Читать книгу Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection - Kathleen Tessaro - Страница 24

My husband and I are having a ‘trial separation’.

Colin is looking for someone to rent his spare room. I tell him that person is me and he blinks in surprise and asks, wide-eyed, if there’s anything he can do. No, I say, there’s nothing to be done. And of that, I’m sure.

It’s been months now – months of conversations, arguments, silences, tears. We have ‘given it one more week’ again and again and again. It’s like trying to amputate a limb with a spoon.

We make it to the end of the month, to the end of another excruciating month, and then I move out.

It’s a Tuesday. My husband offers to help me pack my bags.

‘I’m not going on holiday,’ I tell him, repulsed and amazed that he can imagine us standing side by side, taking things off hangers and folding them into piles. He stares at me, numbly.

‘I’m leaving you,’ I explain, saying the words slowly and loudly, the way you speak to a deaf person. ‘This is me packing my bags and leaving you.’ But he just blinks.

‘I’ll pay for the cab,’ he says. He reaches for his wallet and examines the notes. I watch as he calculates in his head how much he can spare. He puts back the twenty for later. And I want to hit him, to cry, to tear through the fabric of our life together like it’s a badly painted backdrop and get to the point at last. He fumbles. Pulls out a tenner. And we’ve been here before; we’ve been right here, in this same, exact spot for a very long time.

I let him put the money on the table. I turn and walk into the bedroom and take down my suitcase, the one I brought to England when I thought I was going to be a famous actress, and start filling it with clothes.

My husband goes out for a walk and when he comes back I’m gone.

Colin lives with his flatmate Ria, a glassblower and gallery manager, in South London, beyond the urban chic of Brixton. Gone are the exclusive cafés and lunchtime concerts of Westminster, replaced by the gaudy splendour of the Streatham Mega Bowl and the late night Mecca Bingo parlour.

The cab driver helps me to unload my bags and haul them up the front steps. I ring the bell and the door opens to reveal Colin in his bathrobe, hair wet from the shower and Madonna blaring in the background.

I stare at the misshapen collection of bags, suddenly too overwhelming and unwieldy to move. ‘I’m sorry, Col. What am I doing? What have I done?’

He wraps an arm gently around my shoulders. ‘Come inside. Sit down. And I’ll make us a nice, hot cup of tea.’