Chapter Four

 

I’m not sure what time I fell asleep, but I woke up with a damp pillow from bouts of crying during the night. I cried a little more, no longer sure what about exactly, just the empty hollow feeling inside. Wentworth gave me a concerned look and licked my hands. Eventually, I took a shower and then decided I needed to leave the house before this rollercoaster of emotion consumed me.

Wentworth was ecstatic at the idea and sat by the front door wagging his tail happily, as I put his lead on and grabbed my jacket. We got outside and I looked up at the grey sky and kept my chin up, determined to enjoy our walk. We meandered for a bit and then headed towards the town centre.

Ross and I met shortly after I came to Bath, for university. I’d been there a month when I saw Ross chatting to a mutual friend in a pub. I remember he was wearing a crisp white shirt, a grey suit, and looked pretty mature compared to the boys at uni. He was sitting there chatting to his friend, drinking beer out of a glass.

“So are you a student?” was his opening line, and I’d told him a bit about myself. He worked in sales and we swapped life stories before a bit of kissing. I gave him my phone number without him having to ask.

Our relationship developed reasonably quickly from there, and he was charming and romantic by nature. He bought me flowers and little gifts he thought I’d like. He’d give me a massage the night before an exam; he encouraged me to go for it with my photography; he took me out for nice dinners, and he made an effort with my friends.

We went out walking every day. I’d always been a big Jane Austen fan and would chatter on about streets and places mentioned in her books. On my birthday, Ross took me for afternoon tea at the Pump Room and told me I was adorable when I got excited.

And we fell in love. So after I graduated we moved in together. A year after that we got engaged. Another year later we got married. We bought a house, and we adopted Wentworth. We had a few years of doing the whole domestic bit, improving the house, nice holidays, eating out, building our careers. Things were good.

And then Ross ruined it all.

Maybe I could move away, start afresh somewhere completely new? I could go live with my mum for a bit.

My parents split up when I was just a toddler. To date, my mum had been married six times and was currently living in California with Ken, who she thought was the love of her life. I’d heard that before. We had regular Skype chats when she’d tell me how warm and lovely it was out there. It didn’t sound so bad a place to escape to.

I looked up at grey clouds above Bath as we walked and contemplated it for a moment, but then Wentworth stopped for a pee and I looked down at him.

“I couldn’t go to California and leave my Wenty, could I?” I said to him and patted his head. He wagged his tail and sniffed a twig before proudly picking it up and carrying it along as we continued our walk.

Then there was the option of staying with Dad and Lorraine in Milton Keynes, but I wasn’t sure I could put up with my four moody teenage half-siblings for very long. Last time we got together for my dad’s birthday, Ross couldn’t even tell them apart.

“They all look the same to me, with their hoodies, Converses and iPhones glued to their palms,” he’d said on our way home.

There was my sister Sadie who lived not far from Dad, but she’d never let me take Wentworth to live with her, even temporarily. She was very precious about her immaculate apartment and golden retriever hair was not conducive to being house-proud.

Anyway, I thought as I came into the centre of town, I didn’t want to leave Bath. I still loved the city. I loved the sand-coloured buildings and the wrought iron railings. I loved the little shops and cafes, and the river Avon. My friends were here and I needed to be around them right now.

Wentworth and I walked all over town, peering in shop windows, and then called at Shane’s cafe. I let Wentworth loose in the above flat Shane shared with his partner, Andrew, and he ran in to play with Annie while I went down to see Shane for a coffee and a chat. And, if I could wrangle it, a blueberry muffin.

I found a little round table by the window and waved over at Shane behind the counter. He smiled back and came over a few minutes later with a cappuccino.

“Thanks. I don’t want to talk about Ross,” I told him as he sat down opposite me.

“Okay, no problem.”

“You got any blueberry muffins going spare?”

“Sold out, sorry. Double chocolate chip cookie?”

“Yes please.”

He got up and returned with my treat. As he got out a plate behind the counter, I thought about what Ross had said about my being a ‘little bit in love’ with Shane. I felt myself blush. Of course I wasn’t. How ridiculous.

