Harry （Part 3）
A part of that decision was my sense of injustice at having been asked to leave, and part of it was a desire to put things right.
But on top of this, Bern had told me a cautionary tale about a friend of his who’d moved out of the family home and lost everything in the divorce that followed.
Possession, Bern said, was nine-tenths of the law.
Though I didn’t know if this was true, it worried me enough to make me act.
Back home the atmosphere was ghastly. Fiona had reverted to full-on adolescent sulking, and Harry seemed to have decided that the best way to deal with me was to avoid me.
He’d come home late from work, by which time I was dozing, and leave extra early in the morning before I was in any state to talk.
On weekends, if I had a day off, he’d vanish without explanation.
Harry started sleeping in Todd’s room, too – now free because Todd was at university. He made this change the first time I complained about his snoring, and we never discussed it again.
My job remained hellish and my shifts changed so often that – if I’m being honest – it wasn’t that difficult to avoid thinking about it all.
But occasionally there were moments when I found myself with enough mental space to reflect on our marital car crash and it was hard not to conclude we needed to talk.
On three separate occasions – because Fiona was sleeping elsewhere and I was off – I decided that I would sit Harry down and force a conversation but he came home way past midnight every time. It was as if being in the house with me alone terrified him.
In early February, my best nurse-mate Cathy announced she was resigning and going to work in a shop. I was flabbergasted. We’d worked together for over nine years.
‘It’s the job,’ she told me, over lunch. ‘It’s wrecking my mental health. I’ve been feeling on the edge of actual madness ever since Covid started. And it’s either the job or my family. It’s simply not possible to do both.’
‘God!’ I told her. ‘I’m stunned. I don’t even know what to say.’
‘Why the surprise?’ she asked. ‘You know what it’s like as well as I do.
It’s like being in an abusive relationship every single day.
It is being in an abusive relationship, with the doctors and the managers and the idiots running the country.
By the time I get home, I’m a bloody nightmare for Joe to deal with.
Christ knows how you manage to stay so calm.
I hope Harry realises what a gem he’s got. ’
I thought about her claim that working for the NHS was like being in an abusive relationship all the time after that. And the more I thought about it the truer it felt.
We hadn’t received a proper pay rise in decades and due to lack of staff our shift patterns chopped and changed constantly. Half the time I’d wake up and not even know where I was, let alone if I was supposed to be at work.
So yes, I began to notice that everything Cathy had said was true for me, too. You could have a family or work as a nurse, but you almost certainly couldn’t do both.
‘Harry,’ I said one morning. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m in a rush. Can it wait?’
‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Um, OK. Hang on.’ He continued to riffle through a pile of paperwork searching for whatever it was he was looking for.
‘Haz!’ I said sharply. ‘I’ve resigned!’
‘Oh yeah?’ he murmured, continuing his search for a split second until my declaration reached his brain. Only once the words registered did he pause and straighten, his expression slipping to a frown. ‘What?’
‘I quit my job,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t take the pressure anymore.’
I’d pictured this moment a few times and tried to guess his reaction. My best bet was that he’d be glad. After all he’d complained repeatedly that I was bringing too much stress home from work. Perhaps leaving the job would fix us, I thought. Perhaps that was all we needed.
Harry glanced at his phone and then, visibly deciding that it wasn’t so important after all, slipped it back into his jacket pocket. ‘Christ,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Everyone’s resigning right now. It’s almost a national trend.’
‘What do you mean, everyone’s resigning?’ I asked, feeling peeved that he’d turned my groundbreaking announcement into a mere symptom of a national trend.
‘Oh, sorry. Um, yeah, two work colleagues, last week. And the secretary the week before.’ Then, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘For money, you mean? Or with my time?’
‘Either,’ Harry said. ‘Both.’
‘Um, take a break, mainly,’ I told him.
‘And for money? Because you know how tight things are. What with the mortgage rate and the bills going up and everything. They’ve upped the gas bill to two hundred a month, by the way.’
‘I still have that money,’ I said. ‘I’ll just have to use some of that.’
‘Your inheritance?’
I nodded.
‘But…’
‘Yes?’
‘No, nothing,’ Harry said, swallowing and licking his lips.
‘No, really. Go on.’
‘Well, it’s just… I mean, it’s obviously your money for you to do whatever you want.’
