Chapter Two
Freya
When I first met Joe he was a ball of creative energy, excitement and ambition. He was filled with an effervescence that made me feel more alive than I ever thought possible. It was as if he was the half of me I didn’t even know was missing. I realise this is obviously how the beginning of most good relationships start, but I genuinely thought for so long that Joe and I were one of ‘those’ couples. We had both found ‘The One’ – our soulmate. While other friends broke up with partners, moved on, were single and happy to stay that way or stuck in seemingly doomed relationships with partners they clearly weren’t well matched with, we had struck relationship gold. Freya and Joe – as Rick Astley sang – together forever.
‘I guess I’ll move into the spare room today,’ said Joe after what felt like an hour of silence, when it was probably more like two minutes.
‘I’ll make up the bed for you when I get home.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I mean, changing the bed sheets has always fallen to me.’
‘Not fallen, you’re just better at it than me. You always get it so tight. I’m better with the bins.’
‘Bins?’
‘That’s right. You do the bed and I do the bins. It’s how it’s always been.’
‘Is this how we’re going to delegate housework going forward?’ I asked because I knew this was one of the practical things we needed to discuss. ‘Who has always done them?’
‘What do you mean? Wait, if we’re going to get into housework, I think I need another coffee. Fancy another?’
‘I’m good,’ I replied, and Joe stood up and walked off towards the front of the coffee shop again.
While he was there, ordering himself another coffee, I took the opportunity to have a good look at my husband. He was still very handsome, and whereas other men his age had started to let themselves go a little, he definitely hadn’t. He was still in decent shape, his dark hair was thinning with age but that wasn’t something that worried me, and he had the same kind, soft eyes that had always pulled me in. I had no problem admitting I still fancied him – although I hadn’t told Joe in a long time and probably wouldn’t confide in him again – and any problems in our sex life hadn’t stemmed from the physical, but were always to do with how I felt about him. We had lost that closeness, the emotional connection we’d always had, and it was that which was the fly in the relationship ointment. From a purely aesthetic perspective, Joe Wallace still had it as far as I was concerned, but it was hard to jump into bed with a man you’d just spent an hour arguing with about the cost of a writers’ retreat in Cornwall, or why after almost twenty years of marriage he still insisted on waiting for everyone to get into the car and ready to go out, before he decided it was time to hoover up the mess that had been on the kitchen floor all morning.
Joe soon returned with another coffee, and sat down.
‘Right. Where were we?’ he said.
‘Housework,’ I replied. ‘And who’s doing what.’
‘I mean, can’t we just keep everything the same? Why do we need to suddenly start designating housework just because we’re separated?’
‘For that very reason. Case study. You’re in charge of cleaning the bathroom.’
‘Which I have done for years without a fuss.’
‘Agreed, but what if you start slacking and I have to mention it or do it myself? Then it becomes a problem, and it’s just something else for us to potentially argue about. I’m trying to make everything as easy as possible, Joe, so we don’t have any reason to bicker or cause a scene in front of Dolly.’
I looked at Joe, and I knew he didn’t want to be having this conversation and would, in fact, rather be anywhere else in the world than at that table with me. He didn’t want to organise housework, discuss the finer points of our new reality, but I couldn’t let him off the hook because I had been doing that for far too long. Joe’s avoidance tactics and lack of desire to actually sit down and fix things was one of the reasons why we were in this position at all. He had flatly refused to see a marriage counsellor when I had asked, and his continued habit of placing his head firmly in the sand and refusing to acknowledge reality was one of the biggest stumbling blocks when we had both realised our marriage was in serious fucking trouble. Joe’s tactic of repeatedly saying ‘I’m sure it will be fine’ obviously hadn’t had the desired effect.
‘You’re suggesting some sort of housework schedule, I assume?’ he finally said.
‘Something like that, and we also need to discuss money.’
‘Do we have to?’
‘We can’t ignore it, Joe. Right now we have a joint bank account, joint credit cards, and our finances are so intertwined, we need to talk about what we’re going to do about it.’
I looked at Joe, and he sighed.
‘I mean, you’ve always been in charge of money, Freya.’
‘So you don’t care what we do?’ I said.
‘Honestly?’
‘Please.’
‘Just do what you have to do. Rearrange our finances however works best. I just, I don’t know, it’s all a bit much for me at the moment. I trust you, and I’ll do whatever you think is best to make this work.’
