‘So you’re already packed and moving out.’
‘No, I want you and Matthew to.’
Jada pushed her head back and laughed. ‘Say what?’
‘I want you to go and stay with your mum and stepdad at their place in Florida for a while.’
‘Oh, this just gets better! So not only do you want your family out of the house, you want us out of the country too? Well, fuck you, Anthony. We’re not going anywhere.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Anthony replied calmly. ‘I’ve given this a lot of thought and it’s the best possible solution. I’ve packed yours and Matthew’s clothes and toiletries and booked a car to take you to Heathrow Airport. Your flight leaves tonight.’
‘I don’t believe this! You think you can just click your fingers and you get what you want? A marriage, if that’s what you can call this, doesn’t work like that. What about my job? What about Matthew’s education?’
‘You can work and he can study remotely.’
‘You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you? You’re the one who’s in the wrong but we’re the ones being punished?’
Anthony rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and rose to his feet. ‘Jada, I will always love you but sometimes we have to accept that isn’t enough to hold a relationship together.’
‘And now you’re trying to lecture me on what makes a relationship work? How about not lying to your wife for years about what she can and cannot say?’
Anthony averted his gaze to their Audite, then back at Jada. He had only recently explained the device would not be recording them and now he was trying to tell her he had been wrong. It wasn’t their relationship that was being spied upon, it was him. Hyde had been watching him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mouthed.
‘What?’ she replied. Her brows snapped together as if trying to fathom out what her husband wanted to tell her.
‘I have a lot of work to do on this new project so I won’t have much time for you and Matthew anyway,’ Anthony continued. ‘So you’ll be better off with your family. You’ve been saying for a while that you want to spend time with them.’
‘Please, believe me,’ he mouthed again.
‘I don’t understand,’ Jada mouthed back at him.
Husband and wife remained where they were, their eyes fixed on one another, Anthony willing her to grasp all that he wasn’t saying.
‘The return flights are open ended,’ Anthony said, looking back to the Audite. ‘So you can come back when you’re ready for us to talk.’
Jada went to say something else, but had second thoughts. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly instead, her eyes glistening. As she made her way towards the suitcases, Anthony placed his hand on her shoulder.
‘I love you,’ he mouthed. And hesitantly, she did the same. And an hour later, he was standing on the porch waving his tearful family off in a taxi.
76
Roxi
Roxi’s blank stare travelled beyond the figure sitting in thearmchair and drifted into her hallway. Next to the front door sat a neatly positioned briefcase and a matching pair of slip-on loafers. She detested them and the faint aroma of cheddar they emitted even from this distance. Their presence had become such a regular occurrence in her home that they felt like a part of the furniture. However, she would not see them or their owner again after this morning. Her and Owen’s four weeks under the eye of a Relationship Responder were finally coming to an end.
Once she had figured out what Adrian, their appointed counsellor, and Owen had wanted to hear from her, their sessions hadn’t been as awful as she’d feared. But they hadn’t been a box of delights either. Always in the back of her mind was a warning to herself that she must toe the line or face the consequences. She had slipped up early on and been caught out. Adrian had access to her online search history and discovered she had been looking for ‘what Relationship Responders want to hear’ and ‘how to pass Level Two’. She had found no answers, learning that, by law, service providers faced steep fines by regulators for hosting such sites in the UK. The only saving grace was that Adrian had not asked to move into their home like some Responders did with their clients.
Week one was the most surreal. He’d advised the family that while he was observing their behavioural dynamic, to pretend as if he wasn’t there. It was no mean feat given he must tip the scales at more than twenty stone. ‘He’s the proverbial elephant in the room,’ Roxi had joked to Owen.
‘Body shaming is a hate crime,’ he’d reminded her.
Adrian was there monitoring everything, from the hum-drum day-to-day routines of meals, family activities and school runs to how present they were for their children’s distance-learning days. His continual presence meant she’d picked up on and amplified his irritating habits, like the tap-tap-tapping of his fingernails as he made notes on his tablet or how he whistled from his nostrils when he exhaled.
Often, when Owen was at work, it was just him and Roxi orbiting the same tiny universe, her always aware of his hawk-like eyes while she read a book, did laundry or binge-streamed a TV series. There was a lot more time to fill now that she had no social media to prepare content for.
The hard work began in week two. Intense Therapy, Adrian had branded it. And it soon became apparent that he was prone to siding with Owen, not her. After one particularly frustrating session in which she was blamed for everything that was wrong in their marriage, Roxi had given serious consideration to calling Adrian out on his bias. But later, when she’d calmed, she’d been glad she hadn’t. Protestations would make her appear hostile and would be as pointless as a footballer arguing with an AI referee’s decision. And it might even prolong the process if she wasn’t seen to be taking constructive criticism on the chin. She had given up so much of herself already, she wouldn’t miss another piece.
Roxi had been expected to open up to Adrian about her entire life, from the baggage she carried from foster care to motherhood and even her sex life, past and present. She played along but the only subject on which she remained tight-lipped was the accidental killing of Antoinette Cooper. Likewise, Owen was also expected to bring honesty to the table. Yet he failed to mention his therapy sessions with Cooper. She knew that confronting him with it would open a can of worms best left sealed and might drag out this process further. However, she was pleased not to be the only one holding back from the absolute truth.
