The Good Divorce Guide

Chapter 4

Jonathan holds my hands in his. ‘Rosie, we don’t need to be enemies, you know. We’ve got two wonderful children. A million memories. A divorce doesn’t need to be horrible and devastating. It can be an arrangement that suits us both. I’ll be with Linda, you’ll find someone too, the children will still be the centre of our lives.’ He studies my face for a reaction. ‘You can still do your counselling programme, I’ll pay for that. And the three of you can stay here, no problem.’

I shut my eyes: separation is for now, but divorce is for ever. I never meant to let this period drag on for more than a month or two.

Life without Jonathan for ever? I’ve never seriously considered it. Who else can find the shortest way from Belsize Park to Brixton? Or immediately guess what’s wrong with Mum’s prescription? We brush our teeth at the same time, check in with a telephone call at least once a day, eat supper together and, when it comes to the children, we lean on each other, like poles holding up the tent under which Kat and Fred can crawl and be cosy.

But then I look at my husband’s expression of pity. Ugh! I can’t bear the thought of him and Linda shaking their heads over my lonely disappointment. Hey, you! I feel like shouting, You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I can build a new life, find a new love. I breathe in deeply: if I need directions, I can get myself a sat nav. If I need help with prescriptions I can ring Jill. And I’ll always protect the children, Jonathan or no Jonathan.

I can do this. I toss my hair and stand up straight; yes, I can. I’m going to explode every prejudice, and turn all preconceived notions on their head. I’m going to think the unthinkable and do the impossible. I’m going for…

‘A good divorce!’ My voice rings with conviction. ‘We’ll make this a good divorce. A civilised split.’

‘The most civilised divorce in the annals of break-ups.’ Jonathan gives me a lopsided grin.

‘Pain-free.’

‘Humane.’

‘Generous-spirited.’

‘No one will be able to say that we traumatised our children, or ruined each other’s lives.’

‘Everyone will congratulate us on how brilliantly we’ve managed a difficult process.’

‘Ours will be the most constructive collaboration ever.’ Then, with a look of concern, ‘Hey, sweetheart’—Jonathan takes a tissue from the Kleenex box on the mirrored shelves above the toilet—‘you’re crying!’

What not to do when you’re considering a friendly divorce: tell anyone.

I’d prepared my speech, and repeated its promises of ‘civilised separation…mutually convenient arrangement…friendly division of spoils…best for the children…’

Somehow, though, nobody heard these reassuring pledges, and the reactions to my announcement are the same as if I’d said Jonathan and I were fighting to the bitter end, no holds barred, until no one was left standing and the children were covered in our blood.

Kat: ‘How can you DO that to us?! We’ll have to see a therapist for the rest of our lives!’

Freddy: ‘I’ll be like Justin! His parents are divorced and he says he spends every holiday in the car, going from one to the other!’

My mum: ‘What?! No…you can’t be…Oh my God!’

Otilya, our Polish daily: ‘My husband’—she pushes the mop across the kitchen floor—‘he divorce me for new girl too. She not pretty, she not clever, she not rich. I ask him, “What she have?”’ Otilya leans her bulky frame on her mop. ‘He say, “She not you.”’

Dr Casey bestows upon me the look he usually reserves for patients whose excessive use of Botox has frozen their face into a mask. ‘Chin up, my girl! You know what they say: better unaccompanied than shackled to a bad ‘un.’ And I overhear him telling Mrs S: ‘Do be gentle Lavinia—she is obviously near breaking point.’

Strolling down the stretch of Haverstock Hill where I normally shop feels like running a gauntlet these days.

Mr Parker, smoking outside Belsize Parker Estate Agents as usual, is always on the look out for me. ‘Ah, Mrs Martin, how are we doing?’

‘Wonderful, Mr Parker, thank you.’ I don’t want to stop.

‘I understand’—Mr Parker stubs his cigarette butt on the pavement—‘things have become more…permanent.’

Otilya and her big mouth.

‘Yes.’ I sound as casual as I can. ‘We are making it as sensible and friendly as possible.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Mr Parker’s pinstripe suit smells of nicotine, stale and fresh. ‘I went through a very hard time just after my own divorce…but’—here he beams again—‘I then met Mrs Parker, and now my life couldn’t be better.’

‘Hmmm…wonderful…’ I try to walk off, but Mr Parker keeps up with me until after a few paces I stop: I don’t want him following me home.

‘I just thought that you should know we have worked with a lot of couples through…difficult times.’ He gives a little cough. ‘Divorce means two households. Two properties. I could help.’

‘We already have our property—and Jonathan has—’ I begin.

