“I want a divorce, Elena. But I need you to stay until she learns how to perform your duties.”
I had my thumb inside the sleeve of a cardigan that would never fit anyone I knew.
My mother had knitted it in cream wool, refusing to wait until we could tell her whether we were having a boy or a girl. She had made the sleeves longer than the pattern suggested. Babies grew while you were looking the other way, she said; best to give them a head start.
One of the wooden buttons had a tiny bear on it. I had been checking the others to see whether they matched. For some reason I could not remember.
“What?”
Richard stood in the nursery doorway in his blue work shirt. He had taken off his tie. It hung from his hand, the narrow end almost touching the floor.
“I know this isn’t how you wanted us to have this conversation.”
I looked up at him. “Which conversation?”
His gaze dropped to the cardigan.
“Elena.”
“Who is she?”
He pulled the tie through his hands. Richard used to do that with restaurant napkins when he was about to ask a waiter for something unreasonable. He would smooth out all the creases first.
“Her name is Iris.”
The nursery window was open an inch. Someone was cutting grass beyond the garden wall, stopping and starting where the ground became uneven. I wanted them to finish the strip. The repeated effort was unbearable.
“How long?”
“That isn’t—”
“It is the next question.”
He glanced behind him, into the landing.
“Since November. Properly.”
I folded the cardigan, badly. One sleeve stuck out. I pushed it beneath the rest.
“What happened improperly?”
“Please don’t do this.”
There was a pale rectangle on his wrist where his watch usually sat. He must have taken it off downstairs. He never took it off at work, but sometimes he did when he came home and helped me make dinner. Watch on the kitchen dresser, sleeves rolled twice. I knew exactly where it would be.
“You said you need me to stay.”
His shoulders lowered slightly. Here was a question he had prepared for.
“Only for a while. We can be sensible about it. You know how everything runs.”
“The heating?”
“Among other things.”
“The washing machine?”
“It’s a large house.”
“You live in it.”
“There’s no need to make this harder.”
I put the cardigan on top of the chest of drawers. I had been sorting the drawer because it would not close. A ridiculous task, undertaken at six o’clock on an ordinary afternoon while a bucket of tulips waited downstairs for me to recut their stems.
“You want me to show your girlfriend where we keep the spare light bulbs.”
“I want us to manage the transition with some kindness.”
“Does she know which side of the bed you sleep on, or is that part of the training?”
His mouth tightened.
For a second I was pleased. Then I wanted to be sick.
“She’s pregnant,” he said.
The grass cutter stopped.
Richard said something else. His lips moved. I watched them, waiting for the sound to become a sentence.
“How pregnant?” I asked.
He let go of one end of the tie.
“Thirty-two weeks.”
I sat on the edge of the narrow bed beneath the window. We’d put it there for the nights one of us needed to sleep near the cot. Richard had assembled it and complained cheerfully about the instructions, and I’d taken a photograph of him with a screw between his teeth.
Thirty-two weeks.
I couldn’t count backwards. Not because it was difficult. Because each month I reached contained a room I had stood in, something I had said to him, an evening when he had let me lay my head against his shoulder.
“You said November.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No. You said November.”
“I didn’t want to go through every detail while you’re upset.”
I stared at his shoes. There was a small dried leaf caught between the sole and the leather of the left one. He had come through the garden.
“Is she here?”
“She’s in the car.”
I got up so quickly that he moved back.
He had not done that when he told me about the baby.
I walked past him. He said my name, once in the nursery and again as I reached the stairs. The second time he sounded irritated, as if I had left before he could tell me where to park.
The front door opened before I reached the bottom.
A woman stood on the step with one hand on a green suitcase and the other beneath the curve of her stomach. Her coat was unbuttoned. Her fair hair had flattened at one side where she had rested it against something, and she was trying to smile.
I noticed the suitcase first. It was big enough for a holiday. A scarf had caught in the zip.
“Elena?”
I gripped the newel post.
She came in, lifting the suitcase over the brass threshold with an awkward little heave. Its wheels struck the tiles, one-two, loud in the hall.
