I’m so sorry to do this to you, and I’m so grateful for everything we’ve lived through together, but I’m forty-six, Joe, and if there’s a chance I can be truly happy, then I need to take it. I really hope you’ll try to understand.
With all my love, and all my sorrow, Amy.
PS. On a practical note, I’m about to check the car back in, so you’ll have to rent one locally. Of course, I’ll cover any costs incurred (just stick it on the AMEX). Sorry about that but I can’t think of any other practical solution.
PPS. Ant has declined to tell Heather any of this, which is another situation we’ve created that you’ll have to deal with alone. I would suggest that you encourage her to phone him so that he’s forced to tell her himself. He has promised to pick up if she does, too. But if you prefer to show her this email, then that’s fine by me as well. Whatever you think is best. He’s convinced that she’ll feel nothing but relief, by the way. She hates his guts, apparently. But if you do let her see this, he wants her to know she can remain in the house with the girls. He doesn’t want her worrying about anything material. Even if their marriage has fallen apart, he doesn’t want her to suffer unnecessarily.
By the time I’d finished, Joe was gone, and I somehow managed to recall the words I thought I’d missed: that he was going to bed and that he wanted me to leave his phone in the kitchen.
I was glad to be alone. It struck me as extremely sensitive of him to have left me to live this moment in solitude.
I put the phone down, but Amy’s email was still there filling the screen, lighting up the night, and I couldn’t bear to see it any more, so I picked up the phone again and switched it off.
And then I began to weep, silently, much as Joe had that afternoon. I wept because Ant thought I hated him, and out of sadness that, in a way, he was right. I wept with relief that my life would now change, and with fear that I had no idea how. I wept for my daughters, who would have to live through our separation, and out of relief that perhaps they’d get to know a slightly better version of their mother. I cried for Joe, who was losing the woman he loved, and out of jealousy that at least he’d known that kind of love. I cried for Ben, who was losing the stability of two parents who loved each other, and for Amy, who really couldn’t imagine what she was letting herself in for; for myself and all the wasted years, and then finally, and strangely most powerfully, I wept for my mother and my father.
I’ve no idea why they popped up at that moment, but there they were in front of me in all their misery of love and longing, and they were as present in their absence as they had ever been when alive.
The next morning, I woke up ridiculously early with an astonishing and unexpected sense of clarity. It was as if my brain had spent my sleeping hours processing everything and now it had jiggled everything around to make things clear.
I switched on the little bedside lamp and lay there revelling in the sensation even as I tried to identify and name it. Because this wasn’t happiness exactly. It was more a peculiar feeling of being centred within my own body, as if, for the last nine years, I’d been just outside it, like a blurred stereoscopic projection with one half looking in on the other.
But here we were – Ant and I were separating. I’d almost certainly go back to nursing. We would live apart. Nothing had ever felt so logical. Perhaps my mother had said, Go with the flow, after all.
I got up just after six and cleared last night’s mess from the garden table, and then quietly started to sort out the kitchen.
The children all woke up about seven thirty, so I set their breakfast outside in order that Joe could, for once, sleep in. By the time he surfaced, little Lola had returned with her yappy dog, and they were all splashing around in the jacuzzi.
‘Coffee?’ I asked, pointing the pot at him when he returned sleepy-headed from the bathroom.
‘Yeah,’ he said, more slouching than sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Coffee would be good.’
I poured two mugs and sat down opposite him.
‘You seem . . . I don’t know . . .’ he said, speaking through a yawn.
I looked at him enquiringly over the top of my mug.
‘Perky, I suppose, is the word,’ he continued.
I smiled vaguely at this. Joe’s directness never failed to surprise me.
‘It’s a bit weird, actually,’ I admitted. ‘I cried my heart out last night, but this morning I did wake up feeling quite perky. It wasn’t what I expected, but there it is.’
‘Make the most of it,’ Joe said. ‘It doesn’t last.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’
‘Though maybe yours will.’
‘No, I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure these are just phases.’
‘But you’re not devastated,’ Joe said. ‘That’s good.’
‘I was,’ I told him. ‘Last night I was totally devastated. This morning I’m not so sure.’
‘Is . . .’ Joe started, before interrupting himself. ‘Look, you don’t have to answer this, OK?’
I nodded, encouraging him to continue, but he sipped his coffee and instead said, ‘Nah, maybe I shouldn’t get into that.’
‘Please, Joe,’ I said. ‘It’s what I like about you the most – your honesty. Ask away.’
‘Well, is Ant right? About you hating him? I couldn’t help but wonder if that was true or if he was just telling Amy that to make himself feel better.’
I chewed my bottom
