Made it thought my first Christmas school drinks as a Divorcee.
What was it like?
Well in one way, no different then going to one of these do’s when your husband is on a business trip or working late in the City on a deal.
In another way it was like going to have a Brazillian for the first time.
Terrifying.
Yeah, and painful.
I chose my clothes carefully. Not too frumpy, not to racy.
Seven for all Mankind jeans. Bronze v-neck Missoni tunic top, brown boots from LK Bennett.
My mother’s charm bracelet.
Why was I wearing that? Because I needed her with me, somehow. She’s dead. Can’t call her on the phone. So sometimes I wear her jewellery.
This one is quite special. It only has 3 charms and Daddy had it made for her for their 5th wedding anniversary.
The first charm is a heart locket with the date engraved on it of when she and Daddy met. The second is a gold medallion with a Silver Cross style baby carriage on it and the date of my birth. The final charm is another gold disc with an engraving of our first house together and the date they moved in.
Daddy always said that these were the three days that changed his life forever, for better.
We all know those days.
Days when you don’t look back. You know your life will never be the same. Tonight felt a bit like that.
Putting on the bracelet, I bent down to kiss the boys who were all cuddled up with Leo watching a DVD in their pj’s on the sofa. I didn’t want to leave. Move over bacon and make room for me on that sofa!
No, no, no, I was going come hell or high water.
Grabbed the bottle of Aussie plonk to take with me and headed two streets away to the party. The parents hosting the party used to be our across the street neighbours.
I rang the bell.
Heart in my damn mouth.
Matthew opens the achingly hip aubergine Farrow and Ball painted door. His face tan, big brown eyes smiling.
He pauses for a second. Says, wow, so glad you decided to come.
We locked eyes and he knew I needed help. He took my elbow and gently pulled me in the door.
While he got me a glass of Veuve Cliquot (credit crunch? yeah right, apparently not in this cosy corner of West London), I quickly scan the large sleek, limestone kitchen and living room.
Not a single mum that is a mate.
There is last year’s class rep that well, how can I describe her?
You could freeze ice cubes on her arse not to mention one of her smiles.
Eeek. May as well start with the toughest mum and her newbie mum who I can only describe as the perfect English Sloane Ranger Rose. She is dressed head to toe in Boden complete with tasteful not too high heeled suede boots.
I walk up. Take a slug of champagne, smile.
And we’re off.
Cue inane chit chat about how cold it its. How are you coping with 8+ exams? What schools are you sitting your son for? Sharp intake of breathe when I mention the two top London prep schools (they look at each other and think, my her son must be bright…or surely she is tutoring him…God, I don’t fancy THAT school run all the way into central London….) and our safety school (oh, the one where they wear the funny burgundy knickerbockers? Yep, yep, that’s the one….no, there is no formal exam, just a trial morning….).
Frozen smiles all round. I take another sip of champagne and ask how the Karaoke charity night went the other week?
Apparently it was a ‘riot!’
Sebastian So and So Double Barrelled name wore Freddy Mercury leggings and did a ‘rather good falsetto in Bohemian Rhapsody’ guffaw, guffaw. Then a Boden Dad comes over and starts talking about the karaoke which soon turns into a chat about wine. Sloane Ranger Rose Mummy just loves the Wine Society catalogue when it comes. She calls it ‘wine porn.’
No, I am not kidding.
I wish I was making up this up.
This is really what goes on (and I am going to another one tonight for my other son’s class) and just when I thought I couldn’t stand another second, Matthew comes up and refills my glass and brings the very gorgeous Emily over who, like me is not a huge school gate, Mulberry handbags at dawn chit chatter.
Her son, Gabriel has mild learning disabilities and her husband is an Etonian. It must be tough. But she manages it and is just one of those people that is beautiful, inside and out. Never wears any makeup cause the beauty just shines out; she doesn’t need itt.
We have a lovely chat and arrange for Gabriel to come for a playdate as my oldest and he really get on. Gabriel might not be able to stop looking out the window in class or do simple multiplication, but he could charm Mussolini and probably make him laugh too.
