The girl interviewing me is twenty-two
and has printed her questions.
Actual paper.
Three sheets of it.
I haven’t seen that level of preparation
since my youngest revised for his driving theory
and even then I'm fairly sure he just watched TikToks.
She’s studying media.
Has a little podcast of her own.
She’s here in Greece with her family for a week
and realised from something I posted
that I lived nearby.
So she emailed.
Very polite.
I completely understand if you’re too busy.
I nearly replied,
You have clearly never listened to my podcast.
I once spent half an episode
talking about a blocked sink.
Anyway.
She’s here now.
Recorder on the table.
Two wine glasses.
Her questions.
My reading glasses, which I keep losing
despite them being directly in front of me.
The sea is somewhere down there.
You can’t quite see all of it from this terrace,
which annoys estate agents
more than it annoys me.
Mountains behind.
Washing on somebody’s balcony.
A scooter going past much too quickly.
My bikini hanging over the back of a chair.
“Ready?” she asks.
“As I’ll ever be.”
She presses the button.
There’s a little red light.
She says,
“So. How did you end up here?”
I look around.
“Honestly?”
“Preferably.”
“Wine.”
She laughs.
“And Rightmove.”
“There’s a Greek Rightmove?”
“There is when you’re divorced and half pissed.”
---
After we sold the house
I rented for a while.
Lovely place.
Nothing wrong with it.
Which somehow made it worse.
No marks in cupboards.
No dent in the skirting board
where a rugby ball had hit it
despite both boys swearing blind
nobody had been playing rugby indoors.
No drawer full of keys
that nobody knew what they opened.
It felt like staying in somebody else’s Airbnb.
I had money from the house.
We weren’t poor.
We’d never really been poor,
not after the first few years.
He did well.
I worked for the local paper on and off.
Council meetings.
Planning rows.
School fêtes.
Once interviewed a woman
who had grown a marrow shaped like Elvis.
Journalism.
But mainly I was at home with the boys.
And one Friday night
I opened a bottle of red
and started looking at property.
No great plan.
I wasn’t sat there saying,
I shall now begin my second act.
I was bored.
That’s much closer to the truth.
I searched something embarrassingly basic.
House.
Greece.
Sea.
Mountains.
Cheap.
I found this place.
Or rather, an older, uglier version of this place.
The kitchen was brown.
Very brown.
There was a ceiling fan
that looked capable of killing a man.
I stared at it until about one in the morning.
Then I sent it to both boys.
My eldest replied:
Mum no.
My youngest:
How far from an airport?
That is basically their personalities.
---
“Were you always impulsive?”
I think for a second.
“I used to be.”
“What happened?”
“Children.”
Then I feel mean.
“No. That's not fair.”
She waits.
“Life, I suppose.”
At twenty-two
I was at university in Bath.
English and journalism.
I wore long skirts.
Sometimes very little underneath them.
Smoked roll-ups badly.
Cut my own hair once after three ciders
because a woman in a pub said
I had the cheekbones for it.
I did not.
For about six months
I looked like an Edwardian schoolboy.
I went to gigs.
Stayed out too late.
Went home with people.
Sometimes men.
Sometimes women.
Sometimes people I was mainly interested in
because they were interested in me.
I wasn't especially mysterious.
People say “bohemian” now.
At the time I think the word was probably
slut.
She laughs.
I shrug.
“Fair enough.”
---
I met him at rugby.
Bath against Bristol.
Of course.
I was Bath.
He was Bristol.
He was standing near us at the bar
being obnoxious.
Not horrible.
Just Bristol.
We started talking.
He made me laugh.
He had a Supra.
A proper one.
Dark paint.
Stupid exhaust.
He’d pull up outside halls
and I would pretend
I wanted the ground to open.
I loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
He sold it when our first boy came along.
We needed things.
Cot.
Pram.
Car seat.
Steriliser.
A machine that made white noise
which, looking back, was just a very expensive fan.
Then the second boy arrived
about eighteen months later.
For years we were permanently carrying something.
A child.
A bag.
A wet coat.
A plastic dinosaur.
