Page 3 of Not Moving Out
‘So, we keep living together for the next six months until Dolly leaves, and then what? You want to keep sharing like we’re back at university? A couple of housemates, and I’ll put a sock on my bedroom door when I get lucky? If you see a Marks and Spencer striped crew on the doorknob, don’t come a-knocking!’
I looked across at Freya, and she looked back at me with an expression she had worn countless times before. It said something like:Why do you always have to act like a total prick when it comes to anything vaguely uncomfortable, you ridiculous child?
‘It’s six months, Joe. I think we can manage it.’
‘But then what? Just because Dolly leaves for university, it won’t change our financial situation. We still can’t afford to sell the house, and living together but broken up will just be fucking weird and depressing like a sitcom but with literally zero laughs.’
I was waiting for her to say something about my last failed sitcom, but she wasn’t that petty.
‘We’ll deal with that when Dolly is gone, but can we, for the next six months at least, try and get along?’ said Freya, and then she added, ‘For Dolly.’
She was right, of course, as she generally was. We had to make the next six months work for Dolly’s sake, and then once she was gone, we would somehow try to sort out the rest of our lives, untangle the complicated web of our marriage, like unbuilding IKEA furniture without the instructions. It was only six months. How bad could it possibly be?
‘For Dolly,’ I replied, feeling a lump of sadness slide down my throat and into my chest, heading for the knot in my stomach because, despite my need to defend myself with immature retorts, I couldn’t help but feel the agony of grief at the break-up of my marriage.
Chapter Two
Freya
When I first met Joe he was a ball of creative energy, excitement and ambition. He was filled with an effervescence that made me feel more alive than I ever thought possible. It was as if he was the half of me I didn’t even know was missing. I realise this is obviously how the beginning of most good relationships start, but I genuinely thought for so long that Joe and I were one of ‘those’ couples. We had both found ‘The One’ – our soulmate. While other friends broke up with partners, moved on, were single and happy to stay that way or stuck in seemingly doomed relationships with partners they clearly weren’t well matched with, we had struck relationship gold. Freya and Joe – as Rick Astley sang – together forever.
‘I guess I’ll move into the spare room today,’ said Joe after what felt like an hour of silence, when it was probably more like two minutes.
‘I’ll make up the bed for you when I get home.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I mean, changing the bed sheets has always fallen to me.’
‘Not fallen, you’re just better at it than me. You always get it so tight. I’m better with the bins.’
‘Bins?’
‘That’s right. You do the bed and I do the bins. It’s how it’s always been.’
‘Is this how we’re going to delegate housework going forward?’ I asked because I knew this was one of the practical things we needed to discuss. ‘Who has always done them?’
‘What do you mean? Wait, if we’re going to get into housework, I think I need another coffee. Fancy another?’
‘I’m good,’ I replied, and Joe stood up and walked off towards the front of the coffee shop again.
While he was there, ordering himself another coffee, I took the opportunity to have a good look at my husband. He was still very handsome, and whereas other men his age had started to let themselves go a little, he definitely hadn’t. He was still in decent shape, his dark hair was thinning with age but that wasn’t something that worried me, and he had the same kind, soft eyes that had always pulled me in. I had no problem admitting I still fancied him – although I hadn’t told Joe in a long time and probably wouldn’t confide in him again – and any problems in our sex life hadn’t stemmed from the physical, but were always to do with how I felt about him. We had lost that closeness, the emotional connection we’d always had, and it was that which was the fly in the relationship ointment. From a purely aesthetic perspective, Joe Wallace still had it as far as I was concerned, but it was hard to jump into bed with a man you’d just spent an hour arguing with about the cost of a writers’ retreat in Cornwall, or why after almost twenty years of marriage he still insisted on waiting for everyone to get into the car and ready to go out, before he decided it was time to hoover up the mess that had been on the kitchen floor all morning.
Joe soon returned with another coffee, and sat down.
‘Right. Where were we?’ he said.
‘Housework,’ I replied. ‘And who’s doing what.’
‘I mean, can’t we just keep everything the same? Why do we need to suddenly start designating housework just because we’re separated?’
‘For that very reason. Case study. You’re in charge of cleaning the bathroom.’
‘Which I have done for years without a fuss.’
‘Agreed, but what if you start slacking and I have to mention it or do it myself? Then it becomes a problem, and it’s just something else for us to potentially argue about. I’m trying to make everything as easy as possible, Joe, so we don’t have any reason to bicker or cause a scene in front of Dolly.’
I looked at Joe, and I knew he didn’t want to be having this conversation and would, in fact, rather be anywhere else in the world than at that table with me. He didn’t want to organise housework, discuss the finer points of our new reality, but I couldn’t let him off the hook because I had been doing that for far too long. Joe’s avoidance tactics and lack of desire to actually sit down and fix things was one of the reasons why we were in this position at all. He had flatly refused to see a marriage counsellor when I had asked, and his continued habit of placing his head firmly in the sand and refusing to acknowledge reality was one of the biggest stumbling blocks when we had both realised our marriage was in serious fucking trouble. Joe’s tactic of repeatedly saying ‘I’m sure it will be fine’ obviously hadn’t had the desired effect.