Emily and I are the only mummies still drinking (this is our second glass). The rest have moved onto juice because they are driving home or just don’t want to appear tipsy at a school function.
Matthew comes over conspiratorially and puts his arms around us and says, girls, shall we finish the bottle and open another?
We nod and say what took you so long …. we have a huge giggle about the ‘wine porn’ and then Emily gets pulled away by her husband to join another group of parents leaving me and Matthew, slightly tipsy in the middle of the kitchen.
He says, how are you?
One day I looked out the window and there was a moving van in front of your house.
No one knew about the divorce.
I’d had enough champagne to be frank. I said that’s not true. You knew at last year’s xmas party.
Matthew looked at me. His eyes scanning my face, weighing it.
Then says, yes, I knew…it was written all over both of you.
Now, Matthew would notice this kinda thing because he is a very, very, very high profile addiction specialist/psychotherapist.
Name a few top rock stars/super models and I can pretty much guarantee he has treated them at some point in his career.
He doesn’t miss a beat.
He does a roaring trade in miserable expat wives of gazillionaire bankers too. When we met last year he told me I was the happiest expat he’d ever met.
No shortage of charm pills in his medicine cupboard either then.
He asks if we had counselling and I tell him about our counsellor, who again has counselled some of the filthy rich and famous. He has known him for years. (Our counsellor was this wise old Jewish man that finally pronounced our marriage dead and told me who to hire as a lawyer. I owe that man, so much.)
I tell Matthew a funny story about counselling and well, we just start talking, proper talking about real life. Surprised us both.
He asks how the boys are. How I am. Why I didn’t go back to America. He asks how the mums have been to me. He asks me if I am happy. Asks me if I have met anyone.
Do I tell him about Solid Boyfriend Potential who doesn’t know how to be nice to waiters but has a castle in Scotland and calls me darling?
Do I tell him about the T-Rex?
The man that….bloody hell, the man that if he could find his balls, would have been texting me from across the room standing with the Boden Dads.
Telling me to meet him upstairs in the guest loo in 5 minutes where we would have some hard core up against the wall sex and violate each other 3 different ways.
We’d be biting the Xmas hand towels to stop from making noise.
Then we’d go back downstairs shiny faced, our skin feeling sunburn from the inside out because….er, you get the idea.
How can I tell Matthew that? But its so hard not too, because I am worn the f—k out being positive and resilient and telling everyone I am great, never been better.
Strong.
Getting divorced is like childbirth without all the Class A drugs or morphine.
I look back over the last 12 months and I honestly don’t know how I did it. You black it out because its just too painful.
And there is handsome warm Matthew in the middle of this dire school party who makes you feel like you are the only person in the room and he couldn’t give a shit about ‘wine porn’ or 8+ exams, saying all the things I want to hear.
Things like, give this room 10 years.
Half of them will be divorced.
You were just the first. The honest ones.
Just like having Leo around for the boys it was such a relief to hear someone from this part of my life say it.
Before we realised it, we had been talking for over an hour and had polished off a bottle of champagne between us.
We look around and see that the party has thinned out A LOT. I am like I must go. It was almost eleven. Leo had to get back to Shoreditch.
He says, I would love to read your blog and just as I was about to tell him the link, his wife comes over to say goodnight.
To stop us.
I look at her and see these dead brown eyes. Sad eyes. I thank her for a lovely party.
Jesus.
Was their marriage going to be next?
Why was he talking to me at that party and not texting his wife to meet him up in the loo for sex?
Why? Why? Why?
Was anyone in that room, at that party, thinking about how they were going to rip each other’s clothes off in the hallway of their perfect semi-detached West London six bedroom houses as soon as they walked in the door?
Does it ever really happen?
Am I crazy to think I can have that next time around?
Am I looking for something I will never find?
Should I just settle for Solid Boyfriend Potential and weekends in a drafty castle?
Maybe he is exactly what I need? My head is ticking boxes and that’s good right?
I wonder.
Tell ya’ll what though, I ain’t wondering about one thing.
I sure as hell could do with some hard core, break glassware, knock over light fixtures, get carpet burns, shoes still on gorilla sex right about now.
Ms. Magnolia