‘There’s some wonderful flats out there,’ Mr Parker interrupts me, taking a step closer. I wince at the stench of cigarette; standing this close to him is like passive smoking. ‘Really wonderful, if you and Mr Martin wanted to downsize. You should consider two flats. Or maybe you and the children could look at a maisonette and he could stay in a flat—with his friend.’ I scowl and Mr Parker hurries on, ‘And even if the market is soft at the moment, I think we could get a good price for your house.’

‘Our house?!’

‘I know it’s a bit tired—you remember when I sold it to you ten years ago I warned you that the kitchen and bathrooms would need redoing—but it has those original features, and plenty of light, and people place a premium on high ceilings and a bit of outside space…’

‘Our house,’ I hiss, ‘is not for sale.’

Mr Parker stretches out his hands to reassure me. ‘No-no-no, Mrs Martin, this is just in case. What often happens is that the original home can be associated with…strain, stress…and a new environment is seen as conducive to a fresh start…’

‘Mr Parker, our home is full of very happy memories, for us and for the children.’ I sound glacial, and Mr Parker shrinks further into his suit. ‘Jonathan is adamant that we stay put.’

‘Of course, Mrs Martin.’ Mr Parker nods eagerly. ‘I saw him the other day. I thought I could help him get something nearby—you know, makes it convenient for visiting the children…He told me he’s already got something in Bayswater with his…er, he’s got a place already…still, it’s just a rental property. We may be able to convince him that there’s better investments to be made.’ Mr Parker won’t draw breath. ‘Divorce means you have to be so careful about money…and if they can be had at a good price, two homes can mean two very profitable ventures.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘There’s a maisonette around the corner from you, thirteen hundred square feet. At ?50,000, it’s a bargain.’

‘Mr Parker, I’m not interested; we’re not moving.’

‘Maybe you don’t like maisonettes?’ Mr Parker extracts his packet of Marlboros, taps them nervously with his left hand. ‘There’s a nice little mews house up at Belsize Village, spanking new interior, got a designer in who really gave it the wow factor and—’

‘We’re NOT moving!’ I can’t help shouting.

For a moment, Mr Parker looks properly cowed. But then he springs back to his salesman life-form: ‘I know this is probably not the right time, you’re still very raw, but I can tell you there’s a block of flats in St John’s Wood’—I start walking away, shaking my head—‘that would be just the ticket for you and the children. Nice and quiet, very safe and a lovely garden out back…’

Mr Ahmed, our dry cleaner, is not much better.

‘You washing Mr Martin shirts at home now? You try to do my job for me?’ Mr Ahmed throws his hands up in the air when I bring in only a silk blouse and my ancient woollen jacket.

‘Mr Martin no longer lives at home,’ I tell Mr Ahmed without looking at him. Behind him, Mrs Ahmed’s eyes grow round and she stops unfolding clothes.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mrs Martin…’ Mr Ahmed tugs one end of his thick grey moustache.

Mrs Ahmed draws up to the counter, a jumper in her hand. ‘These English men. No sense of family. The Queen’s children, look at them: they too, all divorced.’

‘It’s not quite like that.’ I find myself trying to defend Jonathan, and the Windsors, to our dry cleaner and his wife.

‘Tchtch!’ Mrs Ahmed shakes her head woefully, and her plump body beneath the red and yellow sari jiggles. ‘They want fun and new things all the time.’

Mr Ahmed leans over the counter. ‘You need an Asian man.’ He takes my blouse and jacket and hands me a receipt for them. Then, taking one of the lollies he keeps for his customers’ children, he holds it out to me. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘you take this.’

Nadine, my hairdresser, is also full of sympathy. ‘What?! With whom?! What a bastard!’ She tugs at my wet hair with a comb.

‘That hurts,’ I protest.

‘I know, I know. Trust me, I’ve been there. Me, it happened six years ago, and let me tell you, I lost two dress sizes, I cried so much. You know what makes it so hard?’ she asks my reflection in the mirror: I shake my head, no. ‘That he’s doing it to you at our time of life.’ I flinch: surely Nadine is a good ten years older than me? ‘It’s hard to get dates at our age. Show me a man who notices you when you’re over twenty-two,’ she goes on, addressing the woman with the stringy wet hair and pink towel on her shoulders. ‘But I’ve got a good book for you. In fact two: Couple Uncouples and Split Does Not Mean That’s It. Really deep stuff. Written by psychiatrists. Take up yoga, too; it really helps with the pain. It’s all in the breathing.’

‘This won’t do.’ Jill shakes her head as she undoes my top three buttons. ‘It’s not Sunday school, you know.’

‘What’s going on?’ I look from Jill to David as they draw me into their smart, ultra-modern sitting room. Black-and-white photographs decorate the walls, tall white orchids sit on window sills and mantelpiece. Jill ignores my query as she pushes back the hair from my face. David smiles mysteriously.