‘Obviously.’
‘But you always said you wanted to do something – you know – special with it.’
This was true. Though I’d used almost half of it to bail us out of various tight spots in the years since my mother had died, I’d wanted to keep some back to use on something memorable. It seemed a bit disrespectful to fritter it away on bills.
‘Well, yes,’ I told Harry. ‘And maybe this is it. Maybe this is the special thing I’ve decided to do with it.’
I was chewing over the idea of adding, ‘Is using it to save our marriage really such a waste?’ but because I wasn’t sure if that was even my intention, I hesitated.
Harry spoke before I could decide anyway. ‘So you’re going to use it to just… I mean… I don’t mean to be, you know, critical or what-have-you. But I don’t really get it. You’re leaving your job without any idea what you want to do?’
‘Yes. That is kind of the idea of a break.’
‘OK, but you’re gonna do what? Just sit around at home doing nothing? Because I’m not sure how healthy that’s going to be.’
In an instant I went from wanting to save my marriage to wanting to stab him with one of our excellent Japanese knives. I opened my mouth but nothing came out, and after a few seconds with his eyebrows raised in expectation, Harry gave up waiting and glanced at the kitchen clock.
I could sense my anger was about to burst forth, and because an argument wasn’t at all what I’d intended, I managed to say, through gritted teeth, ‘Go to work. We can talk about this tonight.’
He didn’t need telling twice.
By the time Harry got home that evening – early, for once, so that we could talk – I’d at least worked out how to sound coherent about it.
‘I’m going to rent somewhere and go away,’ I told him.
‘I’m going to take a six-month sabbatical to de-stress.
I’ve been working like a dog for decades, and it’s the only thing I can think of that I can do to stop myself going completely mad.
And it’s not a waste of money at all. I’m saving my mental health. ’
‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so… this morning… I was surprised. And in a rush.’
‘I thought it might be something you’d want to do, too, and that we could talk about doing it together. But if not, I’ll do it on my own.’
‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘OK. Gosh.’
‘Do you think it might do us good?’ I asked. ‘Do you think we maybe need to see some new horizons? Together?’
‘Yeah,’ Harry said, looking shifty. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe,’ I repeated.
‘Look it’s just…’ he said. ‘To be honest, I think maybe what we need is more of a break.’
‘Well, that is what—’
‘From each other,’ he added.
‘Oh… But that’s all we’ve had, these last few years. Lots and lots of breaks from each other.’
‘Yeah,’ Harry said. ‘I know.’
That was the first time the thought crossed my mind. Almost instantly I found myself wondering how I could possibly have missed it. The late nights, the weekend disappearing acts. His lack of enthusiasm for anything to do with me. His shifty avoidance of eye contact, like right now.
‘You’ve met someone else,’ I said. ‘D’you want a divorce? Is that it?’
‘No, no, I haven’t,’ Harry said, still avoiding eye contact. ‘And I don’t know. About the… you know… divorce. Do you?’
‘I don’t know anymore either,’ I told him, and though I’d never named the idea in my head before, as I said it, it became true. I honestly didn’t know.
‘So maybe a proper break…’ Harry said. ‘That’s what I’m thinking. If you went off and did your thing for six months, then maybe by the end, we’d know where we’re at.’
‘Fine!’ I said. ‘I’ll do it alone.’
‘Do you re…’ Harry started, but then his voice petered out.
‘Yes?’
‘Actually, never mind. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.’
I didn’t believe him about that. I was sure that he knew exactly what he’d been about to say but had changed his mind. But I was annoyed enough not to want to know.
‘Have you decided where you’ll go?’ he asked instead.
‘Norway,’ I told him convincingly, the destination plucked out of nowhere – plucked from a silly meme I’d seen on the internet. But Norway seemed as good as anywhere. The important thing was to sound certain.
‘Norway?’ Harry said. ‘Wow!’
‘Yes, I’m going to rent a cabin on a lake and spend six months clearing my head of all this nonsense.’
‘Wow,’ Harry said again. ‘Norway! I wasn’t expecting that.’ And for the first time in many years, he looked as if he admired me.
In the end, I didn’t choose Norway at all. But by then I don’t think Harry was that interested in my destination. By then he just wanted me gone.