Page 40 of The Life She Could Have Lived

YES

The boys had been shut up in their bedrooms all day and Edward was watching news coverage about the upcoming referendum on TV.

They hadn’t discussed it, the referendum, and Anna was almost certain that Edward was going to vote Remain like her, but there was a part of her that didn’t dare to ask, in case she was wrong.

In case she discovered that she’d built a life with someone who held such opposing views to her.

How was it possible, she wondered, to not truly know who someone was after so many years?

In the beginning, there were lots of long talks about politics and big ideas, and then you got older and got so caught up in work and family and home life that there was no longer space for any of that.

People changed, didn’t they? People grew inward, became more conservative, more concerned with their own family unit and less about the wider world.

Who was Edward, now? Who would he be, when she cut him loose and he was out in the world on his own again?

Anna felt restless. Had felt that way all day. She’d done some cleaning and been for a walk, and it hadn’t helped. She picked up her phone and called Nia.

‘How’s the birthday boy?’

‘Loving life. Currently trying to eat something he found in his shoe. Happy anniversary, by the way.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Any plans?’

‘Family dinner. I feel like this is going to be our last one.’

‘Fuck. Call later if you need me.’

‘Looks like you were right all along, about us not fitting.’

‘Anna, you’ve made a life, a family. If something works for a time but doesn’t last forever, that doesn’t mean it was a failure.’

‘And yet, here we are.’

Nia didn’t say anything for a long moment.

‘Thanks for coming to the party yesterday.’

Theo was two and Nia and Aidan had hosted another party at their flat the previous day.

Anna thought back to last year, to cajoling Thomas into going.

This time, she’d gone alone. She’d bought Theo a toy farm complete with wooden animals.

It had made her try to remember that stage with her boys.

Running around and starting to speak and constantly wanting to do things they weren’t yet able to do.

It had had its frustrations but the cuddles had been incredible.

She envied Nia, in a way. But there was a part of her that was glad all that was behind her, too.

After the call was over, Anna went upstairs to get changed.

She spent longer than usual doing her makeup and she wasn’t sure why.

She’d known for a couple of months that her marriage was over, but she hadn’t sat down with Edward and made it formal yet.

She didn’t know whether he knew too, whether he was just waiting for her to be the one to say it.

And the fact that she couldn’t tell, that said a lot.

She looked in the mirror and saw a middle-aged woman.

One of her worries, in making this decision, had been whether she’d ever find anyone again.

But in the end, she’d decided it didn’t matter.

Staying with someone you didn’t love any more because you might not meet someone else was too sad to contemplate.

She’d asked herself when it had happened a lot.

Because she had loved him, and now she didn’t, at least not in the same way, and not enough, and at some point she must have stopped.

Had they become too comfortable? Too willing to show one another their grumpiest, most unkind sides?

Or had it just not been enough love in the first place to last through the years?

Sometimes she thought about that kiss with Steve, and the time they’d spent apart after Edward’s dinner with Fran.

Perhaps they’d never fully come back from that.

She knew, deep down, that she’d never quite let go of the way she felt about Steve.

Ten minutes before the booking, they gathered in the hallway, coming from different areas of the house, doors closing, footsteps on the stairs.

Anna was glad to see the boys, and had a brief flashback to the days of them talking to her through the toilet door and wanting to sit on the worktop while she made lunch.

Then, she had longed for some time to herself.

Now, it seemed, she had too much of it. They walked to the restaurant, Thomas and Sam ahead, talking about a video game they both played.

Edward reached for Anna’s hand and she let him take it.

In the early afternoon, it had felt like summer, but now it was evening and it was chillier than Anna had expected.

She tried to focus on the evening ahead, on making it nice, one to remember.

She hoped that Thomas would be on good form, as his mood could determine the whole course of the evening.

She hoped, too, that Edward would be funny and light, the way he could be.

The way he used to be when the boys were younger .

Edward ordered bread and drinks and when they all had a glass in front of them, he lifted his.

‘Happy anniversary,’ he said.

‘Happy anniversary,’ Anna replied.

Seventeen years had passed since they’d promised to love one another forever, and Anna thought they’d made a pretty good stab at it.

They’d made a home, taken care of each other, and created these two wonderful people who would move away from them and live their own lives, perhaps do incredible things she couldn’t even imagine.

She turned to her boys, their heads close together, a joke on Sam’s lips.

Eleven and slightly awkward, he was always looking up to fourteen-year-old Thomas.

‘Sam has a girlfriend,’ Thomas announced, and Sam gave his brother a shove and went a little red.

‘She’s just a friend,’ he protested. ‘We’re doing this project together and…’

Thomas laughed. ‘Sure, a project.’

The waitress brought the basket of bread Edward had ordered then, and they all reached for it at the same time, and laughed.

It was an ordinary dinner, in the end. One of so many that they’d had over the years.

Sam pushing his plate to one side because there was cucumber in the salad, and then being talked around.

Thomas finishing everything the others left and washing it all down with about a gallon of Coke.

Anna was always the one who held it all together, kept the conversation going, resolved any disagreements.

It was tiring. She was glad when it was time to leave.

On the short walk home, Anna felt stuffed and lethargic. She was walking beside Thomas, with Edward and Sam a little way ahead. Sam was telling Edward something, using elaborate arm movements.

