The Last Year of Being Single (3 page)

First Christmas I wanted to spend with him. But his father didn’t think it right.

‘You haven’t known this girl long.’

‘I’ve known her for four months.’

‘Not long enough. Just our family should be here, Paul. Can’t she go with her own family?’

‘She doesn’t want to.’

I didn’t want to. Mum was driving me nuts.

So I didn’t spend Christmas Day with my love. I spent it with my ex. With David.

David had returned from one of his Saudi I-will-find-my-focus trips, to discover his long-suffering girlfriend had found a focus of her own and he wasn’t in it. After taking all his furniture from the flat we’d shared (i.e. three-quarters of it) when I was away and leaving me with minimalist decor—which had up sides (less to clean and I didn’t like his stuff anyway)—he calmed down. Realised he was a prat. And asked to see me. To have dinner. I declined. But he called after Paul told me we wouldn’t be spending Christmas together. I said I was fine. David said I couldn’t spend it by myself. He said he’d take me out to dinner.

He took me to Paris. By Eurostar. First Class. Montmartre and Sacre Coeur on Christmas Eve and top of Eiffel Tower on Christmas Day. At the top he proposed.

David—‘Sarah, I have something to ask you.’

Sarah—‘What?’

David—taking little black box from his pocket—‘Will you…?’

Sarah—realising what little black box contained and thinking on feet—‘Stop. No. Don’t. I’m not right for you. You know I’m not.’

David—looking shocked and dejected—‘I understand.’ (He didn’t)

Long hug. Saying nothing. Him in tears. Me trying to be.

I said no. I said I was saving him from himself and myself and that in years to come he would thank me. He looked crestfallen, but I was adamant. Plus I didn’t love him. Not that way. We ate at the restaurant in Gare de Lyon. Ornate and grand and value for money—a rare combination. We then returned home, still friends. He dropped me at the bottom of Paul’s parents’ road. I walked up to be greeted by Paul and family as though I was one of them. Although obviously not on Christmas Day.

Looking back, my relationship with Paul in those first years was innocent and special and wonderful and naïve and I wish it could have lasted for ever. But, like the ink on the cards and letters, over time it faded leaving only the impression of happiness rather than the reality of it.

I keep a box of the letters and cards. They stopped about the fourth year. The last note I wrote was a contract of love. I’d applied to so many jobs over the years, I thought I could work the format. A request for a full-time position in his life.

• How to balance precariously on knees without using hands, and bending over at an angle. The only thing stopping me from toppling over is will-power.
  
• How to prove Paul wrong about women drivers.
  
• How to prove Paul wrong.
  
• How to sexually arouse myself.
  
• How to sexually arouse myself keeping Paul guessing as to whether I know he’s watching me.
  
• How to ring the same person over three times a day, having just seen them in the morning and about to see them that night, and still feel you miss the sound of their voice.
  
• How lucky I am to be as supple as I am.
  
• How lucky Paul is to have someone who is as supple as I am.
  
• How cuddles take on a new dimension when you’re with someone you love.
  
• How everything takes on a new dimension when you’re with someone you love.
  
• How I hate electric guitars and never knew it.
  
• How I must never speak after ten o’clock when I’m in bed with a very tired man who has been working hard all day and needs his rest, unless he’s feeling randy, in which case I’ll have my mouth full anyway.
  
• How I have a cute arse.
  
• How Paul thinks I have a cute arse.
  
• How other people probably think I have a cute arse but Paul won’t tell me.
  
• How although Paul likes my chest he would like it to be bigger.
  
• How although I like my chest—I would like it to be bigger.
  
• How I can watch TV, play records and have a meaningful conversation at the same time.
  
• How I have a meaningful relationship with little black dresses.
  
• How having fun and being loyal are not incompatible.
  
• How I love you…
  

See. Sounds naff. But at the time, writing it, it was funny and wonderful and just right. I would keep the letters and cards in a little red box and occasionally look through it on quiet Sunday afternoons if Paul was out with friends. Reading it back, somehow it made me feel just sad and very lonely.

The letters and poems and cards grew less frequent as the months progressed, until the only cards sent were for birth
day and Christmas. And, on the fifth year, he sent a Valentine.

Five years in, the romance had faded. We’d forgotten to respect each other and do what agony aunts enthusiastically call ‘working at it’. There was almost a laziness in his attitude towards me. We both, perhaps arrogantly, thought that relationships if they were meant to be didn’t need to be worked at. The agony pages were for other couples who had problems. We didn’t. We were intelligent and sensitive and in tune with our emotions and other people’s.

Well, we did have some problems. I had been through an abortion after going out for nine months, to which he had agreed and paid for. We had planned a long weekend in Suffolk at the Angel Hotel. I had forgotten to take the Pill. Well, I had taken it, but I’d been ill and it hadn’t worked. Obviously, because two months later I’d discovered I was pregnant. I didn’t know if I should tell him. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, don’t you think? In hindsight I wouldn’t have told him. In hindsight I wouldn’t have told him a lot of things. But I didn’t have the benefit of that, so I told him.

‘Paul. I’m pregnant.’

‘Is it mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours.’

I didn’t expect that question.

He came over to me and hugged me. I think he wanted to be hugged more than hug. I think he was dazed.

