It can be hard to step out from a parent’s shadow when you inherit their dreams. I often wrote stories as a child, but Henry’s shoes were always too big to fill. Plus, he let me know from an early age that he didn’t think I could write. I never thought I might be able to write an entire novel, but dreams can only come true if we dare to dream them in the first place. My self-confidence divorced me long before you did, but life taught me to be brave and to always try again. If you never give up on something you can’t ever fail.
Whenever I weighed my father’s words against my own, his seemed heavier, stronger, more permanent than the thoughts inside my head, which always seemed to come and go like the tide. Washing away my confidence. But castles made of sand never stand tall forever. I am free of his judgement now, and have realised the only person who forced me to live in his shadow was me. I could have stepped out any time I wanted if I hadn’t been so afraid of being seen.
Sometimes I sit in front of the loch when the sun is starting to set and pretend that you and Bob are here sitting next to me. I like to smoke Henry’s pipe in the evening, and watch the salmon jumping across the water, before the moon rises in the sky to replace the sun. Then I listen to the sound of frogs singing, and watch the bats swoop and soar in the sky, until it gets so cold and dark, I have to head back to the cottage. I don’t like to sleep in the chapel – too many unhappy memories haunt the rooms – but I have fallen in love with Blackwater Loch. This place never felt like home until I left it. I wish I could share it with you, along with all the secrets I was forced to keep. You promised to love me forever, but I wonder if you still think of me or miss me at all?
It’s hard to picture Amelia in our old house in London, sleeping in my bed with my husband, walking my dog, cooking in my kitchen, working in my office at Battersea in the job I helped her to get. I still can’t believe you gave her my engagement ring. Or that she’d want to wear something that was once your mother’s, and then mine. But stealing things that belong to other people seems to be a habit of hers. She’s the kind of woman who expects something for nothing, and thinks the world owes her a debt. She was always reading magazines on her lunch breaks – never books – and liked to enter all the competitions inside them, or on the radio, or on daytime TV, hoping to win something for free. That’s how I knew she’d never turn down a free weekend away. It was almost too easy to get you to come here.
I’m sure I’m not the first ex-wife to want revenge. I sometimes imagined killing you both try not to think about it. My personal variety of fury has always been surprisingly calm. I read and write instead. It’s a loneliness coping mechanism that I developed as a little girl, when my father was always too busy working to notice me. It sounds daft now, but I never realised before how alike the two of you are. I seem to have spent a lifetime hiding inside stories: reading other people’s when I was a child, and now writing my own.
There is one secret I want to share. I wrote a novel and now I am writing another. Dreams are like dresses in a shop window; they look pretty, but sometimes don’t fit when you try them on. Some are too small, others are too big. Luckily, my mother taught me how to sew, and dreams can be adjusted to fit, just like dresses.
I think my new book is a good one, and you’re in it.
Rock Paper Scissors is all about choices. I’ve made mine; the time will come when you’ll need to make yours. The only good thing about losing everything, is the freedom that comes from having nothing left to lose.
Your （ex） wife
Amelia
People tend to think that the second wife is a bitch and the first is a victim, but that isn’t always true.
I know how it looks. But ten years is a long time to be married, and theirs had run its course. I didn’t used to think it was possible to be too kind – kindness is meant to be a good thing – but Robin was the variety of kind that invited people to walk all over her: her colleagues, her husband, me. In her mind, she befriended me out of pity when I started volunteering at Battersea Dogs Home. But the truth is she needed a friend more than I did; I’ve never met a lonelier woman.
Of course I was grateful when she helped me to get a full-time job, and of course I felt guilty about sleeping with her husband. But it wasn’t some sordid affair. Their relationship was over long before I arrived on the scene, and Adam and I are married now; instead of all of us being miserable. And she was unhappy – constantly complaining about her husband, the big Hollywood screenwriter, while some of us were stuck dating life’s rejects. From the first time I met my husband, he was like an itch I couldn’t resist scratching. I stayed on the sidelines for a long time, watching, waiting, trying to do the right thing. I changed my hair, my clothes, even the way I speak, all for him. I tried to be who he needed me to be. Not for myself, but because I thought I could fix him, and I knew I could make him happier than he was with her. She didn’t know how lucky she was, and two out of three happy endings are better than none.