Chapter 2 #2
She cleared her throat. ‘Er, good morning. Could I speak to Joel – Mr Trent – please?’
There was a slight hesitation, then, ‘Who’s calling please?’
Jenna swallowed again. ‘It’s… it’s his wife.’
Another pause then, quietly, ‘Joel, it’s Jenna.’
He was in the room with the secretary? Faintly it registered that the woman had called her by her first name, but Jenna was too stressed to give that fact the attention it deserved. She waited, nerves jangling, heart racing, guts twisting, for her husband to decide whether to speak to her or not.
Then, ‘Hello?’
His voice: curt, unemotional, unrepentant.
‘Joel?’ He sounded so distant that she felt she had to check this was really her husband and not some random stranger who’d taken the call by mistake.
‘What do you want, Jenna?’
‘What do I want? I want to know why you didn’t come home from the conference. I was worried about you! I sent you a message and you saw it but didn’t reply. I haven’t heard a thing from you all weekend and—’
‘All right, all right. No need to go on.’
Jenna dropped into the nearest chair, feeling suddenly breathless.
‘No need to go on? Joel, why didn’t you come home?’
There was a long silence.
‘Joel?’ She could feel panic rising. The twisting feeling moving from her stomach up to her chest then into her throat. Her pulse was racing. She wondered vaguely if she was going to pass out.
‘Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just needed some time away.’
‘Time away from what?’
‘From everything.’ There was another pause. ‘From you.’
‘Me?’ Jenna closed her eyes, the sense of dread all pervasive now. She could barely breathe. ‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’
She knew what he was saying but she had to hear it from him.
‘Look, Jenna, you know things haven’t been good between us for ages now. I need a time out.’
A time out. Like they were two kids, arguing over a toy. She thought of Hallie and Ada and tried again.
‘You have responsibilities. You can’t just—’
‘This is what I mean! Life’s all about responsibility with you. You’re no fun. We don’t have any fun any more, Jenna. We haven’t for years, let’s be honest. We never go anywhere or do anything together.’
‘Because you’re always away at some work event or other!’ she cried. ‘You’ve withdrawn from this family almost completely.’
‘Well, there you go,’ he said casually. ‘Like you said, we haven’t been a family in a long time.’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘I need space and time,’ he told her.
‘Well, I can’t give you a Tardis,’ she said bitterly.
‘You know what I mean. I’m going to stay with a friend for a while. I think it’s best. We both need to work out what we want and where we go from here.’
He was staying with a friend?
‘Louis?’ she asked suspiciously. Surely not. Louis and his wife were her friends, too.
‘No one you know. Someone from work. Look, I can’t talk now. I’m busy. I have things to do.’
‘But we have to discuss this!’
‘We don’t really have anything to say, do we? Like I said, I need space, so I’ve moved out and I’ll be in touch when I’m ready. Please don’t call me at work again. It’s very unprofessional to take personal calls during office hours.’
‘But you never answer your bloody phone! You didn’t even reply to my text message, and I know you saw it.’
‘Bye, Jenna.’
‘Joel, please, you can’t just—’
There was no point in continuing. Joel had hung up.
Jenna stared at the phone in her hand in disbelief. That was it? Just like that? He’d left her and he hadn’t even had the decency to tell her he was going, or help her to explain things to the twins, or…
Or tell her the truth.
‘It’s Jenna.’
The secretary’s words came back to her. Why would she say that? Why wouldn’t she say, ‘Joel, it’s your wife’? Or even, ‘Joel, it’s Mrs Trent’. ‘Jenna’ implied a personal relationship. A closeness. An intimacy even…
She ran a hand through her hair, her thoughts charging ahead like a runaway horse. Was she overthinking this? It was an informal office. The secretaries called their bosses by their first names. Maybe it was normal there to call their wives and husbands by their first names, too.
But there’d been something in the woman’s tone. Something Jenna’s subconscious had registered but she hadn’t paid attention to at the time. Something she didn’t want to think about too closely.
Her phone beeped an alarm, reminding her that break was almost over. She switched it off automatically.
Slowly she got to her feet and smoothed her skirt.
Okay, so this had happened. Joel had decided he ‘needed space’ and had moved in with ‘a friend’.
She knew there was no point in her calling him back now.
He wouldn’t take the call. There’d be some excuse from his secretary.
He was busy. He had a meeting. He couldn’t be disturbed.
No, Joel would only speak to her again when he was ready, and since she had no idea where he was staying, she couldn’t exactly go round to his place and demand a face-to-face confrontation with him.
And hell would freeze over before she’d go to his workplace. She might not have much dignity left but she had that much.
She would have to explain all this to the girls somehow. Not the full truth. Maybe tell them their dad was away at a conference again. They’d believe that. There was no point telling them that he ‘needed space’. They’d have no more idea what that meant than she did, and why worry them?
Joel had, after all, left her before. And within eight weeks he’d been back.
Adventure over. Ready to play house again.
This would be the same, surely? He couldn’t really mean that their marriage was over.
He just got restless sometimes. Hadn’t she always known that?
There was no way she was going to upset the twins unless she really, really had to.
‘Joel, it’s Jenna.’
The voice echoed through her brain as she made her way back to her own classroom, the secretary’s change of tone sounding alarm bells that she refused to listen to.
Joel wouldn’t do that to her again. He just wouldn’t. This was a break. A bit of space to help him get some perspective. He’d soon realise he missed his family.
He’d be back.
If she was going to get through the rest of the day, the rest of the week, she had to believe that. For the sake of her sanity and her daughters, she couldn’t accept any other reality.