Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

A year earlier

By the time her possessions were unpacked and her friends had gone, Kiera’s new flat felt empty. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to take much of the furniture from the house, even though Chrissie had made a big point of saying she could take what she wanted. Kiera didn’t want any of it. Her old life felt like a lie. In the hours and days after she had realised her marriage was over she had felt like leaving it all behind, abandoning her possessions and starting all over again. She wanted to burn her old life to the ground. She had promised that life to someone, who appeared to have handed it back, soiled, tatty and worthless.

To start with, all she had was an old armchair that had been left in the flat by the previous occupant, and a television. That was the only really big thing she’d taken from the house. Chrissie didn’t approve of television, and wouldn’t miss it. So that first night, she curled up in the armchair, switched on something she knew Chrissie would have hated, something undemanding to watch – Grey’s Anatomy. She dozed off after a while, and woke up to a late night shopping channel in the early hours. She relocated to her new bedroom. She smiled as she walked in. Lou had set it all up for her, so she had clean, new bed linen. It was a lovely surprise, as she had been expecting to sleep in her old sleeping bag. There was a card beside the bed – a simple bed Lou’s husband had picked up from Ikea that morning and constructed for her. She opened it. On the front was a picture of a bottle of wine. Inside was a message. “You deserve all the very best things, mate, and I hope you sleep well and bed hundreds of women in this cosy bedding. Love, Lou xxx”

Kiera welled up. It felt like the kindest thing anyone could have done. It might just have been some new bed linen and a duvet, but that Lou had thought to put it all out and make her first night comfortable and cosy felt like the most generous gesture. She took off her clothes and fell into the covers – a gorgeous pale blue – and fell asleep almost immediately.

She slept in until eleven the following morning. The sound of rain greeted her ears. She smiled. There might not be much in her flat, but it was hers. She climbed out of bed, put on her dressing gown and went into the box-strewn kitchen. She hunted for a mug, and made a cup of tea using water boiled in a saucepan on the hob. A kettle was top of her list of things to buy. She thanked her yesterday-self for thinking to buy some milk and put it in the fridge, along with a few other essentials.

The flat was still very empty, but with a cup of tea and a bowl of Cheerios, curled up in her dressing gown in her one chair, it began to feel like it could be home. She switched on the TV and selected a Saturday morning cookery show. No one to sigh at her breakfast choice, no barbed comments about TV rotting her brain and no desperate rush to go anywhere. Kiera felt a moment of peace in amongst the turmoil that she knew hadn’t really left, and wouldn’t for a while.

The weeks that followed felt unreal in many ways. She tried to engage Chrissie in a conversation about what they were going to do with the house, but Chrissie seemed absent – even more absent than she had been in the latter days of their marriage. She complained when Kiera called her to talk about possibly putting the house on the market. She said it was putting an unhealthy emphasis on material value.

“But I’m still paying half the mortgage,” said Kiera, trying to keep the frustration from her voice in one of their tortuous phone conversations, “and the rent for this flat.”

“You chose to move out,” said Chrissie.

“Well, I didn’t have much of a choice, really, did I?” said Kiera, completely failing to hide her frustration.

Chrissie paused. Even she couldn’t come back on that one. “The thing is,” she said, “it’s not just me staying here at the moment.”

“Who’s there?” asked Kiera, wondering what was coming.

“Oh, Athena. We’ve been lovers for several weeks. I think you knew there was someone else.” She took a breath. Kiera sighed inwardly and felt her stomach twist. “Sorry, I know that you prefer the idea of monogamy. This is something more fluid than that.” Kiera wasn’t sure what to say, so she opted to stay quiet. “Lucian introduced us.”

Of course he had.

“Right,” said Kiera, raising her voice and not really caring about diplomacy anymore. “I really don’t care who you have there or what you are doing or how long it’s been going on for. But we own that house together and you need either to buy me out or sell it so we can share the proceeds. It’s as simple as that. Outdated as it seems, that is standard procedure. You may not be bound by any moral code, but you are bound by the law.”

Silence.

“And I never want to hear about bloody Lucian again.”

More silence.

Kiera sighed. “I will be filing for divorce in the next few days,” she said, absent-mindedly putting on the kettle and preparing her mug for a cup of tea. She hadn’t meant to raise this now, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“Really? Must we go through that awful process?”

“Yes, we bloody must. You make it sound like this is all my doing when it’s you who shrugged me off like an old coat when I said I wasn’t happy with you shagging all and sundry.”

“Polyamory is not me ‘shagging all and sundry’, as you put it,” said Chrissie, an edge to her voice for the first time in the conversation. “I know it doesn’t make sense for you. But for me, it is a more authentic way to live. The fact is, we grew apart.”

“You grew away from me.” There was a long pause. Kiera was more conciliatory when she spoke again. “Please think about what you want to do with the house, Chrissie. We need to sort this.”

By the time Kiera remembered her half-made cuppa, the kettle needed boiling again.