divorce when there’s another woman,’ he told me, ‘women do so when they’re unhappy.’ He hadn’t had a clue his wife had been planning her escape for well over a year.
Would Cait ever leave me? I asked myself. No, never, surely not, though things have been rocky lately. We don’t talk like we used to. We sleep turned away from each other. We have drifted apart. Take note, Matt Langham, I told myself, and don’t let things go further. Though I’m not sure what to do. Get away somewhere nice? But no, with our finances at the moment, sadly a romantic weekend away is out of the question. In the early days of our relationship, and many years after, we hadn’t stopped talking: books, plans, theatre, politics, religion, our boys – there was always something to say about them and we enjoyed each other’s company and opinions, which were often different. It didn’t matter, it was us against the world: we were solid.
There had been rough patches before – I could see Cait in my mind just after Jed was born, staggering out of bed at 2 a.m., then again at three and four, before finally giving up and sleeping on a make-do bed on the floor beside his cot. A little bugger he was. Another night, she just lay there on her side of the bed when the crying started, each of us hoping the other would get up. She’d gently worked her feet up onto my bum and pushed until I was falling out of the bed. ‘Your turn,’ she said as I hit the floor, then she’d laughed, turned over and gone to sleep. We’d argued a lot too at that time; or rather bickered, we were both so tired. Sex was the last thing on our minds, sleep was all we sought, but we were open about it. I remembered suggesting it one night and Cait had replied. ‘No thanks. Am already shagged out,’ before conking out. It wasn’t an issue, and things soon picked up again once Jed finally started sleeping.
Sam had been an easy baby; he’d slept through the night from the day we brought him home from the hospital.
