One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [168]
He turned and crossed the room past me. I watched him go, sitting on the sofa, tears stinging my eyes now. He picked up his jacket from the table on the way, slung it over his shoulder and disappeared down the hall. Vulnerable. And therefore, lovable. I heard the bedroom door close behind him and felt very sad. I swallowed, taking huge gulps of air. But… oh, I was so relieved. I exhaled shakily. I had no idea I’d feel so relieved. As if a whole heap of coal had slowly rolled, gathered momentum and tumbled from my back. I sat a little straighter in the gathering gloom: listened as he brushed his teeth, pulled the chain. The mechanical sounds of a husband, I realized, getting ready for bed. Something I’d always wanted, very badly. The lovely, cosy familiar sound of routine, one that I probably wouldn’t ever have now.
And maybe his love would have been enough for a while. Maybe too, if we’d married, his ardour would have dampened a bit, which would have helped, I realized. Hal had campaigned for me all these years, but I wonder if he knew what it felt like to be championed: to be rendered so endlessly significant, the focus of such intensity. It made me want to wriggle out from under his microscope and roll off the slide. I truly believed he’d conjured up an idea of me that didn’t exist. I could never live up to his expectations. He’d become possessed by a fixed idea of me that had only grown in my absence over the years. I could only be a disappointment.
I took another deep breath and let it out slowly. And I fervently hoped he’d be happy. Meet someone. Céline hadn’t been right. I wasn’t right. But someone would be. Someone would make him very happy, and he deserved it. But I had a feeling it would be a while.
Sometime later I dimmed the lights and left a note, saying how much easier it would be if we didn’t wake up here together in the morning. I hadn’t cleared out entirely, but would be back another time for my things. I thanked him for everything he’d ever done for me, which was immeasurable, I knew. I wanted to say how I hoped we’d be friends for ever, but didn’t. I knew he wouldn’t take it as a compliment. Then I packed a few things in a small bag, left my key on the table in the hall, looked around one last time at the beautiful, spacious flat, but in a new, semi-detached way. Then I slipped out into the night.
Days passed. At home, on the other side of town, I pulled up my drawbridge and felt somewhat removed from the world for a while. I didn’t want to share my new single state with anyone quite yet. Not Maggie, who was seamlessly entangled with Ralph. Not Seffy, who’d be surprised and disappointed. Not Christian, who’d provoked it – a bit of me didn’t want him to know he’d been spot-on quite so quickly – and certainly not Laura and the rest of my family, who were still breathing a sigh of relief and thanking the Lord that finally, finally, the tricky sister, the difficult daughter, the one they worried about, had landed on her feet. Was going to marry sensible Hal. No, I kept my counsel. Which wasn’t hard, because no one asked. As Seffy had so astutely remarked, we consider our own lives to be endlessly significant, but others take only a passing interest. They have their own to be getting on with.