‘Wow, for a vacation?’ Layla asks.
‘Maybe longer, not sure,’ I write. Layla sends back a GIF of a man’s head exploding. No one is waiting for Violet to go with her reaction first, which is what normally happens around here.
‘Just gonna hang out for a bit, see what’s what. Apparently it’s a great city to live in.’
The other bit of news is too good to keep in.
‘You’ll never guess who I’ve been in touch with,’ I write in the comments. ‘Ted Levy’s step-sister, Naomi.’
‘OMG you actual stalking bitch!! I love it tho. Wer[weofoig[qwoe,’ types Maxi.
‘Whoa, how did you even meet her?’ This from Juliet.
‘It turns out we have a professional connection, within the therapeutic industries,’ I reply. ‘We’ve just been chatting online.’
Immediately a private message pings through from Violet.
‘Your husband going with you?’
I sense her anger. She does not seem best pleased about this. I seem to have crossed a boundary I didn’t know was even there.
‘It’s not like that!! I’m just going to Toronto to visit the city. I don’t even know if Ted will be there. Or even Naomi, for that matter.’
Her lack of reply says enough. Meanwhile, everyone else is on the Facebook post, taking their turn to have a shit-fit.
The day before I am due to leave, I am studying Johnny closely for the first time in ages. He moves about the kitchen with ease, as though it’s just another regular day. Which, I guess, it is for him. He has stopped wondering about when I might start grief counselling. He has precious little idea thatI am leaving, perhaps for a few weeks, but maybe forever if the fates are especially benevolent. Johnny probably thinks I would never have it in me, this steady, cautious wife of his, and up until about three days ago I probably thought that too. I have a packed suitcase in the cloakroom in the hallway and it’s like the bloody thing is throbbing in there, waiting to be found.
Earlier, Johnny came in from work, opened the cloakroom door and kicked his boots into the darkness, which made my insides run to slime. For a split second, I hoped he would find it, would erupt in fury and create all-out war, beg me to stay. The bigger part of me is relieved he didn’t.
I dampen down the idea that’s constantly threatening to heat up: that in going to Toronto, I am somehow betraying Johnny. I’ve started to realize something terrible. There’s so little left of our marriage, just rubble and awfulness, that it barely feels worth the effort to save it. Besides, Johnny would be a fine one to talk about what’s considered ‘appropriate’, having a ‘work wife’ who Loves That For Them.
The way I see it, Johnny might see me running away to Toronto as a betrayal, but to me this feels like living authentically. I am not betraying myself, at any rate. The twelve grand is effectively mine; it wasmygrand-uncle. If I were to go to Toronto, I’d be honouring my truth, as Carrie would have said with her life-coach cap on. I decide to travel first, compose an email to Johnny explaining at the airport, and seek forgiveness at a later date, if indeed the time ever comes.
Thinking of Carrie makes me check her Facebook page, which I muted in a temper ages ago. The baby is here, a girl. Has been in the world for a few weeks now: 9 pounds,5 ounces. Carrie has called her Marianne, and there’s even something about how adult and sensible her baby-name choice is that physically rips through me. I think of Carrie’s body, primal and animalistic, opening like the jaw of a python to let this whole new person out into the world. She feels like even more of a stranger now.
‘Congratulations! Hope you and Marianne are doing well, and I can’t wait to meet her!’ I type as a comment below the photo. I’m weirded out at how formal and stilted I sound, as though I’m congratulating my boss’s wife, not my best friend, but then nothing about this whole scenario is at all recognizable to me.
Later in the evening, Johnny surprises me by gingerly lighting a candle and placing it on the table between us as we have our spaghetti bolognaise. ‘I dunno, just something nice…’
He shrugs, while also looking at me out of the corner of his eye, seeking a reaction. That he still sees an ember of hope flickering in our future makes me want to cry a little. Instead, I say, ‘Fancy a fuck?’
We are no longer screwing according to the calendar or the basal temperature or the app or whenever someone or something else instructs us to on account of the right type of mucus, so the offer genuinely takes Johnny by surprise. He’s practically loosening his belt at the dinner table, the cooling spag bol all but forgotten. Within minutes, we have sex on the kitchen work surface that’s so urgent and vigorous and grunty and athletic and almost deliciously hostile that, for the first time in ages, my mind doesn’t wander off-piste, wondering what’s the difference between a raisin and a sultana, or whether a meadow is the same thing as a glade. We both climax at the same time– a sign we’re doingOK, if you’re going byCosmomagazine wisdom– and afterwards, I can tell he senses we might finally be moving back closer towards each other.
He doesn’t see this sex for what it is.
Leaving at dawn is both thrilling and petrifying, like pulling a pin on a hand grenade.
In the taxi, I type a response to the Swede about today’s disciplinary meeting. ‘Sorry I won’t make it in today for that meeting,’ I type. ‘I’ve come down with a really bad case of Go Fuck Yourself.’ Pressing ‘send’ feels better than whatever Alton Towers has to offer. A small laugh escapes me.
‘Going somewhere good?’ asks the taxi driver.
‘I’m moving to Toronto,’ I reply. Saying it out loud feels incredible.
‘You’re travelling awful light for a move to another country, ain’t ya?’ he says.
‘Well, who needs luggage when you have a fresh start?’ I tell him. ‘I don’t need too much anyway. My… boyfriend’s place will have all the stuff we’ll need.’ I feel a thrill as I hold my fantasy life up to the light.
‘Moving out for a fella? He must be a good ’un.’