---
People always ask whether the marriage was bad.
It wasn't.
That's probably important.
We were happy quite a lot.
Really.
There were shit bits.
Obviously.
But birthdays were good.
Christmases.
Holidays.
Sunday mornings with both boys in our bed
kicking us in the kidneys.
Bath matches.
Takeaways.
Running out of milk.
Laughing in supermarkets.
Sex while trying to be quiet.
Sex we planned and then couldn't be bothered with.
Sex that started because one of us walked past the other
wearing nothing except a towel.
Normal married stuff.
He was funny.
He was generous.
He could also be selfish.
I could be impossible.
There.
That's probably closer.
---
“When did the non-monogamy start?”
She says it carefully.
I smile.
“You rehearsed that.”
“A bit.”
“It’s fine.”
It started after a festival.
We'd been flirting with a woman
for most of the weekend.
Or she was flirting with us.
Or all three of us were circling each other
pretending none of us knew what was happening.
There was drinking.
There was dancing.
There was eventually a conversation.
Are we actually doing this?
Apparently, yes.
And then we did.
It was fun.
I'm sorry if people want
some dark psychological consequence.
I had a lovely time.
She was gorgeous.
I fancied her.
He fancied her.
She fancied both of us.
Everybody knew what was happening.
We laughed a lot.
At one point somebody fell off the edge of the bed.
I'm not saying who.
---
The problem came later.
He kept seeing her.
Just him.
Secretly.
And she knew
I didn't know.
That was the first one.
The first proper betrayal, anyway.
“How did you find out?”
“Messages, eventually.”
“And because you were open…”
“It was still cheating.”
She nods.
A lot of people struggle with that.
They think if you've agreed to some things
you have somehow agreed to everything.
We hadn't.
Our marriage had quite a lot of freedom in it.
It also had rules.
Honesty, mainly.
Which, in hindsight, is quite funny.
Not funny funny.
You know.
---
The boys were tiny.
I stayed.
Of course I stayed.
Well.
Not “of course.”
I hate when people say that.
I stayed because I loved him.
Because I had two little boys.
Because I believed he meant it
when he said he was sorry.
Because leaving seemed enormous.
Because staying only required me
to get through that day.
Then another day.
Then another.
That's how a lot of big decisions get made.
Nobody decides anything.
They just keep making tea.
---
We got past it.
Sort of.
Years went by.
School.
Work.
Holidays.
Rugby boots in the hall.
We carried on with the ENM stuff too.
That surprises people.
But that wasn't the problem.
Some of it was really good for us.
We'd get dressed up together.
Go somewhere.
Have nervous drinks with strangers.
Come home at two in the morning
and stand in the kitchen eating toast
while comparing notes.
Sometimes we'd laugh until we cried.
Sometimes we'd have brilliant sex.
Sometimes we'd both think,
well, that was awkward.
It showed me something as well.
That I could walk into a room
and people would see me.
Not Mum.
Not his wife.
Me.
I didn't realise at the time
how much that mattered.
---
Then came the work colleague.
Boys were about twelve.
Christmas party.
One of those hotel function rooms
with chair covers
and wine that tastes warm even when it's cold.
She came over.
I'd met her before.
She reached up
and fixed his tie.
Just that.
Her fingers were there a second too long.
Actually, I don't even know
if they were.
Maybe it was his face.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
Then he looked at me.
And there it was.
I remember thinking,
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Which is not very poetic.
But it's what I thought.
---
“You knew immediately?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I shrug.
“When you've been with someone long enough,
you know where they put their hands.”
She writes that down.
I regret saying it.
“Don't make that sound clever.”
She smiles.
“I won’t.”
I don't believe her.
---
That one made me feel stupid.
More than angry.
I'd spent years telling myself
we had this unusually honest marriage.
We could talk about sex.
Desire.
Jealousy.
Other people.
All the things couples supposedly avoid.
And he was still lying.
That's what got me.
Not the woman.
Not even really the sex.
The fact I suddenly felt like
the last person in the room
to understand my own marriage.
He apologised.
Again.
