Plain Jane II

I realised later that they had only been setting me up with him as a cruel joke. He had a reputation as a local Lothario, and I had one as an idiot. The joke was on them when we stayed together, but it took a long time for that to happen. The fact is that I had been as low as it is possible to be and survived (and that only because someone heard my cry for help). I didn’t feel as though it had made me stronger, I felt as though it had made me resigned to the emptiness; prepared to accept it, like everything else, because I had no choice. I wasn’t even clever enough to kill myself successfully.

My poor son was still bewildered by it all, and he would surely never have been so judgemental if his sister had not been so bitter and harsh. He wanted things to be easy and nice, the way they always had been in his innocent world. She wanted payback from anyone she could get her spiteful teenage claws into, but for a little while, she was guilted into being a little more grown-up, and she tried to be less confrontational and more supportive.

During that phase, I found a better house, so that they could come and stay with me more often. Children that age need their own rooms, and the three of us looked at a lot of places before we settled on a little red brick place on the edge of the council estate. It wasn’t the town’s classiest location, but there was central heating and a garden, which made it far more homely than the ramshackle establishment their father had moved them into. They spent more time with me then, and the three of us started to build something that was shaky and new, but positive.

I used to get my daughter to answer the phone, because my not-so well-meaning colleagues had given Lothario my number, and after our first date, I really didn’t like him very much. He was persistent, though, as though the more I turned him down, the more he fancied the challenge. I gave in a couple of times, just because when the kids were with their dad, I got so very bored and lonely. He was quite charming and romantic, and conversation without any teenage agenda made a refreshing change. Because I didn’t like him, it was easy to keep him at arm’s length; and never before had I experienced that kind of hold over a man.

Sometimes I wonder how that relationship would have run, if I hadn’t needed his help one night. I was taking the children to the theatre for a birthday treat, and I forgot to pick up my house key on my way out of the door. As it clicked shut, I realised that we were locked out, and stood on the pavement with two teenagers who still needed their mother to know what to do in a crisis. I had no option but to call Lothario from the phone box at the end of my road, and he shuffled us off to the theatre, and had broken into the house, retrieved the key, and mended the window, all by the time we got back.

It felt so good to have someone around who could and would mend things, paint things, plant things, and at the end of the day, sit down and appreciate a good dinner and a couple of pints of beer. I had forgotten that lovemaking could be so exciting, too, because with the other man, it had always been rather hurried and fumbling, which had seemed exciting at the time, but was ultimately unfulfilling. Lothario started to stay the night sometimes, but never when the children were staying. It seemed like I had been given a second chance at happiness, and we were engaged before my divorce was made Absolute.

If only it had been that simple, but what can be simple when you have teenagers who have labelled themselves Broken Home, to take into account? They took an immediate dislike to him, and it was the same with my parents. If my first marriage had been beneath me, then this one was beyond the pale. He was a yorkshireman through and through, and where I saw reliable, strong, knight errant, the snobs in my family were seeing someone who was socially lower, and ten years older than me.

He suffered bouts of ill-health, because he worked in a factory and lived in a damp terraced house; eventually, though, we were spending so much time together that it made sense for him to move in with me. It was a difficult decision, because I knew the children would hate it, but as he said, I couldn’t deny myself happiness just for them. Their lives were just starting, and they would have many chances to arrange things the way they wanted, but for me, it was time to be a little bit selfish. He always stood by me, however rude and unpleasant the children were to us. We used the money from his house sale to pay off my mortgage, which meant that we could both give up work and run our own business, which is what we had both always wanted.

We’ve had good years and bad years. Now that the children are grown up, they have accepted him, and they come to stay with us sometimes. I wanted to have another child, but was over forty by then, and I smoked, and was under a lot of stress. We gave up after the second miscarriage. Sometimes I try to explain to my children what it was like to live with their father, but they always change the subject. I just feel that they ought to know the facts, in case they are still judging me, after all these years.

My life might not be glamorous or exciting, but I’m happy with our small circle of friends, people who he has known for years and years, drinking in the pub that has been his local for a lifetime. It gives me a real feeling of stability. When he is too ill to work, I manage well enough by myself, and come home to make his tea and spend the evening by the fire with a book.

We will grow old together and I will have no regrets. I will never ask myself how it might have been if I had charmed those society boys, or left my first husband when he had his affair, because those were not the lives for me. I believe that I was always destined to meet Lothario, that fate put him there to rescue me when I needed to be rescued, and that all the decisions I ever made have led me to this point. This is the life that chose me.