I kept all the drama out of sight, and of that, at least, I’m quite proud.
When the kids were out, I’d sit in my bedroom and run the phrase I’m only thirty-three and I’m separated through my mind over and over to make myself cry. For some reason, the fact that my marriage hadn’t lasted until I was thirty-five seemed particularly unfair to me at the time. And once I was crying, I’d work myself into a frenzy and punch pillows and scream. But only ever when I was certain that no one could possibly hear me.
I never insulted or denigrated Ian in front of the kids. I never tried to get them to hate their father, even though that would, I think, have been a fairly easy thing to do.
On the Monday evening when I got home, they were sitting in front of the TV. Onscreen, Homer Simpson was running away from a power station. The sound, unusually, was muted.
‘Dad came and took all his stuff,’ Jude said.
I nodded slowly and ruffled his hair. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘He said you both agree,’ Jude said. ‘He said you’re not angry or nothing.’
‘Not angry or anything,’ I corrected him gently, thinking, So, that’s what we’re telling them, is it? And then, Sure, I can run with that.
‘That’s right,’ I managed to croak. ‘We both agree that it’s for the best, really.’
‘Not for us,’ Jude said. ‘It’s not best for us, is it?’ He glanced at Zoe, who shrugged sullenly in reply. ‘It’s rubbish is what it is,’ Jude added, sounding momentarily close to tears.
‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘It’s rubbish. That’s the perfect word for it.’
Jude sighed and then, spotting an opportunity, asked, ‘Can we have pizza tonight? I mean, proper pizza, from Domino’s?’
‘We can,’ I said. ‘You can phone them and order if you want.’
‘Great,’ he said, jumping up and crossing to the bookshelf, where the pizza menu was stashed. ‘Margherita?’ he asked Zoe.
Zoe shook her head.
‘What, then?’ Jude asked, crossing the room and thrusting the flyer in her face.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Zoe said.
‘What about you, Mum?’ Jude asked, turning to me.
‘I’m not hungry either, sweetheart,’ I said.
‘You have to eat something,’ he said, looking between Zoe and myself, and for a moment I believed he was concerned for us, and my heart did a little somersault at the thought that my ten-year-old was trying to look after me. ‘Otherwise we have to pay delivery,’ he continued. ‘Delivery costs almost the same as a pizza, so . . .’
‘Margherita, then,’ I said. ‘A Margherita is fine. Zoe and I can share it.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Zoe said again.
I went upstairs to see just how much of his stuff Ian had taken. The fact that his side of the wardrobe was entirely empty, the fact that not a single suit, shirt, tie or cufflink remained, made me gasp in shock.
In a way, clues to most of what was to come were present in those first few exchanges.
Jude would bounce through most of it with almost shocking resilience while Zoe would alternate between anger, sullenness and sadness. And Zoe, my lovely Zoe, would almost never be hungry again.
Looking back, Zoe had always been difficult about food so, in a way, the fact that food should become the primary focus for her discomfort was predictable. But until Ian left, she hadn’t seemed that much worse than most of her peers. Food phobias are a very adolescent-girl kind of thing and to start with, at least, though she’d suddenly decide she hated tomatoes or cheese or mushrooms, within a week she’d almost always forgotten which thing it was she was pretending not to like. So we’d got into the habit of saying nothing and simply waiting for each new phobia to pass.
We’d had the inevitable vegetarian thing, which, given I’m a keen cook, hadn’t fazed me at all. Meat – or more specifically meat rearing – was apparently terrible for the planet anyway. So it was good for all of us, I told myself, if I cooked – and we ate – a little more variedly.
There had been a moment, a few weeks before Ian left, when the vegetarian phase had coincided with a hatred of all things tomato, and that, I admit, had been a challenge. But then Jude had spotted Zoe in McDonald’s eating a Big Mac, which had calmed things down for quite a while.
With Ian gone, twelve-year-old Zoe’s food phobias went into overdrive. As she wouldn’t admit to being upset or sad, or to having any emotional reaction of any kind to Ian’s departure, I suppose food was just how she expressed her angst. But Zoe’s diet had been a feature of our family landscape for so long, it took me longer than it should have done to react.
I was perhaps, if I’m honest, too busy licking my own wounds to notice. I was worrying about my own weight, as well. It had a tendency to fluctuate in the exact opposite direction to Zoe’s in times of stress, so eating tiny portions of whatever was on this week’s restricted food list suited me, in a way. Or at least, I was able to convince myself that it suited.
Jude, as ever, was happiest when eating pizza, so as often as not, I caved in to the easy solution for making at least one member of the family happy by letting him do exactly that.
The watershed moment when I realised things had got out of hand happened about six months after Ian left.
I was in Morrisons one Friday evening doing the weekly shop, and I walked along the vegetable aisle picking things up and then putting them back in accordance with Zoe’s current list of prohibited foods, which I carried around in my head. When I reached the end of the aisle, I looked down at my trolley and saw I had only two packages: potatoes and beansprouts. I froze and looked back down the aisle. Something had changed, I realised, and that something was that Zoe’s phobias no longer replaced each other. They had become cumulative. And without being able to use fish or meat or beans or tomatoes; without dairy, onions or mushrooms, without rice or gluten, I couldn’t think of a single thing I could cook for her.
I marched back down the aisle, slinging colourful vitamin-filled ingredients into my trolley. She would eat, I had decided, whatever it was that I cooked. I would starve her into submission and we’d become a healthy happy family again.
My battle plan lasted for just over two weeks. For two whole weeks, I cooked delicious nutritionally balanced meals and watched my daughter pushing food around the plate. For two weeks, I scraped whatever I had served her into the dustbin. And then, after a few phone calls, I booked us an appointment with Dr Belcore.
I picked Zoe up from school one day and drove us to the town centre. She asked me where we were going a few times, and I pretended it was a mysterious surprise. ‘You’ll see,’ I said with a wink.
Dr Belcore was in a shared practice on Broad Walk. It was in one of those big stone houses overlooking the park and it had a plaque on the door that read Broad Walk Therapy.
‘I don’t know what this is,’ Zoe said, the second she saw the plaque. ‘But I’m not going.’
‘He’s really nice, apparently,’ I said, gently taking Zoe’s arm and steering her towards the door. ‘And I just want us to have a chat.’
‘A chat? About what?’ Zoe asked, her body rigid as the door buzzed open.