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“I’ve seen a lawyer.”

My heart thumps on my ribs. “Oh.”

“About a divorce,” he says.

I go still. I knew this was coming, right? It was only a matter of time.

“If you agree,” he says, “it means we would file a joint application, and we wouldn’t need to go to court.” He looks at me expectantly.

So this is it, then. On a warm summer morning, four days from Christmas, my marriage has come to an end.

Only it didn’t happen today, did it? It happened long ago. It’s like a decaying radioactive isotope. It broke down slowly over the last few years, and it’ll continue to do so. The feelings we had for each other will wane, until the amount left is so minute, it’s barely noticeable.

“I agree,” I say. He looks surprised. “What?” I add. “Did you expect me to object?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Did he think I’d cry and beg him to stay? Something hardens in my heart at that point. He’s only ever used my love to make himself feel good. He’s a one-way mirror, and he’s never reflected any of it back at me.

“To get a divorce, we need to have lived apart for two years,” he says eventually.

“I know.” I feel a flare of frustration. It binds two people together for long after the love has died.

“We need to agree on the date of separation,” he says. “Apparently you can use a date when you were still living under the same roof if you were leading separate lives, like if you stayed together for children. You have to prove you had separate bedrooms, separate bank accounts. That you were flatmates rather than partners. So… I was thinking…” His voice trails off, and he scratches at a mark on his jeans.

Ohhh… understanding dawns. “You want to say we separated earlier. Not six months ago.”

“It’s an idea.”

“So, when?”

“After the accident. When I came out of hospital.” His brows draw together. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

I sit there quietly, not saying anything. My heart is racing, and I feel nauseous. I’ve been so stupid. He’s saying that for him, the marriage ended two years ago.

He waits, his knee jiggling. Then, he obviously takes my silence as an objection, because he blurts out, “I was going to leave before the accident.”

I blink. “What?”

“I’d got another job in Auckland,” he says sullenly. “I was going to move there and live with a mate for a while. And then I fell off that fucking ladder. They told me they wouldn’t keep the job open for me. So I had nowhere to go and no way to earn money. I was so angry and resentful. I didn’t want to stay, but I had to.”

My mouth opens, but no words come out.

“What was I supposed to do?” he demands. “I couldn’t walk! I was in terrible fucking pain. I had no other option. But I moved into the spare bedroom the day I came back from hospital. So the marriage ended then.”

“Not for me,” I say incredulously. “I didn’t know you were going to leave me. I thought you were trying to drive me away because you thought I deserved better. I thought it was a kind of twisted noble act.”

He looks at the carpet. “You just buried your head in the sand. We both knew it was done.”

My head spins. Oh God, I’ve been so naïve. I feel about an inch high. I tried so hard to make the marriage work, and in his head, he’d already left.

“We’ve always had separate bank accounts and separate friends,” he pleads. “If you agree to say the marriage was over when the accident happened, it means our divorce could be finalised in July.”

July… It means I wouldn’t have to wait eighteen months to be free. It means Mitch and I could have a clear start, without the shadow of my marriage hanging over us.

But it means accepting that the last few years of misery were all for nothing. We weren’t trying to save our marriage. He wasn’t doing anything for me. It was all over, and I was flogging a herd of elephants, not just a dead horse.

I feel like such a fool. We hadn’t slept together for about six months before the accident. We were arguing a lot. I told myself I was fighting for the marriage, but he’s right—it was already over before he got injured.

“What about Millie?” I whisper.