“Thank you so much for this,” she said. “I know it can’t be easy.”
Richard arrived beside me.
“Iris, I said I’d come out.”
“I needed the loo.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to rush anybody.”
I could see the guest bathroom door from where I stood. I had put clean towels in it that morning. Blue, because the white ones were still in the dryer.
“What are you thanking me for?”
Her smile faltered.
“For letting me stay while we get settled.”
“I haven’t let you stay.”
Richard touched my elbow. I shook him off so violently that Iris stepped back against her case.
“He told me about you five minutes ago,” I said. “Upstairs.”
Iris looked at him.
“Richard?”
“We’ve been having problems for a long time.”
“That wasn’t what I asked you.” Her voice was higher now.
“You didn’t ask him anything,” I said, and regretted the sharpness only because it had cost me a breath I needed.
The hall smelled of the hyacinths on the console table. I had brought them in from work yesterday. Three pots tucked into a silver bowl that Richard disliked because it was tarnished underneath. They were almost too much indoors, sweet and thick at the back of my throat.
“Iris needs to sit down,” he said.
Neither of us moved.
“We can’t have this conversation in the hall.”
“Where would you like it?” I asked. “The room you’ve chosen for her?”
He looked towards the stairs.
And there it was. The small, stupid glance that told me he had done that too.
“Which room?”
“Elena, stop.”
“Which room?”
“The guest suite. For now.”
I tried to imagine his preparations. What had he told her to pack? Had he checked that there were enough hangers? Had they discussed whether she would be warm enough in the room above the dining room, where the radiator needed bleeding every October?
“I thought you knew,” Iris said.
She said it to me, but her face was turned towards him.
“I didn’t.”
“You said you’d talked.”
“We have talked. Many times. About the state of things.”
“Not about you,” I said to her. “Not about a divorce. And certainly not about me teaching you how to be his wife.”
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“Well, neither did I.”
Her fingers tightened on the suitcase handle. The skin around her knuckles went white. I wanted to hate every inch of her, to be able to do it without interruption. Then she shifted her weight and winced, and I remembered the bathroom.
I pointed. “Through there.”
“Thank you.”
She left the case where it stood.
Richard waited until the door closed.
“That was unnecessary.”
I looked at him for long enough that he said, “The way you spoke to her.”
“Carry her suitcase.”
He blinked.
“You brought her here. Carry it yourself.”
“I wasn’t asking you to carry anything.”
“No. You were asking me to stay and explain the house and make this pleasant.” My voice cracked on the last word. I swallowed, furious with my throat. “I’m not doing it.”
“You need time to think.”
“I need you to get out of my way.”
He stood aside.
I went into the kitchen because I had left my phone there. The tulips waited in their bucket by the back door, their heads leaning towards the light. Richard’s watch lay on the dresser, exactly where I’d known it would be.
I picked it up.
For one exquisite second I saw myself opening the window and throwing it into the pond.
It had been his father’s.
I put it down so hard the metal strap snapped against the wood.
My phone was beneath an invoice. There were two missed calls from Ruth and a photograph from Nina of a wreath with a strip of pink ribbon held against it. YES OR TOO MUCH? she had written.
I typed YES.
Then I deleted it. Which question was I answering?
Use the green, I wrote.
I stood there with my thumb over the screen, unable to think of a person to call. Not because there was no one. Because calling someone would require me to say it.
The kitchen door opened.
“I’m not having another conversation,” I said.
It was Iris.
She stopped just inside. “I was looking for Richard.”
“Try your room.”
She flinched. I was glad, and not glad, and too tired already to sort those feelings into anything decent.
“He told me you’d agreed,” she said.
“You can ask him about that.”
“I will.”
There was an awful little silence. Her gaze caught on the photograph attached to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pear: Richard and me in Cornwall, hair flattened by wind, his arm across my chest to stop me backing off a low wall. We looked very happy. We had been.
I took the photograph down and laid it face down beside the invoice.
“Please go,” I said.
She went.
I called Ruth.
She answered with, “If Nina’s asked you about that pink ribbon, tell her it looks like a hen party.”
