Just the Woman Who Married Their Father

My husband and his three children pile in the back door, shaking off wet coats and cheerfully bickering about what pizza toppings we’ll have and which movie we’re going to watch. I hand around mugs of hot chocolate and then lean against the counter, nursing a smile as they bounce around the kitchen, laughing and squabbling. The eldest, at 14, tries to wield her authority, and her younger sister and brother laugh it off, appealing with sweet gap-toothed smiles to my husband for adjudication. The house is always filled with this frantic gaiety when they first arrive for a Saturday sleepover, as if to offset the strained politeness of the parental handover in the garden centre parking lot. 

After dinner, the children decide to watch an old family favourite, The Princess Bride. I busy myself tidying the kitchen and popping popcorn while they settle on the sofa. My husband sits in the middle, and the girls take the spots on either side, leaning in and resting their heads on his shoulders like two plump bookends. His shirt will still smell of their fruity shampoo long after they go back home to their mother.

The boy, younger and slight, takes the spot between his father’s feet and wraps his skinny arms around his calves, pulling them close. They fit together so neatly, with the same freckles and plummy English accents, like pieces of the same puzzle, while I—with my Canadian aboot and childlessness by choice—am strange in too many ways to count.

I hand over bowls, napkins, sodas, close the curtains against the light, and move the coffee table into a useful position. Then I hover for a moment. He looks so content, my husband, pinned down on all sides by giggling children. Do I insinuate myself, forcing everyone to adjust for me? Or do my own thing and risk seeming indifferent? I decided from the first that I wouldn’t push, hoping that a space for me would open naturally. So I stretch out on the other sofa and sigh greedily, as if I am happy to be hogging it all for myself.  

The children know the movie by heart and rush to say the actors’ lines first and loudest, competing to win their father’s laughter. I’ve never seen the movie and can’t follow it with the children gabbling over one another, but I laugh along and say nothing. My husband is the parent; I never tell the children what to do. That’s the way I wanted it. Both my parents remarried when I was a teenager, and I know how wrong it can go. I can’t remember the last time my father hugged me.

It’s been two years since I met this man at work in a UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, and a year since I married him in a registry office in England. Busy with my career in journalism, I didn’t plan on any of this. Sometimes, standing on the sidelines of a sports day at the children’s boarding school, with its manicured green fields and parking lot full of Range Rovers, I wonder: how in the hell did I get here?

His ex-wife doesn’t like me there, or anywhere really. Twice, I’ve invited the girls to join me for a pedicure. Nothing fancy, just a walk to the place on the corner and ice cream on the way back. The first time, they flashed their pearly pink nails for the rest of the day and then asked for polish remover and scrubbed it all off before going home. I was confused and a little hurt, but said nothing. The next time, they went home with the polish still on, and within minutes of the drop-off my husband received a scathing text from their mother. Your wife has spoiled a sacred mother-daughter ritual. Tell her to have children of her own.

During their next visit, the children described to us how she had hit the roof. Pots and pans coming down hard on the Aga.

She is their stepmother, her new husband had reportedly pointed out.

She’s not their stepmother, she’d snapped. She’s just the woman who married their father.

I knew when I married my husband that I was getting a life-long package deal—him, his children, and their mother. But I really had no idea what to expect, and how bruising it would sometimes be. For my own peace of mind, I have staunchly resisted the clichés—falling into one, being made into one—and tried to keep an open mind. I make myself small and try to have no expectations. I organize rock climbing, cook and clean, play Monopoly, and I stay out of the way at bedtime so they don’t feel pressured to kiss me goodnight. I advise my husband, gently, to pick fewer battles with their mother, and to fight cleaner and smarter in the ones he does pick. I really would prefer it if they got along. If they got along, there might be space for me in this family. Like a tree growing up through broken tarmac, something new.

The movie is nearing its climax and the children are howling with excitement. The hero is cornered by a gang of outlaws. A sword fight breaks out on a clifftop. A lady is swooning. The eldest girl notices my confused look, and maybe something else. She is the sensitive one. She slides over, pressing my husband and her sister to the far end of the sofa, and suddenly there is room for me. I fold myself into the small space, pressed between her arm and the arm of the sofa, and sit uncomfortably for the rest of the movie. Absurdly grateful just to be there.