Confessions of a Forty Something F##k Up Read online

  ‘It was Valentine’s Day.’

  ‘Maybe the divorce was really amicable?’

  Liza is not one to be deterred by such a minor detail.

  ‘There’s amicable and there’s weird.’

  ‘You need to be more open.’

  I’m lurking underneath a tree in the park, trying to get a better signal.

  ‘This isn’t California.’

  She ignores me. ‘So you like him?

  ‘I don’t know him, but . . . well, he’s the first man I’ve noticed since—’ I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t have to. Liza knows all the details.

  ‘You need to start dating.’

  I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. A few months ago my life was all mapped out. Now everything’s turned upside down and I’m back here again. I feel a raindrop on my face and look up the sky. Dark clouds have started to form.

  ‘It’s too soon.’

  She doesn’t miss a beat.

  ‘Better that than it’s too late.’

  Plus One

  I’ve decided Liza is right – I need to make more of an effort to get out – so a few days ago I took matters in hand.

  ‘A concert?’ Fiona balked at me across her kitchen island, after I rushed around to hers with a surprise.

  ‘It’s an Eighties reunion concert!’

  As teenagers, Fiona and I were huge fans of all the big Eighties bands. But we only discovered our shared love when we both turned up to a fancy dress party at Fresher’s Week, sporting backcombed hair, neckerchiefs and dungarees. She was Siobhan from Bananarama; I was Kevin from Dexy’s Midnight Runners. When I discovered lots of our favourite artists had reunited for a tour, I was so excited.

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘This Saturday. And guess what? I managed to get us two tickets!’

  This would make it up to her for all those gifts of books and candles over the years. Fiona loves these bands. Some of the biggest stars of the Eighties are performing. She’s going to be over the moon.

  There was a pause. I suddenly doubted my impulsiveness. I should have checked first.

  ‘Oh Nell, I’d love to, but I’m busy that night.’

  ‘Even if Robert De Niro’s waiting?’ I joked, trying to conceal my disappointment.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just that I’m going to the Savoy.’

  ‘Oh, wow. Fancy!’

  ‘I know, right?’ she agreed. ‘It’s the charity fundraiser I was telling you about that Annabel’s organized.’

  Suddenly my enthusiasm popped, like a balloon.

  ‘Annabel?’

  ‘Yes, her husband’s company bought a table, but he’s had to go away on business so she asked me as her plus one—’

  ‘Right, yes. Of course.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s fine. I know it’s last minute. I just thought . . .’ I trailed off. I felt foolish. What was I thinking? That we were going to dress up in dungarees and backcomb our hair like we did when we were eighteen? Fiona couldn’t go gallivanting off at the drop of a hat to a concert with her desperate old fart of a friend. She had some swanky fundraiser at the Savoy to go to. With Annabel.

  ‘What about Holly?’ she suggested.

  ‘Does she like Eighties music?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll find someone who wants a free ticket.’

  Except I couldn’t. All my friends already had plans or couldn’t get a babysitter. I did think about going by myself. I used to love taking myself off to movie matinees when I lived in New York. But showing up alone to a concert and singing along to some of the greatest hits of my youth felt different, so I decided to resell the tickets and accept I’d lose about a hundred quid.

  Then I had an idea.

  ‘I haven’t been to a pop concert for years!’

  Cricket looks across at me excitedly as we make our way into the arena.

  ‘I hope you like the music.’

  ‘I do already! I downloaded Now That’s What I Call The 80s in the Uber and listened to a few songs on the way here, instead of my podcast.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I say, impressed.

  I invited Cricket at the last minute. With only a few hours to go, I was about to sell my tickets on eBay when I remembered her telling me how she had no one to do things with now her friends had all died, and on impulse sent her an email. She emailed me straight back saying she’d be delighted, and got straight in a cab to meet me.