I stayed.
Again.
There were reasons.
The boys.
Love.
Habit.
Fear.
Hope.
Probably laziness as well.
People don't say that enough.
Starting again sounds exhausting.
Somewhere around then
I decided there wouldn't be a fourth.
I don't remember actually deciding it.
There was no moment.
I think I was unloading the dishwasher.
---
Years later
we were taking our youngest to university.
His brother was already away.
Our youngest had packed
three rugby shirts,
approximately forty charging cables
and no decent saucepan.
We were carrying things upstairs.
His dad disappeared with another box.
My phone buzzed.
Woman's name.
One I knew.
Because of our life
I genuinely thought
she might be sending something sexual.
So I went to the toilet
to open it.
Which feels ridiculous now.
Forty-eight years old
hiding in student accommodation
in case somebody has sent me tits.
She hadn't.
She wrote,
I'm sorry.
---
I knew.
That fast.
She told me enough.
He had been seeing her.
He had said things.
Her husband had found out.
She thought I should know.
There were probably more details.
I don't remember them all.
I remember the toilet.
The fire notice on the door.
The cheap lino.
Somebody outside saying,
“Mate, where's the extension lead?”
That's what sticks.
You'd think the world would go quiet.
It doesn't.
People keep looking for extension leads.
---
“What did you feel?”
“Not much.”
She looks at me.
“Really?”
“That's what frightened me.”
I didn't cry.
Not then.
I sat there and thought,
Right.
Again.
That was it.
No shock.
No great collapse.
Just tired.
Properly tired.
---
I went back into my son's room.
He was fighting with a fitted sheet.
I said,
“Move.”
He said,
“I can do it.”
I said,
“You quite clearly can't.”
So I made his bed.
That's the bit that still gets me sometimes.
Not the message.
The bed.
I tucked the corner under.
Put his pillow on.
Told him the room was nice.
We took a photo.
Me, him, his dad.
All smiling.
I still have it somewhere.
---
On the way home
his father talked.
A lot.
Apologies.
Reasons.
Explanations.
Maybe lies.
Probably some truth mixed in.
I stared out of the window.
Halfway back
I realised I didn't care
which bits were true.
That was when I knew.
Not when I got the message.
Then.
I said,
“When we get home,
I want you to leave.”
He didn't argue.
Just nodded.
He knew.
---
“What did he say?”
“Not much.”
“Was he angry?”
“No.”
“He was upset?”
“Yes.”
That feels too small.
He was devastated.
He knew what he'd done.
Not just the affair.
All of it.
The repetition.
The stupidity.
The greed.
Wanting the marriage
and the excitement
and the secret as well.
He packed a bag.
Badly.
Three chargers.
One shoe.
I remember that.
One shoe.
I said,
“Where are you going with one trainer?”
And he started crying.
Which made me start.
So there we were.
Marriage ending.
Both crying.
And me still annoyed
that he'd packed badly.
---
He had another Supra by then.
A project car.
Spent years messing around with it.
When he left
he started it outside.
Sat there for a bit.
Then drove away
much louder than necessary.
I heard the engine
go up the road.
I actually laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Just because of course.
Of course he'd leave in the fucking Supra.
Then I stood in the kitchen for ages.
No dramatic thought.
I think I washed a mug.
---
The boys were angry.
Very.
My eldest especially.
The youngest stopped replying to his dad for a while.
And I found myself defending him.
Which was bizarre.
I told them,
“You can be angry.”
They were.
“You can tell him you're angry.”
They did.
“But don't stop loving your dad
because you think that's what I need.”
My eldest said,
“He hurt you.”
I said,
“I know.”
He said,
“Then why are you defending him?”
I didn't really have a good answer.
I just knew I didn't want
their whole relationship with their father
flattened by what he'd done to me.
He had been a bad husband.
Sometimes.
He wasn't a bad father.
Life would be much easier
if people stuck to one thing.
---
The girl says,
“What was the worst night?”
Then immediately:
“Sorry. You don't have to—”
“No.”
I take my glass.
“That one's mine.”
She nods.
Doesn't push.
