The Way I Loved You

Chapter One

JESS

I flinch as my husband’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

He ignores it and continues to stare straight ahead through the windscreen of the taxi.

It’s been doing that all evening, although, most times, he’s swiftly left the room to check it.

Occasionally, I heard his voice, low and rumbling, somewhere else in the house.

My arms are braced on the back seat, keeping me sitting ramrod straight.

Much to my surprise, after he puts his phone away, he also puts his hand on the seat between us, close but not touching.

I want to reach my little finger over and stroke his, but those few millimetres are a gulf that’s too hard to cross.

We argued before we left the house. It was stupid, actually. We’re sitting here, choking in this thick, awkward silence because of toilet paper. Yes, I’m not kidding. Toilet paper.

We have a house rule – if you take the last roll from the wicker container near the loo, you’re supposed to refill said container with more rolls from the big cupboard on the other side of the room.

Only, I always seem to find half a sheet left on the roll, so I reach for a replacement, only to find the basket empty. It drives me nuts.

And this evening, there I was, in my floor-length velvet dress and heels, only to have to waddle across the room with my knickers round my knees to get another roll.

Luke sauntered into the bathroom just as I was washing my hands and I couldn’t help it, even though tonight of all nights wasn’t the time for one of our spats.

I may have been snarky, said something passive-aggressive about the loo roll fairy obviously having a day off today.

He looked as if it was complete news to him that toilet rolls didn’t walk themselves across the bathroom and deposit themselves within easy reach, even though we’ve had this conversation a million times before.

And so that’s how we started arguing about toilet roll.

Except … we weren’t actually arguing about toilet roll at all, were we?

It was just a safe outlet for all the unspoken disappointments that have been piling up, like skeleton bones in our closet, but it’s getting harder and harder to shut the door and pretend they’re not there.

I don’t know how to describe it. Nothing that’s happening is a dealbreaker; it’s just not what I thought marriage would be after all this time. I thought Luke and I would have the fairy tale, even if others didn’t.

‘I’m sorry if I went off about the loo roll,’ I say, sneaking a glance at him. ‘I was just in a bit of a rush and … you know. Even if I was annoyed, I could have brought it up in a nicer way.’

‘Yes, you could,’ he replies, staring straight ahead.

I feel the air molecules between us vibrate with tension. So much for being the bigger person. ‘Listen, Luke, I’m trying to—’

‘I don’t care about the stupid loo roll, Jess, even if you were snippy at me for something so insignificant.’

I have to close my eyes and count to ten. Insignificant to him, maybe! I turn my head so I can see his face properly. ‘Then why have you been giving me the silent treatment ever since?’

He presses his lips together and the shake of his head is almost imperceptible. ‘I haven’t been giving you the silent treatment. I’ve spoken to you.’

I don’t count monosyllables and grunts as full and free communication. ‘Well, if you’re not upset about the toilet roll, what are you upset about?’

Luke blinks slowly. This is not a good sign. That one tiny gesture usually means he’s about to go into full shutdown mode, portcullis down, drawbridge up. I’m ready to scream. We’re going to be there in less than five minutes. We don’t have time for this.

‘Luke … ?’ I say, my tone both warning and pleading at the same time.

Eventually, he huffs out a breath and turns his head – not all the way to look at me, but more than he had been. ‘You didn’t seem overly impressed with the present I got you.’

My stomach hits the floor of the cab. ‘No … It was … It was very … thoughtful.’

My husband snorts softly. ‘You’re a horrible liar, Jess.’

I swallow, unable to deny my reaction to his gift. But I also can’t pretend it was anything close to what I would have chosen, given the chance.

‘You didn’t even take time to look at it properly,’ he says, and the angry tone is mixed with something else. Hurt. Disappointment. It makes me feel like a total bitch, even though I’m disappointed too. But I can’t tell him that, can I?

‘We were running late,’ I say, keeping my voice low and calm, trying to sound much more reasonable than I feel.

‘And I needed to finish getting ready.’ And I was already pissed off after the whole knickers-round-the-knees thing, which didn’t help.

I didn’t realize that a) he noticed I wasn’t thrilled or b) he’s been stewing on it all this time.

