Today was D-Day. Operation Freedom. They’d been building up to this day for months and she still wasn’t sure that she was going to go through with it, that she had the strength to take the steps and make it happen. But she had to believe that she had the courage to do it.
The fact that she had stayed with Kenneth for so long wouldn’t make sense to most people. In the beginning she’dstayed because she loved him. For the first couple of years, she’d truly adored him and couldn’t believe her luck that he’d loved her back. When that began to dim, and then finally die, she stayed for the kids, to give them the security of growing up in a stable home. God knows, he’d reminded her so many times that if she left him, he’d get custody. A man of his reputation? He was sure of it. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t, but she wasn’t going to put it to the test and subject the kids to that kind of trauma.
When Stuart left home a couple of years ago, that should have been her moment. Nina was long gone by then, married and living a few miles away, while Stuart moved into a flat in the city centre with a friend, Connor, from university. By then though, her mum and dad were both poorly, and her marriage was the least of her worries, as she nursed them, visiting every day, co-ordinating with the care team and the nursing staff, spending every possible hour with them until the end.
She’d buried her dad in the spring, and then her mum in the autumn, so now there was no one who was still relying on her, no one to focus on, to take her mind away from the hell of this existence with a man she no longer loved. In some profound way, their deaths had convinced her that she had to start living. Now was her time. She just had to have the nerve to see it through.
‘How hard?’
She barely made out what he said. ‘What?’
‘How hard is it to get this fucking right?’ he said, and she realised he was staring at the assortment of vitamins in the tiny receptacle.
Her heart sank. She’d been distracted when she’d counted them out, too busy thinking about the rest of the day and everything that she had to do to make it work.
‘Sorry, I…’
‘Don’t be fucking sorry,’ he hissed, through gritted teeth, his words delivering a vicious slap. She’d almost have preferred it if he shouted. At least then, she could switch it off, like a thunderstorm, knowing it would blow itself out. But when he was like this… this was the worst. The most dangerous. This was when the insults started, the criticisms, the long list of her inadequacies.
Her eyes flicked to the clock. He had to leave in five minutes and he was never late. Just hold on. Five minutes. Three hundred seconds. Surely there was nothing that couldn’t be endured for three hundred seconds. The last three hundred seconds she’d ever spend looking at his face, contorted into disgust and fury.
Her phone buzzed again and it was all she could do not to get up and run, not stopping until she was free of him.
He snatched it up, threw it at the wall. ‘What have I told you about that phone?’
Bernadette heard the crack as the glass met with the corner of the picture that hung there. She’d always hated it. It had been inherited from his family home. A hunting scene. Apt, given that she’d been trapped for years.
Once upon a time, she’d chased him. He’d been so suave, so dashing, she’d gone out of her way to bump in to him, had hung on his every word. He still had that effect on people now. She saw it all the time, at social events or work gatherings, especially in some of the single (and married!) women. Oh, how they thought he was a catch, a debonair, charismaticalpha male with a twinkle in his eye and a reputation for brilliance.
She knew that’s what they thought, because she once did too.
For those women, the fact that he was married didn’t even factor into it. He didn’t wear a ring, so many didn’t know and the ones that did didn’t seem to care. The only thing that made her feel worse than seeing him admired by others, was when someone with their eye on him realised who he was married to.
Bernadette had seen it many times, read their minds as they went through the steps of realisation. The incomprehension as they took in her appearance, her demeanour, her forgettable presence.Hewas married toher? Really? She must have some personality because she didn’t get him on looks.
In the early years the physical chasm between them hadn’t been so wide, and anyway, she consoled herself with the fact that he came home to her every night. When the sheen of adoration wore off and she realised who he really was, it had stopped hurting altogether.
She was sure people wondered why he stayed. She did too. But then, thirty years was a long relationship to walk away from and he was from a family that stayed. Wasn’t that what his mother, the evil old cow, used to say?We’re fighters, us Mansons. We don’t walk away.
Sometimes, Bernadette wished to God he had, then she wouldn’t have to face him every morning and listen to yet another poisonous attack.
‘Why do you always have to do this to me? Can’t I even have my bloody breakfast in peace and quiet, and have it the way that I want it? Is it really too much to ask? Is it?’
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t too much to ask at all. He’d have plenty of peace and quiet from now on and his breakfast would be bloody perfect, because he’d have to make it himself. She had to stop herself smiling at that thought. He’d have been sure to take that as a sign of defiance and that would rile him up even more.
A few more minutes. She just had to hold her nerve for a few more minutes. Sod him and sod his bloody prunes.
A phone ringing, this time his, not hers. He swore again, kicked the table leg like a petulant child as he got up, reached for his backpack and pulled it out of the front pocket. So it was OK for him to look at his phone, but not for her. A little voice of sarcasm in her mind pointed out that must be because he was a very important surgeon who lived by a whole different set of rules from lowly mortals.
He pressed a button as he put it to his ear.
‘Yes? Okay, prep O.R. three and tell them I’m on my way in. I’ll be about fifteen minutes,’ he said, his furious hiss replaced with a matter-of-fact calm, the public side of him that everyone else saw and admired. ‘No, no worries at all, you didn’t disturb me, I was just leaving anyway. That’s fine. Okay, I’ll be right there.’
Yes, there was Dr Manson, cardiac surgeon. A man of medicine, of healing. Someone who had chosen to dedicate his life to making others better.
By the time that thought reached her brain the wave of hate was so violent she could taste it.
A dozen times in the last few months she’d resolved to go and backed out every time. Spineless, she knew.