Then, ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I don’t think we should have the child. We love each other but we’ve only been going out for nine months. It’s too soon. We want to do so much. Achieve so much. I think if I had the child you would resent me and it and I would resent you and it. That’s not fair on either of us or the child. Will you tell your parents?’

Paul—‘No, of course not. They’re Catholics. They don’t even know you’re living with me, or we’re having sex. This would break their hearts. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t get it. Couldn’t comprehend it. So it’s not worth going there, Sarah. Will you tell your parents?’

I was bemused by the fact he thought his parents were naïve enough not to realise we were sleeping with each other, but, hey, like so many things Paul increasingly said, let it pass for now.

Sarah—‘No. Likewise. They’re not interested. They have their life to lead. They are busy and my mother doesn’t want to know what will or could hurt her. So I tell her nothing. My dad’s not well. He thinks of me as his little girl. I don’t want to spoil the illusion. My mum wouldn’t forgive me if I did.’

Paul—‘So we tell no one?’

Sarah—‘We tell no one.’

One week later. Local clinic. Paul drove. Seven a.m. No traffic on the M25. Leafy lanes. Pre-warned there might be demonstrators outside. Anti-abortion. There weren’t. It would take a morning. I could work the next day. They were very kind. Efficient. At twenty-five I was the oldest in a ward of ten women. It was quick. Physically and emotionally numbing. Offered Rich Tea biscuits and sweet tea when I woke from the deepest sleep. Feeling relieved and relief. The other women in the ward were still sleeping. One was awake. She was crying. She’d had a local anaesthetic and she told me she’d seen the baby.

‘I saw the baby. It looked like a proper little baby. I didn’t think it would look like a baby, but you could tell. You could tell it was a baby when it came out. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect something like that. I expected a little cell and I don’t think I would have had a local if I’d known. I don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go through that again.
That will haunt me, that will. That will haunt me. Wish I hadn’t seen it. Wish I hadn’t.’

I hadn’t seen the baby. I hadn’t seen what had come out of me at twelve weeks. I had been asleep. And I closed my mind to it and just thought it was a joint decision and something that both of us, Paul and I, had decided together and agreed upon. And that it was a dreadful decision to make, but it was the most practical decision, and it would have been unfair on Paul who was just starting out on his career and me who was trying to start one. And there would be plenty of time to have children and we loved each other so it wasn’t a case of that. And we loved each other. And we loved each other. I kept saying that over and over in my head because it made me feel better. Not good. Just better. Reassured.

And I cried, just a little bit.

We drove home in silence. Two hours of it. He cried and went to Confession. Alone, I stayed in the two-up and two-down in Chelmsford and made tea. My mother phoned on the mobile to ask how I was, but really to tell me what she had been doing with Dad that weekend. She asked me if I was OK. I said fine and that I was… She didn’t wait for me to finish and said she had so much to do and had to look after my dad and there was a dinner party they had to go to and she had to get ready and get my dad ready. And she did. I didn’t tell my mother. She was not the sort to listen or offer calming advice. She was the sort to scream and consider every bad thing that happened to me an affront to her ability as a mother, and every good thing something she could either credit to her own influence or, in some cases, feel jealous that she hadn’t done herself. In her youth. Even the good things that happened in my life I think potentially hurt her. I would often think, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her and she can’t hurt me by reacting to things the way she does. Pity. I would
have liked a mum. I spent my life in search of surrogate mums.

Paul returned from Confession an hour later, having confessed nothing.

Paul—‘I couldn’t tell the priest anything. I felt ashamed.’

Sarah—‘Isn’t that what the confessional is for? To relieve the guilt? To relieve the sin?’

Paul—‘You’re not Catholic. You don’t understand. Don’t even try to understand what I’m going through. Don’t talk about it any more. Don’t mention it. Ever.’

Paul didn’t tell anyone. I told my friend Helen and my friend Steve. Helen, an old schoolfriend, had had an abortion herself and was wise beyond her years. Steve was matter-of-fact, straight and honest, and I wanted and needed a man’s perspective. Paul didn’t want to talk about his perspective. So we didn’t talk about it again. The abortion was never mentioned. The baby was never mentioned. The weekend in Suffolk was never mentioned. It was a black hole of time we lost. And into it went our innocence.

I locked it away. We weren’t as intimate. We got up at ten a.m. on Sunday mornings and always met friends and had lunch out. Paul stopped going to church.

As an Irish Catholic, he had felt an impact on him greater than he or I could have imagined. The relationship strained under the weight of guilt and reprehension.

Paul—‘You should have told me you weren’t on the Pill.’

Sarah—‘I was on the Pill. I was just unwell and it obviously didn’t work.’

Paul—‘The Pill always works. Now I’ve got to live with it as well.’

Sarah—‘Are you honestly telling me you wouldn’t have had sex with me that weekend if I’d told you there was a chance the Pill might not work? It was a lovely weekend and I didn’t want to spoil it.’

Paul—‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’

Sarah—‘It was a shared responsibility.’

Paul—‘You didn’t give me the option to share it.’

Sarah—‘I didn’t think there was danger.’

Paul—‘You knew there might be.’

Sarah—‘You’ve slept with girls who weren’t on the Pill before.’

Paul—‘That was different.’

Sarah—‘How different?’

Paul—‘I knew about the risk and I took it. I was given no option here.’