Wedding Night

F ELICITY G RAVENEY LIES HERE . S HE COULD DAMN WELL WEAR LIPSTICK .
    I head out, glance at my watch, and press
Daniel
on speed dial as I walk. He’ll know I’m phoning now, we discussed the timing, he’ll pick up, he has to pick up.… Go on, Daniel, pick up.… Where are you …?
    Voicemail.
    Bastard
.
    With Daniel, I am quite capable of going from calm to seething in 0–60.
    The beep sounds and I draw breath.
    “You’re not there,” I say with elaborate calmness, walking toward my office. “That’s a shame, because I have to be at this event soon, which you knew, because we discussed it. Several times.”
    My voice is shaking. I cannot allow him to get to me. Let it go, Fliss. Divorce is a process and this is a process and we’re all part of the Tao. Or the Zen. Whatever. The thing in all those books I was given with the word “Divorce” on the cover above a circle or a picture of a tree.
    “Anyway.” I take a deep breath. “Maybe you can let Noah listen to this message? Thank you.”
    I close my eyes briefly and remind myself I’m not talking to Daniel anymore. I have to shift his repulsive face out of my mind. I’m talking to the little face that lights up my life. The face that—against pretty tall odds—keeps the world making sense. I picture his shaggy fringe, his huge gray eyes, his school socks wrinkled around his ankles.Curled up on the sofa at Daniel’s place, with Monkey under his arm.
    “Sweetheart, I hope you’re having a lovely time with Daddy. I’ll see you soon, OK? I’ll try calling later, but if I don’t manage it, then night night and I love you.”
    I’m nearly at my office door now. I have stuff to do. But I can’t help talking for as long as possible, till the beep tells me to go and get a life.
    “Night night, sweetheart.” I press the phone up against my cheek. “Have lovely dreams, OK? Night night—”
    “Night night,” answers a familiar little voice, and I nearly trip over my party Manolos.
    What was that? Am I hallucinating? Has he overridden the voicemail? I peer at my phone to make sure, give it a quick bash against my palm, and listen again.
    “Hello?” I say cautiously.
    “Hello! Hello-hello-hello …”
    Oh my God. That voice isn’t coming from the phone. It’s coming from—
    I hurry round the corner into my office and there he is. My seven-year-old son. Sitting on the armchair I give to visitors.
    “Mummy!” he yells in delight.
    “Wow.” I’m almost speechless. “Noah. You’re here. At my office. That’s just … Daniel?” I turn to my ex-husband, who is standing by the window, flicking through a past issue of the magazine. “What’s going on? I thought Noah would be having tea by now? At your place?” I add with bright emphasis. “As we planned?”
    “But I’m not,” puts in Noah triumphantly.
    “Yes! I can see that, darling! So … Daniel?” My smile has spread right across my face. Generally the rule is: the more I smile at Daniel, the more I’m feeling like stabbing him.
    I can’t help surveying his features with a critical eye, even though he has nothing to do with me anymore. He’s gained a couple of pounds. New fine-stripe shirt. No hair product. That’s a mistake; his hair looks too floppy and wispy now. Maybe Trudy likes it that way.
    “Daniel?” I try again.
    Daniel says nothing, just shrugs easily, as though everything is obvious and words are superfluous. That shrug of his is new. It’s a post-me shrug. When we were together, his shoulders were permanently hunched. Now he shrugs. He wears a Kabbalah bracelet under his suit. He bounces confrontation back like he’s made of rubber. His sense of humor has been replaced by a sense of righteousness. He doesn’t joke anymore: he pronounces.
    I can’t believe we used to have sex. I can’t believe we produced Noah together. Maybe I’m in
The Matrix
and I’ll wake up to something which makes
far
more sense, like all this time I’ve been lying in a tank attached to electrodes.
    “Daniel?” My smile is fixed.
    “We agreed Noah would spend tonight with you.” He shrugs again.
    “What?”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “No, we didn’t. It’s your night.”
    “I have to go to Frankfurt tonight. I sent you an email.”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    “I did.”
    “You didn’t! You did
not
send me any email.”
    “We agreed I’d drop Noah here.”
    He’s totally calm, as only Daniel can be. I, on the other hand, am about to have a nervous