Last week, I moved in with my son’s dad. To be clear, we’re not ‘getting back together’, although this is a love story, just not the sort of love story you’re probably expecting - but then, I wasn’t either.
We’re not getting back together, because we were never together in the first place. Egg and I met just before the new millennium and immediately hit it off as friends, then became friends with benefits, then (plot twist!) friends having a baby, then friends and co-parents. What are we now? Since our son left for university eighteen months ago? Friends and empty nesters? Technically, that’s true, but it doesn’t cover what Egg means to me. We share a child – he's my family. What can I say? If it’s good enough for Demi and Bruce…
Twenty years ago, on Mother’s Day 2004 actually, which is sort of beautiful since I realised as I sat down to start this post, that it’s Mother’s Day 2025, I began writing a column about us in in Marie-Claire magazine, where I was staff writer at the time.
It was called And then there were three…sort of and it ran for two and a half years, covering all the complexities of having a baby with your friend, from the NCT lessons with smug-pregnants (which, by the way, I was very much not; scared-and-suddenly-pregnant was more my vibe), to the birth, to moving into my own flat, to how we divided the care of our son, dating and beyond.
That baby, Fergus, is twenty now. He just called from his student flat in Liverpool, to wish me a happy Mother’s Day – albeit at half past-three and with a prompt, but then I’m telling myself that despite his unconventional upbringing, he’s so securely attached, he doesn’t feel the need to people please. Please humour me.
“How’s it going at Dad’s?” he asked. “You guys getting on?”
I told him we were – very much so - and that I was having a very modern Mother’s Day having been taken out for brunch by his father, before meeting Egg’s girlfriend for the first time.
He kind of laughed. “That IS very modern to be fair.” (These Gen Zers - so traditional.)
If you’d have told me on Mother’s Day 2004 that twenty years hence, this would be the state of play, I’d have been very happy. It would have saved me a lot of angst. Because back then, there was a lot of angst about our set-up and the future.
I know this because I wrote about it in my column, which was recently unearthed as I was packing to move. 30-something episodes of it in their original magazine cuttings, kept in a leather portfolio with my name embossed on the front, which was how your work was filed back in 1850…
Packing was aborted as I read it. Talk about life flashing before your eyes.
One of my main concerns back then seemed to be whether Egg and mine’s friendship would survive the stormy seas of parenthood I’d heard about.
“People say the first year of having a baby is the hardest for a relationship – many couples don’t make it - what chance does our relationship have without the glue of sex and romance?’
I wrote, wistfully, panicky.
Of course, I now know, with fifty years of life not thirty behind me, that married or not, most people weren’t having sex and romance in the first year of their kid’s life, (if ever again.) So, I could have saved myself the feelings of inadequacy.
Still, it’s lovely to discover that indeed, our friendship did survive the stormy seas of parenthood – and many more storms besides. It outlived our son’s childhood and is in apparently in such good nick that we’ve moved in together - just as our child’s moved out!
This will be the second time in Fergus’s life, that I’ve moved in with his dad (before that we always split care down the middle, with him spending half the week with at Egg’s and half at mine.) The first was when Fergus was seven; it was meant to be for a year but turned into four. Back then, all of us under one roof, there were certainly the stormy seas of parenthood to weather. It will be interesting to see what this new dynamic brings with Fergus at university most of the time. Will we ‘rediscover’ our pre-kids friendship, like married couples talk about when their offspring fly the nest? I don’t feel we ever lost it.
The reasons for moving last time and this time, are largely financial. Running two houses in the south of England is expensive. I rented my lovely flat on my own on a writer’s income for nine years, which was a miracle, really, and a strain - until it became impossible. According to my mortgage advisor, let’s just say, the property ladder is a long way off!
I loved that flat, as did Fergus (mainly due to its proximity to Wetherspoons in later years). But it became obvious that Egg and I pooling our resources was the most sensible thing to do. So even though it’s not ideal, I’m incredibly lucky I have this option. If we’d been warring divorcees, or even just divorcees this wouldn’t have been possible. And I’d have had to have got a house-share - at fifty. Or perhaps move back up north, where I’m from.
So, I’m grateful. Not that it’s been plain sailing this past week. The actual moving was hideous. The bickering rivalled any married couple – or bitterly divorced ones come to that. There was screaming in GAIL’s. (side note: I live in a town with a GAIL’s, which largely explains why the property ladder on a writer’s income is a long way off!) People slowly moved their children away from us.
The problem seemed to be we have very different packing and unpacking styles. Egg’s is ‘everything should have a place’. Mine is ‘everything has a place and that place is on the floor, where I can see it.’
We’re pretty good at conflict resolution though and have taken measures for this move to go smoothly. I’m writing this from my own lounge for example – Egg generously gave up his bedroom for me - where I have my writing desk, TV and sofa. Obviously, I also have my own bedroom too (we’re not that modern). So, I’ve kind of got my own floor.
We share a kitchen and a bathroom, so in that way, we’re like flatmates – except, of course, the difference is, we also share a child.
Egg was the one who suggested the separate lounges. Partly to give us space but also because we have wildly differing TV tastes: he cares not for my misery documentaries and prefers Emily in Paris. I live for MAFS binges as a welcome lobotomy after a hard day at the typeface, whereas Egg feels he needs a lobotomy to tolerate it.
Some of my married friends sometimes sleep in separate bedrooms to their husbands anyway, due to snoring / weak bladders / avoiding sex / dog issues / all of the above, so I guess we’re not that different. I have the added peace of mind perhaps that there’s no pressure to ever rekindle our sex life, since that was taken off the table some time practically in the last millennium
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“I think I’m a bit jealous” some of these friends have said. “This is the ideal set up!”
Only time will tell about that. I’ll keep you posted.
Can the column still be found online Katy? I love this and would love to hear about the beginning of the journey x
Wow, I swooned a bit when you said Fergus is 20. How can that be?? (Also I’m just opposite Liverpool if you ever want to meet for a coffee.)