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Chapter One

When Barney came into the kitchen on Boxing Day and told me
he was leaving me for his secretary, I didn’t cry. I didn’t cling on to his
ankles, begging him to stay. I didn’t attack him with the Le Creuset pan I was
drying at the time (the thought did occur to me but it was part of a set of five
my parents bought us as a wedding present and a gap in the display rack would
have added insult to injury).

All I said was, ‘Let’s try to make sure things don’t get messy.’

He laughed, a dry, coughing sound that made me wince. ‘No, of course not.
There’d be nothing worse for Tip Top Tess than to make a mess, would there?’ And
he left the room and the house and our marriage. I finished drying the pan and
hung it up before I burst into tears.

Tip Top Tess. It’s not a sexy nickname, but it is accurate and if wanting
things to be neat and tidy is my only fault, I don’t think I’m doing too badly.
I give to charity, I’m kind to animals and small children and I remember all my
friends’ birthdays. Since when has tidiness been a crime?

So when I spent the first New Year’s Eve of my life alone, my resolution was
to avoid nastiness, to stay as civilised and proper as I would in any other
situation, to keep things shipshape. Ready for when Barney came back.

And, as far as my nearests and dearests are concerned, I’ve been pulling it
off. Somehow I’ve managed to maintain the status quo, or at least the illusion
of the status quo, for five months.

Only I know how far I’ve slipped. Until tonight. Then the doorbell rings and
it all falls apart.

I tiptoe into the hall and peer through the spyhole. Mel’s face looms up at
me, distorted by the fisheye lens so she looks all eyes and nose … exactly the
features I don’t want scrutinising my current living arrangements.

I wonder if she’s seen me through the glass panel? I’m trapped now, unable to
escape upstairs in case she catches a glimpse of movement and realises I’m here.
Maybe if I crouch down behind the door and wait, there’s a chance she might
leave. No harm done.

The reproduction Edwardian bell rings again and I feel the reverberation
through the wooden frame. Of all my friends, Mel is the least likely to give up
easily. After fifteen years as a reporter, she’s used to hanging about on
doorsteps, playing cat-and-mouse with the criminals or adulterers inside. They
always break before she does.

She sticks her hand through the letterbox, so I try to manoeuvre my body out
of range. This means crouching down even further so that my head is on my knees
and I get a close-up view of the carpet. It’s worse than I thought. There are
grey clusters of dust gathered like storm clouds at the edges of the skirting
board and a pair of worn tights under the console table. She definitely can’t
come in.

But my faint hope that she might still get bored and settle for leaving a
note is dashed when she screams ‘HONEY! I know you’re in there! You forgot to
turn the telly off.’

Oh God. The duh-duh-duh of the EastEnders theme tune booms from the
living room, reinforcing my basic error. I feel like a character in a French
farce, playing hide-and-seek with my best friend, only I don’t feel any urge to
laugh. Crying seems the more appropriate response, but my biggest fear is that
if I start, I will never stop.

‘Come ON, Tess!’ she shouts. ‘I’m not going anywhere so you might as well
open the door.’

My legs are aching now: I might have had a chance of sitting, or rather
crouching it out before Christmas, when I was going to step classes three times
a week and had thighs of steel. But then again, before Christmas I had no need
to avoid Mel or anyone else.

On my hands and knees I reverse away from the door as far back as the stairs,
stand up and then pound loudly on the bottom step as if I’m walking down. I put
the security chain in place, take a deep breath and finally open the door a few
inches.

‘About bloody time! What the hell have you been up to in there?’

‘Um … Sorry, I was in the bath.’ She stares at me through the gap in the
door. I’m still wearing my work clothes, there are biro marks all over my hands
and my hair hasn’t been washed in a week.

‘Really?’ She says. ‘Well, now you’re out of the bath, don’t keep me
standing here like a door-to-door salesman. I’ve brought a bottle of wine.’ She
waves an Oddbins bag at me.

‘It’s not a good time.’

‘Don’t be daft, honey. I’m fed up with you not returning my calls so I
thought it was time to take affirmative action.’

‘Honestly, Mel, I’m not in the mood … I appreciate the gesture, but why
don’t we arrange to go out next week instead?’

‘What, so you can cancel on me again?’ Her face takes on the same determined
expression she used to adopt on anti-apartheid demonstrations when we were
students. She was always getting arrested, though I never was: a bolshie busty
black woman is bound to attract more attention from the cops than a tidy, skinny
white one. ‘No way. I am going to stay here until you let me in.’

‘Give me a second,’ I say, pushing the door to, while I consider my options.
They’re not exactly promising. If I let her in, she’ll see the shocking state of
my house and, by implication, the even more shocking state of my mind. But if I
leave her outside, it’ll give the neighbours something extra to gossip about.
I’m sure it’s only a matter of days before they present me with a petition about
the height of the weeds in my tiny front garden. Victoria Terrace is that
kind of street. I can’t afford to give the Residents’ Association any more
reasons to complain …

‘OK, you win.’ I fiddle around with the chain, before opening the door. The
sunlight illuminates a million dust particles in the hall: I dread to think what
it’s doing to my poor, tired face. As Mel steps into the hall, I brace myself.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘About what?’ She says, then stops short, looking around in confusion, as
though she’s walked into someone else’s house. ‘What the hell’s happened to Tip
Top Tess?’

