After the Party (9 page)

“Come on,” he said to Smith, draining the diluted dregs of his cocktail from the bottom of the glass, “let's get some more drinks in. I've got a bit of a thirst on.”

“What? In LA? You know that'll never do,” teased Smith.

“Fuck it,” said Ralph, “let's show LA how to party like an Englishman. Two more of these, please,” he said to Avril, “and can you make them doubles?”

J
em quite liked the feel of the house without Ralph in it.

It was odd, because when he was there, but not there, when he'd gone into town for a drink or down to Shirley to see his aging father, when he was due back, she missed him a lot. And when he was here, but not here, when he was upstairs in his garret, when she could hear his bare feet pad-pad-padding around above her and all the domesticity, she willed him to come down and join in. But now that there was no imminence of his presence, she felt more relaxed. She tried to analyze this and got as far as thinking that it had something to do with the fact that if he wasn't there then he couldn't fail to help her with the tea/look after the kids while she went to the gym/put Scarlett's shoes on before they left the house/empty the dishwasher or pop out to buy nappies. Neither could he secrete half the household's collection of mugs in his garret, permeate the lower floors of the house with the smell of old cigarettes or huff and puff when Blake woke him up in the night in the manner of someone who has an early flight to catch the next day followed by a performance of open heart surgery, rather than a man who was just going to potter around all day splodging paint onto canvas, untroubled by any form of appointment or intellectual challenge.

Yes, life was less irritating without Ralph. But there was
more to it than the simple removal of a source of friction. She was enjoying more than Ralph's absence; she was also enjoying her own presence, the sense of being herself. She felt more capable, more open to new things, more spontaneous and more confident.

And it was with this newfound sense of increased substance that Jem set off for the playground the following afternoon with both her children, a bag of chocolate croissants and an umbrella.

It was not the ideal weather for a visit to the playground. The air was viscous and the sky laden with clouds as thick as heavy quilts. But this was her first afternoon as a single mother and she needed to be out and about doing something that would make coming home feel extra nice. She also thought it might be quite nice to bump into Joel.

Bumping into Joel.

It seemed to be happening more and more frequently.

Which is not to say that she was stalking him, because she most definitely was not. They were purely chance meetings. And that is also not to say that anything of any significance was happening during these chance meetings, because it was not. They smiled. They said hello. They waved at each other across the street. Sometimes days lapsed without a chance meeting. Sometimes they met twice in a day. It was all entirely innocent and meaningless. But strangely magnetic.

And she'd felt it just now, as she was pulling on Scarlett's Wellington boots:
He'll be there
.

And he was.

There, on a bench, reading the
Observer
(of course) in a thick blue overcoat, his breath making a cloud around his head. On the bench next to him was a paper cup of something hot with a corrugated cardboard jacket, and Jessica's pink mittens. Jessica
herself was halfway across a wooden bridge, high enough up that if it had been Scarlett up there, Jem would probably not have been absorbed in the Sundays, but hovering around on the wood chips below, ready to catch her should she miss her footing. Jessica stopped when she saw them and threw her arms in the air: “Scarlett!” She turned to her father. “Look, Daddy, Scarlett!”

Joel looked up over the top of his newspaper and smiled when he saw them. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Hello, Scarlett.”

Scarlett stared at him icily for a moment, before dropping Jem's hand and running toward the climbing frame to join Jessica.

“Say hello!” Jem called out after her, but it was too late, she was gone. She smiled apologetically at Joel. “Sorry,” she said, “she seems to have a phobia of polite conversation.”

Joel shrugged and started to close his newspaper. “Don't worry,” he said, “they're all different. That one hugs the garbage men.” He pointed at his daughter.

Jem smiled and absentmindedly stroked the hair of the baby currently sleeping on her chest.

“He looks happy,” said Joel, smiling at Blake.

Jem glanced down at his head and smiled again. He was zipped into a padded snowsuit and his right cheek was squashed up against the top of Jem's left breast. He was fast asleep and warm as toast. “Good to be a baby, eh?” she said.

