Behaving Like Adults Read Free Page A

double yellow, and together we directed Jemima towards her pond. We got as far as the Chinese restaurant when, very sensibly, she decided to fly the rest of the way. We returned to a parking ticket.
    â€˜You might as well make the most of it,’ said Nick. ‘Do you want to get an ice cream?’
    Our relationship was not about being adult. Some couples race to become less liberal clones of their parents. Nick’s best pal Manjit chose Bo, a woman who clamps down on fun like it’s illegal. When Nick showed Manjit a new purchase – a shirt with a design of a cat, a cockerel, a donkey, a bird and a beaver on its back, plus the beautifully embroidered words, ‘pussy, cock, ass, tit, beaver’ – Manjit said mournfully, ‘I wouldn’t be allowed that.’ Same when he saw the two electric love hearts dangling from the Golf’s rear-view mirror.
Tacky
.
    I felt sorry for Manjit, although privately I wondered what Bo could actually
do
to him if he bought a shirt like Nick’s. Tear it off his back? Ignore him for a month? Refuse to leave the house with him? Stop hauling him to classical concerts and her school reunions? Manjit, buy the shirt. (He didn’t, so I could only presume that in some way, he enjoyed the childish relief of relinquishing freewill, one of the few advantages of shacking up with a dictator.)
    Maybe Nick and I weren’t so different after all. We gave each other permission to behave like babies. On the face of it, that was good. In any romantic movie, the universal code for ‘these people are meant to be together’ is a shot of the guy sitting opposite the girl in a diner gazing at her adoringly, as she stuffs down a burger, talks nonsense with her mouth open, oozing gunk, her cheeks bulging with bun, mustard dribbling down her chin – i.e., the precise opposite of how a woman eats on a date. The point is: it’s okay to act like you’re five, you are officially in paradise.
    With Nick I acted more like I was five than when I
was
five. I was quite a serious kid. It took me until I met Nick to realise I’d passed up on half my childhood. Nick would say, ‘Remember the episode of
Fawlty Towers
when Basil attacks the Mini?’ and I’d blush and say, ‘No.’ He’d recall the time he bet Manjit that he could eat three tins of golden syrup, won the bet, but alas, puffed up and spent three days in hospital. Or when he and Manjit went exploring on their bikes and found a dead bullet by the stream. High on good citizenship, they’d sped it to the local police station, where officers had to practically stuff their hands in their mouths to keep from laughing.
    To me, this was idyllic, a marvellous adventure tale,
Tom Sawyer
meets
The Secret Garden
. My upbringing was fine, nothing wrong with it. Just a little more cautious, conservative. Our TV was black and white, toaster-sized and kept in a cupboard. I was a bookworm. Whereas Nick lived the dream, I read about it. My parents are wonderful people, old-fashioned in their innocence, never expecting much. The first time we went on holiday to Portugal, I remember my father blinking in pleasure because the hotel had a pool. My mother looked cowed at her good fortune. It hurt me to see it in their eyes,
what have we done to deserve this?
    While they were keen to give us – me, Claudia and ourbig sister Isabella – whatever we wanted, it never occurred to them that we could want more than we were given. Which was, books. Visits to stately homes. Museum trips. Two thousand piece jigsaws of English country gardens. Love. My parents never wanted more than they were given. My mother would have bitten off her tongue before she complained about anything. Her old friend Leila once gave her a cotton tissue-holder for Christmas. It must have cost 5p. A garage wouldn’t dare give it you free with your petrol. Mum had bought Leila a painting by a local artist she admired.
    It