I’ve been wondering the same myself. My latest theory is that my alter ego
slipped away with Barney – since he walked out with his suitcases, simply
existing has taken all my energy. There hasn’t been any left for the housework.

But there’s a difference between a dim awareness that I might have let things
go, and seeing the reality through someone else’s eyes. Which is why I’ve let
nobody across the threshold for five months.

‘Mel, it’s not as bad as it looks, it’s just I haven’t had much time lately
to do the housework, but -‘

‘I had no idea things were as bad as this …’

‘Yeah, it’s a bit depressing, I grant you. But, look, as you’ve come over,
why don’t we go out, grab a pizza?’

‘Not till I’ve had a proper look,’ she says, stepping cautiously over the
piles of project work and free newspapers I’ve allowed to build up in the hall.
To my worn-out mind, it’s a logical place – handy for me to grab what I need
before heading to school, and close to the recycling box I keep by the porch.
Except I haven’t got round to recycling since … well, since Christmas. ‘At
least now I can see why you haven’t invited me round to supper for a while.’

I dash ahead of her to close the door to the kitchen. The mess in there makes
the hallway look like Buckingham Palace. ‘Well, I haven’t really been up to a
six-course dinner party.’

The living room presents the next logistical problem. Every surface is
covered in stuff. These days I tend to slump onto a floor cushion as soon
as I get home, but it wouldn’t be polite to expect a guest to do the same. I
calculate instantly that the armchair will take the least time to clear. It’s
only holding a few dozen Sunday supplements and an empty pizza box. At least, I
hope it’s empty. The sofa is a different story, the tan leather barely visible
under crisp packets and clothes and exercise books and unopened post. And as for
the coffee table …

Mel pulls the tissue-wrapped bottle of wine out of the bag. ‘I think it’s
time we had a little chat.’

My heart beats faster. Will I be able to track down two clean glasses
anywhere in the house? Perhaps the tooth mug will do for me, the one Barney and
I brought back from Corfu in 1994 because its cobalt blue sheen reminded us of
the painted houses. It might look a bit less decrepit than the chipped black
enamel camping beaker I’ve been using for all forms of liquid refreshment, from
morning coffee to evening whisky nightcap.

Who am I kidding?

I scrunch the blue tissue paper into a loose ball, and bounce it towards the
gap under the sofa. Now I’ve given in to slob-dom, I must confess there is the
occasional frisson of pleasure to be had from adding to the chaos.

‘Nice wine,’ I say, reading the label. I retrieve the corkscrew from under an
upturned foil box that once held chop suey. In the midst of the chaos, I’ve
developed a kind of radar which means I can always locate my Waiter’s Friend.
The same applies to my other lifeline, the TV remote. I use it now to mute the
ever-whinging cast of EastEnders and pass Mel the corkscrew. ‘Back in a
sec.’

It does pong a bit in the kitchen. I never quite got round to taking the
rubbish out last week and this is the hottest room of the house. It’s still only
May but the slight whiff of sweet decay propels me back to the summers of my
childhood, when the days were long, the tar melted beneath our feet, and the
binmen went on strike.

There’s bird shit splashed all over the window, just below the Perspex feeder
that’s attached to the glass with suckers. The few remaining seeds in the tray
have sprouted spindly yellow shoots, like an experiment I’d do with the kids on
photosynthesis. No wonder my feathered friends have taken out their frustration
in a dirty protest on the decking. Judging from the kaleidoscope of different
coloured droppings – black, green, mulberry-red – Spring has been and gone.

Some people wouldn’t bat an eyelid at this level of mess, but for me it’s
damning evidence of my failure. I can’t manage to keep my house tidy, never mind
hang onto my husband. And worse still, I can’t ever imagine having enough energy
to clear up again.

I deserve a stroke of luck, and at last I get one: there’s a clean glass
right under my nose, the one I got as a free gift for buying six bottles of
Grolsch in the supermarket last weekend. The beers are long gone – the empty
bottles glint in the sunlight as they wait to make the perilous journey to the
recycling basket all of six metres away in the hall – but I hadn’t needed the
glass because I’d drunk the contents straight from the chunky bottle necks.

I shut the door behind me again. Mel will never have to see the kitchen if
I’m careful. If we need more booze, all the spirits are in the dining room, in
what Barney used to call the drunks’ cabinet. Food? I’ve got a collection of
takeaway menus, which have the spooky ability always to rise to the top of the
clutter in the living room, the same way scum always rises to the surface of a
pond. The grease-marked photographs of pizza and curry tempt me night after
lonely night, and my skin is suffering, pimples on top of my freckles, but what
difference does it make? If anyone but me has noticed the state of my
complexion, they haven’t mentioned it. Perhaps they’re just being kind.

