“I’ll be here,” she said, although the next day was Tuesday and she had her Morecambe Preservation meeting after school, which would mean hurrying back afterwards, and no time to visit her mother, still in hospital, until later.
He was late, of course. After thinking about it for most of the previous evening, Tricia had decided not to prepare a meal for him. On Tuesdays after her meeting she usually picked up Chinese take-away for herself and the children, and she did that. They had just finished eating when she heard him let himself in. Helen cleared the boxes and forks off the table without being asked and Tricia went down the stairs to greet him.
“Where are the children?” Mark asked.
“Just finishing their dinner, in the kitchen,” Tricia said. Mark walked up the stairs and into the kitchen. Helen looked away from him. George frowned. Only Cathy looked glad to see her father.
“How are you all?” Mark asked.
Tricia could hardly believe how artificial he sounded.
“Fine,” Helen answered for all of them. “Where have you been?”
Mark flashed a look of irritation at Tricia, as if he expected her to have dealt with this. “Your mother and I are considering a separation,” he said, as if it had been her idea.
“A divorce,” Tricia said.
George stood up from the table. “I don’t want to listen to this.”
“I think it would be best if you all went to your rooms while we talk about it,” Mark said. The two younger ones left.
“Do you know Gran fell and I had to get her to hospital?” Helen asked as she followed them towards the door.
“No, I didn’t know. Is she all right?”
“She is, no thanks to you,” Helen said, stopping and turning in the doorway. “I didn’t know where you were. Where were you?”
Mark stood open-mouthed.
“With some floozy, I gather,” Helen went on, stressing the word. “Which is rich, considering what you’ve said to me about my morality. I never went off with anyone and left an old lady alone or somebody else to take care of my responsibilities. That’s what I consider immoral. Just so you know.” She left, closing the door gently behind her.
Tricia stared after her for a moment before turning to Mark.
“You’re turning the children against me!” he stormed.
“I haven’t said anything about you to them other than that you had some work to take care of,” Tricia said. “Mark, I do think we should be able to discuss this like sensible adults.”
“You’ve never been a sensible adult.”
Tricia sat down, everything she had planned to say taken away by that. “What, then?” she asked.
“I need some clothes and some books,” he said. “I’m living in an apartment on campus.”
“Not with her?”
“Who?”
“Oh come on, you already admitted it! Look, I agree that our marriage is over, but there are some things we need to sort out. Support for George and Cathy until they’re eighteen.” Barb had told her she would be entitled to money too, but she thought now she was teaching full time she could live on what she earned.
“I thought you could sell the house and buy a smaller one, and the difference would support you all. This house has appreciated quite a bit in the last six years.” Mark’s tone was even now.
“Sell this house!” Tricia was appalled. “I love this house. And we couldn’t have one that was much smaller—we wouldn’t all fit in.”
Mark walked over to the door and opened it. “I’m going to get my things, and then I’m going back to campus.”
“You’ll be hearing from my solicitor,” Tricia said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have a solicitor.”
“I do now,” Tricia said.
She called the solicitor the next morning and made an appointment for after work that day. The solicitor’s office was on Castle Hill, and the solicitor herself, L. Montrose, was a woman, well groomed and younger than Tricia. “What are your grounds for a divorce?”
“He has another woman. And he has left me.”
“Do you have proof?” Miss Montrose turned a pencil in her fingers. “If he’s an unreasonable person it’s necessary to have proof of adultery. Otherwise you have to wait for two years’ separation, or five if he contests that.”
“What would be proof?” Tricia asked, thinking of stained sheets.
“Hotel bills,” the solicitor said, surprising Tricia. “Photographs. Private detectives can get that kind of thing, and it might be worth your while using one.” She gave Tricia a card. “If that doesn’t work then it’s desertion, but that’s slow, especially if he won’t agree. I take it you want money?”
“I have two children under eighteen—they’re fifteen and thirteen. I want support for them until they’re finished in education. He talked about making me sell the house. I don’t want to. But I don’t know how much the mortgage is.”
“It’ll be in his name? I can find out. You’ve been married how long?”