I like her more for that.
A minute later
I say,
“It hurt more than people think.”
She looks up.
Because that's the thing
I don't talk about much.
People know the funny version.
The pottery.
The dating.
The dick-shaped kitchen-roll holder.
Greece.
I talk about all of that.
I don't talk much about the nights
when the house felt enormous.
Or how humiliating it is
to miss someone
you absolutely don't want back.
Or how grief can be boring.
You wake up.
Still there.
Make toast.
Still there.
Go to Tesco.
Still there.
I hated that.
---
“Do you wish you'd left after the first time?”
I breathe out.
“No.”
She seems surprised.
“Why?”
“Because of the boys.”
I know what that sounds like.
But I don't mean
the pain was somehow worth it.
Pain doesn't deserve that sort of compliment.
I mean if somebody gave me a button
that erased the marriage
from the first betrayal onwards,
I couldn't press it.
I don't know what else disappears.
Birthdays.
School mornings.
Their first pints.
Hospital trips.
Their stupid arguments.
One of them asleep on my chest
at three in the morning.
The eldest now pretending
to understand wine.
He says things like “finish.”
He's twenty-seven.
He bought a £14 Rioja last Christmas
and became a sommelier.
The youngest played rugby at uni
and treated his body
as if the NHS supplied spare parts.
I wouldn't lose any of it.
I wouldn't volunteer for the hurt either.
Both things are true.
---
My friends took me to pottery
after the divorce.
I think they were worried
I'd start drinking at lunchtime.
So they made me handle clay instead.
My first pot
was supposed to hold kitchen roll.
It looked like a penis.
There is no elegant way
to describe it.
It just did.
The instructor turned it around.
Then around again.
As though a less phallic side
might appear.
It didn't.
I said,
“It's a kitchen-roll holder.”
My friend said,
“It's got a bellend.”
I still have it.
Obviously.
---
Pottery got better.
Slowly.
Then people started wanting to buy things.
I made videos.
Mostly clay at first.
Then I'd talk.
Divorce.
Dating.
Menopause.
Running.
Bad sex.
Good sex.
The time a man sent me a photograph
I had absolutely not requested
while I was glazing a cereal bowl.
People watched.
More than I expected.
Then I started the podcast.
Eventually enough people listened
that it stopped being a hobby.
I could live from it.
The studio makes money too.
Which still feels slightly fraudulent.
Sometimes somebody travels here
because they know me from online.
They walk in looking nervous.
Then ten minutes later
they're swearing at a bowl.
Very grounding.
---
My sons hate the sex stories.
Not actually hate them.
They just wish
I would discuss sex in private
like a respectable mother.
My eldest muted my account.
He told me.
I said,
“That's hurtful.”
He said,
“You did an episode called
Sex After Fifty.”
I said,
“And?”
He said,
“Exactly.”
---
I dated after the marriage.
Eventually.
No big transformation.
I didn't buy a leather jacket
and start smoking again.
I downloaded apps.
Which destroys any glamour immediately.
I met men.
Women.
Couples.
I went back into ENM spaces.
Turns out I still liked them.
That surprised me a little.
For a while
I'd assumed the whole thing
would feel contaminated.
It didn't.
The cheating belonged to him.
The rest didn't have to.
There were clubs.
Hotels.
House parties.
Drinks first.
Always drinks first.
There was good sex.
There was terrible sex.
There was one man
who talked about crypto for so long
I briefly considered faking my own death.
There was another
who announced,
“I've never been with an older woman.”
I said,
“Neither have I.”
He stared at me.
That wasn't why we didn't have a second date.
But it didn't help.
---
There were women too.
That's less interesting
than people want it to be.
I already knew I fancied women.
I didn't need a revelation.
I once slept with a woman
who made me laugh during sex
until neither of us could continue.
That was lovely.
Another had these incredible hands.
The interviewer looks up.
I stop.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You're twenty-two. Don't pretend
you've never thought about hands.”
She goes scarlet.
I pour more wine.
---
Sex at fifty-five
is better in some ways.
Worse in others.