The door bell rings. Jill brings her index finger to her lips. ‘Not a word,’ she hisses over her shoulder at her partner as she opens the front door.

‘How funny!’ Jill trills as she walks back in, a handsome man in her wake. ‘David and I were just telling Rosie how wonderful your Romeo and Juliet is, and here you are, in the flesh. What a coincidence!’

‘Well, you did invite me,’ the new arrival replies, puzzled. He’s youngish, copper-haired and white-skinned, tall and wiry. He wears a purple velvet jacket and his hair in a ponytail: I take it he’s one of David’s friends—they’re all theatrically turned out.

‘Must be fate!’ Jill drags the ponytailed man to where I’m standing. ‘Orlando, Rosie. Rosie, Orlando.’

As I smile up at him, Orlando looks at me expectantly: I wonder if we’ve met before and I’ve forgotten.

‘You may recognise Orlando,’ David explains while his friend smiles modestly, ‘from his theatre work. He’s been in some very famous productions.’

‘Uh…I wonder…’ I try to rack my brains about the plays I’ve seen, but the only recent production I remember is the panto, Aladdin, when I accompanied Freddy’s class last Christmas. I sit on the huge grey silk sofa, wishing that I wasn’t wearing my most comfortable and least attractive jeans and a boring button-down shirt. Couldn’t Jill have given me some warning?

‘Did you see The Importance of Being Earnest last May?’ Orlando asks hopefully as he sits on the zebra-skinned stool in front of me. ‘I was Algernon’s butler.’ I shake my head.

David hands me a glass of wine. ‘Fabulous, he was, too. The Ham and High said he was “a scene stealer”.’

‘What about Oliver!?’ Orlando tries again. ‘I was one of Bill’s boozing buddies.’ I shake my head guiltily. ‘OK, you must have seen Wuthering Heights two years ago, with Heathcliffe as a Shia Muslim and Cathy as a Hasidic Jew? Everyone saw that!’

‘No,’ I confess. Then, seeing Orlando’s dejected expression: ‘But everyone did say how marvellous it was.’ Orlando shakes his head forlornly over his glass of wine. ‘It’s me,’ I try to console him, ‘I’ve been going through a philistine patch lately.’

‘Nonsense, Rosie!’ Jill interrupts me. ‘You’re very artistic. She once made me a lovely Christmas card—a collage of wrapping paper, really striking.’ She sits beside me on the sofa, nudging me with her elbow. ‘And she studied Shakespeare, didn’t you, Rosie?’

‘Well, yes, but only for A Levels.’ My admission earns a furious scowl from Jill. And her elbow in my side.

‘Tell Rosie about Romeo and Juliet.’ Jill smiles encouragingly at Orlando.

‘It’s a fab adaptation.’ Orlando bobs up and down enthusiastically, and some long copper curls slip out of the neat ponytail. ‘We’ve got an all-male cast. So it’s homophobia not a family feud that keeps the lovers apart.’

‘How interesting…’ I try to imagine the balcony scene between Romeo and Jules? (Julian?) and fail to. David holds up the bottle, enquiring if I’d like some more. ‘Thanks, yes, it’s delicious.’ I might as well get drinking at this point.

‘Hmmm, lovely, vino.’ Orlando holds up his own glass for seconds.

‘You both like Sauvignon Blanc: you’ve got so much in common!’ Cringing at Jill’s indefatigable matchmaking, I try to draw away from her on the sofa, but she goes on, heedless: ‘Like—divorce.’

Orlando’s eyes grow wide and round and interested. ‘Really? You too? I’ve just come out of three horrible years of it.’

‘Marriage?’

‘No. Divorce court. The harpy was determined to get her mitts on the Hall and I wasn’t going to let it happen.’

‘Northlay Hall is Orlando’s ancestral pile,’ David explains. ‘Adam. In Wiltshire. Stunning.’

‘Once she landed a role on EastEnders she got ideas above her station,’ Orlando explains. Then, in a high-pitched whine, ‘“Orlando, if I can’t have you I want your house.”’ Now he lowers his voice back to normal, ‘“Look, Violet, it’s been in my family for centuries, it means nothing to you but everything to my father.”’ He switches to the high-pitched voice: ‘“It means a lot to me, too. It means I wouldn’t have to slog all day and all night.” “You’re being unreasonable!” “You’re being mean!” “I need closure!” “You need a shrink!”’

I watch, baffled, as Orlando alternates his wife’s voice with his own. When Jill goes to the kitchen to fetch some nibbles, I follow her.

‘Why didn’t you tell me to expect a ventriloquist show?’ I whisper, cross.

