by K. L. Slater
Shaun has barely been home in the evenings for the past two weeks. Looking back, I’m now realising that the way he walked around in a daze with a faint smile on his lips, should have made it obvious that he was in love.
At work, Joanne has taken to sending messages about the cases I’m working on through one of the other paralegals. I’ve barely seen anything of her apart from at the dance studio, where she appears briefly to pick up Piper, steering well clear of me.
I shift around, struggling to get comfy despite the soft cushions.
I can feel the old frustrations making a spectacular comeback, nipping at the edges of my thoughts.
‘Forgive me for insisting about the wine.’ He pushes a coaster across the coffee table and places a large glass of Rioja in front of me. I open my mouth to object, but he sits down on the adjacent sofa and speaks first. ‘It’s not a water night, Emma. I think we both need a glass of wine.’
There he goes again, thinking he knows what’s best for me.
Despite myself, I pick up the glass and take a big gulp of the ruby liquid, allowing it to sit a moment in my mouth so I can savour the intense flavours of blackberry, cherries and, I think, the faintest hint of dark chocolate.
Shaun got me into tasting wine rather than just swilling it down. It was an interest we shared, for a while, at least.
I close my eyes and track the warmth as it slides down from my throat to my stomach.
My hand moves towards the glass again and I intercept it, tuck it under my thigh. I need to keep my wits about me.
‘We talked this through at length. Our marriage… us, we’re not working. You agreed, I agreed. We can’t keep constantly going over it.’
He sighs and clasps his fingers between his splayed knees. He hangs his head and stares down at the tiled floor. He’s thirty-six in a month’s time, and I can see tiny glints of grey in the soft new growth of chestnut-brown hair at the nape of his neck.
‘I want to do my fair share, Em, and I want to spend time with Maisie too. But I’m sorry, I just can’t work around our current agreement.’
He’s not sorry at all. There’s a smugness playing around his mouth and eyes, and I stand up, suddenly furious.
‘Fifty-fifty care for Maisie and fifty-fifty on the household chores. That was the agreement.’
His eyes appraise me coolly, but he doesn’t speak.
‘I’m not willing to do more than half, so I don’t know how there’s any flexibility.’ I clench my fists to stop my fingers from trembling.
‘I’m happy to do my share, just not every night,’ he says, his manner infuriatingly laconic. ‘I could have Maisie say on a Sunday, maybe Saturday afternoon. You should be able to get your work done then.’
He stands up, struts over to the glass doors like a peacock with his chest all puffed out, staring at his own reflection. Where is the man without any self-esteem, without any real belief in his own abilities? Where is the man I married, who used to irritate me with his lack of drive and ambition? Dithering about whether he was good enough to run an evening photography course at the local college, or staring wistfully at the full-colour spreads of the freelance photographers who worked for the big national newspapers.
‘If they can do it, so can you,’ I told him numerous times. ‘You just have to believe in yourself.’
‘I’ve realised that my time is now, Emma,’ he says evenly. ‘And I intend on making it count, whatever it takes. You need to understand that.’
‘Well, whatever planet you’re currently residing on, I have a wake-up call for you. You have a daughter who deserves your time and attention.’
‘I’ve made a decision,’ he says quietly, as if I haven’t spoken. ‘It’s not something I’ve arrived at lightly, Emma. I want you to know that.’
I fold my arms. He has my full attention now, but he’s stopped speaking.
‘So… are you going to tell me what this momentous decision is or not?’
I’m not entirely sure what I expect him to say, but I think it may well involve me staying at home and looking after Maisie while he gads off on holiday with Joanne. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he announces he’s going on a work trip somewhere.
I swallow hard at the thought. If he does say something like that, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. He knows that I’ll always be here for Maisie and that I have Mum to help out too.
All the equal care we’ve been striving towards was never real, not really. I see now that it’s all too easy for him to take off and leave everything to me because there’s always been an unspoken deal between us, as there must be with hundreds of thousands of other parents.
When the chips are down, the mother is the one who is expected to step into the breach.
Despite his initial confidence, Shaun is fidgeting now. Biting his thumbnail and tapping the toe of his shoe on the kitchen floor. I’ve known him long enough to recognise all the signs of his discomfort.
I widen my eyes. ‘Well? I’m waiting.’ I stand up and walk over to the kitchen counter.
‘I… I’m moving out.’
His voice is calm and quiet. He stops biting his thumbnail. He presses his fidgety foot flat to the floor and stands very still.
I slide my hands out to the sides and grip the worktop behind me.
‘I just need some space. I think we both need some space, Em.’
‘You think we need some space?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we have our space, Shaun. Yes, we have a commitment to our arrangement, but after that, we have our own space to do whatever—’
‘I just can’t do it any more,’ he says shortly. ‘This stupid arrangement, I mean. I don’t know what we were thinking of, or why you even suggested it.’
I lean back against the counter, feel the cool, hard quartz cutting into the bottom of my back.
‘Well, I’ll remind you. We were thinking of Maisie. Of how we can minimise the effect on her of us splitting up. And it might have been my suggestion initially, but you agreed with it. You agreed with all of it.’
