to keep up the bravado this past year has been difficult to say the least. My parents had talked about coming over to London to be with me, but I pushed them away, telling them I was fine. In my darkest moments I didn’t feel I deserved the sympathy. Madi was right the other night. Scott having an affair has taken over my life for a year – I can’t go on like this. I need to get my life back on track. I look at the clock on the wall and realize I should hurry. I feel a pang of longing and a nervous anticipation that I will get to see Mum and Dad soon, but I must nip back to my house to pack first.
As I walk past the twinkling lights that wrap around Madi’s stairs, I feel a small thrill of excitement thinking about my parents’ house. If you thought Madi and I loved Christmas, well, my mum is a force unto herself. You can’t move an inch in her house without tripping over a nutcracker. I can’t imagine what their house in Colorado will look like with the backdrop of snowy mountain tops and log cabins. A big grin takes over my features and I welcome the burst of joy I feel in the pit of my stomach.
Back at my house I’m going through my wardrobe grabbing every knit and woolly jumper I own to throw in my suitcase. I’m doing my best to stop my eyes from lingering too long on Scott’s belongings. The only time I have heard from him this past year is when he has texted wanting to pick up some clothes or items. I would then make sure I was at Madi’s so I wouldn’t have to speak to him while he collected his things. There’s still a fair bit here though and I have no idea what to do with it all.
That day I found the emails, I’d called him up on the phone, my whole body tense, straining to keep up with the speed my heart was racing. Scott had told me that his relationship was none of my business, that I was being too emotional and that it wasn’t all his fault. There was no apology, remorse or answers. When I had cried and pushed for more, he’d angrily, and with an irritated inflection in his tone, told me that he had been seeing his apparent girlfriend since February, before hanging up. He had been having an affair for eleven months and I hadn’t even realized. What could I possibly say to him?
Twelve months on and I still feel raw. The house does nothing to curb my state of emptiness; it simply exaggerates it. Even averting my eyes from the framed photos of us as a happy couple doesn’t stop me from feeling the pain. Being in the house without Scott, I can feel it – that loss, that numbness in my bones. I shiver, pleading with the voice in my head to let me get on with packing without torturing me with what the house once was. I don’t want to think about the lazy Sunday mornings we spent curled up in that bed, me watching ‘This Is Us’, Scott playing games on his phone next to me, in no rush to be anywhere, content in each other’s company. He’d been the only person I wanted to be snuggled up under the blankets with.
I hastily grab my glittery red Christmas jumper and stuff it in my suitcase. My eyes are getting a little cloudy. I’m blinking frantically to stop the inevitable, as I snap shut my suitcase and march out of the bedroom. Between the noise in my head and my banging the suitcase against every rail on my way down the stairs I don’t hear the voices that are outside the front door until it’s too late to hide.
All I see are feet – two pairs of feet – as they step into the house. I really, really, don’t want to look up.
‘Harper, I just came to grab a few things.’ I hear his voice, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. He usually texts first. He can’t just turn up like this, unexpected.
‘And you thought it would be a good idea to bring her with you, to see our home, our happy home, the one you and she destroyed?’ I want to scream those words to him, but my mouth is dry, and nothing leaves my lips. Has she been in our house before? The thought hasn’t crossed my mind.
I can feel his eyes burning into the top of my head. It sends a chill down my spine and it feels so alien. I have known this man for nine years, but in this moment, he feels like a complete stranger, like I’ve never met him before in my life.
‘You brought her here?’ I finally mumble, hating that my words come out so small. I look up. She is standing in the hallway looking around at our belongings. I don’t know her, I can’t say she is a bad person, but I don’t see empathy in her eyes. Her features are harsh, her lips pressed into a slight pout. She looks at me with a face that reads she is bored of the predicament she has found herself in and if I would just get out of the way that would be grand.
I hold on to the banister with my suitcase-free hand to avoid humiliating myself should my knees give way and I go crashing down the stairs. I grip the banister tighter – not going to let that happen, I feel stupid enough as it is. Scott looks well and their relationship is clearly flourishing; I can’t show him how far I have fallen.
Scott sighs and turns to hand her the keys to our front door. ‘Look, I’m not doing this now, Harper. It’s not about her. She’s none of your business. I just want to get my stuff. Speaking of which, we need to sell the house. Please don’t play innocent in all this; it has both our names on it. I’m paying for a house I’m not living in.’
Any trepidation I had before about going to Colorado and being so far away from Scott if he needed anything, if he needed to talk, is gone. I pause as I place my hand on the doorknob. I’m not sure why; maybe I feel for a brief moment that he is going to call my name, to apologize for the hurt that he has caused me, to maybe tell me that this is just a quarter-life crisis but we can work through it – just something that would make me feel like the eight years of my life spent loving him have not been a total waste of time, or worse still that in all that time he never truly loved me. I twist the knob. He doesn’t call my name, he doesn’t stop me, but before I close the door behind me, I look back at the man I once loved and take a huge breath in. ‘I would like a divorce,’ I say with all the confidence I can muster, then step into the freezing London afternoon, closing the door behind me as though I’m closing a book at the end of a chapter.
With the ice in the air, the tears are falling down my face, stinging my skin as the frosty nip meets them. Then the tears truly come pouring out. The fight in me has gone, yet my body does not feel deflated or weak. There’s adrenaline coursing through my veins, something that I haven’t felt in a long time. It takes me a minute to register that the tears that are falling are not the same tears as before. I gasp, touching the water on my face. They are happy tears.
The exhausting, draining fight for Scott that I have been clinging on to has been replaced by a new fight. With those five little words ‘I would like a divorce’, I feel the weight that has been dragging me down over the last twelve months has lifted. I’m not fighting for Scott anymore. I’m fighting for me.
‘Switch it off,’ Madi says in a stern voice. I’m trying as quick as I can to read the email from Lara, my boss, while Madi is breathing down my neck and mumbling about how mobile phones and Wi-Fi connections can affect take-off.
‘You were telling me the other day about how I’ve let my work suffer. This is work. I need to read this,’ I say, shifting in my seat anxiously as I glance at an air stewardess looking my way. I make out the words ‘original script’, ‘deadline’, ‘sorry to do this to you before the holidays’ and ‘last shot for the romance department’ before I hear a polite clearing of the throat from a shadow looming over me. I look up and smile innocently. It’s not like we’ve moved on to the runway yet. I’m not exactly one for breaking rules; I will turn it off.
‘It’s Christmas, babe, didn’t you get all your work done before the break?’ Madi asks, offering me a chocolate button as the plane rumbles to life.
I squint, looking past Madi and out of the tiny aeroplane window, thinking over my to-do list. Though I can’t
