Once we were back home, I realized, with no little despair, that all I could do was wait things out, and that it was likely to be a very long wait.
However, about three weeks ago, we were invited to a drinks thing – someone’s birthday – and, to my surprise, he agreed to come. My heart leapt with hope and the ever-present knot in my stomach unwound slightly.
But soon after we got there, my arch-frenemy Genevieve Payne descended on us.
‘Hugh! Hello, stranger.’ She began stroking his arm. ‘The eyes on this man!’ she said. ‘So blue! So sexy! You know, Amy, if Hugh was my husband, I’d never let him out of bed.’
This was her normal lark with him. My mouth went, ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ while my eyes went, ‘Please can I bury an axe in your head?’
In the past, Hugh had always received her attentions in a strong and silent fashion – not shrugging her off but not leading her on either. You know, polite. He knew how her slinky confidence intimidated me.
But this time he turned and smiled at her – I hadn’t seen him smile in the last year. Genevieve reddened, she actually looked embarrassed, and something inside me felt very cold and scared.
Driving home I said, ‘You can have an affair with anyone in the whole world except for Genevieve Payne.’
Whenever I said that – and I said it every time I saw her – Hugh would reply, ‘Babe, I won’t have an affair with anyone ever.’ But this time he said, ‘Okay.’ No ‘babe’. And just ‘Okay.’
I opened my mouth, then thought, No, let it go.
Fast-forward to last Saturday evening, when we were at home, alone. Hugh was at the kitchen table, tapping away on his iPad for hours. A quick look over his shoulder established that he was doing something with figures. I thought nothing of it but on a return visit, ages later, he was still at it.
‘What are you doing?’
He hesitated and, whatever way he did it, a thin thread of dread unfurled in my gut. ‘Our finances.’
I stared at him for a long, silent beat. This didn’t make sense. Only two months earlier, our ropy finances had enjoyed a major facelift because his dad’s house had finally sold. The proceeds were divvied up between Hugh and his three brothers, and after we’d ring-fenced Sofie and Kiara’s college fees, got braces for Kiara’s wonky teeth, repaired our glitchy house-alarm system, fixed the leak in Neeve’s bedroom, gone on the holiday to Sardinia and paid off our credit cards, what remained might have bought half a car. (A mid-range car, I don’t mean a fancy one.)
As we’d never known financial equilibrium, the unprecedented situation of not worrying if our card would be declined with every transaction we made was joyous.
But to have an actual fund of actual cash to play with had nearly toppled me over the edge. I began uttering the phrase ‘nest egg’, even though heretofore it was the most irritatingly smug thing I’d ever heard.
I had great plans for the ‘nest egg’ and assembled a lengthy wish list – replacing our unpredictable boiler, getting a much-needed new couch, paying off a tiny amount of our mortgage, or even – this was a secret, desperate hope – sending Hugh and me on a modest mini-break, just the two of us, in the hope that somehow we’d reconnect.
Nothing explained the lengthy calculations Hugh had been doing all evening and I could have pressed the issue but something – fear? – advised me to say nothing.
The very next night, after the girls had gone to bed, he said to me, ‘We need to talk.’
That is a sentence no one ever wants to hear. But, as Hugh had barely addressed a syllable to me in the previous year, I was definitely … interested, I suppose.
He handed me a glass of wine. ‘Can we sit at the kitchen table?’
A talk where I had to be softened up with alcohol? A talk where we’d be facing each other?
I took a big swig of wine, went to the kitchen, sat at the table and took another swig of wine. ‘Off you go.’
Hugh stared downwards, as if the secrets of the universe were written in the limed oak. ‘I love you.’ He flicked a glance at me and his eyes burnt with sincerity. Then he resumed his study of the table. ‘I want to stay married to you.’
Good words, yes, nice words, the right words. However, any fool could see that a great big BUT was hanging over us like a block of concrete.
‘But?’ I prompted.
His hand clenched his beer bottle and it was a moment before he spoke. ‘I’d like a break.’
Bad. This was bad, bad, bad.
‘Could you look at me?’ If I could see him, it might be possible to stop this.
‘Sorry.’ He sat up straight, and the sight of his face, full-on, was kind of a surprise, because when you’ve been with someone a long time, you rarely bother to study them properly. He looked exhausted.
‘I’m not expressing myself well.’ He sounded miserable. ‘I’ve written it down in a letter. Can I show it to you?’ He slid his iPad across the table.
My angel,
I love you. I will always love you. I want us to be together always.
But I want something else. I need more.
I guess it’s because of Dad, then Gavin. All I can think about is the complete futility of life; we get one go, it’s very short, and then we die. I feel I haven’t done enough with my life. Enough for me. I love Neeve, Sofie and Kiara with everything I’ve got but I feel I’ve spent a lot of time putting them ahead of me. I want some time where I put me first.
And as I write this, it sounds so selfish, and I’m aware of all the other people who have terrible lives they can’t escape. I know you also feel like your time is constantly colonized and that you’re always last on the list. But I feel like I’m being buried alive and that I’ll burst if I don’t change something. This is destroying me and I can’t keep going.
I know it will hurt you and I hate myself for that, but I can’t stop my thoughts. I want to stay for you but I need to go for me. It’s like being torn in two in a trap.
Yes, it’s a mid-life crisis, but I don’t want a sports car, I just want some freedom. I really think this will be the best for us in the long run.
I want us to grow old together. I want us to be together till the end.
It’s not simply a sex thing. I know you’ll worry that it is, but that’s not the reason.
This isn’t a cowardly way of saying I want us to split up. I love you, I love our life together, I will always love you, and after six months I promise to come back.
Hugh
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Just as well I was sitting down because I was dizzy. He looked at me, his eyes searching, and I stared back, like he was a stranger.
‘Amy?’
‘I … God, I don’t know what to …’
‘It’s big, I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry. I hate doing this to you. I don’t want to feel this way. I’ve tried to stop it but it keeps coming back.’
I scanned the words again and they were even more devastating second time round – torn in two in a trap … like I’m being buried alive … six months … freedom …
Having his internal upheaval laid bare was horrifying – he was in a terrible state. And him wanting six months of freedom wasn’t a whim: it was a conclusion he’d reached after painful soul-searching.
He mustn’t go – that was clear – but I needed the details so I could manage them.
‘Where were you thinking of doing this?’ My voice was choked.
‘South East Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, those places. Back-packing. I want to learn to scuba-dive.’
The level of detail triggered another wave of dizziness. All that time he’d been going around like a silent ghost, I’d been solicitously enquiring if he’d like to talk, and he’d been plotting his escape.
And back-packing? He was forty-six, not nineteen.
Still. Lots of people were giving up their middle-aged, middle-class lives to relive their teenage years. Silver something-or-others. Not that Hugh was a silver anything: his beard and shaggy hair were dark brown, not a hint of grey, he was tall and fit and, when he wasn’t in the throes of anguish, he looked younger than his age. He could be a hit on the beach-party-under-a-full-moon circuit.