Chapter 10

10

If Joel ever feels guilty about what’s going on in his life, he’s come up with a nifty list to justify it. It’s not just a mental list, tucked away in his brain. He has actually typed it out in Times New Roman (italics), a pleasingly crisp yet classic font designed in the 1930s – a font which, irritatingly, Joel has yet to better. As well as being a graphic designer, Joel also fancies himself as a writer (all those years spent working on magazines) and a bit of a philosopher too. He enjoyed compiling the list and definitely felt better by the end of it. Stored on his Mac in his studio at the top of the house, it goes like this:

1. It doesn’t affect my family. I am still a good husband, a good dad.

2. If it wasn’t happening, I wouldn’t feel right. I’d be miserable and harder to be around. So really, Shelley and the kids benefit.

3. Because of this, I am actually nicer to Shelley than I might be otherwise. So again, she benefits.

4. Shell takes me for granted. Hardly ever interested in sex.

5. We only have one life to live and everyone owes it to themselves to squeeze the maximum fun and joy out of it. Once your one life is gone, it’s gone.

Joel was especially pleased with that one. He is thinking of creating a poster using those words.

6. I work so hard and funnel so much of my money into this family that I deserve some kind of reward.

And that’s it. That’s how Joel justifies his behaviour to himself. While he isn’t entirely sure that it would stand up in a court of law, he has played the scenario over and over numerous times since it all started six months ago, and the list always helps to settle his nerves.

That’s why he is re-reading it now, on a cold, wet Friday night in their little corner of east London. He is feeling antsy at being left in charge here, and is wondering if there’s anything else he can add to it.

Installed at his desk, on his fantastically expensive ergonomic chair, he glances down to assess the state of his stomach. There had been a bit of a paunch developing there, which Shelley had prodded at playfully. ‘It’s lovely,’ she insisted. ‘A lovely squidgy daddy-tum.’ She’d laughed and hoiked up his self-designed T-shirt (inspired by Soviet-era propaganda poster art) and blown a raspberry on it. But Joel doesn’t want a daddy-tum. And thankfully, due to his perpetually highly charged state – not to mention all the extra-curricular physical activity going on – things are definitely looking firmer in that region.

He starts to add another point to the list.

7. It motivates me to take care of myself and keep in shape. Another win for Shelley ? —

‘Dad?’

Joel freezes as if the police had burst in. ‘Fin! What d’you want?’ He quickly minimises the document.

His son’s gaze shifts from the screen to his father’s perspiring face. ‘Nothing.’

Why are you creeping in here then? Joel wants to snap. Instead, he stands up and rotates his shoulders as if loosening the joints after a punishing evening’s work. Then he makes for the open-tread wooden stairs, hoping his son will follow in his slipstream.

‘What were you doing?’ Fin asks mildly as they trot downstairs.

‘Just working on some ideas for a project,’ Joel replies. When have his kids ever been remotely interested in what he does? He’s just the money machine here. As long as he keeps on landing lucrative jobs, no one cares.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Fin looks at him as they arrive at the kitchen.

‘Haven’t thought about it,’ Joel says tersely.

A silence hovers. ‘How long’s Mum away?’

‘Four nights. She’s back on Christmas Eve.’ Fin seems to pale and shrink into himself, as if this isn’t the news he wanted to hear. Joel isn’t best pleased either, although he plans to make the most of his relative freedom while Shelley is away.

‘Where’s she gone again?’ Fin asks. This is all very different, his dad being left in charge of things.

‘Scotland,’ Joel replies.

‘Whereabouts in Scotland?’ Fin squints, as if having trouble with the concept.

Joel emits an audible sigh. He grew up in the furthest reaches of east London, in a suburb so dull it makes his scalp itch to think of it. Apart from their annual family package holidays to Spain or Greece – and that long-ago excursion to Glasgow when Shelley had to sit down on the old-lady chair in John Lewis and ask for water – he has barely been out of London at all. As far as he is concerned, the UK is divided into two sections: ‘London’ and ‘Outside London’. The latter, he can’t see the point of at all.

