Chapter Remy #13
‘What, Archie?’ She put the glass down hard and stared at him. ‘What are you going to say? That nothing happened? That it didn’t mean anything? That you’ll work hard for forgiveness? That you love me, love Evie, love our life, our home, our little family?’ she spat.
He sat straight up then and wiped his hand across his mouth. He shook his head slightly and in that moment she was glad he wasn’t going to patronise her with his bullshit.
‘No.’ He swallowed. ‘No. I wasn’t going to say any of that.’
‘Good!’ she fired. ‘Because that kind of cliché would do both of us a disservice.’
‘I was going to say’ – he took a deep, slow breath – ‘I was going to say that I want a divorce.’
Ashleigh knew he was speaking, knew what he had said, but it was as if his words were edged with an echo that made it hard to comprehend.
‘What?’ She needed the repetition to allow her a moment to think, to understand not only what he was saying, but also how best to respond.
There was a shift in their dynamic. Ashleigh had thought she was holding all the cards, having discovered his infidelity, was mentally figuring out how he could make amends, wondering if he could make amends, but with these words she understood that it was Archie who was in control.
He was upending their life; he wanted out.
‘I . . . I want a divorce,’ he repeated.
She stared at her legs, just to make sure they were still attached to her body, as she had the most curious sensation that they were not, that she was somehow detached from her lower limbs, cut, halved.
‘Mu-um!’ Evie called down the stairs, impatient, it seemed, to get story time underway.
‘Coming!’ she replied in the brightest voice she could find. ‘Are you in love with her, the . . . the German?’ Her distress came then, as she sobbed, and to her horror, as it confirmed the very worst thing, Archie cried too, matching her tear for tear.
‘No. I’m not in love with anyone,’ he managed.
‘Not even me?’ Her mouth curved and twisted, as sorrow shaped her lips, which tasted of sadness and regret.
‘Not even you,’ he admitted, his eyes bloodshot as he used the flapping sleeve of his shirt to wipe his face.
And there it was, the words she knew would linger in her thoughts long after the image of her husband and the German holding hands on the sofa in the den of their home, drinking red wine, clothes suitably disturbed, suggesting they had been shagging in her beautiful house, had ebbed away.
‘You don’t love me, anymore?’ Her words were the faintest whisper, wary as she was of putting them out into the world, and of hearing confirmation, making it real.
‘I don’t.’ He coughed, as if understanding that this honesty, this openness, was best in the long run.
‘When did you’ – she sniffed through her tears – ‘when did you stop loving me?’ She was curious, wanting to know, despite his every word landing like a sharp thing in her heart.
He doesn’t love me . . .
Archie doesn’t love me . . .
My husband doesn’t love me . . .
You are under my skin and inside my bones . . .
‘I’m not sure, but a while ago.’
‘How long, Archie? A month, three months, a year?’
It felt important, to know at what point he had emotionally pulled the plug on them and for how long he had been pretending. The thought was enough to make her quietly retch again, as she swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.
‘I guess, since not long after Evie was born.’
‘Hooooooh.’ Gripping the edge of the granite countertop, she let out a strange sound, as if the air had been squeezed from her lungs.
This was not what she had expected, wondering when in recent times he had fallen out of love with her, but Evie was now six years old, which meant he had been pretending for a very long time.
Going through the motions as they finished renovating the house, chose paint colours, while she built the business with Guy, and they picked a nursery and then a school, while they took holidays, did laundry, ate supper, drank coffee, saw friends, made love, all of it a lie.
All of it . . . She gave a small nod of understanding, having waited for this moment, this revelation, this dismantling of all she had held dear since .
. . since they had first met, when she feared she would be discovered, outed as a fraud, rejected as just not good enough.
Now she stared at her feet, because everything she had thought was solid, everything she had taken for granted, now needed to be questioned, even the ground beneath her. She fully expected a large hole to appear and swallow her life whole.
‘That’s – that’s a long time.’ She met his gaze.
‘I thought it might get better, thought I might fall in love with you again.’
‘I don’t think it works like that.’
