of the children.’ He looked studiously down at the letter before him, avoiding eye contact with me. ‘Quoting this one from Mrs Shilling, she says, “My son had wanted to leave his wife for years.” ’
I was shocked. Profoundly shocked. Over the weeks I’d come to terms with the fact that a whole world had been continuing somewhere without me; a world of Phil and Emma, Emma and Phil, and these visits of Emma’s to Phil’s family home only sketched in additional appalling detail. More grotesque background. But before, it was just the two of them. More people somehow gave the picture a density that I knew I was going to struggle to push against. It would be like holding back the tide to suggest that all four of these people had been wrong, had judged me unfairly, and that I was a perfectly pleasant human being. A doddle to be married to. Why should they all be mistaken? And yet it wasn’t true. It wasn’t fair. My breathing became laboured. I was a nice girl, surely? Not the girl in this picture?
I did try, though. To push. ‘He wanted out!’ I said shrilly, knowing my nostrils were flaring and my knuckles white as I gripped my handbag on my lap. ‘He only stayed for the children? Oh no, that was me! I was only there because I thought they were so young, so vulnerable.’ My throat filled with tears. I gulped them down. ‘I was the one who wanted to go – always!’
Even as I was protesting, part of my mind was wondering how often he’d heard this sort of thing. Sam, the divorce lawyer. Two people slugging it out unattractively, over children, money. But once I’d started, I felt compelled to finish.
‘I was the one who felt trapped. How dare he say he stayed with me for form’s sake! Out of duty! Ask my friends, ask anyone; they’ll all tell you. God, those bitches,’ I seethed. ‘I can’t believe my own in-laws, my children’s grandmother, their aunt, Aunt Cecilia – Christ!’ I could hear hysteria rising in my voice as I tumbled over my words.
‘I can see that’s very hard to reconcile.’
‘Very hard? Very hard!’
I wanted a cigarette badly and I hadn’t smoked for years. Instead, I twisted a strand of hair rapidly around my finger, another ancient method of restoring composure. I wondered what Phil had said to his mother and sister. Phil, who could do no wrong. Wondered if he’d told them I was a cold fish who gave him no comfort. Oh, I could picture the whole thing. Could see Phil taking Emma to Kent in her smocky white top, looking very different to the girl his mother and sister had met for lunch in London, a business lunch, to discuss their finances, in her power suit and heels.
‘You remember Emma?’ he’d have said, with no awkwardness. Phil didn’t do awkward; he had a towering sense of his own self-importance. His own entitlement. And Emma, with a bunch of flowers perhaps, would execute her practised, anxious smile.
‘Hello. How lovely to see you again. What a pretty house.’
Later, after coffee, Phil would confide in his mother, whilst Cecilia and Emma took a walk in the garden. This girl had brought some much-needed sunshine into his life. Much comfort. He’d never leave me, of course, never. He knew where his duty lay. But this was the real thing. True love. And Marjorie would nod, touch his hand. Her poor boy. Trapped in a loveless marriage. Of course, she’d always known it was a mistake. That dreadful father. She’d shudder. Whisky on his breath. That house, which she’d heard about from Phil. A slum, almost. Oh no, she wouldn’t condemn Phil. Instead, she’d say later to her daughter: poor boy, he deserves some happiness, and how like him to insist he can’t leave Poppy and the children. So little happened in Marjorie and Cecilia’s lives, I could see them thoroughly enjoying the subterfuge. Knowing something I didn’t; having a secret. It would exact a certain kind of revenge, which, let’s face it, was always best eaten cold. And they wanted revenge. They’d felt so robbed, you see, when we hadn’t gone to Kent to live, but had settled near my father instead. My friends. Their fury at the time had been unnerving.
‘But we assumed!’ Marjorie had spat at me in her immaculate kitchen, tight-lipped, spectacles glinting. ‘Cecilia and I had always assumed that you’d come here, to Ashford.