Now it’s his turn to soften. ‘I think we both know that’s not true.’
‘Please.’ I try to keep the begging note out of my voice. ‘I think we’ll be able to get through this if I’m the one putting the work in. You don’t have to do anything. I know that now. This is on me.’ And then, because I’m stuck for a way forward, I blurt it out. ‘Mushroom vol-au-vent, right?’
He takes my hand and looks with such softness into my eyes that I’m almost sure everything is going to be OK– somehow.
‘I’m just going to be the one to say it. You know it and I know it. You will make more sense on your own.’
‘Hold on, you’re now walking out of our marriage?’ I tell him. We let the hypocrisy settle between us.
‘I think we both need to walk out of it. Even before you legged it, we weren’t in a good place, were we? Not if we’re being totally honest with ourselves.’
‘Is this because you have a new girlfriend? You do have one, don’t you?’
‘I don’t, and it’s not,’ Johnny replies patiently. ‘But you know it and I know it. Just because I’m the one pushing this off the cliff doesn’t make me the bad guy here.’
I begin ugly-crying. I make one last attempt to pull it all back from oblivion. ‘If I get help…’
‘I just don’t think so. Too much water,’ Johnny says.
He picks up the salt shaker absent-mindedly.
‘I fucking adored you,’ he says quietly, brimful of pure sadness and confusion. ‘You were my safe space.’
Truly, I’d rather take a box-cutter to the face than ever hear him say it the way he does, ever again.
I take a look around the cafe. Heads turn away, embarrassed for us. Stoke Newington, with its effortless mums and happy children, feels like a prison. It’s as if I’m underwater, unable to get used to the way of things around here. Always with my nose pressed up against the glass, waiting to be let in and to be allowed to belong.
I want off the treadmill.
‘I’ll call you in a while,’ he says. ‘We need to talk about the flat, that kind of stuff.’
I nod.
‘Also, your little adventure cost us ten grand. So, there’s that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
We pick up and leave. We’re not sure how to sign off, so we try an awkward goodbye hug. A hug that is supposed to signify an ending. How can a body that was as familiar as my own feel so weirdly foreign and unyielding? He gives me a smile, the same smile he did while we had our mushroom vol-au-vent talk back on our wedding day, and in that moment I know. I have completely and utterly fucked it. He walks away and it really does look as though he is striding away into a whole other life.
32
My feet take me towards Liverpool Street train station, almost of their own volition.
At one point, I see Francesca on the opposite pavement, walking and chatting with a woman who I assume to be my replacement at work. As Francesca chats with urgency, hands making circles in the air, the other woman’s gait seems resigned and sleepy, and I feel a stab of familiarity as I just about make out her soul-dead eyes. Francesca and I lock eyes for half a second and I could swear that something approximating hostility crosses her face, but she doesn’t break stride. I’m someone she used to work next to, no more than that. To think we once shared eight hours a day under the same fluorescent strip-lighting.
There is only really one other person I need to see on the Esther Contrition Tour apart from Johnny, so I take the train out to a small village in Buckinghamshire, where Carrie now lives.
She opens the door of her rose-covered cottage. Of course there was going to be a rose-covered cottage. The baby Marianne, now a toddler with her divine rolls and pudge, is stacked on her hip. Carrie has never looked more… moisturized. The baby doesn’t just fit her, glove-like; I can barely remember what Carrie looked like without her there. Thechild is an extension of her. Her tiny dark eyes look at me sceptically, and it’s no more than I deserve.
She opens the door wider, and I feel something like shame follow me inside. I worry that I’m going to get it all over the cream-carpeted stairs, the hardwood floor, the bright, clean-lined kitchen. How am I supposed to explain the last five months without sounding totally unhinged?
‘Did you find the place OK?’ Carrie starts, no doubt trying to put off the inevitable showdown for a few more minutes. Everything between us feels so fragile. She disappears into the kitchen to make tea, and I welcome the time to gather my thoughts.
I follow her into the kitchen, where she is putting the child into some sort of jumping contraption suspended in the doorway. Marianne bounces happily, and something in her contentment breaks my own heart a little. I should know her a lot better than I do.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m sorry. I was a complete asshole to you,’ I tell Carrie.
She stops fiddling with tea leaves and strainers. ‘Yeah. You were.’
