Page 10 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER NINE

Anna thought that when you kicked a husband out of the house, it was his job to stay out.

That would be the polite thing to do when your wife has made it clear she doesn’t want you around, along with spending some time to contemplate your life and your decisions and working out if you’ve perhaps made some wrong ones.

Like having an affair. Not that Anna has any proof of that, and after she blurted out her suspicion to Ingrid the other day, her mother cautioned her about getting too attached to the idea of something so serious before finding out if it’s true.

‘Those stories we tell ourselves can be very dangerous,’ Ingrid said darkly and Anna wondered how she’d come to that conclusion, considering her mother has always seemed to live very much in stark reality, what with her husband being incapacitated for so many years.

However, Anna didn’t ask for more detail and Ingrid didn’t offer it.

Some things hover between mothers and daughters, undefined and unaddressed, and they can stay that way forever.

Anna has some of those with Ingrid, and Renee will probably have a few with her, and that’s just fine.

They don’t need to know everything about each other.

Although Ingrid did ask Anna if she wanted to ‘see someone’.

After saying it was a bit early to find a new man, Anna was informed that ‘seeing someone’ meant ‘going to a psychiatrist’.

She declined. Throwing Gary out wasn’t anything that needed medical attention.

It was the only rational thing to do in the circumstances.

Not that Gary thinks so, which is why he’s sitting across from Anna holding a hot cuppa, drumming his fingertips on the kitchen table, not looking at her, biting his bottom lip.

‘How long is this going to go on?’ he’s asking her, still drumming.

‘What?’

‘You not letting me live at home.’ He looks up and she’s surprised to see dismay in his eyes.

‘This wasn’t your home, Gary,’ she says, trying not to sound snarky. ‘It was your dormitory.’

His nostrils flare and he grips the cup tightly. ‘That’s unfair,’ he says.

The kids are playing outside and she can hear Renee giggling. They haven’t really noticed that their father isn’t living there any more, and Anna is quite aware that it’s because of the very reason she asked him to move out.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Tell me why.’

He stares at her and she stares back as his mouth opens then closes then opens again.

‘I know I wasn’t here much,’ he concedes. ‘But it was only for a little while.’

‘Two years,’ she says, because she was keeping track.

Of course, now she realises she was likely keeping track of how long his affair has been going on.

Not that she’s going to say that to him because he’ll just deny it.

And she has no proof. It’s hard – nay, impossible – to think of anything else that would keep him away from her, from the kids, night after night after night. No one likes their job that much.

‘It wasn’t!’ he says quickly, then frowns. ‘Was it?’

‘From when you took on Brendan,’ she says.

‘You told me having a partner would mean less work, not more. But it didn’t.

’ She sighs, more from irritation than anything.

Why is he putting her through this conversation?

They’re done. Not officially. Not legally.

In her heart, though – that’s where he really doesn’t live any more. Because he can’t. She won’t let him.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know. But he has a young family and –’

‘So do you!’

Gary looks so confused right then – as if he has no idea what she could mean. How is it possible he can’t understand?

‘But it’s my practice,’ he says. ‘I was trying to …’ He lets go of the mug and runs his hand over his head.

That’s one thing that has changed about him since they married: his hairstyle.

In the olden days he wore it longer; now he has it short all over.

Easier, she supposes, to maintain for the busy lawyer on the go.

‘Trying to what?’ she prompts.

‘Trying to look after everyone.’ Now it’s his turn to sigh. ‘That’s all I wanted to do.’

‘So why didn’t you?’ She knows it’s mean to say that but she also genuinely wants to know the answer. That is, she’d like to hear the excuse he’s coming up with.

‘Didn’t I?’ The dismay is back. ‘We paid off the mortgage. The kids have everything they want.’

‘Except your time,’ she retorts. ‘Do you really think money is the only thing our children want or need from you? That I need from you?’

‘But …’ He sighs again; this time it’s ragged. Long. ‘But I was providing for you,’ he goes on. ‘For the kids. That’s my job. That’s what I promised you when we married.’

Anna can’t remember asking for such a promise, nor it being given – maybe because it wasn’t something she required.

What she remembers is him saying that with her by his side he felt like he could do anything, and she felt proud of that.

She felt that was the balance they had: he would go out and do things, achieve things, that he wouldn’t be able to do without her support, and she would have a good life, with a husband who adored her and the kids they both wanted.

He fulfilled his part of it, she guesses, except for this: he doesn’t adore her any more.

And it turns out that’s the part she really cares about.

Perhaps she’d care more about the providing if he wasn’t doing that, but why can’t she have both?

She used to. He had her support right up until the end, because she ran his household for him and that enabled him to go out and do what he felt he needed to without having to worry about clean undies and food in the fridge.

