I remember the moment Kevin got the courage to confront the truth. It’s the morning after I’ve come back from my trip to London safe in the knowledge that my Dad is out of hospital and getting the care he needs. I’m in a jet-lagged fog.
I’m in the small kitchen of our rented house. The kids are upstairs in their rooms. I had tried to hide in the kitchen when I heard Kevin come in, busying myself making toast. As soon as I saw his face, I knew he wouldn’t let me run anymore.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot while you were away. I know you’ve had a stressful time with your father,’ he says firmly, ‘but the reality is our marriage isn’t working, Zara. It hasn’t for years. No matter what’s going on in your life it’s always the same. We need to think about moving on. It’s obvious you don’t love me. We sleep in separate rooms, we don’t have sex – you avoid intimacy at all costs. I know you’ve been seeing other men, I’m not stupid. You’re making a fool out of me and I’ve had enough.’
Tears are welling up in my eyes, but he isn’t finished yet.
‘When I met you, I thought you would eventually get over your problems, but you haven’t. It just goes on and on. I can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of your family stuff, I’m tired of your adoption issues. Why don’t you want to be close to me? What’s wrong with you?’
I look at the face of the man I had fallen in love with all those years ago. He was still handsome, his dark hair now sprinkled with grey. Yet here I was, standing in the kitchen as my husband asked me for a divorce.
I had never been in a long-term relationship until I met Kevin. I didn’t have a very good track record, flitting between boyfriends, never fully committing. But when I met him, it felt so different. He was not like any of the men I had ever been with before and he wanted me; he wanted a family, we both loved children. Maybe I felt that if I didn’t take this opportunity it would never happen? I had felt when I met him in some ways cured of the old me. I thought by choosing him I was doing it differently; I thought that I had resolved so much, but it appears that I still have so much to do. All those years were me trying, imperfect though it may have been. No matter what he thought, I had loved him.
‘I don’t need saving anymore,’ I say quietly, ‘and you don’t know what to do with that. You’re suffocating me.’
‘You think being married is suffocating?’ he replies. ‘You think your husband caring about you is suffocating?’ Kevin runs his hand through his hair in exasperation. His face is hard and angry. ‘That’s what couples do – they live alongside each other, they care about each other. But to you it’s an intrusion, it’s someone getting in your space,’ he spits sarcastically, no longer willing to hide his bitterness. ‘I’ve tried and tried to understand you, but I don’t. I can’t do this anymore.’
We look at each other, both silent now. I take off my wedding ring and watch it spin around on the table, fast to begin with, then slowing down before coming to a stop. Kevin does the same, slamming his ring down on the table next to mine. Despite the tears falling heavily now, I feel like a weight has been lifted: we didn’t have to pretend anymore. I’d been hoping that magical thinking would get me to fall back in love with my husband, but it didn’t: it was over.
Neither of us can look at the other.
‘We need a lawyer,’ Kevin says quietly. ‘You can have sole custody of the kids, I’ll have them every other weekend. I understand that they need to be with you.’
I feel the panic rising in my chest, as it always did at the thought of someone leaving me. ‘Adopted people never leave,’ I had read it in a book years ago, ‘because we know what it feels like to be left. So we push as hard as we can, until people leave us.’
I had felt angry at the time, the way that the author implied we were all the same. But now I could see the author had been right: I had pushed him so far away that he was left with no choice but to leave.
‘I’ll make it easy on you,’ he sneers. ‘I won’t mention your behaviour.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ I want to say out loud. ‘It’s about me, not you, I promise.’ But how can I explain this internal battle? I remain quiet, a weight now lying on my chest. I had thought that somehow we would be different from everyone else, that in spite of everything we could figure it out. Instead we had failed – I had failed.
‘I will never abandon you,’ my husband had said, holding me tight. ‘We’re a family, this is what it means to be family.’ I had felt so safe. How wrong I was.
We call in the children later that afternoon and I hold the girls as we cry together. Our son stands, trying to make sense of his parents.
‘I’m leaving,’ their father says in a flat, cold voice.
* * *
On the first night without my husband I take a bath, pouring in carefully my daughters’ purple bubble bath. The liquid turns and rolls under the water, creating small bubbles. I step in and lean back against the cool surface of the bath, feeling the tension leave my body, my breath opening, stomach that was always so clenched releasing. My mind seems empty of all thought, frozen as though it has finally stilled. I stretch my legs, using my toes to adjust the hot water, until it almost burns. As I do so I feel years of built-up tension leaving my body.
