Love Is a Secret (42 page)

Sometimes it seems like years, since it first happened. Sometimes, like days. It’s like being run over by a lorry. You hurt so much you cannot breathe. But no one else can see the gaping, raw flesh.

You carry it around like a silent scar on your arm. You try to hide it with new clothes. New houses. New thoughts. Maybe even a new man.

But none of it works. Because you can never get rid of the stain. A large, brown stain which seeps into the present, the future and the past. When we were on that happy family holiday in Spain, that summer, you say to yourself, he was really thinking of someone else. When he had to use the mobile to phone the office, he was really ringing her. And the thought is enough to make you rip out the snaps from the photograph album.

This time, he says, there’s no one else. But I don’t believe him. Do you?

Session One: Getting To Know  You

Do you feel:

Shocked?

Numbed?

Scared?

Lonely?

Don’t worry! You’re not alone. At this session, we’re going to talk about why we’re here and what we hope to get out of it.

We’ll also get to know each other and make friends!

And – most important of all – we’ll start talking about the person who really matters.

You!

5

LIZZIE

‘A singles group!’

Lizzie stared in disbelief at the leaflet her mother had pressed into her hand. It had barely been a month since Tom had moved out and already Mum was trying to find her someone else!

‘It’s not a dating agency, darling, although I wish I’d used one before I married your father.’ She clinked her sherry glass against Lizzie’s Cath Kidston coffee mug. ‘It’s a group of other people like you on their own. My neighbour told me about it.’

So Mum had started telling the neighbours! Why didn’t that surprise her? Mum had been livid about Tom; Lizzie had had to stop her from going round and beating him on the head with her latest
Saga
magazine. Dad, on the other hand, had seemed strangely philosophical. ‘Maybe it’s for the best, dear. I was never quite sure he was right for you.’

Thanks Dad. Things like this didn’t happen to her. They happened to people on the
‘Dear Kelly’
problem page of
Charisma
(not to be confused with her own family page) although most of them were made up anyway.

‘You’ve got to accept it.’ Her mother was virtually wagging her finger in front of her. ‘These things are always happening nowadays. Much better than in our day when we had to grin and bear it. Now don’t argue. We’ll babysit. Like my nails, by the way? They’re acrylic. I’ll treat you – take your mind off that man.’

As if it could be fixed that easily! But here she was, walking up the path of the local Memorial Hall where she’d once taken Sophie to Brownies . . .  Poking her head round the door, she could see a pile of bottle green canvas chairs and an old-fashioned  table tennis table at the side. No one was there! No one else needed to come to a ‘How to Survive Divorce’ meeting or whatever it was called, because they all had something better to do. Besides, Tom hadn’t really meant it about divorce, had he?

‘Hello! Do come in! You must be . . . ’

She jumped as a tall, plumpish woman with long, silver hair in a bright pink sequinned skirt over purple boots, emerged from behind the pile of chairs. Had she wandered into an early panto rehearsal by mistake?

‘Lizzie.’ For a minute she couldn’t find her voice. ‘My name’s Lizzie Morris.’  She’d purposefully given her married name rather than her maiden name, which she still wrote under.
Charisma
was a national magazine; it wouldn’t do to be recognised as a woman who couldn’t keep her own life together, let alone a readership of fifty thousand and falling.

The woman consulted her clipboard, ticked off her name and nodded her head vigorously. She might look a bit weird, observed Lizzie, but she had a nice warm smile and crinkly laughter lines at the side of her eyes. ‘Wonderful! There are three of you coming – three girls that is – and you’re the first. Do come in. Sorry about the funny smell. The boy scouts were here before us and they were up to something with linseed. Now, sit down and I’ll get you a tea or coffee. By the way, have you spotted the flipchart? Over there.’

Lizzie stared at the purple capital letters.

HAPPINESSISNOWHERE.

‘What do you think it says, Lizzie?’

Was this a trick question?

‘Happiness is nowhere?’ she ventured.

Another grin. ‘Try again.’

Shit. Sorry. Sugar. What on earth had Mum got her into, this time?

ALISON

Thanks Caroline! It was all very well for her sister to be able to move on easily but she, Alison, was different! An evening with a singles group wasn’t going to help even if, as her sister had assured her, it wasn’t a dating agency.

