Page 90 of Hot to Go

‘I don’t know what you want me to say? I am sorry. I am so incredibly sorry. It was a one-off thing. It meant nothing. I don’t know how else to say this to you.’

I sit there, trying to comprehend the words that are coming out of his mouth. It’s not like I’ve not heard them many times over the course of the last six months, but I can’t believe he has the temerity to say them now to my actual face. ‘What?’

‘It was just a fling that meant absolutely nothing. Some girl from the gym. What we have? We’remarried. I think we can salvage this. I love you. You never left my heart. You are all of my heart.’

He gets down on his knees in front of me.

‘Please, Suzie.’

‘Your heart?’ I repeat.

‘All of it. Belongs to you…’ he says, looking me in the eye.

‘Paul…’ I whisper.

‘Yes…’

‘Stop it, get up…you’re embarrassing yourself,’ I mutter.

‘But I love you…’

I shake my head sadly. ‘No, you don’t…’

‘You’re telling me how I feel?’ he says, a finger to the air. I immediately want to snap it off.

‘I’m telling you that I know that everything you told me in the last forty seconds, and everything you’ve been trying to text and email me for the last six months, has been pure lies. That woman who used to come to our flat? I found out from our neighbour that she used to come to our house every Tuesday at two o’clock and had been doing so for the last three months. That’s not a one-off thing, that’s a full-blown affair. In our house, a house that we bought together, a bed that we chose together, that I slept in.’

He stutters, trying to intervene.

‘And we were married. Were…’ I say in a sad and resigned way, exhaling slowly. ‘I loved you so very much and you broke all of it. You broke my heart. So you don’t deserve to have any of it, ever again.’ I flare my nostrils trying to keep in my tears because I promised myself I wouldn’t cry over him, I wouldn’t waste the energy.

He gets up from the sofa, pacing up and down the room.

‘So that’s it? Just give up?’

‘Are you seriously telling me this is my fault?’ I ask him.

‘You literally threw some noodles at me, you packed a bag and then you left. I never saw you again. You sent that looney-tune cousin of yours to get your things. Next thing I hear, you’ve quit your job and you’ve moved to London. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain, nothing.’

‘My cousin’s name is Lucy.’ I feel a mangled fury at how he can be so casually rude about my family.

‘She threatened to shit in my drawers.’

I bite my lip to hide my delight. ‘Was that going to be your explanation then? That little spiel before about me never leaving your heart and all that Instagram meme philosophy?’

‘We could have gone for counselling. We could have sat down and had an adult conversation. Instead, you ran away. From us, from all of it.’

I sit there quietly, my rage building to hear that I did any of this. That any of this was my fault. Because I ran to escape the absolute shame of it all. I did throw some noodles at him and then I went to a Premier Inn for a week. I spent a lot of time just crying on their very comfortable beds, trying to work out my next steps, my heart bleeding over a buffet breakfast. And in the middle of this I continued to go to work. Twenty-two faculty members of my old school went to my wedding. They danced, they ate, they gave us gifts. I didn’t want to admit to them that all of it was a complete sham. I couldn’t face it. So I quit. I ran.

‘You can’t just walk away from a two-year marriage. You haven’t even given us a chance. Is this something to do with that bloke by the school bus?’

I look at him, almost unable to fathom how he’s circling this back to me.

‘Charlie is a colleague – a Spanish teacher at the school. And so what if we’re starting something? I can date who I want. We are separated. We are not together.’ I’m also starting to realise he’s a million times more a man than Paul is.

‘We bought a house together. We’re still paying off the honeymoon. I can’t be divorced at twenty-eight.’

I exhale a deep tired breath. ‘Yes, you can.’