‘Well…’ I feel at a loss. I’m out of synch with everyone these days. I keep mistaking people’s intentions: the driver of the Chrysler Grand Voyager in front of me was not turning left, as I presumed, but trying to park; Lech the plumber was not trying it on as he pressed against me in the tiny guest loo—just trying to manoeuvre his way to answer his mobile; Dr Casey was not cross with me when, as I sloped in late after taking Kat to the dentist, he asked me what time I thought it was—he’d simply forgotten his glasses on Mrs S’s desk and couldn’t see his watch.
‘I’m not feeling my usual self,’ I explain to Babette. ‘Awkward.’
‘When did you start feeling awkward in Jonathan’s presence?’
Was it when he explained to Kat and me that Prada came from praeda, the Latin word for loot, and she and I burst into disrespectful giggles? Was it that night at the dinner party of some old school chum of his, when he wouldn’t laugh at my joke about how do you recognise a blonde at a car wash? (Answer: She’s the one on her bicycle.) Was it when he told me that he really didn’t want my shepherd’s pie for supper and that actually, if he was being truthful, he’d never liked it…
‘I don’t know,’ I answer, eyes picking out the vine-and-flower pattern on the carpet.
Babette turns to Jonathan. ‘Can you see why Rosie might feel uncomfortable with you?’
‘It’s not me. It’s that’—Jonathan moves forward on the sofa—‘from the first, Rosie has never fitted in my world. Do you remember when I took you to our office party?’
I wince at the memory of the wine-soaked Christmas party, when Jonathan’s ‘team’, as he likes to call his colleagues, stood about stiffly under festoons of holly and mistletoe, looking awkward and impervious to seasonal cheer. The conversation moved from what mead did to our ancestors’ liver to whether the side-effects of Rollowart warranted an FDA ban. At ten o’clock, just as I thought it would be perfectly acceptable for me to ask Jonathan if we could go home, I was cornered by some bearded professorial type banging on about how German pharmaceutical companies were beating British ones in R&D. After 35-45 minutes of his monotonous monologue, and after four glasses of Rioja, I yawned: ‘What about some party games to liven this lot up? Sardines? Charades?’ The prof gave me a vicious look and turned on his heels. A moment later, Jonathan came up, ashen-faced: ‘What did you say to Emory Watson? He’s my new boss. He organised tonight.’
Why would I wish to fit into this world? I ask myself now. Eggheads, formulae, labs, white smocks and smoking glass vials: Jonathan’s work has always struck me as an extended chemistry class. And I never did do well at chemistry.
‘The children,’ Babette interrupts my musings, ‘how are they taking your separation?’
Again we answer in chorus:
Him: ‘They’re fine.’
Me: ‘They’re gutted.’
‘Explain.’ Babette turns her gentle smile on me.
‘They’—I gulp, cross my arms again—‘seem in a daze. They don’t believe that their father is really leaving. They keep asking me if there is something we can do to get him back.’
‘Rosie, they are perfectly fine when they’re with me,’ Jonathan interrupts, scarlet with indignation. ‘Honestly, Dr…er, Mrs Pagorsky. They are quite old enough to take on board that grown-ups can change their mind about whom they want to spend the rest of their life with.’
The rest of their life. Till death us do part. I can almost hear the officious vicar at St Swithin’s intoning those words in the flower-filled church near Castle Cary where we were married. It had seemed so certain back then, among family, well-wishers and lilies. My father had had tears in his eyes, as did Jonathan’s parents. My mum had spent most of her time elbowing her sister Margaret, trying to direct her attention to the groom’s pews, where not one (’not one!’ she would repeat later at the reception, fuelled by a few glasses of champagne, to anyone who would listen) of the women wore a proper hat. But even Mum had proclaimed us a perfect couple, that perfect spring day. ‘They’re just so much in love,’ she had sighed, dabbing prettily at her eye with a white hanky.
‘People change. They grow apart…’ I listen to Jonathan’s platitudes, watch him shrug off our twelve-year-old marriage as if it was the wrong beach towel. ‘I’m not the only one who knows we need to move on. Rosie’s heart hasn’t been in this for years.’
‘Maybe not, but I’m not the one sneaking around with a lover from work!’ I jump up from the sofa, grab my handbag.
‘I wasn’t sneaking around! I was going to tell you everything!’ Jonathan jumps up too.
‘Only once I caught you!’ I try to stomp off, but Jonathan grabs my arm.
‘Please, Jonathan, Rosie, sit down.’ Babette’s dark eyes grow round in alarm.
‘Will you stop picking a fight?!’ he’s yelling. ‘What are you fighting for? We haven’t had a real marriage for years.’
‘What’s a REAL marriage?!’
‘We weren’t in love. We hardly ever had sex…’
‘Last time I checked, once a week was considered pretty normal!’
‘Please,’ Babette calls out again from her armchair across the room, ‘will you sit down? The session is not over—’
‘Oh yes it is!’ snaps Jonathan as he stomps off.
I wake up and stretch out my left arm and leg, and feel the rest of the large double bed is empty. I take a minute to adjust to my new circumstances. It’s been like this every morning since Jonathan announced he wants a divorce. The little armchair in the corner of the room is half-hidden by only my clothes—not layers of his and mine. The bathroom door is ajar, but Jonathan is not standing there in his striped pyjamas brushing his teeth as he methodically adjusts the shower jet, lays a towel on the radiator to toast it, and hangs up a clean shirt on the back of the door.
What is he doing, this Sunday morning? Do he and Linda have leisurely lie-ins, when they have sex non-stop and then eat a huge breakfast and read the papers and then more sex? Or does Linda get them up and out for a brisk run and then a joint shower that leads to hotvolcanicsex?
I try to picture the room my ex wakes up in—spotless and spartan, or is Linda into Disney princess pink, with a bit of ruffle on the dressing table and a four-poster bed as big as this one? Stop it, I tell myself. Because I can spend hours, in fact have done so, trying to picture their room, and what they do and say. This divorce may be a mutual decision, but how can I help being jealous when my husband of twelve years lies in someone else’s bed?
I hear Kat moving about next door. I look at my alarm clock: 9.20. As I stir and peep over the white cotton waves, I see an unfamiliar red light blinking at me: I forgot to switch off the DVD player after watching When Harry Met Sally last night until 2 a.m.
I stir myself, and notice other unusual sights: clothes strewn across the chest of drawers and even on the floor. Jonathan would have gone mad. The curtains only half drawn and, on the bedside table, yesterday’s mug of tea. It’s as if every bit of our bedroom announces that Jonathan’s gone.
It’s the same downstairs. In the sitting room, the bookshelves look like an elderly East European’s teeth: rows with huge black gaps where Jonathan has pulled out his must-have volumes: Hair Growth, Folliculitis Prevention, Baldness is Not for Life. In the kitchen, the Sabatier knives are missing, and half the Le Creuset set. Newspapers and tins and glass bottles spill out of the bin in one vast, unecological jumble.
I’m thirty-eight next year. I feel as wary of time passing as I do of crossing a motorway: I’ve made enough mistakes already, I daren’t trust my instincts to get me safely across. I want to see the break-up of my marriage as a beginning; but right now I feel it only as an end.
I