6

We were spending an alarming amount of time flying over the suburbs of Los Angeles. They just kept unscrolling beneath me, grid after grid of dusty, single-level houses, the neat squares occasionally interrupted by a huge concrete freeway snaking violently through them. From far away in the distance came the diamond glint of the ocean.

It was barely a week since the phone call from Emily and I could hardly believe I was here. Almost here – were we ever going to land?

There had been strong opposition to me making the journey. Especially from my mother. ‘Los Angeles? What Los Angeles?’ she had demanded. ‘Didn’t Rachel say you could stay with her in New York? And didn’t Claire say you could go to London and live with her for as long as you wanted? And what if there’s an earthquake in that Los Angeles place?’ She turned on Dad. ‘Say something!’

‘I’ve two tickets for the Hurling semi-final,’ Dad said sadly. ‘Now who’ll come with me?’

Then Mum remembered something and addressed Dad. ‘Isn’t Los Angeles the place where you hurt your neck?’

About twenty years ago, Dad had gone with a load of other accountants on some junket to Los Angeles, and had come back with a gammy neck from the Log Flume at Disneyland.

‘It was my own fault,’ he insisted. ‘There were signs saying I shouldn’t stand up. And it wasn’t just me, the whole seven of our necks got dislocated.’

‘Oh, mother of God!’ Mum clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘She’s taken off her wedding ring!’

I’d been kind of experimenting, to see what it felt like. The missing rings (the engagement ring went too) left a very obvious indent and a circle of white skin like uncooked dough. I don’t think in the nine years I’d been married I’d ever taken them off: being without them felt strange and bad. But so did wearing them. At least this way was more honest.

Next to register his displeasure at my departure was Garv. I’d phoned to tell him I was off for a month or so and he’d come hot-footing it round. Mum ushered him into the sitting-room. ‘Now!’ she declared triumphantly, her entire demeanour saying, ‘Time for this nonsense to stop, young lady.’

Garv said hello, and we both looked at each other for far too long. Maybe that’s what you do when you split up with someone: try to remember what once welded you together. He’d gone slightly bitty and unkempt. Even though he was in his work clothes, he was wearing his off-duty hair and his expression was grim – unless it was always grim? Maybe I was reading more into this than I should.

Indeed, he didn’t look like he was fading away through sorrow; he was still, to use a phrase of my mother’s (except she never said it about Garv), ‘a fine figure of a man’. Hazily, I suspected that these weren’t the right thoughts to be thinking in the circumstances; they didn’t seem weighty enough. But they were all I could manage. Why? Shock, maybe? Or could it be that Anna was right and Cosmopolitan was wrong – perhaps I was depressed.

‘Why LA?’ Garv asked stiffly.

‘Why not? Emily’s there.’

He gave me a look which I didn’t understand.

‘I’ve no job and… you know… ‘I explained. ‘I might as well. I know we’ve a lot of stuff to sort out, but…’

‘When will you be back?’

‘Don’t know exactly, I’ve an open-ended ticket. In about a month.’

‘A month.’ He sounded weary. ‘Well, when you come back, we’ll talk.’

‘That’d make a change.’ I hadn’t meant to sound so bitter.

Rancour mushroomed between us, like a cloud of poison. Then – poof! – it was gone again and we were back to being polite adults.

‘We do need to talk,’ he stressed.

‘If I’m not back in a month you can come and get me.’ I strove to sound pleasant. ‘Then we’ll get solicitors and all that.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you go jumping the gun and getting one before me.’ It was meant to sound light-hearted, but instead emerged sounding spiteful.

He looked at me, without expression. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll wait until you’re back.’

‘I won’t be working so I’ll pay the mortgage from my Ladies’ Nice Things account.’

I had a separate bank account from my joint one with Garv, into which I put a small amount every month – just enough to cover impractical sandals and unnecessary lip-glosses without feeling riddled with guilt at spending our mortgage money. Some of my friends – specifically Donna – wondered how I’d conned Garv into agreeing to it, but in fact it had been his idea and he was the one who’d come up with the jokey name.

‘Forget the mortgage,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll cover it. You’ll need your Ladies’ Nice Things money to buy ladies’ nice things.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’ I was relieved to have a bit more money for Los Angeles. ‘Is it OK for me to go to the house to get some of my stuff?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Something guilty and defensive flickered. He knew exactly what I was talking about, but he pretended not to. And I didn’t bother to elucidate. There was a funny complicity between us, and an awful lot not being said. It was the way I wanted it: if he had someone else I so did not want to know. ‘It’s your house,’ he said. ‘You own half of it.’

It was then that I had the first normal thought that a person whose marriage has just broken up should have – we’d have to sell the house. The mist cleared and my future unspooled like a film. Selling the house, having nowhere to live, searching for somewhere else, trying to make a new life, being alone. And who would I be? So much of my sense of self was tied up in my marriage that, without it, I hadn’t a clue who I was.

I felt dislocated from everything, floating in empty time and space, but I couldn’t think about it now.

‘All in all, how are you? Are you OK?’ Garv asked.

‘Yeah. Considering. You?’

‘Yeah.’ A breathless little laugh. ‘Considering. Keep in touch,’ he said, and made a funny move towards me. It began as a hug, but ended up being a pat on my shoulder.

‘Sure.’ I slid away from his heat and familiar smell. I didn’t want to get too near to him. We said goodbye like strangers.