‘And even if it is, it doesn’t do any harm, does it?’ her sister had said crisply on the mobile while on the way to yet another evening meeting. Sometimes she acted as though she was running the United Nations instead of a PR business, and that nothing else was important. Even the death of a twenty-nine-year-old marriage. ‘Might help you release some of that anger you’ve got inside. Damn this taxi. I’m beginning to think the driver’s taking me the long way on purpose. The French are going to kill me if I’m late. No, don’t argue, Alison. You must be angry with him. Deep down.’

But Alison wasn’t. She was just numb with disbelief. ‘That’s how I feel,’ said the tiny blonde, young girl who was already in the hall when she’d arrived. ‘I can’t believe my husband has left me for my friend.’

‘Maybe it’s a mistake,’ she found herself saying. ‘Perhaps he did something out of character that he regrets now.’

‘Is that what you feel about your husband?’ asked Karen gently. When Alison had first arrived in this funny little hall – only a short distance from her house although she’d hardly noticed it before – with a horseshoe circle of half-empty canvas chairs, a cricket bat linseed smell and a flipchart with a trick word on it, she’d quite liked the look of Karen with her warm, kindly smile, despite the heavy, black, seventies eye make up. Something told her from the way this woman moved and spoke, that she might have had the kind of life Alison had, before her own marriage broke up.

‘My own husband,’ Alison heard herself saying, ‘certainly seems to be acting out of character.’ She felt her voice rise in panic. ‘Friends thought we were the perfect couple but now they’re not even ringing me, as though we’re catching.’

‘You’ll get used to it.’ Karen’s voice was soft. ‘All things must pass. It’s something someone said to me at the time. And it’s true. This pain you’re feeling – it won’t go on forever. That’s why I called the group The ‘How to Survive Divorce’ Club because we will survive.’

All things must pass.
Alison rather liked that. ‘And my daughter . . .’ She stopped. ‘My sister thinks she’s old enough to cope because she’s nineteen. But she’s not. Coping, that is.’

Something flickered in Karen’s eyes. ‘Children of that age want to be coddled one minute and left alone the next.’

True enough.

‘Ah!’ Karen was looking behind her. ‘Looks like someone else has just arrived. Don’t worry about being late!
Do
come in.’

KAREN

Karen had become increasingly nervous as the evening approached, touching the blue stone in her pocket every now and then, for comfort. Even the handouts, which she’d been quite proud of at the time, now seemed amateurish! It was all very well for her to think that her own experience might help others. And yes, last year’s OU module in counselling would surely be useful. As well as the happiness stuff on the flipchart.

But now there were four of them, she was wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. That poor girl whose husband had gone leaving her with two young children! And that lovely woman with rather wispy shoulder-length hair whose husband had left to ‘find himself’. The good looking man in his thirties who looked as though he was going to bolt any minute. And the woman in the voluminous lilac wrap who’d arrived late – Violet was appropriately named – who just sat there, hogging the biscuit tin. Would she really be able to help them?

Perhaps she’d do the next session and if it didn’t work, simply give them their money back.

ED

‘That’s right. I’ve been divorced three times.’

Nearly four if you counted his engagement with Tatiana, Ed wanted to say but stopped himself just in time. The slack jaws around him were enough to make him wonder that perhaps he should have pretended it was twice. Or maybe just the once. It might have helped if he’d been on time too – they hadn’t stopped looking at him since he’d arrived late (the traffic from Wycombe had been horrendous). And how awkward to be the only bloke!

‘Three times?’ repeated that enormous woman in the lilac bath sheet who had, he couldn’t help noticing, a fine head of hair. Pity it was all above her top lip.

‘That’s right. Three times.’ He braced himself. One broken marriage was quite acceptable nowadays. Almost mandatory in fact like a first house or a first dog or a first job.

Two wasn’t too bad. There were some women in the office who’d just broken up with their second husbands. In fact, they’d each assured him at separate sessions by the water cooler with a desperate air of authority, that statistically-speaking, second marriages were more likely to break up than the first due to children from the first marriage resenting the new partner. Interesting. Anita (wife number two) had a daughter who had always hated him even before she could talk.

