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TWENTY

Suzie

‘So this is where you escaped to, eh?’ Paul asks, as we walk through the doors to my flat.

The air inside is cool and dark and I walk straight in, depositing my bag and turning on as many lights as I can.

In my hand is Beth’s phone. Beth who panicked when I told her to leave me, so, with mine broken, she gave me her phone, her pin code and told me to ring any of the cousins if anything was to go wrong.

Like some female Batmen, they’d be there in double quick time to save me.

I storm around my flat, quietly simmering in anger to myself. Why is he here? Why did he feel the need to jump into that moment and just shit all over it. I had Charlie. We had a thing. And now we might not have a thing.

‘Tea?’ Paul asks.

‘I don’t have milk,’ I tell him.

‘I guess just a water then?’ he says.

‘Offering you a drink would suggest that you’re a guest in this house,’ I tell him, taking off my coat and hanging it on the back of a chair.

He takes a tentative seat on my sofa. ‘You have a new sofa?’ he says. ‘But you sent that van to come and get our one?’

‘It was out of principle. I paid for it. It was mine. I gave it to charity,’ I tell him.

He looks annoyed. ‘So, basically, you could have just left the sofa with me…’

I don’t quite know what to say, how to react. All I see are Charlie’s eyes when Paul claimed me as his wife, a blank look which told me the extent of his disappointment, his confusion. But not just him, his two siblings standing there, judging me, all that damage from just the one sentence.

Paul goes into his coat pocket and pulls out an envelope. ‘This arrived.’ I see the name of the solicitors on the envelope and know exactly what is in his hands. ‘No warning? Nothing. Just that arriving at my door.’

‘I am not sure what else you were expecting?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say? I am sorry. I am so incredibly sorry. It was a one-off thing. It meant nothing. I don’t know how else to say this to you.’

I sit there, trying to comprehend the words that are coming out of his mouth. It’s not like I’ve not heard them many times over the course of the last six months, but I can’t believe he has the temerity to say them now to my actual face. ‘What?’

‘It was just a fling that meant absolutely nothing. Some girl from the gym. What we have? We’re married . I think we can salvage this. I love you. You never left my heart. You are all of my heart.’

He gets down on his knees in front of me.

‘Please, Suzie.’

‘Your heart?’ I repeat.

‘All of it. Belongs to you…’ he says, looking me in the eye.

‘Paul…’ I whisper.

‘Yes…’

‘Stop it, get up…you’re embarrassing yourself,’ I mutter .

‘But I love you…’

I shake my head sadly. ‘No, you don’t…’

‘You’re telling me how I feel?’ he says, a finger to the air. I immediately want to snap it off.

‘I’m telling you that I know that everything you told me in the last forty seconds, and everything you’ve been trying to text and email me for the last six months, has been pure lies.

That woman who used to come to our flat?

I found out from our neighbour that she used to come to our house every Tuesday at two o’clock and had been doing so for the last three months.

That’s not a one-off thing, that’s a full-blown affair.

In our house, a house that we bought together, a bed that we chose together, that I slept in. ’

He stutters, trying to intervene.

‘And we were married. Were…’ I say in a sad and resigned way, exhaling slowly.

‘I loved you so very much and you broke all of it. You broke my heart. So you don’t deserve to have any of it, ever again.

’ I flare my nostrils trying to keep in my tears because I promised myself I wouldn’t cry over him, I wouldn’t waste the energy.

He gets up from the sofa, pacing up and down the room.

‘So that’s it? Just give up?’

‘Are you seriously telling me this is my fault?’ I ask him.

‘You literally threw some noodles at me, you packed a bag and then you left. I never saw you again. You sent that looney-tune cousin of yours to get your things. Next thing I hear, you’ve quit your job and you’ve moved to London. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain, nothing.’

‘My cousin’s name is Lucy.’ I feel a mangled fury at how he can be so casually rude about my family.

‘She threatened to shit in my drawers.’

I bite my lip to hide my delight. ‘Was that going to be your explanation then? That little spiel before about me never leaving your heart and all that Instagram meme philosophy? ’

‘We could have gone for counselling. We could have sat down and had an adult conversation. Instead, you ran away. From us, from all of it.’

I sit there quietly, my rage building to hear that I did any of this.

That any of this was my fault. Because I ran to escape the absolute shame of it all.

