“Even a dog wouldn’t touch your rissoles,” the man laughed, and tipped the plate into the bin. Now he eats at the soup kitchen I fund.
The plate of supper went into the rubbish with a white flash; the clatter of china on plastic rang through me like a key turning in a lock that led nowhere.
“Even a dog wouldn’t touch your rissoles,” he grinned, pointing at the dog, which turned its head away from the offered piece with a slow, theatrical dignity, as if it had been rehearsing that exact gesture for years.
Mark wiped his hands on the expensive kitchen towel I had bought to match the new furniture. He had always been obsessive about details when his image was at stake.
“Imogen, I’ve told you. No home cooking when I’m expecting business partners. It looks common.” He spat the word out, as if it left a rotten aftertaste in his mouth.
I looked at him: the immaculate shirt, the costly watch he never removed, even at home. And for the first time in years I felt no anger, no need to justify myself. Only cold. A cold that moved through me like a tide, draining the room of colour.
“They’ll be here in an hour,” he went on, not noticing the state I was in. “Order steaks from the Savoy Grill. And the seafood salad. And do something with yourself. Put on the blue dress.” His gaze flickered over me. “And tie your hair up. That fresh-faced look makes you look cheap.”
I nodded silently. Only a mechanical movement, as if my head were being worked by strings from a great height. While he gave instructions to his assistant on the phone, I collected the broken pieces of the plate. Each shard was as sharp as his words. I didn’t try to argue. What would be the point? Every attempt I had made to “become better for him” had ended the same way: in humiliation. He mocked my wine-tasting course as a “hobby for bored housewives.” He called my attempts at decoration “tasteless.” The food I made, into which I had put not only effort but the last of my hope for warmth, had ended up in the bin.
“Yes, and bring some proper wine,” he said into the phone. “But not the sort Imogen tasted on her course. The real thing.”
I stood up, dropped the shards into the bin, and studied my reflection in the dark door of the oven. An exhausted woman with eyes like burnt-out matches. A woman who had tried for too long to be a comfortable piece of furniture.
I went into the bedroom. But not for the blue dress. I opened the wardrobe and took out a suitcase.
He rang two hours later, when I had already settled into a cheap bed-and-breakfast on the edge of town. I had deliberately not gone to any friends, so he wouldn’t find me at once.
“Where are you?” His voice was calm, but beneath the calm lurked a threat, like a surgeon studying a tumour before cutting it out. “The guests are here, but the hostess is missing. Rude.”
“I’m not coming, Mark.”
“What do you mean, you’re not coming? Sulking about the rissoles? Imogen, don’t behave like a child. Come back.”
He was not asking. He was ordering, wholly convinced that his word was law.
“I’m filing for divorce.”
Silence on the other end. In the background I heard quiet music and the clink of glasses. His evening was moving on without me.
“Understood,” he said at last, with icy mockery. “So you want to show some character. Fine. Play your independence. Let’s see how long you last. Three days?”
He hung up. He didn’t believe me. To him I was simply an object that had briefly malfunctioned.
A week later we met in his office. He sat at the head of a long table; beside him sat a clean-shaven solicitor with the face of a poker player. I came alone. Deliberately.
“Well, had your fun?” Mark smiled his superior smile. “I’m ready to forgive you. If you apologise, of course.”
I placed the divorce papers on the table in silence.
His smile vanished. He nodded to his solicitor.
“My client,” the solicitor began in a gentle voice, “is prepared to be accommodating. In view of your unstable emotional state and lack of income.” He slid a folder towards me. “Mark is willing to let you keep your car, and to pay six months of maintenance. A more than generous sum. Enough for you to rent a modest flat and find work.”
I opened the folder. The sum was humiliating. Not even crumbs from his table—only dust beneath it.
“The flat remains Mark’s, of course,” the solicitor continued. “It was bought before the marriage.”
The business belonged to him. There was no joint property. “You didn’t work, after all.”
“I ran the household,” I said quietly but firmly. “I created a home for him to come back to. I organised his receptions, the ones that helped him close deals.”
Mark snorted. “Home? Receptions? Imogen, don’t be ridiculous. Any housewife could have done it better and cheaper. You were only a pretty ornament. One that has faded considerably lately.”
He wanted to wound me. And he did. But not in the way he intended. Instead of tears, anger began to boil inside me.
“I’m not signing that.” I pushed the folder away.
“You don’t understand,” Mark cut in, leaning forward. His eyes narrowed. “This is not an offer.”
It was an ultimatum. Accept it and leave quietly, or get nothing. “I have the best lawyers. They will prove that you lived off me. Like a parasite.”
He savoured the word.
“Without me you are nothing. A zero. You can’t even fry rissoles properly. How do you expect to stand against me in court?”
I looked at him. And for the first time in years I saw him not as his wife, but as a stranger. His face had become a stranger’s face, the features rearranged by a dream’s indifferent hand.
And I saw no strong man, only a frightened, self-infatuated boy, panicking at the thought of losing control.
“We’ll see each other in court, Mark. And yes, I won’t be coming alone.”
I stood up and walked out, feeling his burning, hate-filled gaze on my back.
The door closed behind me and cut off the past like a dropped curtain. I knew he would not take it lying down. He would try to destroy me. But for the first time in my life, I was ready.
The trial moved at the speed of a nightmare—too fast, too slow, all at once—and it was humiliating. Mark’s lawyers presented me as an infantile parasite taking revenge after a quarrel about a “failed dinner.”
My solicitor—an older, quiet woman—did not argue. She simply put forward the evidence: receipts, bank statements, records.
The same receipts for the ingredients of those “unsuitable” dinners; the bills for dry-cleaning his suits before important meetings; the tickets for events where he networked, paid for by me.
All of it was meticulous, dull work. It was not meant to prove that I had contributed to the business—only one thing: I was no parasite. I was not.