“I'd say.”

Jem kissed Blake's head and turned to check on Scarlett. She was on the wobbly bridge with Jessica and they were making it rock back and forth, giggling at each other. She had no idea what to do next. Joel had closed his newspaper. He hadn't just lowered it, he'd closed it. That had to mean that he'd rather
have a conversation with Jem than read his newspaper. Which would also make it rather rude of her to walk away now and sit on another bench, which was exactly what a sizable part of her wanted to do. She glanced back at him. He smiled at her. She glanced down at his shoes. They were nice. She was paralyzed.

She was about to move away, when Joel said something.

“How old is he now?”

Jem had to think for a moment to whom he might be referring and then remembered her son on her chest. “Oh, he's, er, fifteen weeks, coming up to.”

Joel squinted. “Oh, right, that's nearly four months.”

Jem nodded.

“Yes, you forget what the weeks mean when you haven't had a small baby for a while. Have to revert to months.”

Jem laughed and turned again to watch her daughter, vaguely hoping that she might be doing something terribly dangerous that would necessitate an immediate sprint across the playground, thus ending this curiously painful exchange. Instead she observed that she and Jessica had commandeered the wooden playhouse from a very small boy and were sitting safely at its internal table, playing tea party.

No. It was clear. She was going to have to have her first conversation with Joel. She breathed in deeply and sat down against the arm of the bench.

“Oh, here, here.” Joel moved the paper cup and the mittens out of the way.

“Oh, no, honestly, this is fine. If I sit down properly he'll get all scrunched up and wake up and then I'll be on walkabout.”

Joel smiled at her. “So,” he said, “are you back to work tomorrow?”

“No, no,” she shook her head. “No. I'm full-time mum for a week. My partner's away, so . . .”

“What, your business partner?”

“No. My, ah, life partner, I believe that's the correct, rather awful term.”

“Oh, I see, so he's . . .” He paused for a brief moment and looked at her questioningly and it suddenly occurred to Jem that he was seeking clarification that her life partner was indeed a he. She nodded encouragingly. “He's away on business, is he?”

Jem laughed, louder than she'd intended. “No. Not really. He's away finding his mojo.”

“Ah.” His eyes widened to register his surprise. “And where might it be, this missing mojo?”

“In Santa Monica, apparently.”

“I see.” Joel nodded, once and definitively. It was clear that he was completely aware of the liberty that Ralph was taking, not to mention Jem's feelings about it.

“Hmm,” agreed Jem, forcing her hands down into the pockets of her large down coat and resting her chin on Blake's crown.

“So what does he do, your, er . . . ?”

“Life partner.”

Joel laughed. “Yes, your life partner.”

“He's an artist.”

“Oh,” Joel's brow rose. He looked impressed. “What sort of an artist?”

“Oil, canvas, quite traditional.”

“Oh, right, so he's gone off to top up his creative juices?”

“Er, no,” said Jem, “he's gone off to get away from us.” Jem gulped. She really had not intended to say that. Saying that was practically tantamount to saying: my partner is a crud, I'm sick of him, would you care to have an affair with me?

Joel looked from Jem to her daughter and back again. “Oh,” he said, “I'm sure he hasn't.”

“No, really, honestly. He has. I promise.”

“Well,” said Joel, kindly, “I think that sounds pretty unlikely.”

“In his defense, I would say it's more that he wanted to get away from him.” She pointed at the blissfully ignorant Blake. “I think he was quite happy before he came along.”

Joel nodded. “I see,” he said, in his gentle, measured tone. “Sleepless nights getting to him?”

“Yes. The sleepless nights, the dilution of attention paid to him, the—” Jem stopped herself. She was moving into an unattractive anti-Ralph rant. She didn't know this man and this man did not know Ralph. It was unfair to discuss him with a stranger, with someone who had never had a chance to know the Ralph that she'd known, the sweet, gentle, attentive, talented man she'd spent over a third of her life with. “Anyway”—she smiled—“it's fine. I really don't mind. It's quite nice to have a bit of space . . .”

