The Good Divorce Guide. Cristina Odone

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       Chapter 2

      Jonathan blinks at me, mouth open. ‘Wh-wh-wh-what…?’

      ‘You heard.’ I stare at him across the table where we have shared meals, card games and late-night discussions about us, the children, our friends, the world.

      ‘You’ve been spying on me!’

      ‘You’ve been cheating on me!’

      I wonder if the children can hear us upstairs. But Kat is bound to be glued to her mobile, and I can hear the rhythmic thud of Freddy’s computer game. So I let rip: ‘You thought you had it all worked out, didn’t you? Me here, her there—you would have kept the whole thing going for years if I hadn’t caught you out!’ My voice breaks, but I go on: ‘How could you? Sex with someone in the office—it’s so…squalid!’

      Jonathan looks as if he’s about to shout back, but then he breathes in deeply and issues a slow sigh. ‘It’s not squalid. She’s not squalid. She’s beautiful, she’s kind, she’s…clever.’

      The word hits me and I jump back, as if it had been a splatter of grease from a frying pan.

      Jonathan sees my reaction and looks pained. He draws nearer, and starts to put his hand out towards mine, before letting it fall. ‘I’m sorry. I know this hurts. You deserve better.’ He shakes his head. ‘We’ve been working side by side for a year. She’s been involved in the hair follicle regeneration project. It was bound to happen.’

      ‘Bound to happen? You’re shameless!’

      ‘Stop it, Rosie.’ Jonathan speaks quietly, patiently, the embarrassed husband of a fishwife from the backstreets of Naples.

      ‘How long has it been going on for?’

      ‘I…’ Jonathan looks sheepish. ‘I realised she was interested in everything I was interested in back in January. But’—here he looks proud of himself—‘it didn’t start until three months ago.’

      ‘You’ve lied to me!’

      ‘I was going to tell you,’ Jonathan replies quietly as he sits on the bar stool at the counter.

      ‘What? That you’ve been cheating on me?’ I’m standing, hands on hips. ‘That you don’t love me any more?’

      ‘Don’t pretend you love me any more,’ he snaps back.

      I gasp. ‘How can you say that?!’

      My husband looks at me unblinking: ‘It’s true.’

      I swallow hard. I look away from the man in front of me. Do I love him? Of course I do. Don’t I? What else has kept me by his side for twelve years? I’ve given him two children and given up a job. I’ve put up with his parents’ dislike and his colleagues’ condescension. I’ve put up with his constant sharing of such riveting facts as an elephant defecates twenty kilos a day and the longest river in China is the Yangtze. I’ve reassured him when he thought his colleagues were being promoted above him, supported him when he had to work 24/7, cheered him on when he was ready to give up on his great invention, or buying this house, or building Freddy’s Lego castle. For twelve years I’ve worn pastel blue because it’s his favourite colour and Diorella because it’s his favourite scent. If that’s not love, what is?

      ‘Look,’ Jonathan brings his hands up to cover his face, ‘I don’t want a row.’ His voice is quiet, convinced. ‘We were both growing bored and giving less.’

      Growing bored? Well, yes, it can be a bore to be shush!-ed when we’re driving back from a party, while my husband yells ‘The Congo!’ and ‘Elizabeth I!’ and ‘Tin!’ in answer to Brain of Britain. And yes, Jonathan gets on my nerves when he turns our friends’ incipient baldness into an opportunity to plug his invention—‘I think Ted’s coming along nicely. He’ll soon be asking me about Zelkin’; or ‘Sam’s grown incredibly thin on top, have you noticed? I wonder if I might not tell him about Zelkin…’ And I remember how boring he gets when he insists on updating his files with newspaper clippings on everything from ‘Chinese restaurants’ to ‘children’s museums’. But it doesn’t amount to grounds for divorce. At least, not in my book.

      ‘We both deserve better,’ Jonathan continues.

      Do we? It’s true that when I spot our lovey-dovey neighbours, the Vincents, patting one another on the bottom or cooing at one another over a barbecue in the garden, I feel that I too deserve someone with whom I can be in tune, rather than in denial.

      Our marriage, then, could be better. Yes, I do sometimes think that the elastic has given way, and what was once a support that made us the best we could be, now hangs loose, feels uncomfortable and risks dropping altogether, making us look ridiculous and shoddy.

      I look down, to see whether my marriage is round my ankles.

      ‘You’re only cross,’ my husband is telling me, ‘because I beat you to finding the Right One.’

      I know when I’m beaten. I draw up the second bar stool and perch on it, across from my husband. ‘I trusted you.’

      ‘You still can.’ Jonathan looks earnest. ‘I’ll look after you and the children, no matter what.’

      ‘What does “no matter what” mean?’ My voice trembles: I’m scared now, as well as angry. ‘You can’t seriously be saying that you’re going to risk upsetting our family for a bit of nookie with some…some…slut!’

      Jonathan draws himself up, and a familiar expression, but not one I have seen him wear for years now, comes over him: ‘Take it out on me, Rosie. I understand. You’re angry and hurt. But don’t call Linda a slut.’ I breathe in sharply: Linda! The ‘L’! But Jonathan ignores my reaction and goes on: ‘She tried to fight this for months. She was ready to get out of hair and get into skin. She almost took a job in California to get away.’ He shakes his head. ‘She has been worried about you and the children from the start. She wants to meet you, you know, she wants to explain herself…Will you?’

      ‘Oh please, Jonathan!’ I cry. ‘You can’t expect me to be ready for a tête-à-tête with your lover.’

      ‘No, no, of course not.’ Jonathan looks sheepish. ‘Not yet.’ He shoots me a look. ‘But you will, won’t you, at some point? It will make everything so much easier.’

      I’ve suddenly recognised the expression that has altered Jonathan’s features: love.

      ‘What СКАЧАТЬ