by Daniel Hurst
TIL DEATH DO US PART
DANIEL HURST
www.danielhurstbooks.com
Copyright © 2020 by Daniel Hurst
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Til Death Do Us Part
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About The Author
I take thee, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and obey, until death do us part...
Traditional Wedding Vow
1
MEGAN
The thought of getting out of bed to do nothing all day might appeal to some people, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve never considered myself to be a lazy person, yet that seems to be what I’ve become. How did this happen?
Three words.
I got married.
I don’t regret saying ‘I Do’ to my husband, Craig, but I do regret saying ‘I quit’ to the only boss I’ve ever had before. That’s because while I have a sparkling ring on my finger, a large home in the country and a loving husband who earns a fortune in the city, I don’t have much else.
No children. No friends. No job.
The no children situation is okay because both Craig and I agreed not to have kids before we married. He said he’d never wanted them, and I was happy to say the same, having always doubted I’d be able to pull off motherhood without going insane. My lack of friends is a shame but is unfortunately just what happens when you buy a house at the opposite end of the country from where you were born. But the job situation...
Now that is something that I would like to change.
Craig is the General Manager at the London Branch of a Swiss bank, so money is not an issue for us. His base salary is staggering enough before you factor in the end of year bonuses, which are frankly obscene, but are still gratefully accepted. But the financial security that my husband’s job has given us has meant that it was deemed unnecessary for me to work as soon as we were married. Being told at the age of twenty-nine that you could retire and put your feet up might sound like a dream come true to most people, and it certainly was to me when I heard Craig say it, but now I’m thirty-two, and I’m not so sure.
Yes, I have money, but it’s my husband’s money, not mine. I haven’t earned a penny of it, and while he is happy for me to spend a chunk of it each month on nice things for myself and the house, even that’s starting to grow old.
I want to make my own money.
I want to have a purpose and a profession.
Most of all, I want to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
The sound of Craig’s electric toothbrush in our en-suite bathroom is like a buzz saw to my fuddled brain right now. But I’m not tired. I’m the opposite. I sleep too much. Through until noon some days. But not today.
Today I am determined to get up and make the most of all my free time.
Craig will leave the house in about twenty minutes when he has put on one of his expensive suits and chomped down a Granola bar. He will close the front door behind him at 6:10 am before getting in his Porsche and driving to our nearest train station, which is fifteen minutes away, or ten if he opens up the engine on the quiet country roads. I’ve told him he’s not to speed, but boys will be boys. Besides, it’s not as if there is ever anybody else out on the road at this time.
We really are in the middle of nowhere.
With Craig out of the house all day, I will be alone again. But instead of browsing retail websites and filling my virtual shopping basket with things that I don’t need, I am going to do something productive today.
I am going to look for a job.
It’s hardly an earth-shattering thing to do, but I haven’t worked for three years, and the thought of putting my CV out there is enough to give me butterflies. But that’s not the only thing that I’m anxious about.
I’m not sure how Craig will take the news about me wanting to go back to work.
The toothbrush is turned off, the toilet is flushed, and finally, the bathroom door opens, and I get my first glimpse of my handsome husband today. He’s always been a morning person, and his smart appearance is evidence of that. The clock beside the bed is showing 06:06, but my man is up and ready to take on the world, which is more than can be said for me, as I lie beneath the duvet suffering from a bad case of what can only be called ‘bed-head.’
“Oh, you’re awake,” Craig says, obviously surprised to see my eyes open and watching him from across the spacious bedroom. “Sorry, I thought I was quiet.”
“That’s okay, I want to get an early start today,” I tell him, knowing full well he will be intrigued enough to ask why I need such a thing, unless he presumes that there is a sale about to start on one of my favourite retail websites.
“What for?” he asks, putting on his tie and growing more dashing by the minute.
“I was thinking about seeing if there are any good jobs available,” I say, nervous to see what the response will be. It’s not that he wouldn’t want me to work. It’s just that he might not understand why I would feel the need to.
“A job?” he replies, pausin
g as he pulls on his suit jacket. I’d expected him to be surprised. Maybe it’s a silly idea.