Joel glanced at her, looking as if there was something he wanted to say, but he wasn't quite sure if he should. “You know,” he began, “I thought you might be a single mum.”

“Ha!” Jem threw her head back, delighted with the delicious irony of Joel's observation.

“Yes. It's just I've only ever seen
you
with Scarlett, never your partner, but then when I realized you were pregnant, and when this one came along I thought, well, clearly there's someone else involved here,” he laughed gruffly. His laugh was warm and deep. “And now I know. Your life partner. An artist.”

“Ralph.”

“Ralph,” repeated Joel. “Currently hunting down his mojo in Santa Monica.” They both laughed then and turned to watch their girls, now sitting on their haunches in the sandpit, digging some kind of hole.

“And what about you? Are you a single dad?”

He smiled wryly. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I am.”

Jem waited a moment to see if he would elaborate. He did.

“My, er,
life partner
didn't really manage the ‘life' bit of the arrangement very well.”

Jem left a silence.

“Yes, my wife, Paulette, that's her name, she's got some issues, shall we say. It's better for her not to be around us. So, on the whole, she isn't.”

Jem nodded and stared into the middle distance. “I see,” she said, though she absolutely didn't see at all. But she could tell that Joel had gone as far as he was prepared to go down this particular conversational avenue, so she subtly changed route. “And Jessica, she's your only child?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No. I've got a son too. He's twenty-four.”

“No!”

“Er, yes!”

“But you don't—I mean, how old are you? If that's not a rude question.”

“Well, clearly it's a very rude question,” he teased, “but since you asked, I'm forty-four.”

“So you had him when you were twenty?”

“I did indeed.”

“With the same woman? With Paulette?”

“No, no,” he laughed and shook his head as if the very notion was hugely comical. “No, Lucas was a mistake, a casual girlfriend, nothing serious, but she wanted to keep him and so she did and I played as big a part in his life as I possibly could given that he lived in Doncaster and I lived in London. We're close now, though. He lives down here now, not too far away, Clapham, so I get to see him a fair amount.”

“Wow,” said Jem. “Well, it just goes to show, nobody's what they seem.”

“Why,” he laughed, “what did I ‘seem'?”

“Oh, I don't know. I suppose just the kind of conventional bloke who waits until they've run out of excuses before starting a family. A two point four kids kind of guy.”

“Boring, you mean?”

“No! Not that! Just not the sort of guy to have a grown-up son.”

“Well, a grown-up son was really rather
thrust
upon me. It wasn't exactly a life choice. And, you know, there's a very thin line between most sexually active twenty-year-old men and a twenty-four-year-old son.”

Jem laughed.

He smiled. “And you,” he said, “are you what you seem?”

“That depends,” she said, aware as the words left her lips that those words,
that depends
, were rarely used in a context that wasn't at least mildly flirtatious, “on what you think I seem?”

Joel laughed again and folded his arms across his chest, his legs outstretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles. “Well,” he began, “you
seem
thoroughly normal in every way.”

“Well, in that case I am exactly what I seem. I am. Totally normal. Really. In every single way.”

“Well, how refreshing. Very rare thing, a normal person.”

“I suppose it is,” sighed Jem, feeling very strongly that she was making an impression on Joel, that he was
thinking
things about her, that after they went their separate ways she would be in his mind while he prepared his daughter's tea, while he sat at his computer, while he brushed his teeth. She knew all this for sure and the thought terrified her. No more. Time to walk away from the door and go back to the safety of Scarlett and Blake and their empty house.

“Mummy!” called Scarlett, blessed Scarlett. “Mummy, I need to do a poo!”

Jem laughed and stood up. “I think I might just take this as
my cue to go home.” She looked up. “Those clouds are looking pretty ominous.”