Desperately, he tried to remember what the water cooler women had told him. That was it! ‘The more you get married, the more you realise how important it is to be yourself,’ he repeated to the half-empty circle of chairs . . . Silence. ‘So you get out before you destroy yourself again,’ he added. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in marriage. In fact, it’s because I
do
. But only if the marriage is going to work and lead to children.’ He looked round for some sort of sympathy. ‘I can’t wait to be a father!’

Someone snorted although he couldn’t see who and then the blonde scraped her chair back as though she didn’t want to be anywhere near him.

‘And you’re how old, exactly?’

Forthright women always scared him. ‘Thirty eight.’ Silence. ‘Nearly thirty nine.’

He waited for the usual comments about how he didn’t look his age but they didn’t come.

‘You’ve been married three times and you’re only thirty eight? How old were you when you started?’

He hadn’t expected an inquisition. Clive, his lodger who worked at some library near this place, had told him that it seemed like a nice group. At least, that’s what he’d thought from the woman who had pressed the leaflet on him. ‘It’ll help, mate,’ he’d said in that straightforward northern accent.

‘Sorry.’ The blonde ran her hands back through her hair. Anita used to do that when she was stressed. Maybe it was a code that women learned at their mothers’ knees. Perhaps if he got to learn it, rather like Sudoku, he could crack it and get it right next time.

‘Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘It’s the journalist instinct in me. Makes me ask too many questions. And I’m afraid I smell a bit.’ She glanced round the circle. ‘My youngest threw up all over me just before I left. I nearly didn’t come but Mum made me.’

That explained the smell . . .

‘Look.’ Ed rose awkwardly to his feet, smoothing down his clean, white shirt. ‘Maybe this isn’t for me. I’m sorry. You can keep my money. But I feel . . .’ He stopped, wondering suddenly what it was that he did feel. Rejected. A failure. Stupid.

‘I feel stupid too,’ said the woman with the pale blue eyeshadow and a funny little hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t understand why my husband needs to ‘find himself’.’

‘Because he’s probably got someone else!’ Ed found himself saying. ‘And you . . .’ He nodded at the blonde. ‘You ought to march round to this so-called friend of yours and ask what she thought she was playing at when she shagged your husband. Don’t look at me like that, all of you. If I’m going to stay, I’ve got to be honest. Besides, it will do you good to have a man’s point of view.’

All four nodded and for an instant, Ed felt a thrill. They needed him!

The large woman in purple with a face like an overused Brillo pad began to crumble a biscuit into tiny pieces in her huge, soft white hands with an array of ruby rings. Someone needed to tell her that cable-knit jumpers weren’t cool any more.

‘Scuse me. But can you tell me when we’re going to start singing.’

Singing? Had he stumbled into a madhouse or – heaven forbid – some kind of evangelical let’s-put-our-marriages-right session? To his relief, Ed saw that the others were staring at her patterned purple wrap – a bit like a schizophrenic sofa – with the same confused look on their faces.

‘Singing?’ repeated Karen.

The woman produced a scrunched up newspaper cutting from her pocket. ‘Look.’ She waved it round in the air and a few biscuit crumbs tumbled to the ground at the same time.
‘Scared Of Singing? Then Join Our Always-Wanted-To-Sing Choir.’

‘Mind if I have a look?’ Ed took it from her. Just as he’d thought. The old receptionist was always getting dates wrong too. Thank God for maternity leave which meant she wasn’t there for a bit and bring on VAs (virtual assistants instead of the faulty personal variety). ‘It’s on a Wednesday. Not a Tuesday. Wrong night, I’m afraid.’

Good! She’d go now.

The purple woman sniffed. ‘That’s a shame. I was beginning to like it here. And these handouts are really good.’

‘You can’t stay.’ Ed felt as though he was in charge of the meeting now, just like the boardroom yesterday. ‘You’re not divorced.’

A pair of black, beady eyes fixed themselves on him. ‘How do you know?’

Karen leaned forward as though she was about to separate them. ‘Violet, please don’t be offended. But this group is really for people who are on their own again. Does that apply to you?’

The woman was nodding; all five chins. Of course it did. She’d probably always been on her own with a face like that. A bit like Groucho Marx but wider with a slash of red lipstick half way down.