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“We need to try. Didn’t we have something beautiful? Don’t you remember our vows? How we acknowledged that there might be ups and downs, but that our love would see us through? Is that not your view any more?”
“Well, that was what I thought back then. But I really can’t see how. I don’t know how to be happy any more, in this marriage. Not without you letting me in. Because you haven’t been. Neither of us have.”
She couldn’t have hurt me more had she plucked my heart out without an anaesthetic. My hands curled into fists at my sides with the physical pain that ripped through me. Not in the least because it was all true.
“But aren’t you willing to try? Just try and wait for me to open up?” My voice came out thick, like my mouth was full of obstacles preventing it reaching the outside world.
“For how much longer? Until we’re both old and grey? I can’t carry on like this, Jean. On a practical level. Something needs to change.”
“Just… be patient with me?” I said weakly, but I knew how pathetic that sounded.
“I have been. And if it was just down to me, this problem, I would commit, honestly I would. But if neither of us are communicating, and neither of us know how… that leaves us up a creek, doesn’t it? We’ve lost touch with each other. If you can’t let me in… what can we do?”
“The photo albums,” I said. It was the first thought that came into my head, and I paused to let it form for a second.
“The photo albums?”
“I’ll give you the photo albums. From the kitchen. You can go through and relive our relationship and… I don’t know, try and fall in love with me again? Try and re-connect with what made us fall for each other again? Those albums never fail to make me feel for you. Perhaps they’ll have the same effect the other way around.”
“And what would you do, while I’m doing that?”
The air seemed to be sucked out of my lungs. Tell her, I snarled at myself. Just bloody tell her.
“I’ll… work on myself.” My voice was faint now.
“What?”
“That’s all I can say for now.”
“What?”
I shrugged desperately. Petra squinted at me, then let out an incredulous huff.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before. You’ve never been this… explicitly enigmatic. You’ve always put up walls and blocked me off completely, without even the tiniest chink in your armour. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to seeing whatever it is that’s eating you up inside.” Now she fixed her gaze on me. “There is something, isn’t there?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“I knew it. And it’s something that can be worked through, yes? In terms of letting me in?”
Another nod. “When I’m ready,” I croaked. “Which will be soon, I think.”
“Okay.” She sighed again, then let a little smile cross her face. “Okay, that gives me a fragment of hope. Let’s try another week apart, then. I’ll look at these photo albums, and you… do whatever it is you need to do. Are you working next Wednesday?”
“Early shift. Like today.”
“Same place, same time? A week today?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Okay then.” She smiled again. “Let’s go get these albums.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
As we walked back through the village towards Oceanview, the scorching sunset painting the sky orange and blue, we tried to make small talk. I told Petra briefly about the robin, and she told me about going swimming with Cass and Heather. She also told me about the fantastic cooking skills of both Daniella and Coral, two of Heather’s other alters, until I was half-jealous, thinking of the ready meals that had made up a far too large proportion of my diet recently.
Back at Oceanview, Petra shivered involuntarily as we walked through the door. “This place feels unfriendly, all of a sudden.”
“Unfriendly how?”