‘Hello, lovey.’ It’s Cassie calling in a silly voice. ‘I got your text. You finally did it then?’
‘I didn’t do it, it was him,’ I reply.
‘Well, it’s what you wanted. How many more years could you keep living this way?’ she says half-jokingly. I can tell by her tone that she wants to make sure I’m okay.
‘I know,’ I whisper. ‘But what am I going to do now? I’m middle-aged.’
‘You are old, that’s true,’ she says. ‘And the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen. But you’re also what’s known as a cougar, you’re going to be fine.’ At this we both giggle. ‘You, my dear, are going to get on with life just as you always have.’
‘Yes, yes. Just one step at a time, I know,’ I agree, feeling a notch calmer.
‘And one other thing…’ Cassie says. ‘Next time don’t go for the nice personality, go for the man with the biggest dick.’
‘Can’t I have both?’ I laugh.
‘Don’t be greedy!’
* * *
I’m in the car with my kids. The girls are reading silently, and for a moment I feel proud. I wasn’t a bad parent under the circumstances.
‘Mummy, I always knew you would get divorced,’ my youngest, Anna, pipes up.
In a second my contentment is crushed. ‘You did? How?’
‘You just don’t seem like the marrying type,’ she continues. She sounds much older than her eleven years.
‘The marrying type?’ Katie says loudly from behind her book. ‘What do you mean? She’s been married for years.’
‘She just isn’t the type,’ Anna snaps back to her sister. ‘She doesn’t like being bossed around. She stands up to Dad and he never liked that. She likes to do her own thing, sing in bands, and travel here and there.’
She carries on talking as if I’m not there, barely pausing for breath. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Turning to me, she leans over to touch my arm and in the sweetest voice she says, ‘It’s okay, Mummy, I’m a strong independent woman too.’
As we arrive back home and step out of the car she pauses in front of me.
‘I miss Grandma,’ she says suddenly. ‘Even though she was a little crazy, I miss her. I don’t think she would have been happy about you and Daddy getting a divorce,’ she adds, honestly.
In fact I’d been wondering about that myself. I knew my mother would have been disappointed and blamed me as she often did when something went wrong in my life.
‘Mum,’ I had said a few years before, trying to defend myself as I told her about my troubles with Kevin. ‘Why do you always think it’s my fault?’
She handed me a cup of tea.
‘I know how you are, Zara. You keep too much inside – you just can’t do that in a relationship.’
‘What do you mean?’ I say, exasperated.
‘Men want to feel like kings. They need to be pampered… and other things.’ Her fair skin is reddening.
At this I start laughing. ‘You mean sex, Mum.’
‘Don’t be so crude, Zara. Let’s face it, I’ve never had any problems with your father.’
‘I really don’t want to hear about your sex life. You two never have problems because you’re a slave disguised as a wife. That’s not me. I never could do everything a man says.’
‘Well, no wonder you’re having problems.’
‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t pretend to be someone else just to make his life easier.’ I can hear the whining tone in my voice.
‘But that’s what a wife does, dear.’
‘That’s so depressing,’ I pout.
‘Not really,’ she says bluntly. ‘You just have to be practical. You have a roof over your head and a man with a good job, that’s more important than what you want.’
I stare at my mother, taken aback. She has never spoken to me in this way before.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, Zara, I think you do! You’ve always put your own feelings first. You should be happy with what you have.’
The image of my mother fades. My daughter Anna holds me tightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, stroking her hair.
‘Sorry about what, Mama?’
‘That I couldn’t make the marriage work.’
‘Well, it’s your fault I can’t sleep at night now that Dad has left.’
At least she’s being honest.
‘You’re right,’ I answer, ‘it is my fault.’
Shrugging her shoulders, she hugs me tighter and then wanders off to her room.
I’m steeped in guilt and shame. Kevin was right not to trust me. It was not that I wanted to break up our family, or anyone else’s, I’d been seduced again by the smiles of handsome men. But I didn’t want to leave Kevin for any of them, I just liked the attention, the chase, the lust. I had tried to justify my behaviour by saying I was lonely, that the gulf in our marriage was insurmountable. The truth was that the meaningless flirting left me feeling even lonelier.