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Liz lowered her voice. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this.’
‘Please, Liz…’
‘OK, but you didn’t hear this from me. There was a woman in the meeting, we do her accounts. She’s an investor in various businesses, including yours. Annabel Collins.’
Stella tried to keep her voice as calm as she could. ‘What about her?’
‘She took a call while we were in the meeting. I saw the name flash up on her phone. Simon’s full name. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but the way she spoke to him was… well, they clearly know each other pretty well.’
Stella leaned against the door frame. She felt winded.
‘Stella?’
‘Yes, sorry, Liz. I’m here.’
‘Like I said, I could lose my job telling you this, but I’d heard what happened and I just thought you should know. Please, please don’t say I told you.’ Her voice shook a little.
‘No, of course I won’t. Thank you. You didn’t have to do this, I understand that.’ Stella let out a long sigh. Just when she thought an end to the pain was in sight, she realised this might just be the beginning. ‘Thank you, Liz. And I really appreciate you telling me.’
Stella hung up and called Percy in. She closed the door and turned off the lights before heading upstairs, looking in on her children as she passed their rooms, all fast asleep.
Exhausted, she climbed into bed and lay in darkness listening to the sounds of the city until it was light outside.
27
‘And you’re sure this is what you want to do?’
Stella sat opposite her solicitor, desperately trying to keep her composure. She wanted to scream, Of course this isn’t what I want to do! I want my life to not have been completely screwed up by someone who, as it turns out, has betrayed me in more ways that I ever thought possible. Instead, Stella nodded slowly. ‘Yes, it really is.’ She’d gone to the office that morning for their usual Monday morning planning meeting, delivered the news about the potential new account to her team and then said she needed to be out for a couple of hours as she had an appointment with her lawyer.
Since finding out about Simon being in what she assumed was close contact with Annabel Collins, she’d not told anyone. Her instinct had been to go straight on to the book club group chat for some instant moral support or to her father or Caroline for advice, but in this case, she already knew what she had to do. She needed to divorce Simon. And she needed a plan. The night after she’d spoken to Liz, when all the kids were in bed, Stella had sat at the kitchen table and started writing that plan. Having spent so many months wondering about everything – where he was, who he might be with, even – she didn’t want to waste a second more waiting for answers that might never come.
The plan covered everything she wanted from the divorce, from the financials – the house to the business – and, most importantly, how she wanted them to manage parenting between them. Pages and pages of scribbles were slowly condensed down until she had just one page, with a Post-it note covering each area listing her wishes.
It was a brutal process; she went from feeling absolute rage to sheer sadness as she wrote, but by the time the clock on the wall struck midnight, Stella had it all down on paper. She had then opened her laptop and typed out a list of questions for her solicitor, emailed them over ready to be discussed further at their next meeting.
By the time had Stella closed her laptop, her head was pounding, her fingers weak but she had also felt surer about it than anything she’d done for months. She had gone upstairs, splashed cold water on her face, undressed and fell into bed. She had slept until dawn.
Now, here she was, in her solicitor’s office, the piece of paper on the desk between them. Her solicitor leaned over to study it more closely. She was similar in age to Stella, smartly dressed in a dark sleeveless dress, her blonde hair cut into an immaculate short bob, a slick of red lipstick on her lips. She pointed at the paper. ‘And you say you haven’t spoken to him yet, but you’d like me to contact him with notice of divorce papers. Do you have grounds for divorce? When we last met, he’d recently left, but if I remember correctly,’ she looked at the screen in front of her, ‘you didn’t know if or when he was coming back.’
‘Yes, that’s right. He left, he didn’t make contact, still hasn’t, but now I have reason to believe he’s with someone else. But I don’t want to divorce him on those grounds. Not unreasonable behaviour or adultery.’ Stella sat up and looked straight at her solicitor. ‘I’d like a no-fault divorce.’
The solicitor sat back and looked at Stella. ‘But from what you’re saying, you could have any number of reasons to divorce him. Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I don’t want to have to cite the reasons. We were fine, or so I thought.’ Stella clenched her fist. She’d run over this so many times in her head before coming today. She knew she had to see it through. ‘The point is I want this marriage to be over and I really don’t want to fight about it. However, I do want to see him to discuss this,’ Stella tapped the piece of paper, ‘so that I can tell him what I want.’
Her solicitor sat forward again, looking at Stella’s wish list. ‘And you think he’ll go for this. Put the business back in your name, put the house back in your name.’ She moved her finger further down the page as she spoke. ‘Agree to have the children every other weekend if that’s what they want too.’
‘Yes, I haven’t spoken to the children about that yet. I won’t until I’ve got an agreement with him.’ Stella dug her nails into her palm, reminding herself that as much as she might never want to see him again, the children would want to see their father. And that, Stella reminded herself, his reasons for leaving were for him to explain, not her.
‘And even though you haven’t heard from him for, how long is it exactly?’
‘Four months.’ Stella blinked. ‘And three days.’
‘But you think he’ll respond when he receives the divorce application?’
‘Yes, I’m sure of it. I want you to tell Simon he needs to contact me to have a meeting once he’s seen our requests. He needs to text me so that we can set up a time and it must be just us.’ Stella took a breath. ‘And could you also say that Emily says hello?’
The solicitor looked at Stella, one eyebrow raised.