  ‘The one about Vienna was my favourite. Monty and I used to love going there to the opera—’

  And now I want to ask her a million questions, but she’s already at the bar ordering a couple of drinks, after which we head to our seats. If I was worried about Cricket managing the stairs, I needn’t be. She bounds up them in giant strides. Best of all, she’s still wearing her paint-splattered dungarees, as she’d been in the middle of decorating when she’d received my email and hadn’t had time to change. She couldn’t look more the part.

  ‘My, isn’t this fun?’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, hurrying to keep up with her. It’s more fun than I’ve had in ages. I look around at the audience, which is buzzing with anticipation. It’s a mix of young and old, but none as old as Cricket, though she seems completely unfazed. In fact, I’m not sure she’s even noticed.

  ‘Did you and your fellow go to concerts?’

  ‘No, Ethan didn’t like live music,’ I say, and realize it’s the first time I’ve been able to bring myself to say his name. ‘He always complained they never sounded as good, and it was better to listen to their albums at home.’

  ‘And that, my dear, is reason enough not to marry him,’ she smiles, and despite the ache I feel inside, I smile too.

  ‘We had a lot of differences,’ I acknowledge.

  ‘Differences can make or break a marriage. Often the differences you love in the beginning can be the reasons you want to murder them five years later.’

  I laugh. For the first time, I can actually laugh about it.

  She drums her fingers on her knees impatiently. ‘So when are they coming on?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Soon, I think.’

  ‘Oh how marvellous . . .’ Her eyes grow wide and, taking out her phone, she begins snapping photographs, then leans in towards me. ‘Shall we do a quick selfie?’

  ‘A selfie?’

  ‘It’s when you take a picture of yourself like this,’ she explains innocently, angling her phone out in front of us. ‘Smile!’

  We end up taking quite a few selfies as we wait for the concert to start, while chatting about all kinds of things. From tales about Monty and the time they were offered tickets to see a new band, but they’d never heard of them so went to the pictures instead – ‘and it turned out to be the Beatles, would you believe!’ – to the new podcast she’s listening to – ‘my favourites are true crime’ – to an exhibition she wants to see at the V&A – ‘I don’t know if you’re interested, but I’m a member so I can take in a free guest . . .’

  It’s really quite refreshing. As much as I love my friends, I can’t quite join in their conversations about children and husbands and home improvements. At my birthday lunch, school catchment areas were mentioned and it was like a black hole everyone disappeared into, until the waiter rescued us with grated parmesan and the large pepper grinder.

  Then the house lights go down and the strobe lights go up, and suddenly one of my all-time favourite bands is on stage, singing and dancing, and Cricket is straight up on her feet. A few people behind tell her to sit down, but she just says politely, ‘If I sit down, my dear, I may never get up again,’ and carries on jigging around delightedly.

  Good for her; at eighty-something she’s earned the right to dance at a concert.

  Meanwhile, I’m not so brave and remain pinned to my chair by the laser-like glares in my back from the people in the row behind us. Honestly, how can people come to concerts and not want to dance? I t
hink about my teenage fan-self who had posters on her bedroom wall and backcombed her hair. What would she think if she saw me sitting here?

  That does it. Sod This.

  As they launch into one of their biggest hits, I take my cue from Cricket and jump up. At forty-something I’ve earned the right to dance too.

  I’m grateful for:

  A brilliant evening.

  Cricket being OK after she lost her footing when she was dancing and spilled her red wine all over the grumpy woman behind us, which of course was just an accident and not at all done on purpose – I don’t know what the woman was talking about.

  Kevin, the Uber driver, for taking me home as, although I felt eighteen again, I am not in fact eighteen, and all that dancing did my back in.

  The Eighties.

  Delete Contact

  I deleted Ethan from my phone today. I was scrolling through my contacts to call someone about work and then suddenly there he was: Ethan DeLuca. The American Fiancé. The Ex. The Man Who Broke My Heart.

  Except, of course, it didn’t say any of those things. Just his name and his number. I remember him putting his details into my phone. I was in a bar, celebrating a colleague’s birthday but planning to leave early – I was tired and wanted to go home – until I was persuaded to stay for another drink.

