Hard Tail(2)
Okay, maybe it wasn't just Jay's accident that set things off. After all, I hadn't even heard the news when my marriage broke up.
It happened on a dreary, grey Monday evening, just after Kate had got in from work. I'd been home all day, having recently fallen victim to the merger of my firm, Falstaff & Bird, with a much larger accountancy business. Merger being, of course, merely a polite euphemism for the Falstaff & Bird partners selling the rest of us down the river. Half my department had been made redundant when the two firms combined, and the rest-the lucky ones-forced to relocate to the Williams Way offices in Canary Wharf. Everyone I'd spoken to since the axe had fallen had sounded shell-shocked by the speed of it all and wiped out by the commute.
Kate, being a lawyer, was more or less immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Come to think of it, slings and arrows were pretty much her bread and butter. She was home late that day, and looked tired as she dumped her briefcase in the hall. I wondered guiltily if I should have tried to cook something-but then again, if she'd already been having a bad day, it would have been mean to make it even worse. "Want to get a takeaway?" I asked.
Kate didn't meet my eyes. "Just a minute, Tim. I just need to pop upstairs."
"Okay," I said, a bit puzzled-after all, we had a perfectly good downstairs loo if that was what she needed. I wandered back into our tastefully designed living room and closed up the laptop I'd been busy tweaking my CV on, then unfolded the Financial Times from the job pages. It wasn't like there'd been anything in there, anyway. Then I sat down on the cream leather sofa and wondered if it'd be worth turning the television on while I waited. The phone rang, and I leapt up to answer it-only to find it had stopped before I got there, presumably fielded by Kate. I sat down again and stared at the bookshelves on the wall by the conservatory. Not much there apart from Kate's collection of modern literary fiction, the books all strictly ordered by binding and most of them unread. She'd deemed my pile of old-fashioned crime paperbacks far too scruffy for the living room.
"Tim?" I jumped a little as Kate spoke, peering around the door as if it might not be safe to come in immediately.
"Expecting someone else?" I quipped weakly, because all this uncharacteristic timidity was starting to worry me.
"No! No, don't be silly-who else would I be expecting?" Kate was still as neat as ever in her pale blue business suit, chosen to match her eyes. She came into the room in little, bird-like steps and perched on the sofa next to me, smoothing down her skirt.
"Is something wrong?" I asked.
"No-well, yes, actually. Tim, I'm so sorry." She was about to cry, I realised with a shock; I could tell by the little sniffs and the way her eyelids were fluttering like a hummingbird on acid.
"Kate, what is it?" I was seriously alarmed now. Had her dad had another heart attack? Had she lost her job too?
"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "But I'm moving out. I'm going to live with-" She hiccupped, and I wondered if I should pat her back. Maybe it would be politer just to pretend I hadn't noticed.
Then I wondered why good manners seemed to be my main concern at a time like this.
"I can't live a lie any longer. Alexander and I have been getting, well, closer-and I'm going to live with him." She looked up at me almost defiantly, but it only lasted a moment. Her slim fingers kneaded one another savagely, and I noticed she'd taken off her wedding ring and the engagement ring I'd given her. It had always seemed too big and clumsy for her hands, but apparently that would now no longer be a problem. "You must hate me," she whispered, looking down once more.
"No! No, of course I don't," I said, struggling to work out just how I actually felt. I wasn't sure I felt anything right now-apart from a strange disconnect, a numbness spreading out from my core. Hate her? We didn't really do strong feelings like that.
I did hate it when she cried, though. Always had. I put my arm around her, which turned out to be a big mistake. She burst into huge, ugly sobs and buried her head in my shoulder. I patted her back-I had a fairly good idea pretending not to notice would, in the circumstances, be the polar opposite of good manners. What the hell were you supposed to say in these situations? "There, there," just didn't seem to cut it, somehow. "It'll be all right," was what I went with in the end.
It might have been trite but it had one positive effect-Kate stopped soaking my shoulder and looked up with an expression of outrage only slightly ruined by runny mascara. Thank God I wasn't wearing a favourite shirt. That stuff never comes out. "How can you even do this? God, it's just so unfair! Here you are, comforting me-and I'm about to-" She dissolved into tears once more.