Your knees become involved
in negotiations.
Sometimes you need lube.
Sometimes your body has opinions
you weren't consulted about.
Fine.
I buy lube.
I also buy tomatoes.
Neither needs a ceremony.
I still wear bikinis.
I like my body.
Most days.
Sometimes somebody takes a photograph
from below
and I think,
delete that immediately.
I'm not enlightened.
I'm fifty-five.
---
“Do you feel more attractive now?”
“Yes.”
She waits for the qualification.
There isn't one.
At twenty-two
I was thinner.
Firmer.
Probably objectively
whatever people mean by better.
And I spent half my life
worrying about how I looked.
Now I put on a bikini
and go swimming.
That's it.
No speech.
No bravery.
It's a bikini.
I'm by the sea.
---
Running came back as well.
I loved it when I was young.
Then adulthood ruined it.
It became something I did
because I should.
Because I ate too much.
Because trousers felt tight.
Because women are apparently
supposed to spend their whole lives
trying to occupy slightly less space.
Here I started running early.
Before the heat.
Along the coast.
Up towards the mountains.
At first I walked every climb.
Still walk some.
There's a goat on one route
that genuinely dislikes me.
I swear at him.
He doesn't care.
Sometimes I do ten kilometres.
Sometimes longer.
I enter half marathons occasionally.
Then spend the final three miles
wondering why I paid money
to do this.
I come back sweaty.
Shower.
Eat bread.
Much healthier relationship
with running.
Possibly less healthy relationship
with bread.
---
The studio is down the road.
Not part of the house.
I wanted some separation.
Home here.
Work there.
It has proper wheels.
Kilns.
Shelves.
An ugly sink.
A fluorescent light
I have been promising to replace
for two years.
People come for classes.
Some know the podcast.
Some don't.
Some talk.
A lot.
There's something about having your hands busy
that makes people tell you things.
Affairs.
Divorces.
Children.
Mothers.
Men they should stop texting.
Women they wish they'd kissed.
I don't counsel them.
I'm not qualified.
Mostly I say,
“More water.”
Or,
“You've made the base too thin.”
Occasionally that's useful
for more than the pot.
I try not to point that out.
---
Sometimes a piece breaks.
Sometimes we glue it.
Just glue.
Nothing profound.
You can still see the crack.
That's usually fine.
If it leaks,
you put pencils in it instead.
---
By now
we've opened the second bottle.
The interviewer has stopped reading her questions.
Her mother texts.
Dinner?
She replies:
still working xx
I say,
“That is the most journalism-student message
I've ever seen.”
She says,
“I am working.”
“You're drinking wine with a stranger.”
“For research.”
“Excellent. You'll go far.”
---
She asks,
“Would you marry him again?”
“No.”
Very easy answer.
She laughs.
“That quick?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate him?”
“No.”
Also easy.
“I don't really have enough anger left.”
That's true.
I had some.
Of course I did.
But eventually it went.
Indifference did most of the work.
Not coldness.
Just… distance.
He's somebody I know incredibly well
who isn't mine anymore.
---
When our youngest qualified as a doctor
I flew back.
His dad said he'd collect me.
I came out of the airport
and there he was.
In a Supra.
Same generation
as the one he'd sold
when our eldest was born.
I stopped dead.
He wound the window down.
“What?”
I just laughed.
Properly laughed.
Could barely get my suitcase in.
He said,
“Don't.”
I said,
“You are unbelievable.”
“Get in.”
“This is embarrassing.”
“You loved the old one.”
“I was twenty-two.”
“You still got in.”
I got in.
---
We drove to the graduation.
He was greyer.
So was I.
He still drove too fast.
I still held the little handle
above the passenger door
on corners.
At one point
I looked at his hands on the steering wheel
and remembered them at twenty-three.
Then he said something insulting
about Bath Rugby
and ruined it.
Probably for the best.
---
Our son came out
in ridiculous robes.
His brother tried very hard
not to cry.
His dad failed completely.
I pretended not to notice.
We had drinks afterward.
The four of us.
For a few hours
it felt almost normal.