I did throw some noodles at him and then I went to a Premier Inn for a week.

I spent a lot of time just crying on their very comfortable beds, trying to work out my next steps, my heart bleeding over a buffet breakfast. And in the middle of this I continued to go to work.

Twenty-two faculty members of my old school went to my wedding.

They danced, they ate, they gave us gifts.

I didn’t want to admit to them that all of it was a complete sham. I couldn’t face it. So I quit. I ran.

‘You can’t just walk away from a two-year marriage. You haven’t even given us a chance. Is this something to do with that bloke by the school bus?’

I look at him, almost unable to fathom how he’s circling this back to me.

‘Charlie is a colleague – a Spanish teacher at the school. And so what if we’re starting something? I can date who I want. We are separated. We are not together.’ I’m also starting to realise he’s a million times more a man than Paul is.

‘We bought a house together. We’re still paying off the honeymoon. I can’t be divorced at twenty-eight.’

I exhale a deep tired breath. ‘Yes, you can.’

‘But I love…’

I put a finger to my mouth to tell him to shush.

‘Suzie…’

‘OH, PAUL! Please shut the fuck up!’ I snap.

He sits there in silence completely still, shocked that I would dare shout at him.

‘What did you think? That you would make the grand gesture of driving up the A23 and I would go, “Oh, look, it’s Paul. I’ll forget how he was fucking someone in our marital bed for months, forgive him and move back in and restart our marriage to save him the embarrassment of being a divorcée. ”’

‘But…’

‘But nothing! When you broke my trust, then I was entitled to deal with that however I wanted. We need to get divorced and split the house. I want nothing from you. I don’t need money, I don’t want a Christmas card.

I could do with never seeing you again and forgetting how marrying you was probably the most expensive and stupidest thing I’ve ever fucking done. ’

Maybe I shouldn’t have run off to London. Maybe I should have just done this. It’s hugely cathartic. I look down at his hand. He’s wearing his wedding ring and I can’t quite believe it.

He sees me looking. ‘Where’s yours?’

I hold up my bare hand. ‘I threw it in the sea. I can’t believe you showed up here, Paul. I really can’t.’

I look him up and down. It’s hard not to feel some level of emotion.

I’m not dead inside. I stood in front of this man and made vows and we made some beautiful memories together.

But now I genuinely wonder was it even love we shared?

For him to have gone astray, maybe it wasn’t.

Now I’ve experienced something with Charlie that feels more like what love should look like.

‘I had to try,’ he says.

‘To save a dead marriage?’

‘It was worth a shot. No matter what you think of me, I would have given this another go,’ he says, looking proud, as if this makes him the better person.

‘Don’t be a prick, Paul,’ I tell him.

‘What?’ he says, looking offended.

‘The end of our marriage was your fault. Repeat after me…’

He looks at me.

‘YOU HEARD THE GIRL…’ I turn to see Emma, Beth and Lucy have made their way into my flat using my spare key. Emma looks at me, mouthing to ask if I’m OK, whereas Lucy may as well have horns and a battering ram as she storms inside.

Paul rolls his eyes to see Lucy, which probably doesn’t help. ‘Oh look, it’s the cray-cray cousins.’

Naturally, this doesn’t affect the sisters who stand there unmoved, the best bodyguards a girl could ask for.

I think a reason that I possibly ran to them too is I knew how much Paul disliked them.

He didn’t like the solidarity, the noise, the power in numbers and family loyalty.

I can see now that he was threatened by all of that. That it made him feel small.

‘Why are you here, Paul?’ Lucy asks.

‘That’s between me and my wife,’ he says pompously.

‘I’m not your wife! Christ alive, Paul. Stop calling me your bloody wife!’ I shout. The cousins all try to stop themselves from laughing.

‘Legally…’

‘Well, legally you’re a man but I’ve never seen a more dickless wonder in my life,’ Lucy tells him.

‘On paper, we are married. Shoot me for wanting to try and save that,’ he tells the cousins.

‘Did he actually say I could shoot him?’ Lucy replies.

They both stare each other down. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Emma just let Lucy have free rein. I think she’s quite enjoying this.

‘And what happens if I refuse to sign these divorce papers?’ he says adamantly.

‘Then I know people who can chain you up in a room and put needles in your knob until you do?’ Lucy says.