‘Run out and bag someone else?’ I almost laugh.
‘That’s not exactly what I was thinking. No.’ He looks almost annoyed and slightly hurt. ‘I was meaning . . . I don’t know. Just that maybe you wouldn’t want it hanging over you. The reminder.’
‘And an annulment is going to make it cheerfully go away, is it?’
I take a sip of my drink, and stare at the nuts we haven’t touched. The word keeps writing itself across my vision. I can’t meet his eyes, even though I know he is waiting for me to. When we quarrelled in the past – though it was never over anything much – and I refused to look at him, he would tilt my chin with his index finger until I did. It was his way of finding out if I was really upset with him, because he said he could read just about everything in my eyes. I never really was, of course. I imagine him doing this now – and him smiling, and us acknowledging that we are fine again: that all this was nothing. But, of course, it doesn’t happen.
‘Isn’t an annulment a Catholic thing? So that you can marry again in a Catholic church?’ It’s snarky, but I can’t resist it. ‘I think your mother once talked of someone getting one . . .’
‘It’s not that kind of annulment. Not to do with the Church. It’s simply a declaration by a court that the marriage was not legally valid, or has become legally invalid.’
Not legally valid.
I only ever want one wife.
The words become bold and underlined in my brain. How impersonal we are. The way he’s talking, it’s as though I’m a solicitor he’s consulting. I can’t drag my gaze away from a fixed spot on the table. It’s perhaps the cruellest thing anyone has ever said to me, and the fact that it’s Justin saying it makes it agonising on a whole other level.
‘I thought it would be better . . . Sorry. If you prefer it, we can wait for a divorce. It won’t be complicated. It’s not as though we own property together, or have children.’
I look up now.
‘Sorry,’ he says again. ‘I’m not doing too well here, am I?’
I’m not even sure I believe him, and I have always believed him. Maybe Lisa put him up to it. I stare at his upper body. The wide shoulders. The blue-grey shirt, open at the neck, with the red tie yanked midway down his chest. He’d do that the moment he stepped out of his office. I once asked him about it, and he said, ‘Do you ever feel like work has got both hands around your neck and is strangling you?’ I’d smiled. I’d never felt like that.
‘Do what you have to do, Justin.’ I say it quietly, flatly. ‘Whatever you want, I won’t stand in your way. You’re the lawyer. You just let me know what you need from me.’
‘Are you sure?’
I nod.
‘Thanks. I’m . . . I suppose I’m grateful for that.’
And I suppose he’s finished now.
I stare out of the window, calmly picturing us divorced, or annulled. It actually doesn’t seem so huge. Mainly because I don’t feel married. Maybe he was thinking of me, not himself, when he thought of an annulment – to give him the benefit of the doubt. As if this isn’t ironic enough, tomorrow will be Saturday, a full month since our wedding day. The fact that we are initiating ending our marriage a month after we confirmed it is nothing to do with me, as I once – or a million times – feared. It’s a product of Justin’s complex moral character. His burden, not mine.
My mind skips forward to Christmas. If we do get this annulment, all this will be over for us. I’ll spend Christmas with my father and Evelyn, and Justin will be with the son he only recently learnt he had. This puts it into perspective.
‘Are you planning on marrying her?’
He looks at me, uncomprehendingly. ‘Marrying? God, Alice, I’m not thinking about that. At least, certainly not at the moment. All I can focus on is my son, and what we might be able to do to help him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wishing I could retract the question. I am sorry for everything. Even for the things I had nothing to do with.
He gazes out on to the street. Not a part of him moves. I study his handsome profile, imprinting it in my memory, thinking that this could well be one of the last times I ever see him.
He’ll marry Lisa at his first opportunity. They have a child. His Catholic values will see to it that he does the right thing.
But it doesn’t really matter. I think I realised that this afternoon. I think I knew then that even if he had wanted to come back to me, I wouldn’t take him back. And even if he asks to come back tomorrow, or in four years’ time, my answer will be the same. Sally was right. Justin is a good man, but he’s an emotional wild card. He has morphed into something else altogether, and it doesn’t matter if the old Justin I once loved could ever return; I don’t think I want either of them any more.
I look down the length of the bar with its long mirror and its wall of shiny booze bottles. There is some relief in my epiphany. I lost a husband and gained a father. And somewhere along the way, I made new friends. Evelyn said that perhaps I need someone less buttoned-down. If I am ever to meet another man I want him to be more like Michael. Uncomplicated and easy-going. Even if he carries sweaty sports socks in the pocket of his car door.
I look at Justin and, for the first time, I see the possibility that everything is going to be okay.
The few sips of alcohol have hit my empty stomach hard. ‘Shall we go?’ I say.
He frowns, looking momentarily confused by my haste. I suddenly correct what I concluded earlier. This will definitely be the very last time I see him, outside of, perhaps, a courtroom. And by the collision of messed-up emotions that register on his face, I can tell he’s thinking the same thing, too.