At the sound of feet running down the stairs, Ashleigh instinctively placed her hands on Evie’s shoulders and held her close.
The woman said nothing, declining to look in their direction as she headed across the hallway, and her boots, now on her feet, trotted out of the vestibule, disappearing into the night.
‘Bye!’ Evie called sweetly. ‘Shall I go and get my PJs on, Mum, and then you can read to me?’
‘That’s a great idea.’ She smiled, doing her best to control the shiver to her limbs, which now shook violently. Her fingers twitching, her head jerking, her voice a warble. The moment they were alone, Archie again reached out as if to hold her.
‘Don’t you dare touch me!’
She made her way to the kitchen, hoping a glass of water might help calm her down and wanting to put some distance between them.
Staring out into the garden, she found it hard to hold a thought, overloaded by all she was trying to process. Her heart beat very quickly and the room spun. It happened like this sometimes when the world felt very big and she felt very small and entirely uncertain of her place in it. Her limbs tingled.Freefall ...
‘Ashleigh,’ he began, speaking as he took a stool at the island, slumping down as if weighted by the pain of discovery. ‘Ash,’ he began again, suggesting any more coherent thoughts or speech might be tough.
‘What, Archie?’ She put the glass down hard and stared at him. ‘What are you going to say? That nothing happened? That it didn’t mean anything? That you’ll work hard for forgiveness? That you love me, love Evie, love our life, our home, our little family?’ she spat.
He sat straight up then and wiped his hand across his mouth. He shook his head slightly and in that moment she was glad he wasn’t going to patronise her with his bullshit.
‘No.’ He swallowed. ‘No. I wasn’t going to say any of that.’
‘Good!’ she fired. ‘Because that kind of cliché would do both of us a disservice.’
‘I was going to say’ – he took a deep, slow breath – ‘I was going to say that I want a divorce.’
Ashleigh knew he was speaking, knew what he had said, but it was as if his words were edged with an echo that made it hard to comprehend.
‘What?’ She needed the repetition to allow her a moment to think, to understand not only what he was saying, but also how best to respond. There was a shift in their dynamic. Ashleigh had thought she was holding all the cards, having discovered his infidelity, was mentally figuring out how he could make amends, wondering if hecouldmake amends, but with these words she understood that it was Archie who was in control. He was upending their life; he wanted out.
‘I ... I want a divorce,’ he repeated.
She stared at her legs, just to make sure they were still attached to her body, as she had the most curious sensation that theywere not, that she was somehow detached from her lower limbs, cut, halved.
‘Mu-um!’ Evie called down the stairs, impatient, it seemed, to get story time underway.
‘Coming!’ she replied in the brightest voice she could find. ‘Are you in love with her, the ... the German?’ Her distress came then, as she sobbed, and to her horror, as it confirmed the very worst thing, Archie cried too, matching her tear for tear.
‘No. I’m not in love with anyone,’ he managed.
‘Not even me?’ Her mouth curved and twisted, as sorrow shaped her lips, which tasted of sadness and regret.
‘Not even you,’ he admitted, his eyes bloodshot as he used the flapping sleeve of his shirt to wipe his face.
And there it was, the words she knew would linger in her thoughts long after the image of her husband and the German holding hands on the sofa in the den of their home, drinking red wine, clothes suitably disturbed, suggesting they had been shagging in her beautiful house, had ebbed away.
‘You don’t love me, anymore?’ Her words were the faintest whisper, wary as she was of putting them out into the world, and of hearing confirmation, making it real.
‘I don’t.’ He coughed, as if understanding that this honesty, this openness, was best in the long run.
‘When did you’ – she sniffed through her tears – ‘when did you stop loving me?’ She was curious, wanting to know, despite his every word landing like a sharp thing in her heart.
He doesn’t love me . . .
Archie doesn’t love me . . .
My husband doesn’t love me ...
You are under my skin and inside my bones ...