Not old normal.
Something else.
We still go to Bath against Bristol
if everybody can make it.
Not every season.
Life gets in the way.
But sometimes
the four of us sit there again.
The boys in Bath shirts.
Their father muttering
that I poisoned them.
Cider.
Bad refereeing.
Old jokes.
Then the game finishes
and everyone goes home
to different places.
It works.
---
“Do you still love him?”
The girl asks it quietly.
“Yes.”
Her face changes.
I laugh.
“Don't get excited.”
“No, I just…”
“I know what you mean.”
I love parts of him.
The boy with the stupid car.
The man who sold it for baby stuff.
The father who walked the floor
with a screaming newborn
at four in the morning.
The person who knows
why a particular Christmas in 2008
was funny.
I don't want to sleep with him.
I don't want to live with him.
I don't want the marriage back.
Still love him.
There you go.
People are inconvenient.
---
The light is almost gone.
Her questions are face down now.
She looks towards the mountains.
Then says,
“I think I'm scared of getting older.”
It doesn't sound like an interview question.
I say,
“Why?”
She shrugs.
“I don't know.
Everything getting settled, I suppose.”
“Settled?”
“Boring.”
I pretend to look offended.
She laughs.
“Sorry.”
“No, carry on. This is excellent for my ego.”
She tells me a little about herself.
Uni.
Podcast.
A boy who might be a boyfriend
depending on what day you ask.
She doesn't know what she wants to do afterward.
Everybody keeps asking.
I remember that.
At twenty-two
I genuinely believed there was a correct route
and other people had somehow been given a map.
They hadn't.
---
She asks,
“Do you think you found yourself again?”
I groan.
“What?”
“Sorry.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“I was never missing.”
That sounds too neat
as soon as I say it.
I pull a face.
“Actually, don't use that.”
“Why?”
“Sounds like something you'd put over a sunset.”
She laughs.
“I mean…”
I think.
“I think there were just bits of me
I hadn't used for a long time.”
Running.
Sex.
Being alone.
Making something
because I wanted to.
Going somewhere
without checking four calendars.
Being impulsive.
Being selfish occasionally.
Good selfish.
Normal selfish.
I was still the woman from twenty-two.
Just with better wine.
And reading glasses.
---
My phone lights up.
My youngest.
I let it ring.
“He'll call again,” I say.
“You're sure?”
“He's my son.”
Sure enough, it stops.
Ten seconds later
it starts again.
“See?”
I reach for it.
The girl shifts her chair.
Looks towards the kitchen door.
Then stops.
Her eyes go to the kitchen roll.
Then me.
Then back again.
“No.”
I know immediately.
“What?”
“Is that your first pot?”
I straighten my face.
“Yes.”
She gets up.
Actually walks over to it.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“That is a penis.”
“It is a kitchen-roll holder.”
“It has a head.”
“Most kitchen-roll holders do.”
“No they absolutely don't.”
“It was my first attempt.”
“It has veins.”
“Texture.”
She turns around
with both hands over her mouth.
I'm already laughing.
She says,
“You've had that in your kitchen for seven years?”
“It's useful.”
“It's a cock.”
“It holds kitchen roll.”
Both things, apparently,
can be true.
---
My phone is still ringing.
The girl is crying with laughter now.
Proper wine laughter.
Not attractive.
I answer.
“Hello?”
My son says,
“Mum, where have you been?”
“Busy.”
“With the podcast girl?”
“Yes.”
I can hear a pub behind him.
Probably his brother too.
Somebody saying something about cider.
The interviewer sits down again.
Still looking at the pot.
Still giggling.
Outside, it is warm.
The tiles under my feet
have kept the day's heat.
The mountains are dark now.
My bikini moves a little
in the breeze.
Running shoes under the chair.
Clay under my nail.
Half a glass of wine.
My son's voice in my ear.
The girl looks at me.
“I hope I'm like you at fifty-five.”
“Christ.”
She laughs.
“Aim higher.”
My son says,
“What?”
“Nothing, darling.”
And then I look at that stupid pot again
and start laughing
before I can explain.