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“I want to see Isaac.”
“He’s not here, and you cancelled yesterday. You can’t just turn up here and expect to be able to see him.”
"Why not?” Now it’s Elliot’s turn to sound surprised, but I’m sure the surprise is feigned.
“Because this isn’t what we arranged. We said every other Saturday and you couldn’t do yesterday which means you’ve lost your weekend.” I try to make myself sound confident, but I’m not feeling it on the inside. I’m very aware of Freddy upstairs. I don’t want to hurt Elliot’s feelings. Our marriage is over, has been for a long while, but I don’t want to offend anyone. In the same breath, I don’t like the fact he thinks he can just turn up here unannounced. He knows he doesn’t have any real right. I’m just going along with his request out of respect and a huge dose of guilt.
“Listen.” I try to make my voice stronger. “I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip, but Isaac is with a friend. He had a sleepover last night and he won’t be home until later.”
“Call him.” Elliot takes a step up onto the threshold and blocks me from closing the door.
“No, Elliot. It’s not happening.”
“Why are you being so difficult? I thought we were going to keep this allnice?” He mimics my voice. I did use the word nice, and I cringe now, a faint embarrassed burn stinging my cheeks. I was naïve; no separation and divorce can be nice. My realisation that living in a loveless marriage wasn’t the way to spend my life doesn’t mean that I get an easy extraction from the situation.
There were three of us in the marriage after all: Elliot, Isaac, and me.
I hear Freddy pound down the steps and have one of my moments of mental clarity when it becomes resoundingly clear that there were actually four of us in the marriage. Freddy was always there, lurking in my every waking thought like a ghost unable to pass on. Or one I was unable to let go of.
“What’s going on, Amber?” There is no disguising his dishevelled appearance, nor the hair standing at right angles, which I tousled with my fingers numerous times through the night.
Elliot’s eyes widen in surprise before a hardened demeanour spreads over his expression. “Wow, Amber. That’s fast, even for you.”
His words are a low blow. I know I’m no saint.
I don’t know what to say. There are no words forming in my mind. I’m paralysed. Stuck between a rock and a really uncomfortable hard place. Freddy speaks instead. Clearly he doesn’t need me to make introductions. “You heard Amber. Isaac isn’t here, so you should leave.”
Anger flashes across Elliot’s face and I pitch a step forward, trying to get between the two of them. “Freddy, please let me sort this.”
Elliot lets out a low hiss when he hears Freddy’s name. “Oh my god, this is just tragic, Amber. Did you come rushing back here to be with him again?” He gives his head a slow shake, like he’s trying to get the information to sit properly inside.
“It’s not like that, Elliot.”
“Like what? Like you used me for years and then at the first opportunity, the first excuse you had, you came running straight back to him? Shit, Amber, that’s low. I mean I knew you were manipulating me, but that’s low.”
Freddy combusts into a bright-red colour. “Don’t talk to her like that. You don’t have the right.”
Elliot comes right back into his face. “You don’t have a right to fuck my wife, but apparently you’ve done that.”
I gasp. My throat closing, and tears building. This is the worst situation I could possibly imagine. I understand all too late that my decision to end a relationship I hated being in, wasn’t clean enough. Nowhere near clean enough.
I turn to Elliot. “I didn’t use you, Elliot. I promise, I didn’t. I went into our marriage with my eyes open, hoping it would work. But it didn’t and I’m sorry. I am sorry for that.”
I know this isn’t enough but I’m scrambling around in my head trying to find any words that make sense. “If you will just agree to a divorce then we can both move on, live our lives, hopefully happier.”
“I was happy with you, Amber; you and Isaac. You made me fall in love with both of you and now you want to take that away.” There is a pulsing vein in Elliot’s forehead telling me just how angry he is.
“I’m sorry. It’s not the way you think.”
“Do you know how long it takes to get divorced now, after separation?”
I don’t. I haven’t actually looked into divorce at all. I was just happy from the moment I got in the car with my boy and my belongings and could finally breathe again. “No.”
“Two years.”
The words hammer inside my head.Two years? Two years?
That’s just under half the time we’ve been married. That makes no sense. He knows this. He watches me with a calculating gaze as I root about trying to come up with something else.