‘Fine,’ he says, turning to look out of the window as we pull into the driveway of the Bickley Court Hotel, a converted manor house that was probably once deep in the countryside but now sits next to a golf course on the outskirts of London. ‘Never mind.’

How could I have done anything else but pretended that I loved it? If I’d said how I felt out loud, he’d be even more upset than he is now. Besides, it wasn’t that what he got me was horrible. Someone else might have loved it.

And that’s my point, I suppose. I want to feel as if my husband knows me inside and out, that he loves me inside and out. And he can’t, can he? Not if he doesn’t even see what’s really there?

The cab slows as we near the grand pillared entrance to the hotel.

Just before it comes to a halt, I look down at our hands, then I brush my little finger softly over the top of his.

But he moves away, ostensibly to open the door, so he can come around the car and get mine for me, but I know rejection when I sense it.

I want to grab for the handle and get myself out, but I know it’ll only make things worse, so when he opens it for me, I take the hand he offers.

Our eyes meet briefly as I plant my feet on the gravel driveway and stand up.

Not exactly a truce, but an agreement that we’ll paper over the cracks because, right now, it’s showtime.

We walk up the wide sandstone steps and into the marble-tiled reception lobby and glue on our best smiles as we walk towards the function room.

Around the open double doors is a display of silver and white balloons, and over the entrance, spelled in large shiny letters, is: ‘Happy 10th Anniversary, Luke & Jess!’

A cheer goes up as we enter the hotel’s largest function room.

Shouts of ‘Happy Anniversary!’ and ‘Congratulations!’ are almost drowned out by the setting off of what seems like a thousand party poppers.

A slow-falling trail of colourful tissue paper lands on my head.

I brush it away, my smile wide and bright and artificial.

Luke’s mum rushes over. ‘Congratulations, darlings!’ She kisses Luke on the cheek and envelops me in a warm hug. ‘If you can get through the first ten years, you can get through the next twenty,’ she tells us brightly as Luke’s dad comes to stand beside her.

I nod and smile, of course. I can’t tell her the truth, partly because I don’t want to upset her – I love Diane to bits – but also because I’m not certain what the truth is.

Sure, Luke and I are standing here at our tenth anniversary party but, toilet paper fights and anniversary presents aside, do we really have a solid foundation for the next couple of decades?

Up until a few weeks ago, I would have said of course we had, but as our anniversary approached, I started looking at our life together more carefully.

We’ve both been so busy in our jobs – him at his family’s building firm, me as a physiotherapist – that I didn’t notice the distance between us.

I think we’ve been drifting apart so slowly it would have been impossible to spot in the moment.

But now we’re noticing. Which is possibly why we’re getting snippy at each other about stupid things we probably would have just laughed about when we were first married. I think we need to talk. Really talk.

My father and stepmother appear before us, along with my twin half-sisters.

More kisses and hugs. Someone thrusts a glass of Prosecco into my hand.

Luke and I kiss them warmly, especially Adelola, who is known by her friends and family simply as ‘Lola’.

I know it’s down to her that they’ve arrived on time.

My father can be notoriously unreliable about times and dates and places, even though he’s extremely detail-orientated in every other area of his life.

Dad met Lola a couple of years after his messy split from my mum.

A mid-life crisis, possibly? All I knew was that one moment I was a normal seven-year-old, living in a three-bed semi with my parents and two cats, and the next there was shouting and fighting and Dad disappearing in the middle of the night to go and live with someone who wasn’t my mum.

She was devastated to discover he’d been having an affair with someone from work.

It didn’t last. They broke up just over a year later. Dad went through what I call his ‘teenage phase’ and then he met Lola, who is all common sense and good manners, and he regained his sanity.

My dad’s a strange sort. I keep in touch, visiting only once a month, even though they live fairly close by, and calling roughly once a week, but I never seem to feel that sense of togetherness – of family – that we had when he was living at home and I was Daddy’s little girl.

It’s as if something broke and neither of us know how to repair it.

I’m not resentful of Lola or the girls, though.

I appreciate the woman who whipped some sense into my dad with her no-nonsense ways and soft laughter.

‘Can we have a glass of Prosecco?’ one of the twins asks, their eyes lighting up as a waiter goes past with a tray.