‘I know I did. But now… well, I’ve changed my mind.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘I’m allowed to change my mind, because it’s not working. It just isn’t.’
I laugh bitterly. ‘I wonder why that is? There’s a sense you’re moving on to bigger and better things, perhaps?’
‘I knew you’d be like this.’ He shakes his head. ‘I want us to stay friends, for Maisie’s sake. I’m trying to make this as easy as I can, Emma.’
‘Easy for you.’ I feel the edge of the worktop grazing against my grasping fingers. ‘Not so easy for me to effectively be a single mum to Maisie, keep this house running and my own career on track. While you flounce around like a lovesick sixteen-year-old.’
‘I’ll still pay my share of the bills,’ he says.
‘That’s really good of you,’ I remark. ‘I don’t need to remind you that in a court of law, you’d be expected to do just that. Where is it you’re moving to?’
But of course I already know.
He looks at me and I look back at him. The air is thick with an awful silence that actually hurts my ears.
The love that used to bind us together has gone.
It’s melted into thin air and left behind it a space big enough to accommodate just about every negative feeling you could name.
‘I’m moving in with Joanne. I’m there most of the time now anyway.’
‘Wow. How long has it been? Is it even three weeks yet? Sounds a considered, sensible decision.’
‘What we have is very rare. I hope you find it for yourself some day.’
The draining board is full of dirty breakfast crockery waiting to be loaded into the dishwasher. He hasn’t bothered to clear up before he starts to cook dinner.
It crosses my mind to take each piece and throw it as hard as I can at him.
‘That’s quite a turnaround in opinion after your determination to keep things stable for Maisie for th
e foreseeable,’ I say, just about managing to keep my cool. ‘You must be taking advice from someone who’s got strong views on our marriage and our daughter’s well-being.’
He looks down at his feet with a faint smile, as if I’m conforming to every bad thing he thinks of me.
‘I’m not here to argue, Em. Just to tell you about my decision. We’ve already done the hard bit, agreeing that our marriage is at an end. This is just a change of heart about our living arrangements, that’s all.’
‘A change of heart for you, maybe. For me, it changes everything. I’ll have a house and our daughter to look after. And tell me, are there plans for Maisie to play a part in your exciting new life?’
‘Of course.’ Two dark red spots are blooming nicely on his cheeks. ‘Joanne and I are going to take the girls out for the day and explain it all to them.’
‘Sounds like you’ve thought of everything, Shaun. You’ve certainly moved fast; made more decisions than you have in the whole of our marriage, in fact.’
My eyes bore into him and he looks away.
‘Right, well, I’ll pack a few things to tide me over until we can sort out the best time to—’
‘You can take everything now,’ I say.
‘What? I can’t do that.’
‘I’ll take Maisie out for the day after dance on Saturday morning. Get your stuff out then.’
‘Emma. Why are you being so unreasonable about this?’
‘Get what you need until Saturday and go,’ I say, struggling to keep the tears at bay. ‘I don’t want you here when Maisie comes back with my mum.’
He sighs, shakes his head and then turns and leaves the room.
I sink down against the kitchen cupboards and bury my head in my hands.
My life is a failure. Just like my dad always said it would be.
I hear shoes shuffling on the floor and something being pulled from the coat cupboard. The front door opens and closes with a soft click behind him.
It feels like there’s been a power shift between us. I used to be the sure one, the main instigator of going our separate ways, although Shaun didn’t put up too much of a fight.
Now he’s just walked out on me after saying his piece. I feel stung, although I’m not sure I know why.
I sit back down and stare into the ruby depths of my wine, noticing how the glimmer of the overhead lights reflects on its surface, but deeper down, the liquid remains unctuous and dull.
As if nothing could ever burn bright enough to illuminate its murky depths.
Chapter Nineteen
Val
Val watched as her granddaughter threaded pink, lilac and yellow beads onto the new bracelet she planned on wearing to her dance class on Tuesday night.
She jumped when Alexa’s voice rang out, reminding Maisie that her favourite television show was due to start in fifteen minutes.
Emma and Shaun had bought her the Amazon Echo contraption last Christmas and Maisie loved it, used it for lots of important tasks, such as remembering her homework and television schedule. She’d even brought it over with her to Val’s. The kids of today. Honestly!
‘Alexa’s my friend, Gran,’ Maisie had insisted when Val expressed reservations after reading an article about how the new electronic personal assistants listened to everything being said around them and reported back to the big corporations.
‘You don’t really need another one, darling.’ Val rolled her eyes. ‘One thing you’re not short on is friends.’
The child had so many that she categorised them into ‘school’, ‘dancing’ and ‘celebrity’ friends, and used Alexa for keeping track of all their birthdays.
The slightly worrying thing for Val was that Maisie seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time following all her favourite celebrities online.
‘Seeing their real-life photographs really makes you feel like you know them,’ she told her grandmother one day when Val queried the amount of time Maisie spent online.
Maisie’s favourite, Ariana Grande, would put all sorts of pictures on there. Family snaps, photos of her as a child, recording in the studio, on holiday… Maisie felt as if she knew everything about her.
