He said sorry. ‘I meant, and I will live somewhere else.’
I asked him what he was proposing in that case, if he wanted me as a tenant.
‘No, Martha. I’m just saying if we’re going to do this, I feel like we have to be careful. Two people who have ruined each other’s lives shouldn’t get a second go at it. But while we’re trying to –’
‘Please don’t say trying to make things work.’
‘Fine. Whatever we’re trying to do, while we’re doing it, I don’t want you to have to live with your parents.’
I told him his idea was weird. ‘But okay.’
I went inside, got my things and Patrick drove me home.
Winsome invited him to stay at Belgravia but he rented a studio. It is non-depressing, two streets away in Clapham, and most of the time he is here. We talk about various things: if the hinge on the dishwasher door can be fixed or not; how two people who have ruined each other’s lives can be together again.
When people discover that you and your husband were separated for a time but have since reconciled, they put their head on the side and say, ‘Clearly you never stopped loving him deep down.’ But I did. I know I did. It is easier to say yes, you’re so right, because it is too much work to explain to them that you can stop and start again from nothing, that you can love the same person twice.
*
Patrick woke up when the shit remake had finished and started looking for his shoes. I did not want him to go. I said, ‘Do you want to watch Bake Off with me?’
We watched the episode with the Baked Alaska. He hadn’t seen it.
At the end, I told him that Ingrid still thinks the saboteur took it out of the fridge on purpose. Patrick said there was no way. He said, ‘She just made a mistake because the pressure is so extreme.’ I smiled at him – a man who can work all day in intensive care, then characterise the pressure on a contestant in Dessert Week as extreme. He asked me what I thought. I told him I had been on the fence but now I could see it was no one’s fault.
We said goodbye to each other in the hall, he kissed the top of my head and told me he would come back tomorrow. I went to bed. I still think it is weird. There are days when I cannot bear it, days when he says it feels like nothing has changed, and days when it feels to both of us like so much has been lost it is beyond repair. But we are together in, Patrick says, injury time – time we are not entitled to – and so we are grateful. He has started referring to the studio as the Hotel Olympia.
I don’t have a baby. There is no Flora Friel. I am forty-one. Maybe there never will be, but I have hope, and either way, Patrick is always just there.
Quoted Material
The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison Unless I specifically tell you otherwise, I was always smoking another cigarette Money, by Martin Amis I wasn’t quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn’t think at all funny, and going for country walks and not being asked to express opinions about things like love, and isn’t so-and-so peculiar Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons The great revelation had never come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf What people are most ashamed of usually makes a good story The Love of the Last Tycoon, by F. Scott Fitzgerald The cremation was no worse than a family Christmas
The Only Story, by Julian Barnes You were done being hopeless
Grief is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter Forgotten is forgiven
The Crack Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘Attack the day’
Archbishop Justin Welby, BBC Desert Island Discs, 21 December 2014
‘a woman who lies in a darkened studio thinking about her divorce for 192 pages’
Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys
A Note on the Text
The medical symptoms described in the novel are not consistent with a genuine mental illness. The portrayal of treatment, medication and doctors’ advice is wholly fictional.
Acknowledgements
Catherine. And James. Libby, Belinda and the staff, and freelancers, of HarperCollins. Ceri, Clare and Ben. Fiona, Angie, Kate, the Huebscher family, Laurel, and Victoria. Clementine and Beatrix. Andrew. Thank you.
And my aunt Jenny, who was all my Christmases growing up.
About the Author
MEG MASON is a journalist who began her career at The Times and has since written for The New Yorker, GQ and The Sunday Telegraph. Her work appears regularly in Vogue, Stellar, ELLE and marie claire. Her first book, a memoir of motherhood, Say It Again in a Nice Voice （HarperCollins）， was published in 2012. Her second, a novel, You Be Mother （HarperCollins）， was published in 2017. She lives in Sydney.