I looked at Joe and if there was one word I would have used to describe him it was resigned. He looked resigned to defeat, and it made me sad. I suppose a part of me had still held out hope that maybe he would have turned up today full of determination to fix us. Maybe he would have suggested counselling, and when faced with the reality that we were actually separating, he might have panicked and begged me to give him another chance. I worked for a solicitors’ in Hove, who specialised in family and divorce law, and I had seen my fair share of couples who, after some tough reality checks and some professional mediation, decided that, yes, their marriages were worth saving – especially when faced with the reality of a single life at almost fifty. The thing was, I needed Joe to care and want to put in the effort, and at that moment, neither seemed to be true.
‘Even if it means giving you a fixed weekly budget?’ I said, and I waited for his reaction.
‘Sorry, what do you mean, a fixed weekly budget?’
‘At the moment, all our money funnels into the joint account and we both spend whatever we want and we pay bills from that account too, but if we’re separated, I think it makes sense if we budget ourselves.’
‘And because you bring in more money, I assume you’re suggesting you get a bigger budget than me?’
‘I think that’s fair, don’t you?’ I said. Perhaps this was the thing that was going to elicit a response and make him care. However, after a moment, he just looked at me and smiled.
‘I suppose it does. How much pocket money will I get?’ I detected the sarcasm in his voice, and I knew he didn’t love the idea, but he would accept it because he wasn’t up for the fight, and also when it came to finances he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. We existed almost exclusively on my wage.
‘We can discuss the details later. Shall we move on?’
‘Suppose I’d better enjoy this coffee now, while I can still afford it,’ said Joe, before his face broke and he added, ‘I’m only joking.’ Although it was clear he definitely wasn’t.
We discussed the finer points of our separation, and what would happen after Joe had moved into the spare room. We would disclose any dates to the other person, and no dates would be brought back to the marital home, obviously. Although we both acknowledged that neither of us were expecting anything to happen on that front anytime soon. We would, as much as possible, try to keep eating together, mainly for Dolly’s sake, but as our lives separated further, alternative shopping and eating schedules would emerge. Flexibility would be needed, I stressed like a politician discussing difficult policy changes. The main thing, we both emphasised, was that no matter what happened over the next six months, Dolly always came first. She was the greatest thing we had created, and she was at a pivotal point in her education, and we weren’t going to fuck that up just because we didn’t want to be married any more.
Eventually, after almost two hours of talking, we stood outside the coffee shop, about to say goodbye. Opposite was a florist: Joe had bought me flowers there once on his way home from London after a successful meeting and had good news to share. It felt like a lifetime ago now, and was another reminder of the complete and utter failure of our marriage. We had agreed upon our ‘Manifesto of Separation’ without arguing or raising our voices – much – which felt like a bit of a triumph. But was it too easy? Shouldn’t Joe have argued his corner just that bit harder? Joe had never been one to fight and, over the course of our marriage, I could count the amount of times we had shouted at each other on one hand, but that part of us that I used to think was a positive was now suddenly a giant red flag.
‘I’ll see you later then?’ I said to Joe.
‘Okay. We can talk with Dolly.’
‘Should we order a takeaway? Stress that, despite our break-up, we can still do normal things together.’
‘Good idea. Perhaps an Indian?’
‘Sounds great.’
‘Right then.’
‘Off to see your mum?’
‘Said I’d pop in after. You?’
‘Just home to work.’
‘Right.’
Joe smiled, and then I turned around to leave.
‘Freya?’
‘Yes,’ I said, pivoting back towards him.
‘Are we giving up too soon?’ he said, and I noticed subtle notes of desperation in his voice like key changes in a song. Maybe he cared more than I thought.
I looked at him with a blank face, and then I smiled. I knew what he meant, but the truth was I didn’t know the answer. It wasn’t like we had decided on a whim. It had taken eighteen months of gradual decline to arrive at this point. We had fallen into this hole and despite some attempts to clamber out of it, we appeared stuck, resigned to our fate, and neither of us knew of another solution, and so I said the only thing I could think of.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.’
I looked at Joe, and he smiled a sad sort of smile. He was still so handsome, but it was hidden underneath a veil of all his disappointments.
‘Okay. I just…’
‘Just what, Joe?’
A pause. Was he going to say something to alter the course of our lives?
‘It’s nothing. See you later?’
‘Okay. Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
Then I turned around, and walked away through The Lanes towards Mum’s house, but as soon as Joe was out of sight, I turned down a quieter lane, and then I stopped. I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly together, and then I let the tears come. The tears I had been holding in all morning. There had been so many tears shed over the last eighteen months, and all of them had been because I wanted to save my marriage and the thought that it might be over scared the living shit out of me. But these tears felt different. They felt like the tears you shed not when you were afraid your marriage was over, but the tears that came when you knew it was.