“I didn’t know you wanted to get back into work,” he says, now fully dressed and ready to leave. “I thought you were happy not having to go to an office every day.”
“I was. I mean, I am. It’s just...”
I pause, not wanting to get into it just before he’s about to walk out the door. I don’t want to make him late. Then he definitely will be speeding.
“It was just an idea,” I say, downplaying it a little. “We can talk about it tonight.”
Craig smiles and moves towards the bed, leaning over me and kissing me on my forehead. “Whatever you want, darling.”
Then he heads for the door, leaving my heart aching a little at the thought of not seeing him until he returns this evening.
“Have a good day!” I call after him as he leaves, his footsteps thudding down the staircase before I hear the rattling of his car keys from the hallway below.
“See you tonight, love,” he calls up, before opening the door.
For a second, I can hear the sounds of the birds singing in the trees outside, the fields around our home filled with the sounds of nature as another day dawns in our rural retreat.
Then the door slams and there is nothing but silence.
Home alone.
As per usual.
2
CRAIG
I can’t believe Megan is thinking about getting a job. I thought she was happy with our arrangement. I make the money, so she doesn’t have to. I’m the breadwinner, and she keeps the home fires burning. I go to work. She stays in the house.
That’s how it’s always been since we got married. It’s how I want it and I thought it was how she wanted it too. But I guess I was wrong. Something has changed, and now she is talking about getting a job.
We’ll see about that.
Opening the driver’s side door on the black Porsche parked outside the house, I hop inside my expensive vehicle and feel the familiar thrill of knowing that I will soon be powering it through the quiet country lanes towards the train station. As I fire up the engine and put the car into reverse, I don’t even need to glance at the time on the dashboard because I know exactly what it will be. 06:15. On the dot. I leave at the same time every day, and I arrive home at the same time every day. I like my life to have structure and routine and as few surprises as possible, which is why Megan’s admission this morning has me so riled up.
Pushing my foot down on the accelerator pedal, I guide the beast at my fingertips down the quiet road, past the farmer’s field opposite my house and in the direction of the small train station where I will catch the 06:32 service into Central London. But my mind isn’t on the twists and turns of the route ahead. It’s on Megan and her desire to find herself back in gainful employment again.
Most women would be happy if their husband earned a fortune that allowed them to not have to commute every day to a job they loathed. How many people can say they got to retire at the age of twenty-nine because they had somebody willing to take care of them and allow them to enjoy their life, instead of having to spend the best years of it toiling away behind a desk or standing over a photocopier?
I know all about hard work, having left university with a first-class degree and gone into the working world, beginning as a Teller on the cashier desk in a branch of a Swiss bank in Manchester. With my dedication to the role and my willingness to learn, it didn’t take me long to become the Head Teller, and after some time spent working abroad in Head Office, I was on the fast-track to the senior level. I was Head of Retail by my late-twenties and head-hunted by the London branch to become the UK General Manager before thirty.
Fast forward three years, and here I am, just thirty-two and already at the top of the food chain in my place of work. Not only that, but I am also the proud owner of a seven-figure home in the Berkshire countryside and a breath-taking black supercar that makes me purr almost as much as the engine does. I have loyal friendships, made in both my childhood and adult life, as well as many hobbies, including football, badminton and squash. And to top it all off, I am married to Megan, the beautiful brunette who caught my eye on a night out in Manchester.
The only thing an outside observer would think I was missing would be children, but that’s where they would be wrong. I don’t want kids, and I made sure my future wife didn’t want them too. Megan is an easy woman to persuade and regardless of whether she did want them or not, I was able to sway her to my viewpoint, and now she believes that children are as unnecessary for a happy life as I do. That means that there isn’t anything that I want right now. I have it all, and everything is how I planned it to be.
Until Megan told me she was going to look for a job.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate my wife’s desire to earn her keep and do something more productive with her days than blow a big chunk of my wages on shoes, handbags or another awful cushion for the sofa. It’s just that I like to apply the same structure and routine in my life to that of my darling wife and that means knowing exactly where she is and what she is doing at all times of the day. There’s a good reason why I made sure to buy a house in the middle of nowhere, a long way from anybody, never mind anybody that Megan might have known before meeting me. It’s because I want to keep her at home, not under lock and key, but far enough from anyone else to prevent them from threatening the perfect control I have over my spouse’s life.
