Husbands. Part 16

'Well that's definitely what you want.' I don't know why I am saying this. Of course I want a quick no-mess divorce, if I have to be divorced. There's no point in losing my dignity on top of everything else. But I feel sore.

Bella seems to be concentrating on breathing slowly and deeply. Eventually I relent.

'Let's do the mutual consent thing.'

She grabs the ball and runs with it.

'The procedure is the same for all types of divorce. From issuing pet.i.tion to decree absolute is fourteen weeks. It can all be done through the post. There's no need for any court appearances.'

I sign the paper that will lead to our divorce.

Bella flashes a broad smile and I know I should be sharing her enthusiasm. After all, the divorce will simplify my life too. 'It's a good thing that neither of us owns anything because if we did it gets more complicated.'

'I own my flat and a car,' I tell her.

'Do you really?' She's astonished. 'I was always worried that all you'd ever own was your guitar.'

'I know.'

'Still, it doesn't matter. Both those a.s.sets are in your name presumably, and obviously I don't want to make any claim on them.' She blushes again, because we both know she's just said whatever I own Philip can buy and sell ten times over.

'I have a pension too,' I tell her. 'I started it when I was twenty-four. I'm not sure what it will be worth when I retire.' Why am I telling her this? Do I want to impress her with my stab at respectability? Jesus help me, I want to impress her.

'Well, maybe we'll need to draw up a doc.u.ment to say we have no claim on each other's a.s.sets. Just to be on the safe side,' says Bella. 'We want to do everything properly.'

I resist adding, 'This time.' I know Bella would never claim any money from me and I don't need a legal doc.u.ment to guarantee that.

'What will you do when we're divorced?' I ask.

'I'll remarry Philip,' she says calmly and then she swallows back her G&T.

'Will you tell him, about... me?'

'Good G.o.d, no,' she says emphatically. 'I'm planning on telling him there was some hiccup in our paperwork.'

More lies. 'Do you think he'll believe you?'

'I can be very convincing. Another drink?'

I accept. Bella owes me so much that the least she can do is buy me a few lousy drinks.

When she comes back to the table she is carrying the drinks and three large bags of crisps.

'Tomato flavour,' she says with obvious glee. 'I haven't seen tomato flavour crisps since we were about seventeen, so I bought loads. They used to be your favourite.'

'They were your favourite,' I correct her.

She shrugs and smiles, 'Well, we both liked them. Tuck in.'

It amazes me how many truly appalling social situations can be eased by the introduction of food and drink. The annual school production used to be shamefully painful until one of the staff alighted on the idea of selling wine and boxes of Maltesers in the interval. Suddenly, the kids' terrible stutters and two-left-feet syndrome became less insufferable. Would anyone ever manage to get through a funeral without the promise of egg sandwiches and alcohol at the end? Similarly, Bella and I seem to find each other's company more palatable after a few units and a bag of crisps.

'Thanks for asking us to go to Vegas,' says Bella. She's half grimacing and half grinning.

'Laura thinks we need an opportunity to bond,' I explain. 'I was depending on you turning it down.' I'd been furious that Bella hadn't put her famed skill of bulls.h.i.+tting into play and had failed to pull out of the hat an effective excuse for not coming. Things are complicated enough without a cosy holiday for four.

'Sorry. Are you dreading it?'

I was until about three minutes ago when Bella became Belinda again and bought me three packets of tomato flavour crisps. Crisps which she's munching, and have stuck between her teeth. She puts her finger in her mouth and digs around, presumably for the soft stuff that's stuck at the back. I watch her until she becomes self-conscious. 'Sorry, not very polite of me.'

We both know we've shared intimacies that blow away public tooth-picking. Recently, I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about those intimacies. I've dwelt, with Gollum-like obsession, on our first time and our last time. I've calculated that over the years we must have had s.e.x approximately a thousand times. I'm working on an average of four times a week for the first year, then three times a week for the following five. We cut a lot of cla.s.ses.

We had s.e.x in every way imaginable, or at least in every way we could have imagined back then. Shy s.e.x, saucy s.e.x, sweet loving, dirty loving, marathon loving, inside, outside, stood up, on chairs, on couches, in cars, on beds, lots of different beds single beds and friends' parents' beds featured quite heavily in the early years. It all seemed like b.l.o.o.d.y brilliant s.e.x.

