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Authors: John O'Farrell
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kitchen.
And then as soon as their front door was closed behind me, I began retracing my steps the mile or so to where we had seen Maddy coming out of her front door. I was going to talk to her. I was going to meet my wife. I had resolved that she had to know about my condition; the event had major consequences for her own life, our children, the court case. I owed it to her to tell her face to face what had happened. It should be done before the children were home from school and with time to postpone the court hearing; and that meant I had to do it right now.
‘In any case,’ I told myself, ‘before I divorce my wife I’d like to get to know her a bit first.’
Chapter 6
GARY HAD RELATED the remarkable course of events that had led to Maddy and me becoming the owners of a large Victorian house in Clapham. The dilapidated building had been boarded up in the 1980s, with visible holes in the roof and shrubs growing from the upstairs balconies. After university, Maddy and I had been friends with a group of housing activists who’d identified the long-abandoned property as a potential squat. But when it actually came to it, Maddy had been the bravest of all of us. While I hovered behind, worrying whether we needed someone’s permission to do this, Maddy took a jemmy to the heavily fortified front windows. Over the following weeks, we raided skips for firewood and propped heavy furniture against the doors to make ourselves secure at night, and it transpired that the council was too chaotic ever to evict us. Friends came and went, including a couple of anarchist performance artists whose idea of turning the whole building into a ‘Permanent Free Festival and Events Laboratory’ rather petered out due to their inability to get out of bed in the mornings.
A few years later we formed ourselves into a registered housing association; it was easier then for the authorities to permit us to stay there. But it was apparently
me
who did all the paperwork and took legal responsibility for it all, and Maddy and I were the only ones still living there when the law was changed giving housing association tenants the right to buy. In two decades Maddy and I had made the journey from radical squatters to respectable owner-occupiers without ever leaving our front door. The bay window where Maddy had taken a crowbar to the corrugated iron now had a little poster advertising our kids’ School Autumn Fayre. There was a sticker on the letterbox saying ‘ NO JUNK MAIL ’. I’m guessing we wouldn’t have been so bothered about junk mail when there was a small bush growing out of the kitchen floor.
And now I stood before the family home once again, a place with so many memories, but none of them currently mine. My intention had been to march right up and ring the doorbell, but instead I found myself just taking a moment to summon up my courage. I was thrown by the fact that the bell was actually an intercom system, which meant that my first words to my wife might have to be through the alienating electronic filter of a voice-distorting microphone. When I had left Gary and Linda’s flat, it had seemed so clear to me that this was what I had to do. But now my finger was shaking as I reached for the button. I left it hovering there uncertainly. What if one of my children was off school and rushed down to say hello? I imagined the terrifying scenario of my daughter emerging with a friend and me not knowing which girl I was father of. It was not just my own mental health that was at issue here.
But it had to be done. I flattened my hair down, pulled my shirt straight and pressed the buzzer. To my surprise this prompted the sound of loud barking from the other side of the door. There was a dog! No one had said anything about a dog. But this was the furious bark of a guard dog in the house on his own – an angry defensive warning that was not mollified by any owner coming down the hallway, calling him away from the door. Maddy was out. I had
And then as soon as their front door was closed behind me, I began retracing my steps the mile or so to where we had seen Maddy coming out of her front door. I was going to talk to her. I was going to meet my wife. I had resolved that she had to know about my condition; the event had major consequences for her own life, our children, the court case. I owed it to her to tell her face to face what had happened. It should be done before the children were home from school and with time to postpone the court hearing; and that meant I had to do it right now.
‘In any case,’ I told myself, ‘before I divorce my wife I’d like to get to know her a bit first.’
Chapter 6
GARY HAD RELATED the remarkable course of events that had led to Maddy and me becoming the owners of a large Victorian house in Clapham. The dilapidated building had been boarded up in the 1980s, with visible holes in the roof and shrubs growing from the upstairs balconies. After university, Maddy and I had been friends with a group of housing activists who’d identified the long-abandoned property as a potential squat. But when it actually came to it, Maddy had been the bravest of all of us. While I hovered behind, worrying whether we needed someone’s permission to do this, Maddy took a jemmy to the heavily fortified front windows. Over the following weeks, we raided skips for firewood and propped heavy furniture against the doors to make ourselves secure at night, and it transpired that the council was too chaotic ever to evict us. Friends came and went, including a couple of anarchist performance artists whose idea of turning the whole building into a ‘Permanent Free Festival and Events Laboratory’ rather petered out due to their inability to get out of bed in the mornings.
A few years later we formed ourselves into a registered housing association; it was easier then for the authorities to permit us to stay there. But it was apparently
me
who did all the paperwork and took legal responsibility for it all, and Maddy and I were the only ones still living there when the law was changed giving housing association tenants the right to buy. In two decades Maddy and I had made the journey from radical squatters to respectable owner-occupiers without ever leaving our front door. The bay window where Maddy had taken a crowbar to the corrugated iron now had a little poster advertising our kids’ School Autumn Fayre. There was a sticker on the letterbox saying ‘ NO JUNK MAIL ’. I’m guessing we wouldn’t have been so bothered about junk mail when there was a small bush growing out of the kitchen floor.
And now I stood before the family home once again, a place with so many memories, but none of them currently mine. My intention had been to march right up and ring the doorbell, but instead I found myself just taking a moment to summon up my courage. I was thrown by the fact that the bell was actually an intercom system, which meant that my first words to my wife might have to be through the alienating electronic filter of a voice-distorting microphone. When I had left Gary and Linda’s flat, it had seemed so clear to me that this was what I had to do. But now my finger was shaking as I reached for the button. I left it hovering there uncertainly. What if one of my children was off school and rushed down to say hello? I imagined the terrifying scenario of my daughter emerging with a friend and me not knowing which girl I was father of. It was not just my own mental health that was at issue here.
But it had to be done. I flattened my hair down, pulled my shirt straight and pressed the buzzer. To my surprise this prompted the sound of loud barking from the other side of the door. There was a dog! No one had said anything about a dog. But this was the furious bark of a guard dog in the house on his own – an angry defensive warning that was not mollified by any owner coming down the hallway, calling him away from the door. Maddy was out. I had
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