‘Did I tell you about this party next weekend? At Harry’s? ’

Anna knew what he was doing. He could have brought this up when they were sitting around the table, but he’d waited until he had her on her own.

Over the years, she’d tried hard not to let this happen.

To present a united front. But there were countless decisions, every day, and you couldn’t consult one another about every last one.

Gradually, it had become a thing, that the boys came to her rather than Edward, when they wanted something they thought might not be allowed.

How would it be, Anna wondered, if she and Edward weren’t even together? How wide would this wedge grow?

‘I don’t think you did,’ she said.

‘It’s a birthday thing, about twenty of us. His mum will be there.’

Anna wasn’t na?ve. She knew to translate this as thirty or forty kids, no parents, plenty of alcohol.

She remembered what it was like. And she didn’t want him to miss out, didn’t care about him getting drunk and being sick and all of that.

She just worried. About drunk teenagers, unprotected sex, consent, drugs. She would talk to Edward.

‘I’ll talk to Dad about it.’

Thomas looked at her imploringly. ‘Please Mum, everyone is going. I just don’t want to miss it.’

Anna felt her heart crack a little. She remembered it all.

The feeling of being left out if you missed one party, the way friendships and relationships could change overnight.

You could miss one night out and miss that chance with the girl or boy you’d liked all year.

It was fraught. And she knew Edward was much more likely to say no.

But she had to run it past him. They were still a partnership.

‘I know. I get it. I’ll talk to Dad.’

Thomas and Sam both disappeared to their rooms as soon as they got home.

Homework, Xbox, social media. Anna felt like she was losing them.

Edward went to the kitchen and poured them both a glass of wine, brought it through to the lounge.

He handed her one and then chinked his against it, and a few drops fell onto the wooden floor, and Anna decided against cleaning it up immediately. They sank into the sofa.

‘Seventeen years,’ Edward said.

Anna hoped he wouldn’t make that joke, about getting less for murder. He didn’t.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you think we knew what we were signing up for?’

Edward looked at her, his face serious. ‘I don’t think we had any idea. But I wouldn’t change it.’

Anna wasn’t sure she would, either. She knew in her bones that their marriage was over, was just waiting to feel strong enough to talk to him about it, to start making those decisions about who would live in the house and who would move out and how they would divide up their time with the boys.

But despite knowing all that was to come, she didn’t feel regret about the years they’d spent together.

She had loved Edward. In a way, she still did.

It just wasn’t enough any more. But they’d had a good life, a happy one, and she didn’t know what she would have had otherwise. Couldn’t know.

Without expecting it, Anna felt close to tears. She saw Edward notice.

‘What is it?’ he asked, leaning forward and brushing the first tear from her cheek.

Did he know? It belonged to both of them, this marriage, and she found it hard to see how it could still be alive and well for him, when it was all but dead for her. But perhaps that was part of the reason why it needed to end; they simply saw things too differently .

‘I’m not sure,’ Anna said. ‘I just feel overwhelmed, somehow.’

Edward nodded. He stood up, put his glass of wine down on the coffee table, took hers, too.

And then he sat again, closer to her, his arms around her.

Anna remembered when they had just seemed to fit, but now it felt a bit awkward, a bit uncomfortable.

She lifted her head, and Edward kissed her, and for a moment, it all melted away.

All the doubt and uncertainty. She pretended that they were different people, that they had a different life ahead than the one she knew was right.

When Edward pulled away, they looked at each other without accusation. Anna felt like Edward was trying to see inside her, trying and failing to determine what she was thinking. It wasn’t so long ago that he would have been able to tell.

‘Remember that Christmas Eve when we were wrapping presents until almost midnight and Sam came downstairs, half asleep, and you threw a blanket over everything and managed to get him back upstairs without him suspecting a thing?’

Anna smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s the kind of mum you are. Calm under pressure, always thinking of what they need, what will make them happy. I admire it so much.’

Anna was taken aback. It wasn’t that he’d never complimented her mothering, but he’d never said this. She didn’t know that he thought about this kind of thing, that it took up space in his mind.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I always worry that I’m not doing well enough.’

‘You shouldn’t. You are.’

She wanted to say something back, about how he was a good father, because he was, but she didn’t want it to seem like she was saying it because he had. She would save it for another time, when he wasn’t expecting it, and she would surprise him the way he’d surprised her.

‘I’m going to go to bed,’ she said. ‘I’m tired.’

‘I’m going tooooooooooooooooo bed,’ Edward sang.

Anna laughed. It was something he’d done so much in the early years, singing her words back to her as if they were power ballads. She couldn’t remember the last time he had done it.

Edward reached for the remote control. ‘I’m going to stay up a bit, I think.’

Anna went upstairs and stood outside her boys’ bedroom doors.

She could hear them in there. Sam was playing a game, she thought, and Thomas was talking to someone, probably about the party.

She’d forgotten to mention it to Edward.

She got ready for bed and lay there in the dark, her eyes wide open.

She had been tired when she’d said it, but like so often happened, the act of going upstairs and undressing and brushing her teeth had woken her.

She went back over the evening, over the things Edward had said.

And she resolved to talk to him, soon, about splitting up, about going their separate ways after all these years of walking side by side.