A sound escaped me. It hurt so much that I put my hand against my mouth.
“Elena?”
“Can you close up?”
“Of course. What’s happened?”
I looked at the tulips. One stem had bent over the lip of the bucket and split. I’d need to cut it short. It would still be useful in a smaller arrangement.
“Richard’s leaving me,” I said.
Ruth said nothing for a moment.
“Where are you?”
“Kitchen.”
“I’ll come through.”
“No. Not yet. She’s here.”
“Who is?”
I shut my eyes.
“Oh, love.”
I could not bear the kindness. “Just close up. Please. I’ll call you in a bit.”
“All right. But I’m keeping my phone on.”
Upstairs, I took my overnight bag from the wardrobe and put it on the bed. I packed underwear, jeans, the grey jumper I liked and the first pair of shoes I saw. They were heels. I took them out again.
Where was I going?
Ruth had a spare room. I knew that. I could ask. There were hotels in Alderwick and beyond it, rooms occupied by people whose suitcases contained ordinary things for ordinary reasons. I could be one of them tonight.
I put my flat shoes in the bag.
Across the landing, Richard was speaking in a low voice. I heard Iris say, quite distinctly, “Don’t tell me to calm down.”
Good, I thought, and hated that this was what I had left to share with her.
My passport was in the study. So were the copies of the business insurance and the folder with the original inventory from when Mum’s workroom had moved into the conservatory. I went downstairs to get them. If I left now, I wasn’t coming back tomorrow to ask Richard to find a blue folder while he played host.
The study door was open. On the desk, beside a glass with an inch of whisky in it, lay a roll of drawings held down with his phone charger.
I knew the outline of the conservatory before I read anything.
Long rectangle. Three projecting bays. The narrow link to the house at the western end. I had measured that link for a delivery only last week, standing in the rain while Nina insisted she could make the trolley fit.
There was a red line through it.
I moved the charger.
PROPOSED CLEARANCE, the heading said.
Below it was a drawing of an open terrace where our workbenches stood. Someone had added little round tables and a row of identical trees in pots. Nothing ever looked thirsty in an architect’s drawing. Nothing had a pile of dirty buckets behind it.
I turned the sheet. The next page showed an access route through the yard. OUR VAN PARKS HERE, I thought, as if the printed arrows might take account of an objection if I made it clearly enough.
There was a note clipped to the corner. June works—confirm possession/access following household transition.
For several seconds I heard only the quiet ticking of the study clock.
Then Richard appeared in the doorway.
“I was going to discuss that with you.”
“When?”
“They’re preliminary.”
“You’ve put a terrace where my business is.”
“The building’s deteriorating. You know that.”
“I know the north gutter needs replacing.”
“It’s more than the gutter.”
He reached for the top sheet. I put my hand flat on it.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“We have weddings booked through September,” I said. “Ruth works there. Nina works there. There are deposits.”
“You’ll have time to sort something out.”
“How much time?”
“The end of May was the provisional date.”
Eight weeks. A little less.
I looked at the neat empty terrace again. He had planned the absence of my work more carefully than he had planned the conversation in which he disposed of me.
“These drawings aren’t permission to touch anything.”
“No one’s touching anything tonight.”
“Or tomorrow.”
He sighed. “Let’s talk when we’re both less emotional.”
I photographed each sheet. My hands shook, and the first picture blurred. I took it again.
Then I found the blue business folder, my passport and the envelope containing Mum’s inventory. Richard watched me put them under my arm.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from this room.”
I collected the cardigan from the nursery. I put it in my overnight bag on top of the grey jumper, where the wool wouldn’t catch on a buckle.
Ruth answered before the phone had properly rung.
“Can I stay tonight?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. There’s something I need to show you.”
I carried my own bag down the stairs. Iris’s green suitcase had gone. The hyacinths remained, extravagant and sickeningly sweet in their silver bowl.
At the front door I stopped, went back into the kitchen and lifted the bucket of tulips. Water slopped over my shoe. I left the wet footprint on the hall tiles.
Tomorrow, before I did anything about a divorce, I would find out what it would take to move a conservatory.