Page 25 of Where Do We Go From Here?
‘From each other,’ he added.
‘Oh… But that’s all we’ve had, these last few years. Lots and lots of breaks from each other.’
‘Yeah,’ Harry said. ‘I know.’
That was the first time the thought crossed my mind. Almost instantly I found myself wondering how I could possibly have missed it. The late nights, the weekend disappearing acts. His lack of enthusiasm for anything to do with me. His shifty avoidance of eye contact, like right now.
‘You’ve met someone else,’ I said. ‘D’you want a divorce? Is that it?’
‘No, no, I haven’t,’ Harry said, still avoiding eye contact. ‘And I don’t know. About the… you know… divorce. Do you?’
‘I don’t know anymore either,’ I told him, and though I’d never named the idea in my head before, as I said it, it became true. I honestly didn’t know.
‘So maybe a proper break…’ Harry said. ‘That’s what I’m thinking. If you went off and did your thing for six months, then maybe by the end, we’d know where we’re at.’
‘Fine!’ I said. ‘I’ll do it alone.’
‘Do you re…’ Harry started, but then his voice petered out.
‘Yes?’
‘Actually, never mind. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.’
I didn’t believe him about that. I was sure that he knew exactly what he’d been about to say but had changed his mind. But I was annoyed enough not to want to know.
‘Have you decided where you’ll go?’ he asked instead.
‘Norway,’ I told him convincingly, the destination plucked out of nowhere – plucked from a silly meme I’d seen on theinternet. But Norway seemed as good as anywhere. The important thing was to sound certain.
‘Norway?’ Harry said. ‘Wow!’
‘Yes, I’m going to rent a cabin on a lake and spend six months clearing my head of all this nonsense.’
‘Wow,’ Harry said again. ‘Norway! I wasn’t expecting that.’ And for the first time in many years, he looked as if he admired me.
In the end, I didn’t choose Norway at all. But by then I don’t think Harry was that interested in my destination. By then he just wanted me gone.
SEVEN
JILL
Somehow, she’s aware of Jill’s presence before she sees her. The airport is surprisingly busy for November, and she has been momentarily distracted from the stream of people spewing from the arrivals gate by a particularly attractive man in bottom-hugging combat trousers.
She watches him petting his bulldog for a moment and wonders who he’s waiting for. You see so many lives in airports, she thinks. So many different ways to live.
She briefly imagines a pretty woman arriving who will kiss this sexy man – an image that morphs rapidly into kissing his unusually plump lips herself. Harry’s lips are thin and rather British and his kisses always leave her feeling a bit cheated, but this guy… well, he must be an Olympic-level kisser. Just as she thinks this, the man raises the dog so that it can lick his face – so that it can kiss him. Yuck!
She remembers Harry letting Whitey lick his face when they’d first brought him home for Fiona. She’d told him there and then that he needed to choose – told him he could kiss the dog or he could kiss her, but that he couldn’t do both, and they’dlaughed about that as though it was a joke, even though they’d both understood that she was being entirely serious.
He’d done his best to avoid doing it in front of her after that, but she’d caught him in the act once or twice. ‘You know he licks his arse with that tongue,’ she reminded him every time.
‘Yes, but their tongues are antiseptic,’ Harry always retorted. From such repetitious dialogues are marriages made.
It’s at that moment, as she’s watching the no-longer-sexy dog-kisser, that she becomes aware of Jill’s presence, moving towards her from the right. She’s almost completely beyond Wendy’s field of vision but there’s something familiar about her aura – or perhaps it’s the clip-cloppy, wobbly kneed way Jill walks. Whatever it is, without having seen her, Wendy turns, and there she is, her friend, grinning, dragging a little green suitcase behind her.
‘Darling!’ Jill trills, for some reason putting on a silly posh voice. ‘How absolutely spiffing to see you!’
‘Hello, you!’ Wendy says, opening her arms to accept Jill’s theatrical embrace.
