26

Deny, deny, deny: that’s what Daniel had been doing for days, ever since Laura had found lipstick on a shirt he’d put in the laundry basket and smelled the perfume on it, and had wrapped the shirt round his neck and started twisting it, choking him. ‘One of your students who’s mesmerised with your eloquence and fictions, eh?’ she’d shouted. He’d burst away from her and had escaped to Aaron’s house, where he’d hidden, avoiding her and their children.

‘Sorry, bro, but you have to go home and face the music if you want to salvage your marriage,’ Aaron had said on Friday evening. ‘She rang this morning and ordered me to order you to do that.’ Aaron paused, and then added, ‘This time I think she really means it, mate.’ Daniel asked him if there was any liquor in the house. ‘This time, do it cold sober,’ Aaron advised.

But on his way home, he stopped at a bar and, within an hour, had anaesthetised himself against all pain and fears and dread, arming himself with a reckless courage which foolishly made him believe she’d never, ever, be able to do without him. Besides, she would never jeopardise their family, their beautiful children, their beautiful home. And in their past confrontations she had always turned back from the brink.

Only the standing lamp beside the large leather couch was on. Snared in that light she shone like burning steel, as she sat anchored to the middle of the couch, hands clasped in her lap, shoulders square, back straight, head erect; the perfect healthy posture she’d been trained, by her grandmother, to assume at all times. How beautiful and radiant she was in her splendid anger! And when her fiercely green-blue eyes, in which he’d lived for all their life together, focused on him and seared away his alcohol-induced courage and false expectations, the all-consuming love he’d first experienced in the early years of their marriage spread, like a baptismal fire, from his centre and filled all of him, and he scrambled towards her and knelt down on the carpet.

‘I love you, Laura!’ he pleaded. ‘I love you more than anyone else. I always have. It’s true; I can’t do without you and the kids.’ Now he was literally grovelling, his hands wrapped, like tentacles, around her ankles, refusing to let go when she tried to pull them away. ‘Please, Laura, I love you …’ There were tears gushing from his eyes.

‘No, you don’t,’ she said, with what he felt was irrefutable conviction, sending him into deeper despair. ‘How can you love me and love your latest woman? And don’t give me your bullshit about being able to love more than one person.’

‘But it’s true, darling …’

‘I’m afraid you’ve been living too long in your cynical world of realist fiction, in which there is no such creature as love, and if there is, you can spread it round to other lovers. And everything is physical desire and genital lust. Me, I’m just a simple-minded lawyer who has always loved you, or should I say, did love you – but who is now fed up with your lies and abuse and infidelities.’ She pulled away her legs and stood up. In the half-light, she loomed above him, glowing with a terrible finality. ‘I’m shifting with my son, who tells me he doesn’t ever want to see you again. I’m going to stay at Mere’s while you pack your things and leave.’ She stepped round him and headed for the door.

‘I’m sorry, Laura; really sorry!’ He was weeping profusely, and meaning it.

‘Please don’t make it difficult for me and the kids to have the house,’ she instructed. ‘We’ve paid fairly for it through our suffering your unbelievable egotism and betrayal.’ At the door, she paused, and then delivered the final blow. ‘I’ve drawn up the draft of a final settlement, which my lawyer, who is Mere, will discuss with your lawyer. I hope you won’t oppose what is in it, mate. I’m not the best family lawyer in Auckland for nothing.’ He could almost hear her laughing.‘By the way, Mere, Keith and Paul agree with what I’m doing. I didn’t consult Aaron, who I know has always supported you in this, because that’s the way he treats women too.’

He deserved it; he truly deserved her unforgiving and majestic anger and vengeance.

Next day he called his lawyer and instructed him to contact Mere, and agree to everything she wanted.