  Sliding doors. Isn’t that what they call it? When a split-second decision changes the course of your life.

  If I hadn’t stayed longer, I wouldn’t have been introduced to my colleague’s dark-haired friend, who arrived late as he’d just flown in from California. That one drink wouldn’t have turned into several and he wouldn’t have asked for my number. I wouldn’t have refused because I’d just come out of another short-lived relationship and sworn off men. He wouldn’t have punched his number into my phone, and I wouldn’t have laughed and thought, ‘I like this man.’

  Instead I would have left the bar and gone home to bed, and life would have gone on as before.

  But it did happen. And the next day I did something very unlike me.

  I called him.

  In the beginning Ethan made me laugh a lot. He wrote funny emails and told me quirky, self-deprecating stories about life as a chef when we would FaceTime. He had an odd way of looking at life, like he was seeing it through a completely different lens to everyone else. Yet he was uniquely observant. He saw things in people they didn’t see themselves. He saw things in me.

  It’s a powerful thing, feeling like you’re understood without ever having to explain. To have that connection. I once read somewhere that the reason two people come together is to feel like they’re not alone. Not physically, but emotionally. That’s how I felt when I fell in love with Ethan. Like a part of me that I’d kept hidden from everyone else was being reflected back at me. That finally, after all those bad dates and wrong men and relationships that didn’t work out, I’d found someone who got me.

  But a lot can happen in five years. You can go from feeling gloriously happy to feeling like you’re never going to be happy again. From believing you’re in this together to discovering that you’re in this alone. From that delicious tingle of anticipation as the handsome stranger in the bar types his details into your phone to a cafe on a random rainy day, as you press edit and scroll down the screen until there it is, at the bottom, in red: Delete Contact.

  Five years of moments shared and memories made, of a lifetime you thought you were going to spend together, and with one press of your thumb – click – they’re gone.

  I’m grateful for:

  Wonderful memories, even though I can’t help wishing it was just as easy to delete them from my heart.

  Arthur’s fur to bury my face into, as it soaks up all my tears.

  No longer getting that annoying ‘storage almost full’ message, as a result of deleting all the photos of Ethan on my phone. Proof that there is always a silver lining, no matter how shitty things may seem.

  MARCH

  #easterbunnybombshell

  Question and Answer

  I wake up to three missed calls and a new voicemail from Michelle about babysitting. Blearily, I squint at the time. It’s not even 8 a.m.

  ‘Nell! Where are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours!’

  I’m still in bed, I’m about to say, when I call her back to reassure her that no, I haven’t forgotten about babysitting, and yes, I’ll be there at six forty-five on the dot. But after listening to the long list of all the tasks she’s already completed before breakfast, I decide against it.

  It’s not just Michelle who’s keen to tell me how busy she is; we’re all at it. It’s like there’s this new competition to see who can be the busiest. ‘How are you?’ ‘Crazy busy!’ ‘Me too! Absolutely manic!’ Conversations are spent comparing hectic schedules and reeling off endless to-do lists, but mostly we just text because, seriously, who has time for an actual conversation?

  What I want to know is, when did busy become better? When did a jam-packed diary become a measure of success? And does that mean I’m failing because, since losing everything, I’m currently not that rushed off my feet, but lying in bed thinking about Max’s birthday and wondering how on earth one of my friends can be turning fifty? Fifty. How is this even possible? Fifty is your dad’s age. It’s the age of the politician on the news with the terrible comb-over and bad taste in ties.

  It’s MIDDLE-AGED! (And I mean really middle-aged, not just feeling middle-aged.)

  It is not, I repeat, not someone you went inter-railing around Europe with the summer you were eighteen, sleeping on beaches because you spent all your youth-hostel money on straw-bottomed bottles of chianti that you swigged on the Spanish Steps at midnight, thinking ‘life doesn’t get better than this’.

