‘I do notice you,’ said Simon indignantly.
‘No, you don’t,’ I said in despair. ‘You don’t even see me anymore. I’m just there, like a piece of old furniture. You don’t notice how I look, you don’t notice what I do, you certainly don’t notice how I feel.’
‘I do notice how you look,’ insisted Simon.
‘You don’t. No matter how dressed up I am, you never notice, you never say anything, you never compliment me. When I ask you how I look, you don’t even look up from your iPad, you just grunt, “You look fine” – and that’s it.’
‘Well, you do. You always look fine. What do you want me to say?’
‘Simon, “You look fine” means “Yes, you’re respectable, your skirt isn’t tucked into your knickers, you haven’t got spinach in your teeth and you’re fit to leave the house.” You don’t notice if I have my hair done or I’m wearing a new dress or I’ve gone to a bit of extra effort. You make me beg even for that grudging “You look fine!”’
‘I didn’t realise it was a big deal. I’m sorry. I’ll not say you look fine again.’
‘Pay me a compliment now. Go on. Say one nice thing about me.’
‘This is very good,’ breathed Christina.
‘Ummm.’ Simon thought hard. ‘I know. You make the best lasagne I’ve ever tasted.’
I stared at him in disbelief.
‘Lasagne? Really? LASAGNE? That’s the most noticeable, memorable, NICEST thing about me you could think of? Fucking LASAGNE?’
‘Well, you put me on the spot, and the other things I could think of I couldn’t say here.’
‘So lasagne. That’s what I’m reduced to. Twenty-five years together, and you’re only here for my lasagne?’ I howled.
‘Ellen, I’m going to have to ask you not to raise your voice,’ said Christina in her irritatingly calm way.
‘Oh sorry. Sorry. I wouldn’t want to make a scene or anything. But seriously, Christina, you tell me I’m angry, and are you surprised I’m angry when that is the sort of thing he says?’
‘Ellen, you know I’m not here to take sides. This isn’t about me – it’s about you and Simon. Simon, how do you feel about Ellen saying you don’t notice her anymore?’
‘I think that’s pretty hypocritical because she doesn’t notice me either,’ said Simon crossly. ‘She doesn’t know who I am, she doesn’t know what I want in life, she doesn’t know what interests or excites me –’
‘Tapas, apparently, rather than lasagne,’ I muttered.
‘Ellen, I’m going to have to ask you not to interrupt Simon again. Just let him speak,’ said Christina. Christina’s sessions are rather like being counselled by the bloody Supernanny. I really wouldn’t be at all surprised if she put me on the naughty step one day.
Simon carried on: ‘You want to keep the family together. You don’t want the children shuttled back and forth between different homes at the weekend, introduced to step-parents, used as pawns in their parents’ games, like you were. And I think most of the reason you’re still here is because of the kids, in an attempt to spare them that, rather than an active desire to be with me. You say I don’t see you. Well, you don’t see me either. I could be anyone. An anonymous father and husband figure in your life who you need to keep things together.’
‘That’s better than the housekeeper, cook and nanny you see me as,’ I objected.
‘Ellen, this is the last time I’m going to ask you to stop interrupting,’ said Christina. ‘If you do it again, I’ll be forced to give you a yellow card.’
I glared at her. She glared back. It was blatantly obvious the ‘yellow card’ was no more than an adult version of the naughty step. She never threatened Simon with yellow cards. She clearly liked him better than me, and it wasn’t fair. I half expected her to get down on my level, look me sternly in the eye and tell me I had to the count of three to start behaving myself.
‘I don’t even know if you love me anymore, Ellen,’ announced Simon with a dramatic sigh. ‘And that makes me question whether I still love you. I just don’t know.’
I opened my mouth to respond to this – fuck your yellow card, Christina – but she suddenly announced, ‘Oh dear, this has been very useful, but I’m afraid our time is up!’
So it’s OK for you to interrupt then, Christina!
I put my coat on in a daze, and we left Christina’s office. In the street, the cold air hit me in the face like a slap from a wet kipper and brought me back to my senses.
‘You don’t love me anymore?’ I snarled. ‘What has all this been for, if you don’t love me anymore? Why have you put me through this?’
‘Don’t make a scene, Ellen, not in the street!’ said Simon briskly. ‘Come on,’ he added, steering me into the bar next to Christina’s office, ‘let’s go for a drink.’
‘Is that really all you’re worried about? A scene in the street? Anyway, we need to get back for the kids,’ I objected.
‘They can hang on for another half-hour. We need to talk.’
‘We’ve just been talking. You’ve made everything very clear. What’s there left to talk about?’
‘OK, I need to talk to you.’
It was a very nice bar. It had cosy booths and ambient lighting, and under any other circumstances I’d have been thinking how totally Instagrammable it was. Simon got me a glass of wine and sat down beside me.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ he said. ‘You’re tearing yourself into pieces. I can’t do this anymore.’
‘You can’t do this? So even though the person who is supposed to always be there for me, who is supposed to never hurt me, even though this person has basically ripped my heart out and left me in pieces, I need to get over it, because you’ve had enough of me hurting? You’ve cheated on me, compared me to lasagne and then told me you don’t love me, and what? Am I supposed to be happy about that? Yippee! My husband and the father of my children doesn’t love me anymore! Hurrah, my life is fucking complete, at last!’
‘Please keep your voice down,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t love you.’
‘You did.’
‘No, I said I wasn’t sure. And that I wasn’t sure if you loved me. Of course I love you, I’m just not sure if I still love you like that. I mean, I don’t even know if you want to be married to me anymore,’ he said sadly.
‘Of course I do,’ I protested. ‘I wouldn’t be going through all this if I didn’t, would I? Don’t you want our marriage anymore?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I know I’m unhappy, and I have been for a long time, long before all this. I know I can’t say sorry any more than I have, but it doesn’t make any difference. I know I can’t keep trying to change the past, I can only change the future, but as things are, you won’t let me, because you can’t move on from the past. So, I think we need some time apart.’
‘What, like you going away for the weekend or something? Another jolly?’
‘No,