My former wife and I only ever got along at the very start of our relationship. Floating through a haze of chocolates and bouquets, we convinced ourselves it was mad love. But when we discovered a baby was on the way and our parents hurried us down the aisle, things began to unravel. We didnt quite hate each other enough for divorce after a year together and a son between us, but we could argue Monday, Wednesday, and Friday over next to nothing.
Strangely enough, I worked late most days, buried in numbers or lost in paperwork, while my wife drifted about the house with the child, and the time apart gave us just enough space to breathe. As long as we avoided bumping into one another too often and I spoiled our son when work allowed, things seemed just about bearable. Perhaps that foggy logic explains why, when our son turned four, we decided to bring another child into our surreal world.
The second child knitted us closer for a time, fashioning a quilt of busyness and domestic worries that wrapped around us, making home life almost tolerable. We lived each day tangled in milk stains and childrens giggles, and the thought drifted by that our family wasnt so bad after all.
But then the third child arrived, and I sank further into my work, stacking hours on my shoulders like damp coats. My wife agreed it was for the best. Wed never mastered the art of saving, coins dribbling between our fingers like drizzle, so in frantic hope our offspring would never feel lesser than their peers, I worked even harder. I spoiled my wife as best as a man distracted could, but apparently never enough, because one grey afternoon the divorce papers materialised. By then, our eldest was eleven and our youngest just four, and she announcedin the calmest, most otherworldly waythat shed found someone else.
I cant say it bowled me over. Id never been naive enough to think she couldnt find another man. With so much free time twixt the school run and nursery pickup, opportunity would occasionally drop in like fog over the Thames. While I lived submerged in work and thoughts only of home, she found her own dreams to follow. Still, her wish to leave the children behind with me struck me as peculiar and heavy, like a kettle filled with pebbles.
She was their motheralways arranging routines and school uniformsyet suddenly she declared herself worn out and began tossing threats in the air like loose change. She said if she had to drag the children into a new marriage, shed much rather send them off to an orphanage, or something similarly unthinkable. She and her new chap had plans for a fresh child together, and she no longer wanted those ones trailing behind, fading into the background like half-remembered dreams.
