Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle stretched out on the bed while Annie packed.
“I’m sorry to leave you, Tiggs,” she said. “Let me get sorted, and I’ll come back for you. I think you’ll like your new home, there are plenty of places to explore. You’ll be a seaside cat instead of a town cat, how do you like that?”
Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle rolled onto her back and stretched before pulling herself back into a coil and going to sleep.
With the last box loaded into the car, Annie took one final look around the place. She heard the key turn in the lock and the front door close softly. Oh, shit! she thought. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, who had been padding along beside Annie on her farewell tour, retreated into the airing cupboard.
“Coward,” said Annie as Tiggs’s ginger tail disappeared between the louvered doors.
She heard Max’s footsteps walking from room to room downstairs and finally the creak of the tread on the stairs. He saw her and planted himself at the top of the stairs, one hand on the wall, the other gripping the newel post, casually blocking her exit.
“I couldn’t let you leave without saying something,” he said. “And now I don’t know what to say.”
“I think it’s all been said before,” she said.
“I guess I’d always hoped we’d find each other again,” said Max.
“Not in the places you’ve been looking,” said Annie.
Max looked at the carpet. “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I came to tell you again that I’m not giving up on us. We’ve been through too much. You hate me now, and I don’t blame you. I hate me too. But I’m going to make it right.”
“I don’t hate you, Max,” said Annie. “Hate requires much bigger feelings than I have for you. And you can’t make this right. It’s too broken. Let’s just move on with our lives and stop pretending we shouldn’t have called time ten years ago.”
“Did you say good-bye to Tiggs?” asked Max.
“Yes,” said Annie. “I’ll come back for her in a few weeks.”
“You can’t take her,” said Max.
“What do you mean I can’t take her? She’s my cat!”
“She’s my cat too,” said Max.
“You don’t even like her!”
“I do like her,” said Max. “She just doesn’t like me! Maybe we’ll bond over your desertion.”
“You deserted our marriage long before I did!” said Annie, her hackles rising. This was precisely why she hadn’t wanted to see Max.
“I don’t want to go tit-for-tat with you,” said Max quietly. “It’s painful enough without petty insults adding to the sting.”
It was remarkable how Max always managed to climb up to the moral high ground even when his ethics were in sinking sand. Annie concentrated on breathing and resisting the urge to push Max down the stairs.
“You don’t want to do tit-for-tat?” she asked incredulously. “I leave you because you cheat, so you freeze me out of my own bank accounts. I’d say you are well and truly in tit-for-tat territory!”
“I’m trying to undo it. I’ve been calling the bank to get it reversed. It’ll take a bit of time.”
“Let me pass,” said Annie in exasperation.
Max didn’t move. She could feel his eyes on her.
Her heart pounded. She didn’t look at him. It was a familiar fear. She’d always told herself that his behavior wasn’t abusive because he didn’t hit her. But deep down she knew that was wrong. Max’s psychological manipulation was insidious—he might not leave bruises, but that didn’t mean there weren’t scars. She had to make a stand.
“Let me pass, Max,” she said again. “This isn’t going to make it any easier. I’m not going to change my mind.”
Max dropped his hand and moved aside to let her pass.
“I’ll kill myself!” said Max as Annie started down the stairs.
She’d been expecting it, but it still winded her. Annie inhaled deeply and turned slowly on the stair to look up at him. She couldn’t be shackled by his threats any longer. It wasn’t fair. He’d been using those three little words on her like a cattle prod for as long as they’d been together, and each time he said them Annie would let herself be lassoed back into the pen, for fear of the consequences. She couldn’t let herself be held to ransom any longer. She’d paid enough.
With as much calm as she could muster, Annie looked him in the eye and said: “This is on you, Max. You alone are responsible for your own actions and the consequences of those actions. If you kill yourself, you will devastate our children and probably be the death of your mother. I’d be sad, but your blood won’t be on my hands.”