The One Day You Were My Husband (102)

In the past eighteen months, the children have proved to me that they are tougher than I could have imagined. It hasn’t been plain sailing since we moved over here last month, but they’ve transitioned relatively well to their international school and both have made a tentative smattering of friends, even if I find Maeve’s choices alarming.

And with that curious adaptability that only children possess, they seem to have accepted the new normal of their life, with Daddy living in a different house—initially twenty minutes away, now several hours—with a baffling absence of anguish. I’m more grateful still that they seem not to hold either of us responsible for the breakup. The woman from Families Service says this is “epically fantastic” and that we are to keep up the hard work no matter what.

The “hard work” she’s referring to is our agreement to abstain from slinging mud at each other with our children. And it has been very hard, much of the time. Mum uncovered things about Robin that I wouldn’t have wanted to find out about a distant acquaintance, let alone my children’s father; my only survival strategy, at times, has been the oft-repeated mantra Robin is a decent person who was hired by bad people to do good things. But there have been times when I have deeply hated him, when the best I could do was just close my mouth and not say a word when the kids came back after a weekend at his place.

It has been worth it, though. They are surviving. Some might say thriving.

The only certainty that has emerged about Robin is that I cannot believe a word he says. Part of the reason I felt able to say yes to this job in Sweden is that he decided to take a freelance contract in Singapore for nine months for a philanthropic foundation. Mum has done a lot of digging and she assures me that the foundation isn’t linked to Valentin Meyer, but that it has used charitable donations to clear up dirty reputations in the past. In spite of everything, he still cannot be trusted not to follow the money.

The “inheritance money” Robin cashed in so that I could become a stay-at-home mother, for example. His parents had died, but he’d used his real inheritance to buy his flat in London many years before we met. The “inheritance money” he gifted me was in fact the money he’d built up through these side hustles for Valentin Meyer. My precious time looking after our children and healing myself was funded by a billionaire criminal who’d paid my husband to sanitize his reputation through charitable giving. That this man’s money partly paid for our house is one of many facts of my life that I have to work very hard at accepting.

I have learned, also, that Robin went out of his way to obstruct my mother from having a relationship with our children or even me, hiding or throwing away gifts she sent and whisking us all away to our favorite hotel in Cornwall on more than one occasion when Mum had proposed a visit. “Why should we give up our plans to see a woman who only bothers to make the journey once a year?” he used to say.

I think he feared Mum one day finding him out, if she got too close. Best to keep her at arm’s length by exploiting my already battle-weary relationship with her. Dad, who offered no obvious threat, was instead the target of Robin’s charm.

What I have to remind myself of, daily, is that Robin remains a good father to Raffy and Maeve. He video calls them every other day at teatime, he looks after them very well when they’re with him, and he pays me child maintenance on the first of the month without quibble. Before moving to Singapore, he came to their medical appointments, whether I asked him to or not, and he took them on a camping holiday this summer, which they described—without any care for my poor heart—as the BEST HOLIDAY EVER. He’s prebooked four trips to Sweden from Singapore to make sure he sees enough of them while he’s working abroad. Who am I to destroy their belief in their daddy?

It brings me no pleasure whatsoever that I hold silent power over the man, that he knows I could make things very bad for him, very quickly. I don’t want that kind of power over my children’s father. But when the resentment becomes too much to bear it can be quite enjoyable to send him a little reminder of who I am and what I know. A carefully placed Instagram like on a post about his wonderful charitable endeavors, a knowing wink under a picture of him and a bunch of rich people at the polo. They’re small weapons, really, but they’re better than nothing.

“Have fun at the disco, Mummy,” Raffy calls from somewhere in a slimy autumnal pond. “Don’t forget we want pancakes for breakfast!”



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I get into my little Swedish car and start driving. The city feels alive and vital as twilight thickens. Diners steam the softly lit windows of small restaurants; trees drop blazing leaves onto pavements full of Friday-evening drinkers. I drive slowly, enjoying the home I’ve chosen for the next eleven months. This city fills my heart with joy.

But the truth is: many areas of my life are filling my heart with joy these days. In spite of my divorce, my fear of what Robin could drag us into next, the fact that I won’t become a consultant surgeon until I’m about eighty, I feel competent once again. Purposeful and resourced. Even on bad days, I feel like I have something to build back up to, something to regain. I had been without this recourse for years without even knowing it. And for me this isn’t even about returning to work. I think I’d be feeling this sense of agency, of jurisdiction, even if I’d continued to be a stay-at-home mum.