Men underestimate the worth of that, they really do – the fact that they wouldn’t be able to put half the time and energy into their work if they also had to do the million small tasks women took care of for them.

They’re staring at each other again but her mind is wandering, to the list of things she needs to tick off today, to planning for the week ahead so she can make sure the kids have everything they need for school, and remembering to take her mother to the shops after they go to the salon tomorrow.

‘What do you want?’ Gary says quietly. So quietly she almost doesn’t hear it.

‘Hm?’ She’s buying time because the question has flummoxed her – not because she doesn’t know what she wants but because he’s never asked her before. Not that she can remember.

‘What do you want?’ he repeats, his voice catching.

She narrows her eyes, trying to work out if he’s genuinely upset or just trying one on. ‘I want you to care about what happens in this house,’ she says. ‘But you don’t.’

‘Anna, I genuinely …’ Another catch in his voice. Another ragged sigh. ‘I love you,’ he says.

She can’t help the laugh that escapes from her lips and she can see how much it hurts him.

That wasn’t her intention, but she feels hurt herself and that’s where it came from.

All these years of supporting him so he could do what he wanted to do, only for him to consider her – their children – less and less worthy of his time.

Because of another woman. Probably. Maybe.

‘It’s easy to say it,’ she says.

‘Because it’s true,’ he says firmly.

‘Not so easy to show it, then. Is it?’

He looks confused again. ‘But I do,’ he insists.

‘By working?’

‘By providing .’

This is, she thinks, the point he’ll keep repeating, probably long after they’re divorced.

Divorce .

That’s a word that actually hasn’t popped into her head before.

Is that what they’re doing – divorce? Yet another thing she’ll have to manage for both of them because he’s not going to initiate it.

Well, it’s a year off anyway. One year they have to be separated.

She knows that because her friend Tina just went through it.

‘We’re not getting anywhere here, Gary,’ she says. ‘But what I’d really like is for you to take more of an interest in the children.’

‘I do!’

‘Turning up for an hour or so on the weekend is not taking an interest.’

‘So …’ He frowns.

He really doesn’t get it, does he? Maybe that’s her fault. She made it all too easy for him to not be involved with anything in this household. Loosened his grip on their lives for him, then pulled off the last finger he was using to hold on.

‘Troy has Saturday sport, Renee likes to go along. Maybe you could take them to that each weekend?’

‘Will you come too?’ He looks a little pathetic as he says it.

‘No. It’s for you to spend time with them. I do that every day. And night. And don’t just take them then stand around talking to the other dads, please. Pay attention . They need to know you care.’

His mouth opens and she holds up her hand.

‘I know you think you do,’ she says, ‘but you don’t. They can tell.’

He nods slowly. ‘All right,’ he concedes.

She stands, hoping he’ll take it for the signal to leave that she intends it to be.

‘Where are you going now?’ he says, slowly standing up.

‘To the park.’

‘Can I come?’

She sighs, considering her options. There are at least two loads of washing here, and she wants to make spag bol for dinner, and a casserole they can eat later in the week. It would be handy if she didn’t have to go to the park.

‘How about you take them?’ she says.

‘Oh.’

‘Seriously, Gary? You can’t handle taking your own children to the park? You need me to do it with you?’

His eyes water. ‘It’s not that,’ he says. ‘I just want to spend time with you.’

‘You had years to do that,’ she says. ‘And you didn’t. Don’t make the same mistake with the kids.’

He closes his eyes for a second or two then opens them and looks toward the garden. ‘I won’t,’ he promises. Then he picks up his car keys from the table and walks out the back door, calling to the children.

Anna heads for the laundry and starts the day’s chores.

It isn’t until she comes across a stray sock of Gary’s – who knows where on earth the other sock is, because the eternal mystery of washing is how socks become separated – that she feels something bubbling up that she really doesn’t want to deal with.

Not irritation, because she’d allow herself that – indeed, has been for months.

Not anger. She’s not given to anything so forceful, usually.

No …

A sob erupts from her chest and she’s shocked by it.

What? WHY?

She’s not sad about him being gone. She can’t be. This is what she wanted.

Isn’t it?

Sniffling back the tears that threaten to pour out of her because she really does not want to waste time on an emotional outburst, she switches on the radio in time for the bridge of Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ to waft out of it.

Great. Not the song she wants to hear right now.

Turning the knob through the AM dial she alights on a Lionel Richie song that is not about a broken heart and hums along to it.

Distractions. That’s what she needs in order to get through whatever this is.

Distractions and a new version of herself, so she’s not the Anna whose marriage went to hell.

Humming along to Lionel, she starts to daydream about who that Anna may be.