William’s Progress. Matt Rudd
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she had joined forces with Alex, back when he wasn’t gay, to help ruin my marriage. He wanted Isabel. Saskia wanted revenge. Apparently, the fling from years before hadn’t been a fling after all…I was the first person Saskia had ever loved, she said, and I’d discarded her without a moment’s thought.
That was how she put it, anyway. She was Glenn Close; I was Michael Douglas. The pet rabbit was my marriage and it very nearly got boiled to death.
Once Alex and Saskia admitted to their plot – and Isabel and I had managed to start trusting each other again – Saskia vanished. And now she was back.
‘What do you mean, “She’s back”? I thought you killed her,’ joked Isabel.
‘She’s, umm, going out with Andy.’
‘What?!’ stuttered Isabel. Jacob, who until that moment had been happily sucking away on a breast, started to cry. Perhaps the milk had curdled.
‘They met by chance in a bar in Islington. Andy was going to avoid her, but she and her friend were getting hassled by a group of yobs. Andy stepped in. The yobs threatened him and got thrown out by bouncers. Saskia and Andy got chatting and now they’re madly in love. The end.’
‘Blimey.’
‘I know.’
‘Can you make me a camomile tea?’
Saturday 2 February
The weekend. It’s hard to say whether it’s worse than the week. Obviously, it doesn’t contain any work-related horror, but equally, it doesn’t contain any work-related loafing, either. It is much easier to give the impression that you are busy in an office than it is at home. You sit at your desk and you do pretend typing. You dial some non-existent telephone numbers and have some non-existent conversations about non-existent articles you aren’t really writing. A whole afternoon can pass with the minimum of brain activity. Not so at home. Pretending to change a nappy, make tea, cook dinner, unload the dishwasher and make decisions about what type of bathroom suite we want is easily detectable by an overly tired wife.
‘Have you unloaded the dishwasher?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you lying?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No.’
I’m wondering if they’ll let me go into the office at the weekend as well.
Andy texted to see if I wanted to go out with him and Saskia for a tension-breaking drink. Tonight. Even if we ignore the fact that I have a new baby and a very tired wife and I’m an hour from London, we can’t ignore the fact that my best mate is going out with my worst ex. So no, I can’t.
He texts back: ‘Saskia wants a chance to talk to you. To explain.’
I don’t reply. Instead, I sing soporific nursery rhymes over and over again, right through the Lottery show (my only chance to get the money I need to hire a full-time nanny) and Casualty. Jacob loves my singing. Point-blank refuses to miss any of it by going to sleep.
Sunday 3 February
My parents come round with lots of blue clothes for Jacob. Isabel explains her desire to give the poor chap a non-gender-specific upbringing. Dad rolls his eyes and bites his tongue. Then they leave.
Alex and Geoff come round minutes later. Isabel has failed to dissuade them about the bathroom. They are still promising it will be done in a jiffy and that we will hardly notice and I only just manage to stop myself pointing out that I have already noticed them because they’re here on a Sunday prattling on about bath shapes. And it’s Jacob’s nap, the only time of the day when I can lie catatonic on the sofa and pretend to read the newspaper.
Geoff likes egg-shaped.
Alex likes roll-top.
Isabel is split between the two.
When they leave, at last, I look stroppy. Isabel asks why I look stroppy. I tell her it’s annoying that our Sundays have to be intruded on by Alex and his very overbearing boyfriend.
‘Darling, I know he’s a bit crazy and I know he did all that horrible stuff last year but, well, he’s still trying to make amends. I thought you liked baths. Aren’t you excited about having an egg-shaped one?’
‘No, it will be too steep at the top. I like the one we’ve got.’
‘It’s yellowing and you complain about it all the time.’
‘I’ll paint it.’
‘You can’t paint a bath.’
‘I’m sick of Alex. Why can’t he leave us alone?’
‘Why can’t Saskia leave us alone? At least Alex is gay. And sorry. Which is more than can be said for that tart.’
I give up. ‘Cup of camomile tea, darling?’
Monday 4 February
CONTENTS OF MONDAY MORNING INBOX
1 Three e-mails from Andy apologising for falling in love with the Destroyer of Relationships, but also saying that Saskia is completely misunderstood and isn’t a Destroyer of Relationships at all.
2 Two e-mails from Isabel, the first delighting in the fact that Jacob is sleeping properly, the second, much shorter, lamenting the fact that he isn’t. And that the house is virtually uninhabitable. And can I please get home early, if possible.
3 One e-mail from my mum asking if I could check if it has a virus atta—oh, bugger.
Thursday 7 February
Jacob smiled. And just when I was beginning to wonder if he had the same syndrome as the boy on the Channel Five documentary – the one who had to have nine operations in order to smile, or was it the boy with the face-eating bug who had the full nine? I can’t remember. But the point is, we hadn’t seen a smile yet, and Isabel’s mum’s greengrocer’s daughter’s baby smiled after the first month. I was beginning to wonder whether I’d passed the stress of an unreasonable boss, a traitorous best friend and a psychotic but newly homosexual bathroom designer on to our precious child. But it was definitely a smile. And it came at 4 a.m.
4 A.M.
This used to be the time when you would be sound asleep or possibly clubbing or hosting a terribly good party or, very occasionally, having sexual intercourse. Used to be. Now, it is the hour of the zombie parent. It is said, although no one has reliable statistical evidence to back this up, that at least 20 per cent of traffic on the M25 at 4 a.m. constitutes exhausted parents trying to drive their insomniac babies to sleep. The figure could be far greater. It is certainly the time I am out pushing the goddam four-by-four Bugaboo round the block under the quite possibly inaccurate assumption that cold air makes our insomniac child sleepy. I loop the block twelve or fourteen times, singing nursery rhymes as boringly as possible. Why won’t he sleep? Doesn’t he know I have to pretend to work in the morning? And finally, he closes his eyes.
And then opens them again.
And this is the point, the horrible dark point, in that horrible dark hour, when you think, is this really worth it? Would adoption be such a bad thing? Maybe I could leave him in a cardboard box outside the gates of the hospital? With a blanket, of course.
Then he smiled – a beautiful smile right at me – and it was all worth it a million times over. I had the energy for another few hundred loops of the block. Or the M25.
And when he finally did nod off, I went back inside to find Isabel, anxious, in the front room. She never sleeps properly now when Jacob isn’t with her.