31

If Beth Ann had any doubts about acting quickly to settle things with Tony they were silenced when the news trickled back to her that Tony was indeed living with another woman.

Not everyone who had brought her information had intended to be kind.

‘Beth Ann,’ Liz Briggs had said, ‘I am so sorry to hear how Tony had treated you. After all these years you had stood by him and now to be left for someone who is younger than your daughter. It must be so humiliating.’

The barely disguised joy of some about the breakup of her marriage had surprised her, but so had the generosity of others. Just two days after the split - how quickly the black grapevine works when it has some gossip - she received a call offering her a job teaching the literacy bridging course at the Aboriginal college.

‘You are just being kind,’ Beth Ann had said.

‘This is not sympathy. We need you. Our last teacher quit last week. Patricia Tyndale, who’s on our board, recommended you. Honestly, you’d be doing us a huge favour.’

And so she had accepted. Not long after, the university down the road offered her some tutoring on their bridging course. Starting next year in February.

She’d been touched that, though she was white, people had looked after her. She had never pushed to be accepted and now, when help was most appreciated, these acts of thoughtfulness made her feel like she had been included.

One week without Tony and she had two parttime jobs and set the wheels in motion for a property settlement. She calculated she could buy a small flat, invest the rest and work part-time. She had never been extravagant, was the kind of woman who did not dye her hair and liked bright, classic clothes, not necessarily expensive ones. She also decided that she would move to the other side of the harbour. She didn’t want to keep running into people in the street and find herself the object of their pity.

She’d never expected marriage to be all romance. She had been realistic about it all along, had expected to have to compromise and to concede. Marriage, she had thought, took two people with a firm resolve to make it work. Both she and Tony had lost that resolve now.

Even with Christmas looming she felt scarce regret that she would be spending it on her own - perhaps with Simone but not with Tony. She had already given herself the best present: her freedom.

It only remained to tell Simone. ‘Best if you do it,’ Tony had said when they spoke on the phone yesterday morning. ‘She’ll take it better coming from you.’

It was commonly understood that a divorce is hard on the children. Even adult children. Beth Ann wondered how much harder the news would be for Simone when she found out that her father was living with someone only slightly younger than she was.

Or would she be surprised? Since Tony had left and Beth Ann had been reminded of how swiftly gossip flew around the neighbourhood, she began to suspect that the rift she had seen between father and daughter could be explained by this new relationship. For Tony to have moved in, it must have been going on for some time and have been serious. If Tony couldn’t hide it from his wife, he probably hadn’t hid it from many people.

Carl Jung once said, ‘Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of their parents.’ Beth Ann had remembered it because she thought it explained a lot about her own childhood - the impact of watching her mother’s happiness smothered by an unhappy marriage. Surely she owed Simone the example of being a woman who makes certain that her life is fully lived.