‘This is still Blackrock, whatever else is going on out there’
PEAKING AS A soon-to-be-divorced parent, I have to say that one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do is explain to my daughter why mummy and daddy don’t live under the same roof anymore. That was until I had to explain that daddy was moving back home temporarily while the owners of the aportment building in which he lived lodged an appeal against a High Court decision ordering the building to be demolished on the grounds that its foundations were, like, unsafe? I was like, “It’s only for a few weeks, bear in mind.” “Whatevs,” Honor just went, barely looking up from Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
I was there, “Be nice for you and I to spend time together, won’t it?” And she went, “Er, hashtag – why are you still talking?” So I just thought, okay, that seems to be that job done and I wandered out to the kitchen, where Sorcha was in the process of pulling out her Nigella Lawson bakeware.
“You had the big chat?” she went.
I was like, “Er, yeah.” “And you explained that we’re still getting divorced?” “Big time, yeah.” “Because it’s important that she knows from the stort, Ross. I don’t want the disappointment of finding out the truth to fracture her trust of the adult figures in her life.” This, by the way, was Sorcha’s reason for telling her the truth about Santa Claus at age three.” “Yeah, I went through the whole thing.” “And she definitely understood, Ross? She didn’t just say, ‘Whatevs,‘ and continue watching the TV.” “No, she definitely seemed to take it in.” Sorcha smiled at me.
“Thanks, Ross. You know, it’s actually a really healthy thing for her emotional development to see that we’ve remained friends. Like it or not, our parents do provide the template for our future relationship models.” And with that, she threw her orms around me. She smelled of Miss Dior and I suddenly had a dong on me that wouldn’t have looked embarrassed hanging from a hook behind the meat counter in Aldi.
“Oh my God, you two are so lame,” I suddenly heard Honor go. She walked straight past us and I heard her pull the door of the fridge. “Okay, where are the Actimels?” Sorcha pulled away from me. “They’re where they’ve always been, Sweethort.” “Er, I told you to get fat free ones?”
“And I told you I didn’t think it was healthy for a girl of six to be concerned with issues of weight.” I heard the fridge door slam. “Oh my God,” Honor went, “you are such a sap,” and then returned to the Kardashians – or her foster family, as I call them. Yeah, she was going to turn out a good ’un alright, obviously thanks to our efforts.
Sorcha went, “Oh my God, look at the time. I’ve got all this baking to do and I haven’t even picked out an outfit yet?” I was like, “What are you talking about?” “Ross, I’m hosting a Neighbourhood Watch meeting tonight. It’s my first meeting as vice-chair.” “Tonight?”
“Er, I told you that yesterday? when I was having the corpets steam-cleaned?” I was there, “Oh, yeah, now I remember,” which I didn’t, of course. I might have been watching TV myself – and I wonder where my daughter gets it from! I was like, “I’ll stay out of the way then,” and I trotted upstairs to finish my unpacking. I’m staying in Sorcha’s spare room, which used to be Honor’s nursery, but which I helped Sorcha convert into a relaxation space – or as she put it, “Somewhere I can go to just, like, be?” I basically painted the walls aquamarine, put up a shelf for her Maya Angelou books and her whalesong CDs and stuck a little table in one corner with a Max Benjamin candle on it that smelled of, like, Grapefruit and Pomelo? I storted putting away my things in the wardrobe. It was, like, an hour or two later and I was wondering would it be rude to cover over her poster of the Dalai Lama – “The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be” – with my poster of Shane Horgan scoring his famous try at Twickenham in ’06, when all of a sudden I heard – weird, this – a little tap on the door. I opened it and standing there was Sorcha.
I could get the whiff of baking wafting up from the kitchen. Her chocolate brandy dream cake, unless my nose was very much mistaken, and her raspberry sorbet roulade.
“I don’t know what to wear,” she went.
I was like, “Er, as in?” “For the meeting. Should I wear my MiH Marrakech flared jeans with my lilac silk Equipment shirt or my baby pink shirtdress by Sonia by Sonia Rykiel with my Isabel Marant dicker boots? Or should I go for something even more dressy-dressy?” And suddenly I got a flash of memory of what it was like to be married – great smells and a hundred questions a day that no straight man could ever honestly answer. This was obviously going to take some adjustment.
“Er, the first one,” I went.
“My Made in Heavens?” “Er, yeah. Sorcha, do you mind me asking why are you pushing the boat out like this?” It wasn’t just the baking, the corpets and the agonizing over what to wear — the downstairs toilet had been off limits for me for the previous 48 hours.
She went, “It’s just that this is – oh my God – so an important meeting. There’s the whole issue of, like, burglaries, which have made a serious comeback since the recession and the whole cash for gold thing. Then there’s whether or not we’ve going to pay the household chorge.” They will, by the way. This is still Blackrock, whatever else is going on out there.
She was like, “Gary said this could be the most seminal meeting the residents association has ever had.” I heard myself go, “Who’s Gary?” in a definitely jealous way.
“He’s the actual chairman? I told you about him before. He’s just been through the whole divorce thing himself.” Then off she went to make the final decision about her outfit, leaving me sitting on the bed wondering was she doing this on purpose.
Half an hour later, I heard the doorbell go. I stepped out onto the landing as Sorcha, like, opened the front door? I looked through the gap in the banisters as this dude – maybe a year or two older than us – stepped into the hall, air-kissed Sorcha on either cheek and told her she looked lovely, which is a line I’ve been known to use myself.
“Sorry,” he went, “I know I’m about 20 minutes early. I thought you and I might just run through the agenda before everyone else gets here.” He obviously fancied himself as a bit of a player.
Look, Sorcha’s still an attractive woman. There’s always been goys sniffing around. As the two of them disappear into the kitchen, I realise that this dude, like all the others, is going to have to be destroyed.