CHAPTER FOURTEEN HARRIET STRATTON

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

H ARRIET S TRATTON

A UGUST 2002

With shaking hands, Harriet closed the door of the smallest room in the house, the laundry room, and switched on the tumble dryer. Not to drown out their conversation entirely, but certainly with the intention of masking it. Plus, she figured the whirring sound resonating throughout the cottage would give Bear and Dilly the impression, should they venture downstairs, that there was nothing to be concerned about, no drama lurking beneath their little feet on the floor below.

It was unpleasant how close she was to Hugo in the relatively confined space. Not that she found him unpleasant but she would certainly have preferred more distance in light of the conversation they were about to have. She leaned on the white china butler sink, he by the window, putting no more than thirty-odd inches between them, the space made smaller still in light of the topic. But this small discomfort preferable to alarming the kids.

‘So.' She decided to begin, harnessing the anger that sparked in her veins. ‘You think the issues we have in our marriage are my fault?'

‘No, I never said that.' He shook his head.

‘Because, and please do interject if I've got the wrong end of the stick entirely, but I thought it was because you were having sex with our neighbour while I scurried around Waitrose on the hunt for hummus?'

‘Why do you do that?' He narrowed his eyes at her, as if trying to see her, really see her. She could smell the tang of red wine on his breath and found it repellent.

‘Do what, Hugo?'

‘Try to be funny, while being so fucking mean, so cutting!'

She took a deep breath; maybe he was right. Deciding to turn down the meanness, she would try to speak plainly without the edge. The point of this chat was, after all, to make progress. This, she knew, would be a hell of a lot easier to do if the red-hot poker of anger and indignation was not shoved firmly up her arse.

‘Okay' – she held up her palms – ‘let's start again. Why don't you tell me how you feel I'm responsible for what we're going through, or at least tell me my part in it?' She folded her arms tightly across her stomach.

He took his time in forming a response and this, too, bothered her more than she could say.

‘I know I'm the one that had the affair.'

Bravo! Wisely, she kept this to herself.

‘I've admitted it, told you everything there is to tell, agreed to move and I've been working hard to help us heal, to figure out how we go forward. I mean, here we are, in Ilfracombe, our fresh start!'

‘Yep.' She could barely contain her contempt for the fact he wanted points for admitting the affair, as if unaware, or choosing to ignore, the reason for their move.

‘But I think it's useful to look at the reasons why I made the decisions I did.'

She felt her jaw tense. Useful? He sounded irritatingly officious, as if he were about to conduct a post-implementation review, or garner lessons learned after a project.

‘For the last few years, H, you've been so focused on your job, the kids, the house, whatever else is popping up next on the calendar. It's like you have to slot me in. I've felt redundant. I was never the priority for you. Never. And Wendy ...'

It was rare for him to use her first name. When unable to avoid mentioning her at all, he would say ‘her' or ‘she' as if aware that to use her name made a connection, gave her status, both of which were like knives in her gut.

‘...Wendy was all about me. And it reminded me what it felt like to have someone put me first.'

It was as if all the air had been sucked from the room and she was hit with an overpowering sense of claustrophobia. Fearing she may pass out, unable now to prioritise what the kids may or may not hear, she opened the laundry room door and made her way across the kitchen to the open-plan sitting room. Gulping great lungfuls of air, she walked backwards until her legs touched the leather chair and slumped down, as the strength finally left her. She was appalled by his admission that basic flattery and a little attention had been all it took to divert him from their shared life, to knock him from the pillars of commitment on which their future had rested.

Hugo, having followed her, wasn't done. He sat on the couch opposite and rested his joined hands on his knees, his head down, tone earnest, calmed a little.

‘I guess I never realised when we got married, when the kids came along, that I would slip further and further down the list, and I guess being with her was a reminder of what it felt like to be considered. It wasn't that I wanted her , per se, but I wanted to be someone's priority. It felt good.'

She bit her lip, trying to think of the last time she had put herself first. It was far easier to recall all the times she hadn't; turning up at many a school event without having had time to wash her hair because she'd been too busy making cupcakes for the bake sale, hours and hours of homework and reading with the kids instead of taking a hot bath, gluing masks for Halloween until the early hours, or packing jars of sweets for the Christmas tombola while yawning at the end of a hectic week. Giving Hugo the last of the vegetables, an extra helping of apple pie or the spare pillow, always thinking of his needs/wants before her own. The big things too: only inviting her beloved family every other Christmas as he found it all ‘too much', turning down the offer of promotion four years ago, which would have meant relocating to Edinburgh, because despite it being a huge whack of salary and an opportunity for her to write her own scientific paper, Hugo and the kids were settled and that was how she understood compromise. And this before she got to the daily sacrifices she willingly made for her kids, or how she'd packed boxes, locked up their family home and was now in this cottage in a town where she didn't have one proper friend and was clinging on by her fingertips.

‘I know it sounds selfish, H.'

She couldn't help the snort of sarcastic laughter that left her mouth. Ya think?

‘But I don't think it is selfish to want more. I mean, I fucked up badly, I know I did, but I feel that if we'd had better communication, if we'd made more time for each other ...'