Until Edinburgh. Then we had more and more quick s.e.x, tired s.e.x and angry s.e.x. It is odd, isn't it, that the last time you have s.e.x with anyone you rarely know it's that. We did it the day she left a duty-fuelled quickie that we pretended was about wis.h.i.+ng me luck before the compet.i.tion. We'd got into the habit of my taking her from behind. She knew that I couldn't last as long in that position, it got it over quicker for her and she didn't have to look at me. Even remembering her firm a.r.s.e bobbing up and down doesn't make that flashback palatable.

'Do you go home much?' I ask, pus.h.i.+ng all carnal thoughts away. Far away.

'No. You?'

'My mum moved back to Blackpool to be near my nan. I visit her every month or so.'

Bella stutters, 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, I do my best to avoid my family for at least a couple of years at a time.'

'You must visit at Christmas?'

'No, actually, the snow always puts me off.'

'What do you do instead?'

'I go skiing.'

'That doesn't make sense.' She shrugs. 'How are your brothers? Are they still fis.h.i.+ng?'

'Martin and Iain are. Not on our own boat any more. They work in town for a bigger one. Rob packed it in. He hurt his back somehow. I can't remember the details.'

'What does he do now?'

'Watches TV.'

'And Don?'

'Don's otherwise engaged.'

'They're all well, though, on the whole?'

'I suppose so,' she mutters grumpily. 'To be honest I got fed up of looking after them when I lived with them so I'm quite keen to leave them to their own devices now.'

I ignore her pique. 'Is your dad well?'

'I expect so. I haven't seen him since the wedding.'

'He did come then.' I'm relieved to hear that the reinvention of Belinda found a way to accommodate her father, at least.

'I wasn't keen to break my own precedent,' admits Bella, alluding, I presume, to our wedding. 'If I could have got away with not inviting my father and my brothers I would have, but Phil insisted. At least Dad managed to appear sober until the reception. Quite an achievement since he'd been drinking since ten in the morning.'

'Did your brothers come?'

'Martin and Iain did. Rob couldn't be bothered and Don, well, as I said he's-'

'Inside?' I guess.

'Yes.' Bella sighs.

'Did they cause any trouble?' We both know that Bella's brothers are awkward when sober, aggressive when drunk.

'No. In all fairness all they wanted was to merge into the wallpaper. Like that was going to happen, with their cheap s.h.i.+rts and dirty hair. They didn't even wear jackets. I'd offered to buy them all suits but they wouldn't let me. It was so obvious that they were fish out of water. But at least that meant they were unsure enough not to kick anything off.'

She's still angry and ashamed of them. I'd hoped she'd grow out of that.

'What do you want from them, Bella?'

'I want them to be altogether different.'

This is possibly the most honest thing Belinda has said to me since we met up again. I pity her for chasing an impossible dream.

'I want them to be charming, involved and fascinating relatives. At my wedding, I wanted Dad to bore the guests with stories about what a darling little girl I was and I wanted my brothers to flirt with my single friends.' She tries to smile but I know her well enough to know that she wants this so much it hurts. Smiling is next to impossible.

'You know that's never going to happen. You'll never change them, however much you change yourself.'

'You're right,' admits Bella, with a sigh. 'My brothers' idea of a charm offensive is to ask a girl if she wants a bag of chips before or after s.e.x. At least my father's indifference towards me came in useful when I told him that a father-of-the-bride speech wasn't required. I didn't want him to walk me down the aisle either, but Philip said it was traditional and respectful. I wanted to say, "Sod respectful. Had my father and brothers ever been respectful towards me when I lived with them? No."'

'Why didn't you say that?'

'I don't talk about my family much to Philip,' she says with a shrug. 'My family are light years away from his; he wouldn't be able to relate to my experiences.'

'You should be more open.'

'Don't you start. Why does everyone always want to rake over the past? The past is just that, past. It's where it is for a reason.' Bella looks at her watch. 'Look, I think we've said all we have to say tonight. Thanks for signing the papers. I guess I'll see you at the airport.'

And with that she stood up and took flight.

27. Viva Las Vegas.

Wednesday 7th July 2004.

Bella.

'Oh my G.o.d, first cla.s.s. I have never flown first cla.s.s in my life.'

Laura's grin is so wide I think her face might split and, while I have been imagining all manner of disasters to prevent my having to attend this trip, my best friend's face ripping in two because of the force of her ecstasy, is one I'd not considered.

She's been behaving like an excitable child since the limo picked her up this morning and who can blame her? Besides the limo, there's free champagne flowing liberally, this is her first holiday abroad in four years, she is travelling with her best friend and the man of her dreams.

The only fly in the ointment is that he's the love of my life too.