‘No. I don’t think it does. I just didn’t want to upset you, didn’t want to . . .’ He ran out of words.
‘Didn’t want to upset me?’
The irony wasn’t lost on her, as tears sheeted her face.
Her next thought was to call Guy, to go to Guy’s flat, to nab his spare room and howl into his shoulder after tucking Evie up on the back seat and telling her it was an adventure, before she remembered that Guy was busy with his wife and the Bens, preoccupied in his baby bubble.
And of course there was no spare room, now that Ben baby had arrived and it was his nursery.
She pictured the file with the paperwork in it, knowing Guy too had kept secrets, wanted to make Ada a partner, all discussed and set in motion behind her back.
She wondered then if Guy and Archie chatted openly; were they aware that the other was lying to her, pretending?
‘Shit!’ She felt the cloak of loneliness and desolation wrap tightly about her shoulders.
‘I am sorry, Ash.’ Archie spoke as on unsteady legs she made her way across the large kitchen.
‘For what?’ she asked over her shoulder as she paused at the door, leaning on the frame for support.
‘All of it.’ He placed his splayed palm over his mouth and spoke through his fat fingers. ‘All of it.’
Walking up the stairs to go and read to Evie, it took all of her strength to put one foot in front of the other.
One thing was certain: Ashleigh knew she had never felt less golden in her whole life.
She pictured her family, crammed into her parents’ sitting room earlier, watching her dad open his gifts, teasing each other, the kids huddled together, arms and legs overlapping, and the air weighted with love.
It made her cry all over again, wishing she had stayed right there in that place that had once been her home, before she’d started at the school that had set her apart and made her chase a life that was not really hers.
How could it be? A life that was now being taken away from her, just as she had always expected.
And wishing she could go back to exam day and be stronger, speak louder, let Remy wear the crown, while she slunk off to Milton Road with Tony Newman, because then it might be her at home with Midge and her sister standing at the foot of this grand staircase, trying to figure out how to keep climbing.
Not that she’d wish this feeling on Remy; not that she’d wish it on anyone.
Remy
‘Hey, Mum.’ Remy called before climbing the stairs to bed. ‘Just wanted to thank you for a lovely day, and I’m sorry about the whole table mix-up thing. Obviously my fault, and I feel dreadful about it, but I think everyone had a lovely day.’
‘I don’t think Ashleigh minded. In fact, she seemed to like tucking into her chicken!’
‘And Dad, whose birthday it was, did he mind?’ She did her best to find the humour in it, how quickly her mum had zeroed in on Queen Ashleigh.
Not that it was her sister’s fault, and it had truly been so good to spend some time together, just the two of them.
The echo of their conversation about coming clean was still in her mind.
She hoped they’d put the subject to bed, unable to imagine the damage a revelation like that might cause and feeling shame at this truth.
‘Oh, you know your dad. Doesn’t mind much, doesn’t like a fuss.’
She pictured the look of delight on his face when the prospect of a KFC in the lounge had first been suggested and smiled.
‘Yep, anyway, bedtime for me, but thank you for a great day, Mum. It was nice.’
‘I told Ashleigh that next time she should bring Archie if he’s not working, and they can stay. We got rid of the bed to make space for storage, but I’ve got the blow-up mattress that we got for Auntie Joan’s back when she had to sleep on the floor at Jane and Angelo’s wedding, do you remember?’
Remy didn’t remember, could scarcely place Auntie Joan, one of her mother’s cousins who apparently had a dicky back, but was too tired to listen to what she suspected might be a convoluted explanation in which she had only the tiniest bit of interest.
‘Oh yes, yes I do.’ The lie was swift, tasted of guilt, and yet was preferable to having to hear Auntie Joan’s life story.
‘I told her we could put that on the floor of her old room, and she and Archie can sleep there, and Evie can go on the single in your room. It’d be cosy for one night.’
‘I think they’d love it.’
The excitement in her mother’s tone for an event that was no more than a vague idea was as sobering as it was sad.
A reminder of how little her mother needed and how she so loved her family.
