People should be more careful what they wish for.
There is a side of my wife which nobody else sees, because she is so good at hiding it. Just because Amelia works for an animal charity, it doesn’t make her a saint. It doesn’t mean she’s never done anything bad, quite the opposite. There are forests less shady than my wife. She might be able to fool everyone else, but I know who she really is and what she is capable of. That’s why I am emotionally bankrupt these days – any love I had left for her is spent.
I’m not pretending to be blameless in all this.
I never thought I was the kind of man who would cheat on his wife.
But I did. And somehow, she found out.
I suppose that makes me sound like the bad guy, but there’s also a bad girl in this story. Two wrongs sometimes make an ugly. And I wasn’t the only one who slept with someone they shouldn’t have. So did Saint Amelia.
Amelia
‘Adam?’
I stand on the landing, holding a candle, and calling his name. But he doesn’t answer.
Bob stares up at me, annoyed that I have disturbed his sleep, then he looks at the door with the DANGER KEEP OUT sign and sighs. Sometimes I think our dog is cleverer than we know. But then I remember all the times I have seen him running in circles chasing his own tail, and realise he’s just as bemused by life as the rest of us.
I’ve never been great at sticking to rules, so I ignore the sign and open the door. It reveals a narrow wooden staircase, leading to another door at the top. I take a few steps, then almost drop the candle when I walk into a spider’s web. I desperately try to brush it away from my face, but it still feels as though something is crawling across my skin in the dark.
‘Adam? Are you up there?’
‘Yes, the view is amazing. Bring the wine, and a couple of blankets,’ he says, and the rush of relief I feel surprises me.
Five minutes later, we are huddled together in the bell tower of the chapel, and he’s right, the view really is quite magical. There isn’t a lot of room, and I’m cold – even with the blanket wrapped around my shoulders – but the wine is helping, and when Adam sees me shiver, he puts his arms around me.
‘I can’t remember the last time I saw a full moon,’ he whispers.
‘Or so many stars,’ I reply. ‘The sky is so clear.’
‘No light pollution. Can you see that brightest star, just to the left of the moon?’ he asks, pointing up at the sky. I nod, and watch as he moves his finger as though writing the letter W. ‘These five stars form the constellation Cassiopeia.’ Adam is full of random knowledge, sometimes I think it’s the reason why there is no room left inside his head to think about us, or me.
‘Which one is Cassiopeia again?’
‘Cassiopeia was a queen in Greek mythology whose vanity and arrogance led to her downfall.’ My husband knows more than I do about a great many things. He’s well read and a bit of a peacock when it comes to general knowledge. But if there were an IQ test for emotional intelligence, I’d have a higher score every time. There is an edge to his tone as he talks about the stars, and I don’t think I am imagining it.
I was having a bit of a clear-out recently, sorting through some old things, and I found a pretty box of wedding keepsakes. It was like a marriage time capsule. One which I had carefully curated, then hidden away for my future self to find. There were some cards from friends and colleagues at Battersea, little Lego cake toppers of a bride and groom, and a lucky sixpence. Adam’s superstitions insisted I needed that on our big – rather small – day, and we agreed that his mother’s sapphire ring was both my something borrowed and something blue. At the bottom of the box, I found an envelope containing our handwritten vows. All those promise-shaped good intensions made me cry. It reminded me of the us we used to be, and who I thought we’d be forever. But promises lose their value when broken or chipped, like dusty, forgotten antiques. The sad truth about our present always punctuates my happy memories of our past with full stops.
I wonder if all marriages end the same way eventually. Maybe it is only ever a matter of time before life makes the love unravel. But then I think about those old married couples you see on the news every Valentine’s Day, the ones who have been together for sixty years and are still very much in love, grinning false-teeth smiles for the cameras like teenage sweethearts. I wonder what their secret is and why nobody ever shared it with us?
My own teeth start to chatter. ‘Maybe we should head back inside?’