Oh G.o.d, do I mean that?

I am trying to avoid Stevie. I really am but it's not easy. When all the others were enjoying free alcohol in the airport lounge I wandered around the shops. But I panicked when I couldn't get excited about the rows of lotions and perfumes, the discounted leather bags and clothes this is not just out of character, it must be a seriously worrying clinical condition. I didn't feel the slightest spark of excitement at spending my cash (well, Phil's cash). All I wanted was to be near Stevie. Stevie with his neat, toned body, his broad, full-on grin, his laugh, his wit, his guitar for G.o.d's sake. That shows how desperate things are.

The past six weeks have been the worst of my life.

I've tried not to think about him. I've tried not to want him. But it's like going on a diet; the moment you decide to cut down on fat is the moment you start to fantasize about cream cakes, fish and chips and Mars bars. I'm ashamed to admit that we've met up a few times since we agreed to divorce. One of the meetings was a necessity, the others were luxuries.

At the first meeting we signed the relevant papers within about three minutes. Then I offered him a drink and he agreed, instantly. I should have kept it all businesslike and impersonal. But I was enjoying myself. At least, I was until he started going on and on about the past. The worst of it was that I was answering him fully and honestly, just slipping back into the old ways of frank conversations. It is not healthy. It's pretty dangerous, so I b.u.g.g.e.red off as quickly as possible.

As I left the pub I swore I wouldn't give him another thought and we certainly wouldn't meet up again. We met up again by the end of the same week.

I told him I needed to check a detail with the paperwork. The strange thing was, once we were ensconced in a pub in Covent Garden a less covert, more comfortable rendezvous than our initial meeting he didn't refer to the outstanding detail, he knew it was a pretence but he'd come anyway.

During the evening we caught up, like old friends do, with genuine affection. We laughed, chatted and confessed our dreams, achievements and compromises. Stevie talked about his career, his mates and the girls he's dated. He did not talk about Laura. I talked about all my careers, my mates including Laura (I was unilaterally nice, it's easy), and men as a h.o.m.ogeneous group. I didn't mention Philip. We decided we were hungry and chose to eat spaghetti together rather than go home to the people we weren't mentioning.

Then we agreed to meet at All Bar One on Cambridge Circus. An extremely busy venue. I told myself that this underlined that our meeting was innocent and we had nothing to hide. I dismissed as lunacy Amelie's suggestion that I wanted to be caught with Stevie.

The atmosphere was thick with cigarette smoke and curiosity. This time we didn't bother with polite small talk or general enquiries. We sank into a comforting intimacy and picked up where we'd left off years ago. I carefully recounted elusive, long-forgotten memories and he told me his latest theories, ideas and plans. He fidgeted on his chair, but with excitement I think, not nerves or embarra.s.sment. He found it unproblematic to tell me the most tremendous and melancholic thoughts he'd harboured in the last eight years. He was delighted that I was equally interested in both and (at least temporarily) he didn't seem to resent that I wasn't around when he formed his theory on what makes someone happy. Stevie has grown up. This thrilled and saddened me in more or less equal and confusing proportions.

'In the end everyone wants the same thing,' he'd said.

'What's that?' I'd asked.

'Happiness.'

'Well, obviously. But you can't leave it at that. That's too broad.' And while Stevie has great pecs and the T-s.h.i.+rt he was wearing showed them off to perfection, I was mildly impatient that he had failed to develop a more honed argument. Philip would not have tolerated such sloppiness.

'Happiness to some people is scaling mountains. To others it's having mountains of cash. To still others it's having a big family or independence. It's not enough to say everyone wants the same thing.' It terrified me to realize that I wasn't really interested in what Stevie believed made everyone happy, just what made him happy.

'Contentment,' he told me, although I hadn't asked the question. 'I'm happy when I am content with what I have and not longing for something I don't have or I've lost or never had.'

He had lifted his beer bottle to his mouth but he didn't drink, he paused and stared at me. The look sliced me to my core. I felt as if he'd undressed me in that busy pub and exposed me for what I was, someone cruel, someone destructive but someone powerful.

'I don't know if I've ever felt content.'

'I know that, Belinda,' said Stevie, before he coughed, turned away and broke the torturous tension.

Stevie talked about music, novels and poetry. We quoted old poems to one another, poems that we'd memorized at school. I told him I still found T. S. Eliot too much like hard work but I'd since given some more modern poets a chance; Liz Lochhead and Douglas Dunn were my favourites. He told me he still hated Jane Austen and thought she was twee. I told him I still loved her and always would.