I paused what I was doing and listened more intently.
‘Does it look like I’m eating it?’ she replied.
‘OK. Let me rephrase that,’ Scott said. ‘If you’re not eating that, how about you carry it through to the kitchen, put it in the bin and put your dirty plate in the dishwasher?’
‘Why should I?’ Zoe asked in her most belligerent tone of voice.
‘Because leaving our dinner plates in the middle of the sofa isn’t sustainable behaviour,’ Scott explained, reasonably.
‘You what?’ Zoe said. To my despair, she was starting to sound a lot like Vicky Pollard from Little Britain.
‘Sustainable behaviour is something that everyone can do without it being a problem. Unsustainable is something that everyone can’t do,’ Scott explained. ‘So, for instance, if we all left our dinner plates on the sofa, then none of us would be able to sit down, would we? So we can’t all do that. It’s unsustainable.’
‘Whatever,’ Zoe said.
I blew through my lips and closed the lid of the laptop. I was loth to stop what I was doing, but my daughter’s rudeness was becoming intolerable. But as I started to stand, for the first time ever Scott spoke up.
‘Just do it, Zoe!’ he shouted. ‘Take your bloody plate through to the kitchen before I ram it down your throat.’ I shuddered to hear him talking to her this way, but she’d been so consistently foul to him I had kind of been waiting for it to happen. As I hesitated over whether to intervene, Zoe said, predictably, ‘You’re not my father. You don’t get to tell me what to do.’
‘You’re right,’ Scott said. ‘And thank God I’m not. Because being the father of such a rude, gutter-mouthed, sulky, ungrateful daughter would be a real f— a real effing downer, wouldn’t it?’
‘And so would having a dad like you,’ Zoe replied childishly, but with a quiver in her voice I hadn’t heard for a while.
I was unconvinced that this was a constructive way for Scott to build a relationship with my daughter but, after all, everything else had failed. He’d been as nice as pie to her for months and it had got him precisely nowhere. So as she entered the kitchen and dumped her plate in the sink, sandwich and all, I said nothing. I just watched and waited to see if things might now improve.
A few days later I got my friend Ellie to phone her psychologist brother for advice. He said that Zoe’s reactions were all pretty normal and that I should just keep things as calm as possible. I should ensure Zoe felt loved and safe, he said, and wait for her to get over it. So even though I was finding the love bit increasingly challenging, that’s what I tried to do.
In the beginning, Scott and I just seemed to get on better and better. I could barely believe my luck.
The main reason for this was his honesty, I think. He was so truthful about everything that I never really doubted his word. So if Scott said, ‘I’m going to go home for a bit. I need a bit of quiet time. It’s just the way I’m built,’ I’d know that it was exactly as he’d said. It didn’t mean, ‘You’ve annoyed me,’ or ‘I’m going off you,’ or even ‘Your daughter is driving me insane,’ though he often enough said that last one, too.
I found I was happier, that I was more satisfied sexually as well, than I had ever been before. It will sound clichéd, but I really did find myself singing in the shower of a morning, and it seemed to me that perhaps I’d been in the wrong relationship all along. I even occasionally felt grateful towards Ian for having prompted the break-up. And that took all the anger out of our separation.
He started stopping by for a cuppa about then. He’d bring the kids home and then stay for a cup of tea or, depending on the time of day, even a bite to eat. He’d split up with Linda so he had time on his hands, I suppose. I have to admit to feeling a bit smug about the fact that their relationship hadn’t worked out.
The mealtimes when Ian ate with us were the only times Zoe was bearable. She was never happier than when Ian and I were being civil to each other.
But there was someone who didn’t have such a positive view, and that person was Scott. Finally, the man with no faults revealed that he wasn’t so perfect after all. He suffered from jealousy, and it was all directed at my ex.
Of itself, we could probably have worked around it. After all, I was as in love with Scott as I was comfortable with the fact that I was no longer with Ian. So all I had to do was avoid mentioning the one to the other and everything would be fine.
But Zoe soon discovered she could wind Scott up about it. She’d compare them constantly, and within earshot, always painting Ian as Scott’s far superior rival. She’d tell Scott what a great father Ian was, how he earned so much money, or how much his new suit or car had cost. If Scott gave me a gift, usually something cute and home-made, or tasty and home-grown, she’d mention some previous expensive gift I’d had from Ian, exaggerating freely. She was turning into a sort of Glenn Close of daughters and if Scott had owned a pet rabbit, I’m pretty sure she would have boiled it.
Once she’d twigged that I was avoiding mentioning Ian, things really got difficult to manage. Zoe started to note when Ian lingered for a drink and then make me look like a liar by mentioning it.
‘You didn’t tell me Ian stayed for dinner,’ Scott said accusingly one night, and I knew instantly that Zoe was behind it.
‘He brought the kids home,’ I said. ‘That’s all. He is their father, Scott.’
‘But you invited him to dinner.’
‘I was serving up, Scott. I could hardly not invite him, could I? He stayed just long enough to wolf down a jacket potato and then he left.’
‘That’s not what Zoe said.’
‘Well, no. Of course it isn’t. But I can assure you, he ate a potato and left.’
‘He didn’t have dessert?’
‘Yes, he ate a yoghurt, if you must know.’
‘And wine.’
‘And he drank a glass of wine.’
‘But you decided to keep that a secret?’
‘I didn’t keep it a secret, Scott. I just didn’t think it worth mentioning.’
‘You didn’t think it was worth mentioning,’ Scott repeated. ‘Funny, that. We spoke for half an hour last night and you didn’t think to tell me.’
‘OK, if you must know, this is exactly why I didn’t mention it. Because it makes you get like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Jealous. Absurdly jealous.’
‘Right,’ Scott said, pulling his still-warm jacket back on. ‘Whereas knowing you’ve been seeing your ex-husband behind my back doesn’t make me feel jealous at all.’
No sooner had the front door slammed than Zoe appeared, looking smug. ‘Scott didn’t stay for long,’ she said glibly.
‘You’re right,’ I replied, as neutrally as I could manage. ‘He didn’t.’
Four
Jude
It takes us less than ten minutes to walk to the house on Bantry Road.
Our lunch of Pot Noodles and crisps hasn’t really hit the spot for me, and my stomach is grumbling as we walk. But when I mention this to Jess, she suggests it’s probably just nerves, so I wonder briefly if she might be right before deciding that, no, I simply haven’t eaten enough. Jess always likes to find a psychological explanation for everything, and sometimes, for instance when you’re just hungry, that can be quite annoying.