February 21 – Saturday
Richard was sitting in the kitchen studying the Times when she got home. He looked at her over his reading glasses, surveyed her as though she was an errant teenager who had outstayed her curfew. ‘The kettle is just boiled, if you fancy a cup of tea,’ he said, as though it was normal for him to be sitting in her kitchen at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.
‘Right, make a pot, will you while I run up and get changed,’ she said and she pointed towards the kettle as though he might need reminding which step came first. It was true, she couldn’t remember the last time he had made a cup of tea for her, never mind a pot. As she walked up the stairs, she realised he had washed the dishes that had been left sitting in the sink. Maybe he just dumped them in the dishwasher, but either way the effort represented something momentous, even if it was just a little too late.
In the bedroom she closed the door tight, caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror. She looked exactly like what she was; a woman who had just spent a passionate night in the arms of a thirty-year-old Italian stallion. It was a look that suited her. Even after she had a shower and changed into a cotton blouse, jeans and Birkenstocks, she still had a wanton look about her. It was as though Carlos had unearthed a new sexiness to her. With the glow in her cheeks from working outside and the recent changes to her diet, she was unrecognisable from the woman she’d been only weeks ago. She wasn’t all that much thinner, it had to be said, but it was something else. It was something that had changed deep within her. She dumped the towels in the laundry basket, and it struck her, it was something that made her an ample adversary for Richard. She threw her shoulders back and marched into the kitchen.
‘Tea?’ he offered in a meeker than usual voice, he was pouring out a steaming mug for her.
‘On second thoughts, Richard, no thanks. I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want your tea and to be perfectly frank, I don’t want you anymore either.’
‘Hold on a minute now, Amanda, I’m the one who has put this roof over your head. I’m the one who pays the bills. Without me, do you think you’d be having coffee with your friends at the Berkley every week?’
‘Honestly, Richard, I don’t care if I never see inside the Berkley again. As for your colleagues and their wives, they are not my friends. They never were, it’s just a shame I didn’t see that until recently. So I can survive without them.’ She didn’t add that she felt she’d probably thrive without them clawing at her to hold her back in the place they believed she should stay. ‘And as for this house and your bill-paying capacity, I could live with a lot less. Of course, I won’t have to. Any family court in the land will make sure I have plenty to live on and this house for as long as I want it.’
‘Don’t be like that, Amanda, we don’t want to go down that route,’ Richard’s voice held a nervous quaver that gave him away.
‘No? But you must have realised that by taking a mistress, it was something that might happen? Surely when you left here to be with her, it crossed your mind?’
‘That’s not how it was,’ he was almost squirming now.
‘Hah,’ Amanda felt a surge of temper rise within her. ‘Like hell it wasn’t. Richard, we both know that the only reason you’re back here is because things didn’t work out with Arial.’ She put up her hand to stop him lying. It was enough to be betrayed, but to be treated as if she was some kind of simple imbecile a second time round really would be too much to endure. ‘Even though you hurt me, Richard, I’m glad it happened.’
‘I…’ he looked down at the table before him. ‘I’m sorry, Amanda, I didn’t think… I…’
‘That’s the first time you’ve said sorry, Richard, and it’s long overdue. Not just for the betrayal, but you know, it’s only since you left that I realised you have so much more to be sorry for.’ She held up her hand again, there was no point going over it. It wouldn’t do any good trying to explain to him that she had let him stifle her. That each time he had shrugged her off, wrinkled his nose or compared her disparagingly to someone else, he had only made her try harder to be someone she wasn’t. In the end, that night at New Year’s the truth was that she really didn’t know that dumpy little middle-aged woman who looked back at her from the plate glass window. She couldn’t find herself in her own eyes anymore, much less in the clothes she chose, the colour of her hair or the mounds of skin that had accumulated all across her body. It took Tess and Robyn to show her that the mounds didn’t matter. What mattered was finding who was hiding beneath and then everything else would fall into place. And they were right, that was what had happened. Amanda had made friends, real friends, and through the galleries, once she started painting again, she’d make plenty more. With Tess and Stephen at her back, she was beginning to see the wood for the trees. She was having fun again, not just with Carlos – but with herself. She had walked into her beautiful bedroom this morning and seen a woman that she liked. She wanted to get to know herself better because she had a feeling that she could really grow to love that woman in the mirror.
Amanda took a deep breath, what she was about to do now was going to take far more courage than she’d ever given herself credit for. ‘Where are your bags?’ she looked wildly about the kitchen, but there was no sign of a suitcase or any kind of travel bag. ‘Did you bring your things with you?’ she asked him now, eyeballing him so there was no room for him to fudge.
‘Yes, I put them in the spare room, for now…’ he said almost against hope.
‘For now?’ Amanda threw her eyes up to heaven and darted through the kitchen door. She took the stairs two steps at a time and rounded into the spare room. She had the contents of the drawers emptied into his bag before he made the landing. The whole lot was packed before he could make an argument to stay. ‘It’s very simple Richard. This is my home now. This is the children’s home. We’ve told them that you’ve left. I’ve told them that we don’t love each other in the same way anymore. They understand that. They get it. I’m not having them confused for one thing and for another…’ She heaved the bag towards the door, took a final look about the room, checked she had everything in. ‘I don’t love you anymore. Maybe I haven’t loved you for longer than I realised when you left, but I’m sure of it now. There’s no way for us to go back, Richard, not now.’
She shook her head. She felt no sadness, only a tinge of regret at all the years she’d wasted being someone she wasn’t meant to be. She realised, had it not been for the fact that she hadn’t wanted him to end up with Arial, she might not have felt as much sadness before either.
‘And, in case you’re wondering,’ she said as she yanked the bag down each step, bump by bump, ‘this is not about Arial, it never was. I stopped loving you long before you took up with her, I just didn’t realise it.’ She pulled the bag out the door, noticed that she’d torn her lovely expensive wallpaper along the stairs, but really, what did a scrap of wallpaper matter in the greater scheme of things? She didn’t like it much anymore anyway.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying, Amanda,’ Richard said and he found his second wind. ‘You’ve been drinking? It’s affecting your decision making.’ She tossed him his jacket and half pushed him out the door. ‘You’re seeing someone else, is that it?’ He was clutching at straws, trying to make sense of all this. His voice sounded as though it was verging on tears as she banged the door behind her. She knew if she looked out at him now, she might just crack. He would look vulnerable and pitiful standing on the doorstep in the cold, his bags at his feet, his face shocked and his expression defeated. Amanda chose not to look out the window at all. Instead she made her way back into the study that had until now been Richard’s. She decided that she would make it into a storage area for her paintings.
It really was a little haven of a room. Admittedly, it was west-facing, cut off from every sound, with only the evening sunlight to illuminate it, but you could do so much with artificial lighting these days. She stood with her back to the door for a long time, imagining what it would be like to fill it with canvases. It would be cathartic, emptying every bit of Richard from this room. She would have fun putting her own stamp on it. First off, she would paint a nice big canvas for the kitchen. Something cheerful and bright? Or perhaps, something sultry, sexy – Italian?
Amanda threw her head back and laughed a throaty chuckle that was new to her. She felt alive, ready to take on the world and, with Tess at her side, she had a feeling it would be quite a ride.