It also reinforced Ashleigh’s words, how uncomfortable it made her to be the star attraction, and in part the reason she deliberately wanted to sabotage the view their parents had long held about their two daughters.
‘I think so too, and don’t worry about the pub. You have a lot on your plate, Remy, you work so hard.’
It was recognition that warmed her from the inside out, as any compliment from her mum always did; forgiveness, almost, for not taking the raffle ticket that had been handed to her, for not, in their eyes, grabbing it with both hands.
‘Thank you. Love you, Mum.’
‘And I love you, little dove.’
Remy checked the doors and windows were locked and climbed the stairs. Midge was already in bed, reading the sports results on Ceefax.
‘Three–nil, Remy! Three flippin’ nil!’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’ She had no idea of the team or even the sport, but by the look on her husband’s face it was not the result he desired.
‘Can you believe it!’
‘No. No, I really can’t.’ She feigned interest.
‘I sometimes think I’d be better off as their manager. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I do, love.’ She gathered her hair into its curly pineapple and popped it inside the silky scrunchy. ‘Like my mum, but shinier! Did you hear what Bert said?’ She laughed at the audacity of the boy she loved.
‘Did he have his glasses on?’ Midge looked away from his phone.
‘He doesn’t wear glasses!’ She hopped into bed and pulled the duvet over her shoulders; the heating went off at 8 p.m. and she was beginning to feel the chill.
‘Well, maybe he should start.’
‘Very funny.’ She snuggled against his warm body, putting her cold feet on his calves.
‘There is nothing dull about you, my love. You shine brighter than anyone.’
‘You say the nicest things to me.’ She felt the glow of love spreading over her, doing her best in that moment to dilute her fear over having to come clean about taking the exam for Ashleigh, or more specifically for keeping it a secret from him.
‘It’s true, plus, I’m kind of hoping to get lucky and thought that by saying that you might be more receptive.’
Propping her head on her wrist, she studied his handsome face.
‘You know it’s not flattery that puts me in the mood.’
‘Isn’t it?’ He looked a little surprised. ‘It’s just that I’ve read articles in those women’s magazines in the doctors’ surgery, and it seems that a box of chocolates and flattery is a time-old tradition, it’s how to woo a woman.’
‘Hmm, maybe in 1953. For me, it’s unstacking the dishwasher, folding laundry, helping the kids with their homework, things like that. It’s doing chores that I find most alluring.’
‘In that case, I should probably remind you that this week, unasked, I have babysat, cooked supper, cleaned out Morty’s cage, and provided a very reliable taxi service. And so if we’re keeping score—’
‘We’re not,’ she interjected. He ignored her.
‘Then I’m actually down on the deal.’ He sighed.
‘Can I just say’ – she spoke as he abandoned his phone and shifted to face her – ‘that you haven’t babysat.’
‘I have! Nearly every day!’
‘No, Midge, it’s not babysitting when they’re your children. It’s just parenthood. It’s what we do. Keeping an eye on the kids that live in our house, the kids we had, our kids, feeding them, keeping them from harm. It’s almost a prerequisite.’
‘But . . .’ She could see the crease of confusion at the top of his nose.
It made her laugh. He was right: he did a lot and was loved a lot, and without doubt his honesty was the one thing she loved about him most. This itself a small needle, reminding her of her own duplicity.
‘It’s okay. I love you. You’re going to get lucky anyway. ’
The landline rang, and they looked at each other, he, like her, wondering who would phone the house when it was dark, and they were off to bed.
‘I’ll go.’ Grabbing her dressing gown from the end of the bed, she hared down the stairs, trying to get to the phone before it woke the kids, if it hadn’t already.
The sound of crying came down the line and her stomach dropped, before she realised that Sophie was asleep upstairs, Bertie and Harper too. She’d only just spoken to her mum, and so that left . . .
‘Ash?’
‘Just . . . just give me a minute.’
‘Okay, my love, take your time.’ She sat on the bottom stair and let her sister sob, as she fought for breath.
‘I need you, dove. I need you right now.’
‘It’s okay, my love, don’t cry. Ash, take deep breaths, I’m right here.’