‘I wish you’d get into the spirit of it,’ Jill scolds me as she opens the bag of handmade potato crisps. ‘Orlando’s gorgeous.’

‘He’s also bitter about his divorce and horrid about his ex.’

‘Everyone’s bitter about their divorce.’

‘Not me, and not Jonathan.’

‘Your attitude to this divorce is just not healthy.’ She fills the square glass bowl with crisps. ‘Divorce is as close as two people can legally get to murdering one another.’

‘It’s not true, I don’t want bitterness, recriminations, huge maintenance…’

‘Stop!’ Jill drops the empty bag of crisps on the counter and puts the back of her hand against her forehead in a dramatic gesture. ‘Stop right there. No to huge maintenance? What’s the point of divorce then?’

‘I don’t want Jonathan suffering. He’s a good man. An excellent father. A better husband than most.’

‘You can’t be nice about your ex when you’re in the middle of a split. It’s perverse.’ She grabs my hand. ‘Now, get back in there and strut your stuff,’ she barks.

In the sitting room, alas, Orlando’s one-man show continues: ‘“You’re a harpy!” “You’re an idiot!” “May you rot in hell!” “May your scrotum itch you for seven years.”’

The worst, though, is next door. Carolyn Vincent cannot resist a few words of concern every time our paths cross: ‘Oh, poor you!’ she intones piously when she sees me struggling under the weight of carrier bags. ‘Do you want a hand?’ she calls out from her doorstep. And then, over her shoulder: ‘My love, will you help Rosie with her shopping?’ And husband Louis, a square-jawed and handsome knight in shining armour, materialises to help me with the bags.

‘Well done, angel.’ Carolyn rewards her husband with a big smack of a kiss, right on the doorstep for everyone to see.

Worse, it seems as if whenever I stand at my window, lost in thought and wondering about what life will bring next, I am subjected to a sighting of the happy couple hugging, kissing, rubbing noses (nothing seems beyond them). These little vignettes of marital harmony have me reaching for the curtain cord and longing to move to Nuneaton.

Not that the Vincents are unkind. Carolyn is constantly inviting us over for a ‘kitchen supper’, or tea, or Sunday lunch.

Into the bright yellow kitchen we troop. Carolyn, in a pretty pale blue Cath Kidston apron, stands at her stove, stirring some delicious but non-fattening sauce. Louis springs up from the table where he was reading out loud, presumably for Carolyn’s amusement, the Daily Mail Richard Kay gossip column.

‘Hullo! Carolyn, Rosie and the children are here!’ He offers me a glass of Bordeaux, and an expression of condolence fills his face.

‘Kat, Freddy, will you fetch the children?’ Carolyn turns from the Aga, wooden spoon in hand, a perfect homemaker’s smile on her face. ‘It’s supper time. And wash hands.’ Then, when Kat and Freddy are no longer in earshot, ‘They’re being so braaaave, you must be so prooooouuuud.’

At table, Molly immediately sits beside me. She has not, I’ve noticed, been seeking my advice lately: she has obviously drawn her own conclusions about my ability to navigate emotional life. Louis, on my other side, keeps my glass and plate filled and makes kind suggestions like, ‘You will let me know if I can do anything, won’t you? DIY, dig you out of the snow, cart down any heavy rubbish…’

Worst of all is watching Carolyn and him perform a perfect duet as they move back and forth from kitchen table to sink, from stove to dishwasher, enviably in synch with every step and look. Were Jonathan and I ever like that?

‘Sweetpea, will you pour me a glass of water? Thanks, darling one. Rosie, are you and Jon…’ Carolyn stops in her tracks, flushes, gives a little embarrassed cough, then resumes, ‘er, I mean, are you going off somewhere nice before term starts?’

‘Nah,’ Freddy answers before I can.

‘We aren’t either,’ Molly scowls. ‘Dad just wants to be near a golf course so he can disappear for hours. Holidays are supposed to be, like, spent with the family all together and…’ A look from her parents sends her into manic backpedalling: ‘I mean, er…Actually who needs fathers on holidays?’

The children and I seek refuge in Carolyn’s tender roast chicken and comforting mash. We eat silently, leaving our hosts to find another subject of conversation.

‘Mum, did you get Oliver’s birthday present?’ Freddy asks me.

‘Oliver?…’ I ask blankly, wondering in a panic who Oliver could be and when this shock birthday party is to be held.

‘Oh, Mu-um!’ Freddy groans. ‘I to-old you!’

‘Well, your mum has had a lot on her plate,’ Carolyn says hurriedly. Then, trying to turn the conversation away from odious comparisons: ‘Oh, Kat, that is the prettiest pendant!’ Carolyn smiles. ‘Matches your eyes.’