ML Roberts - The Wife – Part One

‘I’m sorry, Ellie.’

I know he is. I’m sorry too.

I turn around and pull him to me by his shirt collar, quickly kissing his slightly open mouth.

‘Go see Liam. Go on. Go plan your squash strategy or whatever it is you do before one of your games. I’m going to finish getting ready. I need to stop by the spa later, make sure everything’s going to plan.’ I smile and I cup his cheek and kiss him again, stroking his skin with my fingertips. ‘Go. I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

I let go of him and I watch as he leaves the room, waiting until I hear both his and Liam’s voices echo up from the kitchen downstairs before I head into the en suite.

I’ve got a busy day ahead. And maybe that’s just as well.

Long hours are something Michael and I are used to. Sometimes we can be nothing more than passing ships in the night. Days can blend into weeks before we realise we haven’t spent any real time together. We both love our work. We both need our work, now more than ever. But over the past few months the hours we work are increasing, the days are becoming longer. Our life, it’s changed. It had to. We changed. What happened, it was always going to change us. It would have changed anybody, but for us – Ellie and Michael Travers, the perfect couple, because that’s how people saw us, how people still want to see us – for us, those changes are something I’m still trying to cope with.

I switch on the kettle and start laying out the breakfast things just as Michael comes into the kitchen, his head down as he sorts through the post.

‘Anything for me?’ I ask, leaning back against the counter, wrapping my arms tighter around myself.

He looks up, his eyes meeting mine for the briefest of seconds before his gaze drops back down to the letters in his hand. He shakes his head, keeping his eyes down, and I drop my own gaze, catching a glimpse of my bare feet, the shocking-pink nail polish I’m wearing – courtesy of some last-minute product testing yesterday at the spa – a sharp contrast against the dark tiled floor. And as I raise my head and check the time I realise I’m running late. I need to be at the spa in an hour and I’m not dressed yet.

I pour myself a mug of tea and make to leave, but I stop as I reach the door. I turn back around to face Michael but his head is still down. He’s checking over some papers he’s just taken from his briefcase. This is what it’s like now. Sometimes. The silences, the heavy atmosphere. Painful memories engulf us, both of us, constantly, but we’re finding different ways of dealing with them. I still need to talk about what happened, but Michael thinks we’ve talked enough. He’s wrong.

‘Will you be home for dinner tonight?’

He slowly raises his head, his eyes once more meeting mine, and he holds my gaze a little longer this time, but not long enough to make me feel as though anything’s changing. We haven’t really moved forward, we haven’t yet got past what happened. We’re not the same people we used to be, not behind closed doors anyway. We used to be happy, we used to be close, we had everything. Now I don’t know what we have any more.

‘I’m not sure. I have a department meeting at five, and then evening tutorials. I’ll probably just grab something in the pub. I said I’d meet Liam for a quick drink after work, so …’

He trails off and looks down again. That’s it. He’s severed that communication, and I watch him slide those papers back into his briefcase, slip on his jacket, grab his keys from the dresser. As he heads towards the doorway I’m still standing in. I feel my stomach jolt as he comes closer, and he stops, turning his head to look at me.

‘I’ll try not to be too late.’

I nod, and I take the small smile he gives me, close my eyes as he leans in to kiss my cheek. And I watch as he strides down the hall, without looking back.

It wasn’t always this way. Not so long ago we could barely make it out of the house on time because morning sex and breakfast together was an all-important part of our day. We had it all, we were that couple. Ellie and Michael Travers. