No one was in the least bit surprised when I said I was moving away to start over again. No one tried to talk me out of it. No one, not even my parents, tried to dissuade me.
That hurt, I suppose. Then again, I imagine they were relieved to see me go at that stage. I might have been getting ready for a whole new life, but the truth was, the person they’d known and loved had gone a long time before.
A big part of her was buried in the ground in a plot at the City Cemetery.
They told me a new start would be good for me. That they thought it was ‘just what I needed’. That it would ‘do me good to get away from all the reminders’.
They didn’t know, of course, that when I went, I’d be saying goodbye to them forever. I always wondered if that would’ve bothered them.
Everything about this new start had to be fresh and clean and properly organised. I’d actually forgotten just how organised I could be.
I took to it all easily. All the planning – sorting out the logistics. New place to live. When to go. How to get there. How to appear to have gone but to still be here, just close enough. Where to stay when I was in that limbo of waiting for her to be born, but where no-one from my old life would find me.
The loneliness would get to me, I’d imagined.
So I’d had to be clever. I’d staved off my loneliness by allowing myself to watch them more. Always safely. Always from a distance. Always hidden from view. This quiet little mouse watched them lead their lives. I’d pretended that, in some way, I was part of it. Which I suppose I had been.
I sometimes wondered how he’d have reacted if I’d given him a choice. To come with me and raise his baby together, or stay with her knowing he’d never see his child again. Surely any decent man would choose his child over his wife. Blood over lust.
I told myself off for that. It would’ve been wrong. It would’ve been a sin.
The Sixth Commandment: Thou shall not commit adultery. Or would it? I wasn’t the one who was married, after all. But could I condone it? Would it make me more of a sinner as one who encouraged it?