She could hardly stand to hear any more and kept her voice low. Another sacrifice to spare the kids hearing the row, when all she wanted to do was scream from the roof!

‘I remember—' She coughed to clear her throat of the plug of sadness that had risen unexpectedly there. ‘I remember when we were at university and we'd spend nights in that single bed in my room. It was so narrow, we practically had to lie on each other, until we devised the perfect way to sleep; me halfway down the bed, you on your back, legs wide, me in the gap, head on your stomach, so close ...'

‘So close,' he echoed.

‘I'd never felt so safe, so comfortable, so happy and I knew that if I got to sleep like that every night, every night, then we'd be happy forever.'

‘And forever would not be enough,' he whispered, completing the phrase they had coined and used sparingly and with great intent throughout their marriage.

She ignored it, knowing that to give it credence right now might throw her off track. She needed to stay focused, to rip off the Band-Aid, to stop pretending.

‘If I think about those two young lovers with their lives in front of them, they're hard to recognise; it's like looking at people we used to know, but have lost touch with.' The accuracy of this was a moment of realisation for her, another jab of sadness. The first being a little more than a jab, actually, more of a right hook that caught her squarely on the jaw when she'd found out about him and Mrs bloody Peterson. ‘And for the record, it seems you might have forgotten that you only admitted your affair because I figured it out. Who knows how long it might have gone on otherwise? And if it had finished, run its course, would I ever have known? I mean have there been others?'

‘Jesus, no! What a thing to say!' He raised his voice a little, adamant.

‘Also ...' She knew her maelstrom of thoughts wouldn't settle until she'd addressed all the points that he'd raised, lodged now in her chest like thorns. ‘... you used to say, "I love how smart you are, how hard you work." We'd plan to take over the world! You liked that I never rested, was independent, busy.'

He nodded. ‘Yes.'

‘Yet listening to you just now, it seems like the very things that attracted you to me are the very things that you now dislike, the things that have irritated you, the things that drove you into Wendy's arms.' She accentuated the verb she used sardonically and felt her lip flinch at the use of the woman's name.

‘No, I just—'

‘I was never one of those girls with a small handbag.' She cut him short. ‘Or one with the latest clothes, high heels, a sparkly top and a big laugh. I was quieter, thoughtful, and that's how I've behaved for our entire marriage. I don't think I've changed.'

‘You think I've changed?' He lifted his head.

‘Erm, if not changed, then maybe got a little bored, wondered if the grass was greener.' It was easy to be direct when she spoke her truth, no longer treading on eggshells, guarded.

‘Doesn't everybody?'

That her reply to his question was slow in coming spoke volumes. ‘No, Hugo. Not everybody.'

‘There it is again, that blaming voice, that tone.' He placed his hand over his mouth, as if this physical barrier might prevent the words slipping out that he knew were only damaging them further.

Harriet sat back in the chair and folded her hands into her lap. It was a moment of reckoning; Hugo's words were branded in her thoughts. His casual admission of how he had been ‘lured' into infidelity with no more than a kind word, was incendiary and with it the realisation that they never had been and never could be stable. Picturing a small cage, she mentally placed it around her heart and locked it tight, knowing that if she could so misunderstand her marriage, misjudge her family life, and mistrust her husband, then nothing else in life could be taken for granted. She had never felt so alone, so dangerously on the edge, and she realised how easy it would be to fall.

What came next was delivered calmly, clearly, and she did her best to control the emotion that threatened to hijack her composure. It was important she got her phrasing right. Important that he listened. There was a beat of weighted silence before she was ready to speak. Hugo's foot tip-tapped gently on the floor in anticipation.

‘In case you're wondering, or wonder in the future, at which point I decided to walk away from this marriage, the moment I knew I was done, the second the plug got pulled on all those remaining feelings that meant we might be in with a shot: it's now. Right now. This is the moment, Hugo.' She gestured towards the floor, a visual that she knew would live in her mind to concrete the moment in recollection. She saw his mouth fall open, his shoulders slump. ‘Not that it will matter in years to come, not at all. Everything we have, everything that concerns us and keeps us awake in the early hours, will be no more than a tributary of indifference that will trickle into the sea, and these past few weeks and how we got here will merge into one murky area of shade in our lives.'

‘Are you—'

‘Joking? No. No, I'm not.' She felt the wave of nausea, despite her outward serenity.

‘So this is it?' He spoke as if this might help the facts sink in.

‘This is it.'

‘We can't just give up!'

‘I'm not just giving up. If I had wanted to give up, I would have packed a bag the day I found out or I'd have stayed and carried on in Ledwick Green, hauling this sadness quietly inside me. That would have been giving up. We tried. I tried. I almost needed the clarity of coming here, away from our normal life, to get my head straight.'

‘I ... I don't want us to.' His lower lip wobbled, and it was hard to see. ‘I can't stand the thought of us not being—'

‘That's the thing, Hugo. It's no longer about what you want or what you can or can't stand. It's not even about trying to reach the compromise that I've held in my thoughts, strived for. A goal, if you like, since I first found out.'

