Page 67 of Perfect Wives
After my shower, I pull on my tartan pyjamas – the ones I bought in matching sets last Christmas and posed with in front of the tree. Oscar wore his for a week straight, but now they’re too small in the legs. Nate never wore his after that first photo.
Still, I like mine. I wouldn’t usually wear them downstairs. Choosing something more fitted – sexier – in the evenings, but after Nate’s rejection last night and everything we did earlier, I crave cosy and warm.
I check on Oscar, slipping silently into his room, tiptoeing over the obstacle course of books and plastic toys scattered across his floor. He’s asleep, duvet half-kicked off, a little damp curl of hair stuck to his forehead. I kiss the top of his head and fight back a sob as I tuck his favourite bear a little closer. I will not destroy his world. I will do whatever it takes to protect it.
I pad downstairs and find Nate by the living-room window with a glass of wine, lights off, like the night of Jonny’s death. I linger in the doorway, unsure and unsettled. We’ve shared our lives and our bed for over ten years, and I don’t know what to say to my husband.
It’s Nate who fills the silence. ‘I think it’s about time you told me what’s going on,’ he says without moving his gaze from the window.
My pulse stutters. How long has he been watching at the window? We were careful when we went to Jonny’s house. Beth parked her car outside the gates and we slipped through, sticking to the shadows. But if he was watching closely, he would’ve seen us. Anyone could have.
I force a lightness into my voice. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say, turning away on trembling legs. He isn’t the only one who knows how to leave a room. Suddenly, the desire to flee is stronger than the need to talk to Nate and find a way for our marriage to work. He knows something. I’m certain of it.
‘Georgie,’ Nate calls after me.
I pause.
‘I want a divorce,’ he says.
Ice floods my body. Four words. That’s all it takes to unravel everything I’ve worked for. My heart lodges in my throat.
‘I don’t,’ I reply, the words barely a croak. ‘I want to try. I want you to try. If not for me, then for Oscar. Please, Nate. We can be good again. I know it. I’ll do anything.’
I step back into the living room and curl myself up on the sofa. I wonder if he’s kept the lights off not to watch the neighbours but to make this moment easier. In the dark, he doesn’t have to see my hurt. Coward!
I try to reach for his hand, but he moves it away and sighs like I’m just another board meeting he doesn’t want to attend.
‘Do you know how exhausting your toxic positivity is, Georgie? Do you know how tiring you are to live with day in day out? The constant photos you want me to pose in. Then checking how many hits and comments. You’re obsessed with posting our entire lives online and going viral. It’s exhausting trying to live up to the expectations of who you think you are and who you want everyone to think we are. We’re just normal people. I want to be normal.’
‘I can change,’ I say, too fast.
He shakes his head in the darkness. ‘No, you can’t. And you shouldn’t have to.’
‘But—’
‘You live in a delusion,’ he says.
I grit my teeth to the hurt cracking in my chest. ‘That’s not true.’
‘It is,’ he replies. ‘You think you’re this amazing, superior person, but you’re just…so fucking ordinary. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re a normal mum. A housewife. Maybe if you’d accepted that…’ He trails off for a second; shakes his head. ‘But you think you’re some kind of super mum influencer who’s going to take over the world one day, and you’re not.’
The words slice through me. He’s blaming me. The failure of our marriage isn’t because of all the times he shuts himself away and ignores us. All the ways he shows he’s bored of us. It’s all me. After everything I’ve done. Every compromise, every sacrifice, every dark, terrible thing I’ve done to protect us, and this is howit ends? All I’ve ever wanted is to be enough. And instead, I’ve never felt more disposable.
‘You can’t blame me for all of this,’ I reply, forcing myself not to break. I’m keeping myself together with sticky tape, but it’s holding for now.
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘It sounds like it,’ I push. ‘Because what about you, Nate? You checked out of this a long time ago. You’re a great dad and a great husband when it suits you. But a lot of the time, you can’t be bothered. And you ignore us. Do you have any idea how painful that is?’
‘I don’t mean to ignore you or Oscar?—’
‘You stopped trying to see the good in me,’ I carry on while I still can. ‘You go out night after night instead of spending time with us.’
A niggling, awful feeling sweeps over me. Suddenly, I’m thinking of the moment in the playground when he was talking to Keira. The anger in her eyes. The hardness in Nate’s expression.
‘Youarehaving an affair with Keira, aren’t you? Admit it.’ The question is blurted and rushed. I don’t even know why I say it, only that even now, with my world falling apart, I can’t shake the feeling I’m missing something.
Another deep sigh sounds in the dark living room. ‘I told you, I’m not,’ he says.
