Kerry Fisher - The Island Escape

Birthday cheer, then, was in short supply. Obviously, I’d known he was going to be thirty-nine for the last three hundred and sixty-four days – but that hadn’t stopped me racing from the nursery to the supermarket for fillet steaks on the very eve I needed to cook them. We’d been living on an economy diet of lentils, chickpeas and turkey mince, so I was glad of an excuse to splash out. I’d just arrived home and was bunging the meat in a sherry and mustard marinade when Roberta turned up.

Post-marriage, we didn’t do many unannounced visits. Though since she’d rented a ridiculously tiny flat in a fancy new development shortly after New Year – ‘I’d rather have pristine and small than grotty and spacious’ – she’d been round much more often. For a brief moment, I thought she’d popped round with a present for Jonathan. I glanced down, but there was no sign of the shiny gift bags Roberta couldn’t live without. She was huddled into her mac and looked so pinched and miserable that I bundled her straight into the kitchen, batting away the children with a packet of HobNobs and a promise that tea would be ready soon.

As soon as the door was shut she told me, in a strained voice, that Scott was thinking of moving his new girlfriend, Shana, into her old house. ‘I know I should be delighted, because it will stop him hassling me and telling me what a rubbish mother I am all the time. But I keep thinking about how special he’ll be making her feel. All those little details he’s so good at. Alicia told me she runs her own lingerie business and that Scott keeps raving about what a brilliant businesswoman she is.’

I couldn’t see that Scott directing his attentions onto some other poor woman was anything other than a cause for cracking open the champagne and setting off the party poppers. I could hear the frustration in my voice as I said, ‘When did he last make you feel special? I know he did all that dramatic crossing-continents and grand-gesture malarkey at the beginning but apart from the odd bunch of daffs he gets his secretary to send you, he hasn’t been putting on the Ritz lately, has he? He’ll soon turn nasty with this Shana floozy when he doesn’t get his own way.’

Roberta sighed. ‘Maybe if I’d insisted on having my own career instead of just renovating our houses, he might have had a little more respect for me.’ Roberta sounded brittle, as though something inside her had tightened too far.

‘You have had your own career. It was your input and your designs that made the houses so saleable. If you hadn’t project-managed every detail, sorted out those bloody builders, architects and landscape gardeners, you’d never have made so much profit. Without you, he couldn’t have built up his property business.’

Roberta was so smart in so many ways. I just couldn’t comprehend why she had this blind spot when it came to Scott. I busied myself getting mushrooms out of the fridge so that she couldn’t see my exasperated face. I tried to sound sympathetic. ‘Scott didn’t want you to go out to work. As far as I can remember, that hotel chain offered you a job revamping that place on New Road and he practically forbade you to do it.’

‘I don’t think he forbade me to do it, did he? I think he just thought the timing wasn’t terribly good because Alicia was so young and it would be tricky finding the right childcare.’

Especially if your husband thought his part of the bargain stopped at the sperm donation stage.

‘That’s not how I recall it. Anyway, whatever the rights and wrongs, you can’t escape the fact that Scott was a bully and you’re better off without him.’ I clenched my teeth and waited. Even when Scott was behaving like a total turd, Roberta had never liked me criticising him.

I wasn’t sure that had changed.

Roberta swirled her coffee. ‘That’s just it. I don’t think I am better off. We’ve been talking a lot lately, mainly about arrangements for Alicia but about us, too. It’s almost like talking to the old Scotty, from years ago, before he got so aggressive. I do wonder if he ever dealt properly with the miscarriages.’

‘No one wanted those little boys more than you, and you haven’t got all bitter and twisted.’ I was so cynical about Scott and his motivations that I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry for him.

‘I know.’ A pause. She looked away. ‘He did say that if I wanted to come back, he would finish with this other woman.’

My head ached with the effort of not telling her to go and get her chakras realigned or her aura smoothed, or whichever one of her bollocky New Age therapies it would take to make her see sense. ‘Woo-hoo, what a ringing endorsement. He might dump the other Sheila if you’re prepared to forgive and forget. Not “I’ll always love you and I’ll be sitting here broken-hearted and experimenting with razor blades until you give me a second chance.” He should be licking the floor in front of you, begging forgiveness.’

‘We were happy most of the time. I know he could be difficult, but he was a good provider. He’s got a girlfriend now, but he wasn’t a philanderer.’

I shook some balsamic vinegar into the marinade and tried to sigh quietly. ‘I think it’s human nature to remember the good times and forget the bad ones. Can I give your rose-tinted specs a little polish? Half the time you couldn’t even speak to your friends on the phone in case the spotlight wandered off him. Then there’s the small matter of that little trip in the cop car. Plus the fact that as soon as you left him, he stopped you getting access to any money – money that you had helped him create – never mind that you still had his daughter to take care of.’

Roberta rested her head on one hand. ‘I know. I did have that conversation with him. He admitted he’d been out of order, said he wasn’t thinking straight when I left him. He’s sorted out an allowance for me now, until we get things onto a more formal footing. That’s if I don’t go back.’ Her voice was small, sinking down into her chest.

By contrast I thought my voice might start bellowing out of mine until the neighbours could hear. ‘Why would you want to?’

‘I never imagined being a single parent. I feel like I’ve let everyone down after insisting that I knew what I was doing, marrying Scott. I don’t want Alicia growing up without a father. I keep hoping that she’ll get closer to Scott as she gets older. That won’t happen if he has a baby with this other woman.’

‘But you also don’t want Alicia growing up thinking that it’s OK to let a bloke swear at her or lock her out when the mood takes him. If Alicia got together with someone who treated her like Scott treats you, you’d think you’d failed as a mother. And she’s not growing up without a father. He sees her whenever he wants, doesn’t he?’

Roberta was shrinking into herself, dwarfed by the collar on her coat. Hard to believe this was the woman who’d run the debating society at school. Who’d petitioned her MP about cuts in funding for the arts. Whose letters to The Times were legendary. Scott had worn her down over the years until she wouldn’t recognise her own opinion if it took a chunk out of her arse. But maybe I was turning into Scott, haranguing her until she agreed with me, whether she thought I was right or not.

I was working out how to do a quick backpedal so she didn’t feel the whole world was against her, when Jonathan came through. He looked amazed to see Roberta, even though he’d only been on the other side of the hatch. His face always took on a wary look when Roberta appeared, in case she might suddenly come and stay again for another ten days.

‘Hiya. How are you? Things falling into place a bit better now?’

Roberta shrugged. ‘We’re fine, thanks.’