By the time I return from my sortie to the upstairs bathroom to collect my
tooth mug, Mel has opened the Chianti. I hold out the mug – hoping she wouldn’t
notice the minty scum that a quick splash under the hot tap has failed to shift.
‘Like being a student again, eh, Mel?’

‘You were never like this as a student.’

The main problem with my best friend is that she’s always right. The
compulsion to keep mess under control started early for me, my plastic work tray
in infants school was always beautifully neat, the pencils sharpened to the same
length, felt tip pens arranged in the order of the colours of the rainbow.
Tess is the most methodical child in her class, my teacher wrote in my
first ever report.

Now I have a classroom of my own and it is the tidiest in the school. I’m not
obsessive about it. A group of 23 ten-year-olds will always cause a certain
amount of disarray and it doesn’t phase me when a field trip or an art session
degenerates into an all-round dirt or paint fest. But I love the feeling when we
restore order, the transformation of a squirming mini-bus full of energy and mud
into a semi-circle of calm and concentration, gathering round me on the floor to
listen to a story. They might be nearly ready to move to secondary school, they
might be more used to the instant gratification of Playstations and X-boxes at
home. But this is my gift to them – the ability to be quiet AND enjoy it. A
lifeskill, if you like, and one their parents thank me for. Self-control is an
asset as far as I’m concerned.

‘Well, maybe it was about time I let go a little, you’re always telling me to
chill out.’

‘This isn’t chilling out … it’s giving up the ghost. I mean, this is no
worse than my place. You know, I’d live in a pigsty quite happily. But not you,
honey. You should have said something. Asked me for help.’

But when you’re the kind of person who only ever gives help, asking for it
feels like an admission of failure. The only time I considered it was when I had
that letter from Barney’s solicitor and realised that I would need to engage one
of my own. The first thing we could never share. The obvious solution was to
call our university chum Sara for advice: she’s always telling us that she’s the
best family lawyer in Birmingham. But asking one of our oldest friends to play
piggy in the middle, seemed more likely to increase the mess and that was the
last thing I wanted. Though I was hurt that she never called me to offer …

The lawyer I picked from the Yellow Pages had a box of tissues on her desk,
and tried to encourage me to ‘let it all out.’ She didn’t seem to understand
that spilling my guts in her burgundy leather-lined office would, for me, be as
humiliating as appearing naked in assembly. Not to mention the fact that she’d
be charging 拢150 an hour plus VAT for the privilege of listening. She’d
suggested mediation, but that sounded even messier. So now Barney and I are in
legal limbo, neither of us making the first move. And while part of me hopes
that’s a good sign, the organised side of me thinks it might be easier when
everything’s done and dusted. Especially dusted.

‘I didn’t think I needed any help.’

‘What, you hadn’t realised that you’ve turned into a candidate for those two
battleaxes on How Clean is your House?’

‘It’s a gradual thing …’ I say. ‘An untidy house is the least of my worries
and anyway, how could I ask for help when there’s nothing anyone can do?’

‘The hoovering would be a start.’ She smiles at me, and I try to smile back.
The muscles in my face feel brittle, as if they might snap from this unfamiliar
movement. Mostly these days I don’t change my expression at all, it feels too
much effort. Why pay for Botox when splitting up can paralyse your forehead for
free? Only it hasn’t made me look youthful. Instead, everything is slumped, like
a stroke victim with the dubious good luck of finding that both sides have been
rendered equally droopy.

I suppose that’s the difference between a broken heart at 15 and a broken
heart at 35. The elasticity has gone. Maybe my ability to bounce back has gone
too.

We sit there for a while in silence. I don’t do silence any more. The radio
or TV always has to be on, voices in every room. Aural clutter, glorified white
noise to stop me thinking about anything more meaningful than a soap opera
storyline.

I go over to the stereo, open the CD tray to see what’s in there. Something
mournful by Annie Lennox. I swap it for the new Coldplay album that Barney
overlooked when he separated our music collections. That must have been a hard
task. We’d been together so long that it’d never occurred to me whose musical
taste was whose. It was a joint thing, a shared consciousness. Only the techno
stuff was obviously his, the most recent arrivals and the first manifestation of
the fact he was changing … I should have noticed that too.

I never, ever thought of myself as smug, but looking back on things now, I
was insufferable. We both were. Joined at the hip from the unnaturally early age
of 19. Mel called us the Siamese twins. Which we pretended to find irritating
but would laugh about in bed when we got home from the pub, before falling
asleep lying like the brand-new blue-handled spoons in our cutlery drawer.

‘You shouldn’t have cut yourself off from everyone, Tess. So many people care
about you, but you have to open up, show us you need us.’

‘I know.’

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from The Starter Marriage by Kate
Harrison Copyright 漏 2005 by Kate Harrison . Excerpted by
permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced
or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are
provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this
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