  Actually, I’m not sure life does get better than that. I can afford nicer wine now, but nothing tastes as good as that cheap chianti did. And, despite spending a fortune on a Tempur-Pedic mattress and Hungarian goose-down duvet when I lived in California, the best sleep I’ve ever had was in my moth-eaten sleeping bag on the sand.

  So what’s the answer?

  I have no idea. Truly, I really do not know what the answer is, to this and many of the other big questions life seems to be throwing at me right now. But I do know I need to get up, make some coffee, and do some work on this week’s obituary – life of a freelancer and all that – then walk Arthur. I’ll think about it tonight when I’m babysitting and all the children are tucked up in bed. I’ll have plenty of time then to sit on the sofa watching telly and thinking about life. When I’m not so busy. Ha.

  The Surprise

  What on earth was I thinking? It’s after midnight and they’re STILL refusing to go to bed! This is a nightmare. I can barely hear myself think over the screaming and yelling. As for sitting on the sofa, er, hello. I’ve just spent the last five hours running up and down the stairs after children.

  I’m exhausted. Broken, in fact. Not only that, but they’ve turned from being adorable five- and six-year-olds, with cute, old-fashioned flowery names like Rosie and Lily, into monsters who demand Disney movies and throw slime everywhere. Even sweet, darling Freddy, who, last year when I babysat, curled up in the crook of my arm and told me he wanted to marry me, has turned gangsta and is insisting he’s allowed to stay up and watch Peaky Blinders until ‘the olds’ come home.

  Freddy is ten.

  Meanwhile, I feel about a hundred. I haven’t eaten. I have slime in my hair. My ears are ringing. The takeaway I ordered has gone cold as I was too busy – God, that word again – corralling three children into the bathroom. Little did I know then of the horror that an innocent phrase like ‘clean your teeth’ could create. I turned my back for two minutes and there was toothpaste everywhere. The bathroom mirror looks like a Jackson Pollock.

  I call Mum in desperation. ‘Just be firm,’ she advises, after I wake her up. ‘Don’t take no for an answer. Children need to know who’s boss.’

  Right. OK. This is ridiculous. I’ve
hiked down the Grand Canyon. I’ve negotiated the freeways in Los Angeles. I’ve given a speech at my granddad’s funeral in front of a packed congregation. Surely I can get three small children into their bunk beds?

  So I get tough and march them upstairs to bed, despite the wails and howls of protestation. No longer am I fun godmother. I’m horrid godmother. They hate me. Lily even kicks me. As soon as I get them into bed and go downstairs, they get out again and I have to march them back upstairs. Up, down. Up, down. I don’t feel like the boss. I feel like the frigging Grand Old Duke of York.

  In the middle of it all, my phone beeps. It’s Michelle, texting to make sure everything’s OK.

  Absolutely fine! Children fast asleep and I’m watching TV

  Of course, it is all a complete lie. It’s chaos over here. Total anarchy. But I don’t want to spoil Max’s birthday. Or admit I’ve completely failed at my bedtime duties. Maybe there’s a reason I’m not a mum: I’d be rubbish at it.

  Finally, after resorting to bribery (Lily and Rosie get a fiver each, Freddy gets a tenner, and there was me remembering when I used to be the one getting paid for babysitting, not the other way around) I get them all into bed, and by the time I’ve cleaned up the bathroom they’ve fallen asleep and I flop face down on the sofa.

  Just in time to hear the key in the door.

  I sit bolt upright and pretend to be idly flicking through an interiors magazine featuring gorgeous homes (to rub salt in the wounds) as Max and Michelle appear, laughing and giddy after their night out. Max is drunk and collapses on the sofa next to me, while Michelle announces, ‘This baby is pressing on my bladder!’ and nips upstairs to the loo.

  ‘So, I guess you were in on the secret?’ grins Max drunkenly as she disappears.

  Already jabbing with relief at my Uber app, I’m not really listening. ‘What secret?’

  ‘The surprise party.’

  I look up from my iPhone. A surprise party?

  ‘But I thought you were having dinner? Just the two of you.’ My voice sounds a bit strangled.