Megan thinks I told her to retire because I love her and want her to enjoy her life. In truth, it was because she is easier to manage when she is stuck at home all day and utterly dependent on me. But the fact that she wants a job threatens not just the routine I have put in place for her but also the large degree of reliance she has on me.
Her own job would mean her own wage and her own disposable income. It would mean new people in her life and new social events in her diary. Most of all, it would mean she isn’t totally and utterly under my thumb.
Not that Megan realises that. She thinks I’m the perfect husband and that she still exercises her own free will in our relationship. How cute. She has no idea.
That is the way that I will keep it.
But the unexpected development this morning means I have some thinking to do as I speed on towards the train station, going much faster than I should be on these roads. Megan would hate it if she knew I was going this fast. Then again, she would hate a lot of things about me if she knew them.
But she doesn’t.
I intend to keep it that way.
3
MEGAN
I stare at my laptop screen, the mouse hovering over the little blue button marked ‘Apply.’ I’m not sure why I’m so nervous about clicking the button. It’s not as if I’m expecting anything to come of it if I do.
So what if I apply for this job as a part-time clerical worker at a housing redevelopment organisation? I doubt they’ll even read my CV, let alone get back to me with a response.
All the advice says to put yourself in the shoes of the person who is hiring and try to figure out why they would want to choose you over all the other applicants. But doing that only makes me feel depressed because there is no earthly reason why any manager would want to hire me. My CV hardly screams ‘Ideal Candidate’. Instead, it meekly advises whoever looks at it to turn to the next applicant quickly.
I’ve already spent all morning trying to make it better, but there’s only so many ways you can describe an admin assistant role from three years ago. There’s far too much white space on the page, but that’s because I’ve hardly worked in my life, and nothing to do with the advice about keeping your CV short.
The longer I spent working on it, the worse it made me feel. But I uploaded it to the website of what is apparently “the number one source for new jobs on the internet”, and now I’m preparing to take it for a spin.
One click and I will have applied for this job. Ten clicks and I will have applied for several. It’s never been e
asier to apply for a job, which in turn means that it’s never been harder to beat all the competition and actually get one.
Just before I click, I think about how Craig took the news this morning when I told him that I was looking for a job. He didn’t seem annoyed, but he didn’t seem thrilled either. I know it was first thing in the morning and he was rushing out the door, but he wasn’t exactly chatty about it.
I know what he is thinking. Why on earth would I want a job when I don’t need one? It’s a valid question, and if you would have asked me a few months ago, then I would have said I had no intention of ever working again. But call it boredom, or frustration, or just a need to see another person than my husband, but I feel like I have to get out of this house. I love my home, but I hate feeling useless, and that’s exactly how I feel right now.
It’s okay for Craig. He has places to go and people to meet. Hands to shake. Jokes to crack. People that depend on him being there. But I have none of that, and while I know that I’ll hardly be a vital cog in the wheel as a part-time clerical worker, at least there will be somebody other than my husband expecting to see me in the morning.
If I needed any more encouragement, then I imagine the next thirty years of my life, sitting alone in this house while I patiently wait for Craig to retire so we can go and see the world.
Thirty more years of doing nothing all day.
Thirty more years of staring at these four walls.
I don’t waste another second.
I click Apply.
4
CRAIG
Oh Megan, what are you doing?
Applying for a part-time job as a clerical worker at a housing redevelopment company? I thought you had a higher opinion of yourself than that.
I really did.
Then again, I know she won’t get the job. Besides the fact that she hasn’t worked in years, I can see that 642 other people have also applied for this role in the past twenty-four hours. That means her poor CV is a needle in a haystack and I’ll be surprised if anybody even looks at it, never mind considers it.
There’s no doubt that this is a tough time to be unemployed. If that many people are applying for a bad job, then how many people are applying for the good ones? But that’s not my concern. I’m employed, and I’m well paid, which means I don’t have to worry about all those poor people who aren’t.