The Family Way

Cat was speechless. And outraged. Men didn’t treat Brigitte like this. She was the one who did the dumping.

‘Some well-stacked slut from his office.’ Brigitte calmly fed the shredding machine a Polaroid of Digby and herself atop a couple of drooling camels, the pyramids shining in the background. Dry-eyed, Cat noticed with admiration. Even now, Brigitte seemed in control. From the floor below they could hear the clatter and din of Saturday night at Mamma-san.

‘I just wanted to tell you there are a couple of footballers at the desk. They haven’t booked.’

‘Alone?’

‘Two women with them. They look like lap dancers. Although of course they could be their wives. What should I tell them?’

‘Tell them to call ahead next time.’

‘Could be good publicity. There are a couple of photographers outside.’

‘It’s even better publicity if we turn them away.’

‘Okay.’

Cat turned to leave. Brigitte’s voice caught her at the door.

‘Do you know what I am this year?’

Cat shook her head.

‘Forty. I am forty years old. How can I compete with a big bouncing pair of twenty-year-old tits?’

‘Twenty-four. And you don’t have to compete. You’re a strong, free woman who has seen life, and lived life, and all that kind of stuff. You don’t need to latch on to some man to prove you exist. She has to compete with you.’

Brigitte began to laugh. ‘Oh, my darling Cat.’

‘She’s not the catch,’ Cat said, warming to her theme, ‘you are!’

Brigitte stared wistfully at a photograph of Digby and herself at a crowded party – New Year’s Eve? – and then gave it to the shredder.

‘The trouble is, Cat, as women get older, the pool of potential partners gets smaller. But for men, it gets bigger.’ She fed the shredding machine a picture taken on a bridge in Paris. ‘So where does that leave women like us?’

And as the roar of Saturday night boomed beneath her feet, Cat thought, women like us?

Four (#ulink_c9c3d419-a826-58b7-aac4-4463bec53f3b)

It was his favourite moment of the week.

When the city streets were starting to empty, and the lights were going out all over London, Cat would ease her long body into his car, closing her eyes as soon as her head touched the passenger seat.

‘Boy,’ she said. ‘I’m bushed.’

‘We’ll be home soon,’ he said.

He always picked her up at the restaurant on Saturday night. By the time Mamma-san closed for business, and the last drunken customer had been decanted into a taxi, and the kitchen staff and waitresses had all been fed and watered and packed off in a fleet of minicabs, by the time Cat locked up Mamma-san, it was always the early hours of Sunday morning.

These Saturday nights and Sunday mornings were among their favourite times. They would have a drink back at his place, shower together, and make familiar lazy love before expiring in each other’s arms.

Sunday meant brunch just off the Fulham Road, surrounded by the papers and fresh bagels in a little café they felt was their own private secret, where they could watch the world go by and pretend it was Chelsea in the swinging sixties. In these luxurious hours of doing nothing very much, their dreams coincided. Cat found the freedom she had craved since childhood, and Rory found the quiet life he had searched for since the end of his marriage.

But not tonight. Rory let them into the flat, and there were lights and music that shouldn’t have been there. Bright lights, loud music.

‘Jake must have let himself in,’ Rory said.

Jake was Rory’s fifteen-year-old son. He usually stayed with Rory’s ex-wife, Ali, at the weekend, and lived with Rory during the holidays. The exceptions to this rule were the nights when hysterical screaming rows ended with Jake storming off to his father. Rory frowned. What was it this time? He turned to Cat with an apologetic smile.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ Rory said.

‘It’s fine,’ Cat said.

She had been looking forward to being alone with Rory and shutting out the world. But what could she say? Her man had a child, and if they were going to be together, she had to live with the fact. Besides, she liked Jake. When she had first met him, three years ago now, he had been a shy, sweet-natured twelve-year-old boy who had reacted to his parents’ divorce as though the sky had fallen in. Cat loved him instantly, and saw echoes of her own childhood wounds in the boy. Jake was clingy with Rory, and easily moved to tears, and you would have needed a heart of stone not to warm to him. But Cat had to admit it was hard to equate that sunny-faced twelve-year-old with the hulking teenager that Jake had become.

‘What’s this music?’ Rory smiled brightly, as he came into the room with Cat. ‘Nirvana?’

Jake – spotty, lanky and hooded, hormones in turmoil – was draped all over the sofa with a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips.

‘Nirvana?’ he sneered. ‘Nirvana?’

There was another youth by his side, wearing a woolly hat. Cat thought, why do they wear outdoor clothes inside? What’s cool about that?

‘Nirvana,’ the youth chortled. ‘Nirvana!’

‘It’s White Stripes,’ Cat said. ‘Something from Elephant, isn’t it? “Ball and Biscuit”, is it? Shame on you, Rory. Hello, Jake.’

‘Sounds a bit like Nirvana,’ Rory said sheepishly.

Jake rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘It does not sound anything like fucking Nirvana!’

‘Tone down the language a notch,’ Rory said. ‘And please open the window if you have to smoke that stuff.’

‘Mum doesn’t mind.’

‘Mum doesn’t live here. Don’t you say hello to Cat?’

Jake grunted.

‘Hi, Jake, how’s it going?’ Cat said, in that affable voice she seemed to reserve just for him.

The friend was called Jude. Jude had been planning to stay the night with Jake until there was some dispute with Jake’s mother. The details were unclear. As far as Cat could make out, it was something to do with three-day-old pizza, unwashed socks and treating the place like a hotel. So Jake and his friend had escaped to Dad.

Cat felt sorry for Jake. She knew what it was like to have your mother and your father living different lives in different homes. She knew how trapped a teenager could feel. She struggled to remind herself that Jake was still the same vulnerable child she had known not so long ago.

But her Saturday night was shot, and it was hard to fight the feeling that your parents ruin the first half of your life, and then somebody else’s children ruin the second half.

How her mother would have laughed.