Fingers on the keyboard, I sigh as I tip back my head to stare at the ceiling. It feels like the pain of the past—the things I’ve worked so hard to move on from—are no longer a dull ache. My heart feels freshly cleaved.
‘Fuck this,’ I growl, sitting up and slapping down the lid of my laptop. I’m fucking off to the pub. ‘I think I’ll get pissed.’
As I reach our local watering hole, The Cock and Bull, renamed by the locals as The Cock and Balls, I go straight to the bar and order a round of beers with whisky chasers.
‘Ah, you’re a legend in your own workplace,’ Geordie crows, coming up behind me and slapping me on the shoulder.
‘Make yourself useful and take these over, would you?’ I’d already spotted Josh by the dartboard. Only in pubs will you find half-drunk men being allowed to chuck pointy wee things indoors. I wonder how many people end up visiting accident and emergency each year after a few pints and a game of darts?
I’m purposely filling my mind with the inane as I turn to make my way over to the lads, when my shoulder clashes with a woman walking in the opposite direction.
‘Sorry, hen.’ I apologise without looking up, concentrating on the spillage of beer against both of my hands.
‘Sorry,’ she says at the same time. ‘My fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.’ I know that voice, but I still don’t look up, wanting right now to be anywhere but here. The hairs on my neck stand like pins, my hands suddenly looking more like bare bones than anything else, bloodless through shock or maybe anger. Still. It’s been years, and yet I still rage when she’s near. ‘Greg, will you not say hello?’
I inhale, exhale, and do the only thing I can as I look up and greet my ex-wife.
‘Diana.’
‘It’s been a long time.’ Not long enough, I don’t say. Our divorce was, like most divorces I’m sure, acrimonious. It’s a fine word but not an adequate one. Her request for a divorce hit me out of the blue, and from the day she told me until the day the final divorce papers came through, I felt like I bled continually. Bled money, bled pain and bled out love. She might’ve left me for someone else, which I didn’t know at the time, but we both know that wasn’t the real reason our marriage ended.
‘How are you?’ She wraps her hands around her waist, ostensibly to close her long cardigan across her body.
‘Good. And you?’ Like I give a fuck.
‘I’m well.’ Nope, no fucks were given that day.
‘And Chris?’ The twat you left me for?
‘He’s well. We’re just here visiting Mum for Christmas.’ Excuse me while I don’t get excited. ‘What about you? Are you seeing anyone?’
‘Nope.’ I place the beers back down on the bar. This looks like it might take a while.
‘I’ve always hoped you’d find someone else.’
‘Once bitten and all that,’ comes my gruff reply.
‘Well, that’s a shame. You really were a good husband.’
‘Just not good enough, apparently.’ I wish to God I hadn’t said that—wish I could rewind and suck those words back in. Because the last thing I want is her pity. If I never had to think about her again, I’d be happy.
‘No, Greg.’ Her cheeks turn as red as though I’d slapped her. ‘That’s not true. Our breakup wasn’t on you.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ The words come out as a sneer. ‘See, I seem to recall you telling me exactly that.’
Diana’s gaze darts to the bar, maybe the barman, then over her shoulder. ‘Come and sit down, please,’ she says, her hands on my forearm.
‘What’s the point? I’ve no interest in anything you have to say.’
‘Please, Greg. Just five minutes. Please, just hear me out.’
With a shrug and a deep sip of my pint, my eyes follow her to one of the booths as, from the dartboard, Josh and Geordie watch warily. I indicate the remaining drinks on the bar as I follow my ex-wife.
‘I’m truly sorry for hurting you,’ she begins before my arse even touches the upholstery, speaking so fast it’s like she’s worried I might not stay to hear whatever it is she feels she needs to say. ‘I said some awful things to you, Greg. Things that weren’t true. I didn’t leave you because we couldn’t have children—’
‘Tell the truth and shame the devil, hen.Youcould have kids.’ I lean across the table, my words dripping with a sudden menace, a sudden hurt. ‘I, on the other hand. . . Don’t hold back now, not when I’ve already heard this part. You left me becauseIcouldn’t give you kids.’
‘I know that’s what I said, but it was an excuse. Something I told myself to absolve myself of blame, a way to unburden the guilt. I didn’t leave because of that. I left because I fell in love with someone else, pure and simple. I’m sorry, so, so sorry, but the fertility treatments and the doctors, the waiting rooms full of worried faces—I just couldn’t do it anymore.’ Tears begin to track down her face, but I don’t have it in me to feel pity either, it seems. ‘Chris walked into my life right at that time, and I told myself he was what I needed.’