‘Please, H, please!'

‘No.' She shook her head, not wanting him to pointlessly plead and knowing it would be better for him, upon reflection, if he did not. With her tone still level, her demeanour calm, despite the desperate avalanche of sadness that tumbled inside her. ‘No. It's ... it's gone. It's really gone, whatever it was, whatever we had – love, I guess – it's been gone for a while.' Her throat narrowed at the admission. ‘That love was slashed and burned when you slept with her, when you slept with Wendy Peterson. I thought the roots might reseed, that it might be recoverable. That we could renovate our love, repaint, upcycle, go again. I believed, wanted desperately to believe, that it was a blip, an anomaly, but your words about how we live, the things I do that are wrong—'

‘Not wrong, just ...' he interrupted, as if it might make a difference.

‘Okay, not wrong, let's say, distasteful to you. That list, your views ... I can see that it wasn't a blip; it was an escape from the cage you see yourself living in, a way to break through the walls of dissatisfaction that have hemmed you in. I don't and have never wanted to be your jailer.'

‘It's not like that, Harriet. I love you.' He sank down on to the floor in front of her, one hand on his heart, the other on her knees. He sounded a little breathless, overcome. ‘I love you.'

She stood slowly, edging him out of the way and coming to stand in front of the sitting room window with its view down Fore Street, deliberately not looking as he sat on the floor, giving him a chance to stand and restore his dignity.

‘I love me too, and that's why I need to walk away. In setting you free, I'm setting myself free from a situation I didn't know I needed to escape. But it's the right thing to do.'

‘What about the kids? What about all the reasons we moved here, gave up our home, unsettled them?'

Turning to face him, she nodded. ‘This will always, always be all about the kids. Every decision I have ever made has had the children at the heart of it. That won't change, not ever.' This to remind him that her way of life meant never putting herself first. ‘I thought we could patch things up, thought we could start over, but we can't. I can't. The kids will be fine, eventually, because it will be their normal. And I for one can tell them how suddenly things can shift, even when you least expect it and you have to learn to live with a new normal.'

He put his hands on his hips and his stance and expression changed a little. It was familiar, and easier to deal with somehow; the way he switched gears from humble to defensive, depending on how things were going. It took all of her strength to continue, not knowing when she might next have the opportunity to speak so candidly. ‘I have to think about the long term and the message I want to give them. I don't want Bear thinking it's okay to treat people in the way you've treated me and there be no consequence, and I want Dilly to know her worth and not to put up with any shit because her partner tells her that's all she has any right to expect.'

‘Are you enjoying this?' This, too, a familiar pattern; how his frustration now bubbled over into anger.

She stared at him, noting his less than attractive physical traits. Part of the process, she guessed. The start of the emotional disentangling from the man who she had always thought was her future.

‘No. What I enjoyed was the life I had and not knowing I had anything to worry about. I enjoyed all of that. I'm not enjoying this, the dismantling of our lives, of our kids' lives and all that comes next.'

‘You're using that voice.' He gave a short burst of laughter that didn't reach his eyes. ‘The one you keep in reserve for talking to idiots, people you hold in low regard, officious pricks with clipboards, or when talking about your father.'

‘I know the one, and it's nothing personal, Hugo. It's just part of the barrier I have to put up to keep myself together, to stop me from losing it. To stop me from unravelling.' It was taking every ounce of strength and every fibre of her being to remain calm and not sink down to the floor and weep.

‘You need to talk to the kids.' His words were clipped.

‘ I need to talk to the kids?' She narrowed her eyes, wondering why the responsibility was deemed solely hers.

‘Yes, I mean this is your choice. Your decision.'

‘Yes, it is. Like deciding to clamber up on to a raft, forcing everyone to get out of the sea, to spoil the fun, when you're the only one who's seen a great big fucking shark circling!'

‘So, am I the shark?' She hated the glint of confidence in his eye, as if he was happy she'd bitten. It didn't bode well for the calm, grown-up strategy she pictured for their future.

‘Well, I certainly feel like the bait. Dangling, swallowed up and left in the dark. But yes, I'll talk to the kids. If that's what you want.'

Hugo moved quickly, turning towards the staircase and it was all she could do not to jump up and physically restrain him. How dare he do this, in this moment! In this way! It was cruel, a shit trick.

‘Dilly, Edgar, can you come down for a minute please, guys!'

There were two things about his yelling that bothered her most. The way he had used their son's real name, almost suggesting that his childhood was coming to an end, time to use this grown-up name, and also his disgusting timing. The kids were readying for sleep, safe in their rooms, still getting used to their new home. What would have been the harm in letting them rest until the morning, to have this last night of peace before they had to hop on to that bloody raft? And forcing the issue, the timing; putting her in an unenviable position just to prove his point. Harriet knew she would never forgive nor forget his actions right now.

‘You can be a fucking prick, Hugo,' she whispered, loudly enough for him to hear, as their little feet thudded down the stairs. It was harrowing, knowing her children were about to sit down on the sofa believing they lived one life, but by the time they stood again, they would be living quite another.