CHAPTER TWO
DAN
The house is too loud.
It’s always loud now, but tonight it feels personal. The TV blares from the living room. Someone is shouting about a cushion. Ruby is crying upstairs, that sharp, furious cry that means she’s already decided I’m the wrong parent.
Emma stands at the sink, back to me, staring at a pile of dishes like they’ve personally betrayed her.
I hesitate.
This is the bit I always get wrong. Do I jump in? Do I wait? Do I say something helpful that somehow comes out sounding like criticism?
“Emma?” I try.
Nothing.
I rub my forehead. My head is pounding, work emails, missed deadlines, the constant low-level panic that I’m screwing everything up everywhere at once.
“She won’t go down,” I say, gesturing vaguely upstairs.
Still nothing.
“She wants you,” I add, because that’s usually true. Because it explains things. Because it makes it not my fault.
Emma turns then, eyes sharp, exhausted. She brushes past me without a word.
I know I’ve already lost.
I stand in the kitchen, suddenly unsure what to do with my hands. The dishes loom. The bins are out. I did that earlier. I remember thinking good, that’s one thing done, like I was ticking off a list only I could see.
From upstairs, Ruby’s crying stops almost instantly.
Of course it does.
I sink onto a chair and stare at my phone without really seeing it. Part of me is relieved. Emma is better at this. Always has been. Another part of me hates how quickly that relief turns into resentment.
I am helping. I work. I provide. I take the bins out. I do bath time when I’m home in time. I try.
Don’t I?
When Emma comes back down, she looks smaller somehow. Tired in a way sleep won’t fix.
“Unbelievable,” I say, before I can stop myself.
She looks at me like she might actually bite.
“That took you five minutes,” I add, because once I start, I can’t seem to stop.
“It’s not a competition,” she says.
But it feels like one. It always does. And I’m always losing.
We argue on the stairs. In the hallway. Words pile up too fast. Accusations, defences, things we’ve said before. I hear myself saying I work, like that’s a shield. Like it explains why I don’t know what size shoes Oscar wears now. Why I didn’t remember the milk.
The milk.
When she asks, I know the answer before she finishes the sentence.
I forgot.
The look on her face hurts more than if she’d shouted.
“I was busy,” I say. “It was a long day.”
She says hers was too.
I want to tell her I’m tired of feeling like a failure in my own house. That every time she lists everything she does, I hear everything I don’t. That I don’t know how to fix something I don’t fully understand.
Instead, I say I took the bins out.
As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know how it sounds.
She says I do visible things. Not the thinking.
That lands somewhere deep and uncomfortable.
“I just don’t get why you’re always so angry,” I say, because anger is easier to deal with than hurt.
Then she says it.
That she doesn’t feel like my wife. That she feels like my housekeeper. My PA. The person who makes my life run so I don’t have to think about it.
I open my mouth to argue. To explain. To say that’s not how I see her.
Then she adds, “I don’t want to be needed. I want to be chosen. To be wanted”
The words hit me in the chest.
Chosen.
Wanted.
I did choose her. Over and over. And I do want her. I just didn’t realise I’d stopped showing it.
We end up outside, the cold sobering. I drop into a chair and stare at the patio slabs, suddenly terrified.
“Is this it?” I ask. “Are we just… like this now?”
She says she doesn’t know.
That’s worse than a yes.
I tell her I don’t want this. It feels inadequate, but it’s true. I don’t want this version of us; the logistics, the silence, the way we talk through the kids instead of to each other.
She says she doesn’t want to coexist. That she misses me.
I miss her too. God, I miss her. The way she used to laugh at my stupid jokes. The way she used to look at me like I was her safe place, not another responsibility.
“I don’t know how to do this right,” I admit, because it’s the truest thing I’ve said all night.
For once, I don’t try to fix it. I don’t suggest solutions or lists or promises I don’t yet understand how to keep. I just sit there, terrified she’s already halfway gone.
Her hand is close. I reach for it, then stop. The pause feels enormous.
When I take it, her fingers curl around mine automatically. Like muscle memory.
Relief floods me, sharp and undeserved.
“We try,” I say. “Properly.”
She nods, crying quietly, and I realise with a sick twist that I didn’t notice how close she was to breaking until she already had.
Behind us, the house hums on. Mess. Noise. Life we built and somehow lost control of.
I squeeze her hand.
I love her. I just don’t know how to be the man she needs yet.
And the worst part is, I’m starting to realise that loving her isn’t enough.