**Friday, 28th October**
He left – and somehow became closer. Or perhaps it was me who finally saw him clearly? Christ, thirty years. Thirty. And all I could do today was stand there, fists clenched, shouting at him like a fishwife. “Don’t you dare lecture me!” My voice sounded shrill even to my own ears. “Three decades I’ve lived with you! And what do you offer? Silence. Always silence. Mum’s the word!”
Victor slowly raised his eyes from the newspaper, looked at me. His grey hair stuck up unevenly. Anger flushed my face. I knew another row was brewing. “Mary, love, calm down. Let’s talk properly.”
“Properly?!” I practically choked on the word. “When was the last time you talked to me *properly*? Or asked how I was? Or what was on my mind? Just answer that!”
He folded the paper neatly, placed it on the table. Stood, walked to the window. Outside, October rain drizzled against the pane. Maple leaves, sickly yellow, drifted down one by one. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “I don’t speak much.”
“Much?!” Indignation almost strangled me. “You don’t speak *at all*! Home from work, silent over supper, glued to the telly. I tell you about Margaret next door, her grandson getting into Exeter, and you just grunt, ‘Right, good.’ I say I want to pop to the cottage, gather the last tomatoes, and you say, ‘Do what you like.’ Am I your wife or a bloody coat rack?”
He turned. Tears pricked my eyes, but I stubbornly held them back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realise it mattered so much.”
“Didn’t realise!” A bitter laugh escaped me. “Vic, what *do* think about me? The cook? The cleaner? Or just… habit? Like your worn-out slippers?”
He opened his mouth, but I’d already spun on my heel and stalked towards the door. “Never mind. Don’t answer. It’s perfectly clear.”
The door slammed. Silence descended on the lounge, punctuated only by my own clattering about the kitchen, banging dishes with more force than needed. Then, finally, quiet there too.
He sank back into his chair, tried to read. The words blurred. Mary was right. He had withdrawn. Since Mum passed? Or earlier, after becoming the yard manager, swallowed whole by work?
He remembered meeting her. Mary Ann Dawson then, working in that charming little bookshop in Bath high street. He’d gone in for an engineering handbook. Her smile was so radiant, he forgot why he was there. Just stood gawping until she asked, “Can I help you find something?”
“Something interesting,” he’d blurted. “What would you suggest?”
“What do you like to read?” she’d asked, genuine curiosity in her eyes.
“Oh, anything. Technical stuff, mysteries, the classics.”
She handed him a volume of Thomas Hardy. “Try his short stories. Beautifully written tales about the heart.” He bought it. Barely read Hardy, consumed instead by thoughts of the girl with kind eyes. He went back the next day.
“Did you like it?” Mary asked.
“Absolutely. What else would you recommend?”
This went on a week. He bought books, invented excuses to chat. Finally plucked up the courage. “The Odeon’s got that new Ealing comedy. Fancy it?”
Mary laughed softly. “I was wondering if you’d ever ask.”
They married within the year. The memory of their first flat – a tiny one-bed on the outskirts of Bristol – was vivid. Mary hung curtains; he wrestled with shelves. Evenings spent at the kitchen table with cups of tea, dreaming aloud. “I want two children,” Mary would say. “A boy and a girl.”
“And I want a house with a garden,” Victor replied. “You growing roses, me tinkering in the garage.”
“And we’ll never, ever row,” she added.
“Never,” he agreed, kissing her forehead.
But children never came. Doctors offered pointless platitudes. Mary cried silently at night, thinking him oblivious. He heard, but felt helpless, tongue-tied. Gradually, they stopped talking about it. Stopped talking much at all.
Victor climbed the ranks. Mary moved to the school library. They bought the three-bed Victorian terrace in Kenilworth, then the Devon cottage. Mary grew roses. He tinkered in the garage. But the words between them grew scarcer.
Now, alone in the silent lounge, Victor realised the fault was shared. He’d retreated, and Mary had stopped trying to breach his silence. Thirty years married, a stranger in his own home.
Breakfast was icy. She served silently, answered monosyllabically. Victor tried. “Mary, love, let’s go to the cottage this weekend. Help you with the garden.”
“No need,” came the clipped reply. “I’ll manage.”
“Or the theatre? Heard the Royal Shakespeare’s new production is good.”
“Busy.”
He gave up. Work was a blur. All day, thoughts spun around his wife, their crumbling marriage. On the way home, he stopped at the florist – chrysanthemums, her favourite. Back at the house, key in the lock.
“Mary! I’m home!” he called out.
Silence. In the lounge, a note on the table. His heart lurched at the familiar handwriting.
*Vic. Gone to stay with Rose in Cheltenham. Need time. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Mary.*
He slumped into his chair, re-reading the words. The chrysanthemums’ delicate scent filled the unnatural quiet.
Anger came first. How childish! Storming off over nothing! Let her stay with Rosie, see how she misses home comforts!
But fury faded fast. The house without Mary felt like a museum exhibit. Silent breakfasts. Solitary suppers. Staring at the telly – it wasn’t life, just existence.
He started noticing things, details previously unseen. Mary’s worn slippers by the bed. Her hand cream on the dressing table. The wooden spoon precisely placed on the hob. Her book on the bedside table, bookmark hiding a dried leaf.
He phoned Rosie, Mary’s sister.
“How is she?”
“Miserable, Vic,” Rose answered honestly. “Crying most days. Says her life feels wasted.”
“Can I speak with her?”
“She doesn’t want to. Asked me to tell you not to call just yet.”
“Rose, what on earth do I *do*?”
“I don’t know, Vic. But she’s hurting terribly. And you must be too.”
“I am,” he confessed. “Tell her I’ll wait.”
“I will.”
Victor started talking to the empty house. Telling Mary about his day – the project delays, Neil’s funny story at the pub. Sharing thoughts he’d always kept locked away.
“Mary, love,” he’d say aloud over a cuppa. “Remember Jim Davies from Logistics? Turned up today looking utterly wretched. His wife left him. Said he took her for granted, thought everything was just… ticking over. Now he sees it isn’t. Told him – go, beg her forgiveness, talk
Outside, the morning sun was shining, and life seemed full of new possibilities, and as Helen squeezed my hand, I finally understood that true love isn’t measured in years but in the quiet moments we choose to truly see one another.