The cookie looked amazing.

“Thank you.”

“So, you okay?”

“Yes. This is delicious.”

“Good, thank you. My new hire is an amazing baker.”

“How’s the dragon?”

“Andrew said she’s awful as ever. I don’t know why he bothers.”

“It’s his mum.”

“Yeah, I guess so. You don’t go visiting your mum as often as he does though, and she’s actually a nice person.”

I shrugged.

“It costs a lot to visit my mum.”

As I told her over and over. If she wanted to run off to live in America then she needed to come visit me. Or, better still, send me the air fare so I could visit her.

We filled a half hour with chat about the cafe and how things were going, avoiding the Ross debate, while I sipped my coffee and nibbled on the cookie.

“So you haven’t spoken to Ross?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t you think you ought to?”

I shrugged, reminding myself of my sulky teen siblings.

“I’m going to walk a bit more. I’ll grab Wentworth.” I got out my purse.

“On the house this time,” he said, waving my hand away. I smiled and gave him a quick hug. It was always on the house but I always got my purse out anyway, never wishing to assume.

Wentworth greeted me as if we’d been separated for years, as always, and I gave him an affectionate rub on the head before we went back out and continued our walk. We dawdled aimlessly for a while, looking in shop windows, watching tourists, passing pubs, wondering which one Ross had met this girl in.

We walked up to the Travelodge and I peered up at the windows, trying to pick out the one Ross had betrayed me behind. Wentworth sat beside me, looking up too.

I tried to picture the girl again. What had she looked like? What did she think of him now? Did she know about me? Did she feel guilty? Would he see her again? I shuddered at the thought.

Next, we walked down to the Abbey, passing more tourists, then we crossed the bridge over the river and I sat on a bench for a while, while Wentworth lay down and dozed by my feet.

How had this happened? Had I been a bad wife? Maybe it was my over-enthusiasm for cheesy pop music. I was always putting corny tunes on and singing at the top of my voice. Maybe he couldn’t take one more Boyzone melody and had gone out to piss me off just as much as I’d annoyed him.

Or perhaps it was that I was just too much of a nag. I liked everything to have a place, and moaned at him when he left his crap lying around. I was always asking him to clean something or fix something. Had I become one of those boring, annoying wives? If I had, could I blame him for not loving me quite as much as he used to? Perhaps he only loved me 90% now; and that 10% slump was enough to allow him to drop his morals for a moment, and cheat.

Maybe I just wasn’t as attractive to him as when we first met. I mean, I wasn’t nineteen anymore, I was reaching my late twenties. I’d put on a few pounds. More than a few, if I’m honest. I didn’t always make the effort to wear sexy lingerie anymore, opting more often than not for my big comfy cotton granny knickers.

And, yes, I did spend a lot of time out with my friends. Shane and I often walked the dogs together and Hayley and I had regular girls’ nights, but usually he seemed pleased I was going out so he could play his Playstation games uninterrupted.

Maybe a combination of all those things had led to this. I was sure he wouldn’t have cheated when we were first married. Could it be that he’d fallen out of love with me a little bit? Just enough to think it was okay to betray me? Enough not to worry if I left him? Maybe it actually was my fault this had happened. Had I not been paying attention? Maybe I’d taken our marriage for granted.

And yet he also played his fair share of, in my opinion, bad music. He didn’t seduce me so much these days. He wasn’t quite as romantic as he had been in the beginning. And yet I’d never contemplated cheating on him. Never once even been tempted. I’d have been horrified at the thought. I’d never even spoken to a stranger in a bar long enough to get that far. Because I loved him. So I obviously loved him more than he loved me.

That thought made me feel desperately sad. He used to adore me. When we first got together, he fell for me before I realised I loved him back. He even made me feel smothered at times, showering me with affection and romance at every turn. But my love had grown and when we got married, I really felt we were equals when it came to the ‘being in love’ ratio. When had the balance shifted?

It started to rain, but still I sat. After a while, it eased off and I got my phone out. I had several missed calls from Ross. I decided it was time to call him back.