‘You’ve got to expel him,’ said Bea forcefully.
‘You’ve got to eject him,’ agreed her twin.
‘You’ve got to exile him,’ said Bea.
‘Erase him,’ Bella went on.
‘Evict him.’
‘Excommunicate him.’
‘You’ve got to exorcise him,’ they both said.
‘Exorcise him?’ I whispered. ‘Yes. That’s it. I shall simply Ed-it Ed out of my life.’
I felt better once I’d resolved to do that. Ed and I live eight miles apart, we have no mutual friends, my mail’s redirected, and we don’t have kids. We don’t even have to communicate through lawyers as we can’t start proceedings until we’ve been married a year. So it can all be nice and neat. Which is how I like things. Tidy. Sorted out. Nor do we have any joint financial commitments as the house belongs solely to Ed. I sold my flat when we got engaged and moved in with him. Ed wanted me to put in my equity to pool resources but Bella advised me to wait.
‘Rose,’ she said, ‘you haven’t known Ed long. Please, don’t tie up your cash with his until you feel certain it’s going to work out.’
Ed seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t do it, but as things turned out, Bella was right. As for letting all our friends know about the split – that had been taken care of by the popular press.
I shall simply carry on as though I’d never met him I decided as I opened more packing cases the next day. I shall be very civilised about it. I shall not get hysterical; I’ll be as cool as vichyssoise. In any case the unpalatable image of him canoodling with our marriage guidance counsellor would keep sentiment firmly at bay.
And now I masochistically replayed the scene where I’d found them together that day. I’d been invited to speak at a seminar on Relationship Enrichment and told Ed I’d be coming home late. I hadn’t thought it relevant to mention that it was being held in a conference room at the Savoy. But when I left at nine I had to walk through the bar and, to my astonishment, I spotted Ed. He was sitting at a corner table – behind a large parlour palm – holding hands with Mary-Claire Grey.
My unfailing advice to readers in such disagreeable situations is, Just Pretend You Haven’t Seen Them And Leave! But in the nanosecond it took my brain to clock their combined presence I had walked right up to them. Mary-Claire saw me first and the look of horror on her snouty little face is something I’ll never forget. She dropped Ed’s hand as though it were radioactive, and emitted a high-pitched little cough. Ed swivelled in his seat, saw me, blinked twice, blushed deeply and simply said, ‘Oh!’
I was relieved that he didn’t try and cover it up by saying, for example, ‘Gosh, Rose, fancy seeing you here!’ or ‘Darling, do you remember our marriage guidance counsellor, Mary-Claire Grey?’ or even ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘Oh…Rose,’ Ed stuttered, getting to his feet. ‘Well, what a surprise! I, er expect you’re wondering what we’re…’
‘Yes,’ I interjected. ‘I am.’ I was so frosty I gave myself goose bumps, but inside I was as hot as a flame.
‘Well, I…we…we were just having a chat, actually.’
‘A chat?’ I echoed. ‘How nice. Well, don’t let me interrupt,’ I added with a chilly little smile. Then I turned on my heel, and left.
Looking back, the only thing that gives me any solace is the knowledge that I retained my dignity. It’s only in my dreams that I throw things at him, and swear, and rage and hit. In real life I was as cool as a frozen penguin, which might surprise people who know me well. I’m supposed to be ‘difficult’ you see – a bit ‘complicated’. A rather ‘thorny’ Rose – ho ho ho! And of course my red hair is a guaranteed sign of a crazy streak and a wicked tongue. So the fact that I didn’t erupt like Mount Etna in this moment of crisis would almost certainly confound my friends. But I felt oddly detached from what was going on. I was numb. I guess it was shock. I mean, there was my handsome husband, of barely six months, holding hands with a troll! This realisation astounded me so much that I was able to retain my sang-froid.
‘Rose…’ he ventured an hour and a half later in the kitchen where I was tidying out a drawer. ‘Rose…’ he repeated, but I was having difficulty hearing him over the deafening thump, thump of my heart. ‘Rose…’ he reiterated, ‘you must think badly of me.’
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I do.’
‘I just want to say that I’m truly sorry. I know it doesn’t look good.’ Now that elegant little apology really annoyed me, because I was enjoying being on the moral high ground. The air’s very bracing at ten thousand feet, and of course there’s a wonderful view. ‘But I’d like to…explain,’ he suggested impotently.
‘No. Spare me, Ed. Please don’t.’
‘I want to,’ he insisted. ‘There are things I’d like to say.’
Suddenly I noticed that one of the cupboards was grubby and began wiping it with a damp cloth.
‘I’m not remotely interested in why you were holding hands with that pigmy,’ I said stiffly as I swabbed away.
‘Look, Rose. We’ve got to talk.’
‘You sound like the B.T. ad.’
‘Mary-Claire and I were just…chatting,’ he added lamely.
‘Ed,’ I said serenely, ‘that’s a lie: a) you were not just “chatting”, you were holding hands; and b) there was a pool of drool under your table big enough to support aquatic life. What’s the attraction?’ I added breezily as I reached for the Ajax. ‘She looks like a pig in a tutu to me.’
‘Well…she…she…Mary-Claire listens to me Rose,’ he said with sudden emphasis. ‘She hears what I say. You don’t. You take everyone else’s problems seriously, don’t you – but not mine, and would you please put that cloth down?’
‘There’s a nasty mark here,’ I said. ‘It’s very stubborn. I’ll have to try Astonish if this doesn’t work.’
‘Will you stop cleaning, Rose, for Chrissake!’ He snatched the cloth out of my hand and hurled it into the sink with a flaccid slap. ‘You’re always cleaning things,’ he said. ‘That’s part of the problem – I can never relax.’
‘I just like things to be shipshape,’ I protested pleasantly. ‘No need to snap.’
‘But you’re always at it. It’s bizarre! If you’re not at work or the radio station you’re cleaning or tidying, or polishing the furniture, or you’re sorting drawers. Or you’re colour spectrumming my shirts: or filing stuff away, or you’re hoovering the floor, or telling me to hoover.’
‘But it’s a very big house.’
Ed shook his head. ‘You can never relax, Rose, can you? You can never just sit and be. Look,’ he added with a painful sigh, ‘you and I have got problems. What shall we do?’
At this my ears pricked up like a husky. Ed was talking my lingo now. This was just like one of my monthly ‘Dilemmas’ when the readers, rather than me, give advice. Rose (name changed to protect her identity), has just found her husband Ed (ditto), canoodling with their vertically-challenged marriage guidance counsellor, Mary-Claire Grey. Rose, understandably, feels shocked and betrayed. But, despite this, she still finds her husband desperately, knee-tremblingly, heart-breakingly attractive, so is wondering what to