After Anna. Alex Lake

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СКАЧАТЬ up on dog treats, planning where they would take her for walks, and Julia did not want to have to deal with the disappointment that would follow if she had to tell Anna that the puppy would not be coming home that evening after all.

      Even more than that, Julia needed the puppy to be a source of nothing but joy and affection, because she was going to be facing her own custody battle soon enough and, if it was anything like Carol Prowses’s, Anna would need all the distractions she could get.

      Julia hadn’t found Brian in bed with one of his students – thankfully, since he taught in a junior school – or with anyone else, for that matter. If she had she probably wouldn’t have cared, which was exactly the problem. She liked Brian. She thought he was a good man and a good dad and a good husband – well, an OK man and an OK dad and an OK husband – but she just wasn’t inspired by him; no, it was worse, she wasn’t interested in him. He was like a work acquaintance that she knew in passing but didn’t really care about. The kind of acquaintance whose troubles you might hear about – did you hear Brian’s getting a divorce? – and think it was a shame but it wasn’t really any of your business. That was how she felt about Brian. He just didn’t belong in her life anymore.

      It hadn’t always been like that. For a while she had kept a photo of her and Brian on the first day of their honeymoon on her desk at work. They were on a white sandy beach on the Greek island of Milos. They had just finished eating a meal of grilled fish and the sun was setting behind them. She’d asked the waiter – a Greek fisherman who doubled up as a beachfront restaurant owner in the evening – to take it.

      Afterwards, they stood, arm in arm, facing the sea.

      This is heaven, she said. It’s amazing. The world is such a magical place.

      Brian laughed. You sound like you’ve been smoking too much dope. Like when we used to get stoned and stare up at the stars.

      But this is real, Julia said. It really is heaven. Our feet in the water, nothing to worry about for the next two weeks. And nothing to do right now but go back to our room …’ she kissed Brian’s cheek, taking note of his muscular arms and flat stomach, then ran her hand through his salt-stiff hair, ‘where we can see if we can find a way to spend a few hours of our honeymoon.’

      They were so at ease with each other then, so tight, so intertwined. But that was all gone now. Somewhere along the way they had taken different paths, started seeking different things in life. They hadn’t noticed at the time, hadn’t seen that they were slowly diverging, until it was too late. Looking back, Julia thought it had started around the time Anna was born. She was their only child, and the only one they were likely to have given how hard it had been to get her, and she deserved a dad who invented wild stories and made treasure hunts and drew and painted and created with her. A dad who injected energy and wonder and awe into her world.

      Brian loved her, of course he did. He doted on her. But he never suggested that they try anything new, that they go camping on an island in a lake or to the seaside or to see a play. He didn’t build an obstacle course in the garden or put on plays in an Anna-sized theatre or assemble a trampoline and hold the Crowne Mini Olympics. Instead, he bought her the same pink Lego sets and Disney-branded dolls that every other girl her age owned. He was content for Anna to live her life in the narrow suburban confines he had allowed himself to become enmeshed in. It was too normal for Anna, and, for that matter, for Julia. She wanted more, and Brian could not provide it.

      He was, truth be told, a bit boring, although Julia would never have put it that way to him.

      Or at least, she hadn’t intended to, but when she’d told him a month back that she was considering their future together – specifically, whether they had one – he’d not taken it well, and they’d spiralled into a vicious argument. She’d ended up saying things she now regretted, but once things are said they have a habit of staying that way, and all you can do is live with the consequences.

      You’re a bit, you know, a bit – she’d been thinking boring, but she managed to find a euphemism just in time – a bit mainstream.

      Her attempt to soften the blow didn’t work. Brian clenched his jaw.

      Mainstream? he’d replied. You mean boring, don’t you?

      Stupidly, with two glasses of white wine lubricating her anger, she’d nodded.

      She said a few more things she hadn’t been planning to share, like the fact that she didn’t want her life to drift by, empty of inspiration and wonder. Or the fact that she was sick of doing the same things every weekend, going to the same places every holiday, eating at the same restaurants. She wanted more, she wanted adventure and romance and colour.

      You’re just having a bloody midlife crisis, Brian said. I thought it was me that was supposed to get scared about life leaking away and spend our savings on a sports car and have an affair with a bimbo.

      And then she said the thing she really regretted.

      I wish you would, she’d said. At least I could find something interesting in a man who had some fight in him. You’re ready for the pipe and slippers phase already.

      What, he said, suddenly red-faced. What did you say?

      She repeated herself. That you’re ready for your pipe and slippers. Julia found it odd that this, of all she’d said, was the thing that he was particularly exercised by, but his reply enlightened her.

      Not that, he said. Not the bloody pipe and slippers. You said you could find something interesting in a man with some fight in him. So I’m not even interesting to you?

      Julia realized that she hadn’t been making that statement – it had just kind of slipped out – but now it was said it was exactly what she meant. So she nodded.

      You can think I’m boring, Brian replied, and lacking inspiration, or whatever it is you’ve read on Facebook that you should be looking for, I can accept that. What I can’t accept is you saying that there’s nothing about me that deserves your interest. Not your respect, and not, heaven forbid, your love, but your interest. If that’s the case it really is over.

      And she had agreed. She told him he had put it well. That he really understood the situation.

      Since then they had barely spoken. Brian slept in the guest room; she stayed in their room. On the few occasions they had been unable to avoid sharing words they had not discussed their future, until about ten days ago, when she had told him she’d made up her mind. She wanted a divorce.

      Which was what Carol Prowse wanted, and would get. The problem was that she also wanted her husband only to have custody of their nine-year-old son when supervised. Her demand was ridiculous and vindictive, and it would never be granted.

      Jordi Prowse had shaken his head when Julia said it, and now he was laughing.

      ‘Forget it,’ he said. His hair was greying at the temples and he had a relaxed, easy manner. ‘That’s simply unthinkable. There’s no grounds for that.’

      There was a long pause. Carol Prowse looked at Julia. ‘That’s not what my lawyer thinks.’

      That was what her lawyer thought, but it was not what Councillor Prowse wanted her to say. Julia glanced again at the time. Two fifty. She needed to wrap this up.

      ‘Given СКАЧАТЬ