‘I remember—’ She coughed to clear her throat of the plug of sadness that had risen unexpectedly there. ‘I remember when we were at university and we’d spend nights in that single bed in my room. It was so narrow, we practically had to lie on each other, until we devised the perfect way to sleep; me halfway down the bed, you on your back, legs wide, me in the gap, head on your stomach, so close ...’
‘So close,’ he echoed.
‘I’d never felt so safe, so comfortable, so happy and I knew that if I got to sleep like that every night,everynight, then we’d be happy forever.’
‘And forever would not be enough,’ he whispered, completing the phrase they had coined and used sparingly and with great intent throughout their marriage.
She ignored it, knowing that to give it credence right now might throw her off track. She needed to stay focused, to rip off the Band-Aid, to stop pretending.
‘If I think about those two young lovers with their lives in front of them, they’re hard to recognise; it’s like looking at people we used to know, but have lost touch with.’ The accuracy of this was a moment of realisation for her, another jab of sadness. The first being a little more than a jab, actually, more of a right hook that caught her squarely on the jaw when she’d found out about him and Mrs bloody Peterson. ‘And for the record, it seems you might have forgotten that you only admitted your affair because I figured it out. Who knows how long it might have gone on otherwise? And if it had finished, run its course, would I ever have known? I mean have there been others?’
‘Jesus, no! What a thing to say!’ He raised his voice a little, adamant.
‘Also ...’ She knew her maelstrom of thoughts wouldn’t settle until she’d addressed all the points that he’d raised, lodged now inher chest like thorns. ‘... you used to say, “I love how smart you are, how hard you work.” We’d plan to take over the world! You liked that I never rested, was independent, busy.’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Yet listening to you just now, it seems like the very things that attracted you to me are the very things that you now dislike, the things that have irritated you, the things thatdroveyou into Wendy’s arms.’ She accentuated the verb she used sardonically and felt her lip flinch at the use of the woman’s name.
‘No, I just—’
‘I was never one of those girls with a small handbag.’ She cut him short. ‘Or one with the latest clothes, high heels, a sparkly top and a big laugh. I was quieter, thoughtful, and that’s how I’ve behaved for our entire marriage. I don’t think I’ve changed.’
‘You think I’ve changed?’ He lifted his head.
‘Erm, if not changed, then maybe got a little bored, wondered if the grass was greener.’ It was easy to be direct when she spoke her truth, no longer treading on eggshells, guarded.
‘Doesn’t everybody?’
That her reply to his question was slow in coming spoke volumes. ‘No, Hugo. Not everybody.’
‘There it is again, that blaming voice, that tone.’ He placed his hand over his mouth, as if this physical barrier might prevent the words slipping out that he knew were only damaging them further.
Harriet sat back in the chair and folded her hands into her lap. It was a moment of reckoning; Hugo’s words were branded in her thoughts. His casual admission of how he had been ‘lured’ into infidelity with no more than a kind word, was incendiary and with it the realisation that they never had been and never could be stable. Picturing a small cage, she mentally placed it around her heart and locked it tight, knowing that if she could so misunderstand her marriage, misjudge her family life, and mistrust her husband, thennothing else in life could be taken for granted. She had never felt so alone, so dangerously on the edge, and she realised how easy it would be to fall.
What came next was delivered calmly, clearly, and she did her best to control the emotion that threatened to hijack her composure. It was important she got her phrasing right. Important that he listened. There was a beat of weighted silence before she was ready to speak. Hugo’s foot tip-tapped gently on the floor in anticipation.
‘In case you’re wondering, or wonder in the future, at which point I decided to walk away from this marriage, the moment I knew I was done, the second the plug got pulled on all those remaining feelings that meant we might be in with a shot: it’s now. Right now. This is the moment, Hugo.’ She gestured towards the floor, a visual that she knew would live in her mind to concrete the moment in recollection. She saw his mouth fall open, his shoulders slump. ‘Not that it will matter in years to come, not at all. Everything we have, everything that concerns us and keeps us awake in the early hours, will be no more than a tributary of indifference that will trickle into the sea, and these past few weeks and how we got here will merge into one murky area of shade in our lives.’
‘Are you—’
‘Joking? No. No, I’m not.’ She felt the wave of nausea, despite her outward serenity.
‘So this is it?’ He spoke as if this might help the facts sink in.
‘This is it.’
‘We can’t just give up!’
‘I’m not just giving up. If I had wanted to give up, I would have packed a bag the day I found out or I’d have stayed and carried on in Ledwick Green, hauling this sadness quietly inside me. That would have been giving up. We tried. I tried. I almost needed theclarity of coming here, away from our normal life, to get my head straight.’
‘I ... I don’t want us to.’ His lower lip wobbled, and it was hard to see. ‘I can’t stand the thought of us not being—’
‘That’s the thing, Hugo. It’s no longer about what you want or what you can or can’t stand. It’s not even about trying to reach the compromise that I’ve held in my thoughts, strived for. A goal, if you like, since I first found out.’
‘Please, H, please!’
‘No.’ She shook her head, not wanting him to pointlessly plead and knowing it would be better for him, upon reflection, if he did not. With her tone still level, her demeanour calm, despite the desperate avalanche of sadness that tumbled inside her. ‘No. It’s ... it’s gone. It’s really gone, whatever it was, whatever we had – love, I guess – it’s been gone for a while.’ Her throat narrowed at the admission. ‘That love was slashed and burned when you slept with her, when you slept with Wendy Peterson. I thought the roots might reseed, that it might be recoverable. That we could renovate our love, repaint, upcycle, go again. I believed, wanted desperately to believe, that it was a blip, an anomaly, but your words about how we live, the things I do that are wrong—’