‘Someplace in the middle of nowhere,’ he replies, although he doesn’t really know.

‘Why’s she gone there?’

‘Don’t know. Just an urge, I suppose.’ With a snort and an eye roll, Joel tries to engage his son in a silent man-to-man exchange. Women, eh? But Fin isn’t biting. ‘Why don’t you go and watch TV?’ Joel suggests impatiently.

Fin blinks at him. He doesn’t ‘watch TV’; he gains all of his visual stimulation via his laptop and phone. His dad might as well have suggested he pop off and listen to the wireless. But he leaves the kitchen anyway, and soon Joel becomes aware of a mumbled conversation between Fin and Martha in the living room.

Feeling weighted down by having to care for his kids, Joel boils enough spaghetti to fuel a football team and grabs a jar of sauce from the cupboard. Sun ripened Isle of Wight tomatoes and fragrant basil. Made with love, the label reads. Joel isn’t making dinner with love. He slops out ill-tempered spaghetti for his near-silent kids, slumped gloomily at the table. It’s a relief when dinner is over, and first Fin heads out to his mate Ajay’s, and then Martha announces that she too is meeting ‘people’, no further information supplied.

Alone now, Joel prowls around the Victorian terraced house that they almost bankrupted themselves to buy when Shelley was pregnant with Fin. It’s as if he needs to reassure himself that no one is hiding away in any of the rooms or cupboards. He even checks the tiny downstairs loo and the cupboard under the stairs. Although he is often alone here during the day, when Shelley is at work and the kids are at school, tonight’s aloneness has taken on a different quality.

There’s something almost thrilling about it. It’s like those rare occasions when his parents went out to meet friends at the pub, a fake Tudor monstrosity with a terrible font on its signage close to Epping Forest. Left home alone, the teenage Joel would raid their drinks cabinet and concoct audacious cocktails incorporating all the spirits, topped up with the sangria they’d brought back from Lloret de Mar in a bottle shaped like a bull.

Tonight’s aloneness is like that. It feels shiny, like a gift. Because for one thing, it’s evening; the start of the last weekend before Christmas. Better still, Joel doesn’t have any outstanding work to do, and he isn’t about to tackle the dishes. Why should he clear up after his kids, like a servant?

No, tonight Joel has another plan. Leaving the dirty pasta bowls on the table, he bounds upstairs for a swift shower and then, in the bedroom, surveys his naked form in the full-length mirror. He has definitely trimmed down in the belly region and he’s not in bad shape for fifty-two. In fact, if he stands up straight to his full six feet and sucks in his stomach, he’s actually still pretty hot.

Shelley might not think so, judging by the way she clambers into bed in her flowery pyjamas that remind him of his late nan’s curtains and immediately pops her reading glasses on. But someone else does. Someone who seems pretty impressed by his semi-fame as a top graphic designer and who would never wear spectacles in bed.

The thought of this person triggers a spontaneous stirring of Joel’s loins. That’s what she does to him. It’s as if he’s a teenager again, hair-triggered to respond to the slightest sexual provocation: watching Top of the Pops ; glimpsing the bra section of his mum’s Grattan catalogue. Even Margot from The Good Life could set him off when his hormones were at a rolling boil. But tonight, determined to keep himself for the delights ahead, he tries to dampen his ardour by focusing hard on decidedly non-sexual things: the damp patch on the bedroom ceiling; Shelley reminding him to sluice out the black wheelie bin because something is rotting in the bottom of it. Yep, that’s done it. He picks out a plain dark-blue shirt and putty-coloured trousers and his favourite new trainers. Having dressed quickly, he squirts on the new fragrance that was gifted to him, as an extra thank you for his packaging redesign.

Frowning, he messages his kids to say he’s meeting a friend for a drink tonight. Do they have their keys?

Yes, replies Fin.

Ye, says Martha.

Thus settled, Joel steps out into the dank December night, mentally adding an extra point to his secret list.

Shelley’s fucked off to Scotland – five days before Christmas! – without even clearing it with me. So what does she expect?