34

Losing the fake smile I’d firmly pasted on my face for the benefit of the grandkids, as it had been all morning through the present-giving act, I grip his arm firmly and drag him towards the kitchen.

Now the house is open plan getting the chance to talk to James privately had been nigh on impossible. But the kids had taken the grandkids for an afternoon stroll, leaving just us two.

No doubt that had been by design.

“How dare you?” I hiss now through gritted teeth. “This is my home!”

“It’s our home, Merri,” he sighs, moving to the fridge to presumably look for a beer and turning around empty-handed when he finds none.

I poke him in his red-suited, heavily padded chest with my finger. Just like every year, he’d dressed as Santa for the kids. Where the real Santa-to-be is, I don’t know. He wasn’t in the house and I hadn’t been able to go out to search, stuck as I was playing the role of grandmother and pretend wife. When I’d asked Katie and Roger they said they hadn’t seen him. Katie had added she didn’t think it appropriate for him to be here for our family celebration, and that perhaps he’d recognised that too.

I’d held my tongue. But her comment just added to the anger I feel now as I confront my husband.

“ Our home? You lost the privilege of calling it that when you started sleeping around,” I snarl at him. “And you lost the right to enter my home when you broke your word and put a fucking For Sale sign out front. You have no business being here, James.”

“Merri, please,” he sighs. “I wanted to see the grandkids and give them the Christmas they deserve. It’s our tradition, our family tradition. Don’t take that away from them.”

“Me?” I hiss. “Me take that away from them?”

“Please,” he takes off his fake beard and looks at me earnestly. “I missed them, Merri. The kids, the grandkids, you…”

“Bullshit.”

“Look, I know it’s going to take time to build the trust back that we once had. I’m sorry. I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to say it, or for how long, but I’m truly, truly sorry. I fucked up. I want to come home.”

“I just told you,” I narrow my eyes at him, “that there’s no such place, and I’m not falling for your lies again. Despite what Katie and Roger say, I know you’re only here because of this!”

I walk to the junk drawer and pull out a large envelope, waving it in his face. I’d received it the day before yesterday. It was the divorce papers and the financial information on the split.

It turned out that Chris, the non-lawyer Angel, was right. I was entitled to much, much more than I’d ever imagined. Over the years I’d contributed financially to the business, the mortgages and the household expenses. In the wash up I was entitled to this house, the lake house, and half his business. He’d keep the other half of the business, truck, boat, and all the household furniture and effects he’d taken when he moved out. There was no cash to speak of, or shares. Our thirty years together had built a home that he’d demolished from within, and a business he would either have to buy me out of or sell. That was it.

Once upon a time there was no way I would ever, ever , do something like this to the man standing before me. Everything I’d ever done was to support him and build him up, to help him pursue his dreams. But that seemed like a long, long time ago now, before all my dreams were shattered. And I was a different person then. Now, I’m embracing Ivana Trump’s mantra; ‘don’t get mad — get everything.’

“You must see,” James says, recognising the envelope I’m holding, “that you’ll destroy me, Merri, if you go through with the divorce.”

“Oh, I’ll go through with it,” I nod.

“I won’t,” he shakes his head. “I don’t want a divorce.”

“And what’s the alternative?” I whisper, the fight starting to drip out of me as the emotional exhaustion sets in. It’s been a long few days.

“That we start again. I come home. We start again and pretend it never happened.”

“Pretend it never happened? And how does Wednesday fit into this?”

“Who?”

“Your lover.”

He shakes his head.

“That will be worked out too,” he sighs.

“Worked out? Are you saying you’re still together?”

“We’re living in the lake house, Merri. It’s complicated...”

‘Complicated?’

“So, wait,” I hold up my hand to stall his continuing bullshit. “You’re here telling me you want to come home. You have the audacity to tell our children you want to come back, but that I won’t let you, and yet you’re still in a relationship with that woman? You’ve literally come, still warm from her bed, to hand out presents to our grandchildren this morning?”

He groans.

“When you put it like that… it’s not the way it is, exactly, Merri.”

“What exactly is it then, James?” I hiss. “Make me understand.”

He stares at me.

I’ve seen that look a hundred times, and his expression tells me all I need to know.

“I didn’t destroy you, James,” I shake my head and move to pour myself a gin, “You did it all by yourself.”