Val thought about her own crushes as a ten-year-old girl in the late sixties: you might get a fleeting glimpse on television or in a magazine, and very occasionally the chance to attend a concert, but that was it. Buying their records was the only way to feel like you were closer to them.
Her concern was that this social media thing was all false. From what she could see, mainly over Maisie’s shoulder, it consisted of people cutting and pasting all the best bits from their lives and leaving out the ordinary stuff.
Maisie purred like a cat when she perused Katy Perry’s fairy-tale existence and Val would smile tightly, not wanting to lecture her granddaughter and spoil her fun, but feeling concerned that Maisie bought into this skewed version of reality so readily.
Everyone knew it was vital that young people needed to learn that life was all about the highs and the lows, the triumphs and the failures – and understand that you could survive through all of it.
Nobody’s life resembled a fairy tale, no matter how much money they had in the bank, yet Maisie and millions of other young girls were growing up thinking it could be achieved at the drop of a hat.
When it was Ariana’s birthday last year, Maisie told Val that she had posted a message on the pop star’s page and Ariana had LIKED IT!
Maisie’s face was a picture; she was so validated by it.
‘When I told everyone at ballet class, they all cheered and even Miss Diane looked impressed,’ she said happily, her face shining.
‘That’s nice,’ Val said, hoping to acknowledge Maisie’s enthusiasm without overly encouraging it.
‘You should have seen Piper Dent’s face, Gran.’ Maisie grinned. ‘It crumpled up like someone had shoved dog poo under her nose.’
Maisie knew her gran didn’t like to hear her being unkind about people, and Val suspected that was why she hadn’t said much more about it. But Maisie’s mood was upbeat and bouncy, as if a sweet warmth had spread in her chest and stayed there all day.
Maisie loved dancing, TV programmes and listening to music, and she even liked school, most of the time. She enjoyed reading and writing stories, but she wasn’t keen on maths.
The one thing she would really adore, but hadn’t got, was a dog. Val was pleased that Emma had said it wouldn’t be fair on the animal because there was nobody home all day, which Maisie had grudgingly agreed with.
Val noticed her granddaughter sigh as she began to pack the beads away so she could command the big flat-screen television.
‘What’s wrong, love?’ she said softly. ‘Is everything OK… at home, I mean?’
‘You mean the weird stuff happening between Mum and Dad?’ Maisie said, her bluntness startling Val for a moment. ‘They think I’m a little kid, like I’m still five years old.’
‘I’m sure they don’t,’ Val said gently.
It was difficult as a grandparent, being in the middle of it all. Val often wished she’d made a better job of mothering Emma all those years ago, but… well, you did the best you could at the time, didn’t you? Life had been far from easy back then.
Privately, Val knew that Emma and Shaun were having problems. But even if Emma hadn’t said as much, Val wasn’t stupid. She’d seen the secret looks that flashed between them like sparks. It was clear to anyone that trouble brewed under the surface. ‘What do you mean by weird stuff?’
‘I dunno.’ Maisie shrugged. ‘Dad is sleeping in the spare room, but when I asked about it, Mum’s eyes blinked really fast, like she was trying to think of something to say.’
‘I think the central heating makes your dad snore,’ Val said, repeating what Emma had told her to say. But Maisie would not be dissuaded from her theory.
‘Andrew Carpenter in my class, his mum and dad split up in the new year. He cried in front of everyone but wouldn’t go to the office, and Miss
Lambert had to stop the lesson until someone came to fetch him.’
‘That’s sad,’ Val said.
Maisie nodded. ‘Before he went home, he told the whole class he knew something bad was going to happen because his parents had started sleeping in separate rooms.’
Maisie’s parents thought they were being clever hiding stuff from her, but behind their smiles and the extra time she now got to spend on her own with her dad, the child knew something had changed.
Val had tried to speak to Emma about it, suggested they sit Maisie down and tell her the truth. But Emma waved her away.
‘She doesn’t need to know, Mum,’ she said. ‘She’s too young to realise what’s happening.’
But Val knew she was wrong about that.
Maisie was very aware of all of it.
Chapter Twenty
Emma
I sit there for a long time, in the kitchen where we used to gather and talk about our day, until I’m rattled out of my uneasy trance by a key in the front door.
‘Only us,’ Mum’s voice sings out as I hear Maisie barrel down the hallway. The kitchen door flies open and bangs against the wall.
‘Hi, Mum, where’s Dad?’
‘He’s had to pop out,’ I say, standing up. ‘Did you have a good time at Gran’s?’
‘Of course she did. We always have a great time, don’t we, poppet?’ Mum appears in the doorway, weighed down by Maisie’s school coat and bag.
‘Mum, you shouldn’t cart that stuff around for her; she’s perfectly capable of carrying her school things inside.’
Mum had an operation for a slipped disc last year and it still gives her problems at times.
I rush forward to relieve her of the burden as Maisie flops down on the sofa and turns on the television.
‘Homework first, missy,’ I say. ‘Television off until then.’
‘I did my homework at Gran’s,’ Maisie says, grinning and twisting her head back on the sofa to look pleadingly at Mum.
‘Good try.’ I take the remote control and turn the TV off again.