Sophie Kinsella - Wedding Night

“Yes! I can see that, darling! So … Daniel?” My smile has spread right across my face. Generally the rule is: the more I smile at Daniel, the more I’m feeling like stabbing him.

I can’t help surveying his features with a critical eye, even though he has nothing to do with me anymore. He’s gained a couple of pounds. New fine-stripe shirt. No hair product. That’s a mistake; his hair looks too floppy and wispy now. Maybe Trudy likes it that way.

“Daniel?” I try again.

Daniel says nothing, just shrugs easily, as though everything is obvious and words are superfluous.

That shrug of his is new. It’s a post-me shrug. When we were together, his shoulders were permanently hunched. Now he shrugs. He wears a Kabbalah bracelet under his suit. He bounces confrontation back like he’s made of rubber. His sense of humor has been replaced by a sense of righteousness. He doesn’t joke anymore: he pronounces.

I can’t believe we used to have sex. I can’t believe we produced Noah together. Maybe I’m in The Matrix and I’ll wake up to something which makes far more sense, like all this time I’ve been lying in a tank attached to electrodes.

“Daniel?” My smile is fixed.

“We agreed Noah would spend tonight with you.” He shrugs again.

“What?” I stare at him, dumbfounded. “No, we didn’t. It’s your night.”

“I have to go to Frankfurt tonight. I sent you an email.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t! You did not send me any email.”

“We agreed I’d drop Noah here.”

He’s totally calm, as only Daniel can be. I, on the other hand, am about to have a nervous breakdown.

“Daniel.” My voice is trembling with the effort of not smashing his head in. “Why would I have agreed to have Noah here tonight when I’m hosting an awards ceremony? Why would I have done that?”

Daniel shrugs again. “I’m about to go to the airport. He’s had something to eat. Here’s his overnight bag.” He dumps Noah’s rucksack on the floor. “All right, Noah? Mummy’s going to have you tonight, lucky thing.”

There is no way out of this.

“Great!” I smile at Noah, who is eyeing the two of us anxiously. It breaks my heart to see worry in his huge eyes. No child of his age should ever worry about anything. “What a treat for me!” I ruffle his hair reassuringly. “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.…”

I walk along the corridor to the Ladies’. It’s empty, which is a good thing, because I cannot contain myself any longer.

“HE DID NOT SEND ME A FUCKING EMAIL!” My voice rockets round the cubicles. I’m panting as I meet my own eyes in the mirror. I feel about ten percent better. Enough to get through the evening.

I walk calmly back to the office, to see Daniel shrugging on his coat.

“Well, have a good trip or whatever.” I sit down, unscrew my fountain pen, and write Congratulations! on the card for the bouquet which will be presented to the overall winner (that new spa — resort in Marrakesh). With best wishes from Felicity Graveney and all the team .

Daniel is still in my office. I can sense him lurking. He has something to say.

“You still here?” I lift my eyes.

“Just one other thing.” He surveys me with that righteous expression again. “I’ve got a couple more points to raise over the settlement.”

For a moment I’m so stunned I can’t react.

“Wha-at?” I manage to utter at last.

He cannot raise more points. We’ve finished raising points. We’re about to sign off. It’s done.

After a court case and two appeals and a million lawyers’ letters. It’s finished.

“I was talking it over with Trudy.” He does his hand-spreading again. “She raised some interesting issues.”

No way. I want to thwack him. He does not get to talk about our divorce with Trudy. It’s ours. If Trudy wants a divorce, she can marry him first. See how she likes that.

“Just a couple of points.” He puts a wad of papers down on the desk. “Have a read.”

Have a read . As though he’s recommending a good whodunit.

“Daniel.” I feel like a kettle coming to the boil. “You can’t start laying new stuff on me now. The divorce is done . We’ve thrashed everything out already.”

“Surely it’s more important to get it right?”

He sounds reproving, as though I’m suggesting we go for a shoddy, ill-prepared divorce. One with no workmanship in it. Botched together with a glue gun instead of hand-sewn.

“I’m happy with what we’ve agreed,” I say tightly, although “happy” is hardly the right word.

“Happy” would have been not finding his draft love letters to another woman stuffed in his briefcase, where anyone searching for chewing gum might stumble on them.

Love letters. I mean, love letters! I still can’t believe he wrote love letters to another woman and not to his own wife. I can’t believe he wrote explicit sexual poetry, illustrated by cartoons. I was genuinely shocked. If he’d written those poems to me, maybe everything would have been different.

Maybe I would have realized what a self-obsessed weirdo he was before we got married.

“Well.” He shrugs again. “Perhaps I have more of a long-term view. Maybe you’re too close.”

Too close? How can I be too close to my own divorce? Who is this rubber-faced, emotionally stunted idiot, and how did he get into my life? I’m breathing so fast with frustration, I feel like if I rose from my desk now, I could give Usain Bolt a run for his money.

And then it happens. I don’t exactly mean for it to happen. My wrist moves sharply and it’s done, and there are six little ink spots in a trail on his shirt and a bubble of happiness inside my chest.

“What was that?” Daniel looks down at his shirt and then up, his face aghast. “Is that ink? Did you just flick your pen at me ?”

I glance at Noah to see if he witnessed his mother’s descent into infantile behavior. But he’s lost in the far more mature world of Captain Underpants .

“It slipped,” I say innocently.

“It slipped. Are you five years old?” His face crumples into a scowl and he dabs at his shirt, smearing one of the ink spots. “I could call my lawyer about this.”

“You could discuss parental responsibility, your favorite subject.”

“Funny.”

“It’s not.” My mood suddenly sobers. I’m tired of playing tit for tat. “It’s really not.” I look at our son, who is bent over his book, shaking with laughter at something. His shorts are rucked up, and on his knee is a face drawn in ballpoint pen with an arrow pointing to it and I AM A SUPERHERO printed in wobbly letters. How can Daniel bail out on him like this? He hasn’t seen him for a fortnight; he never calls to chat with him. It’s as if Noah is a hobby that he bought all the equipment for and reached an elementary level―but then decided he’s just not that into after all and maybe he should have gone for wall-climbing instead.

“It’s really not,” I repeat. “I think you should go.”

I don’t even look up as he departs. I draw his stupid pile of papers to me, flick through them, too angry to read a word, then open a document on my computer and type furiously: D arrives at office, leaving N with me with no notice, contravening agreement. Unhelpful manner. Wishes to raise more points regarding divorce settlement. Refuses to discuss reasonably.

I unclip my memory stick from its place on a chain round my neck and save the updated file to it.

My memory stick is my comfort blanket. The whole dossier is on there: the whole sorry Daniel story.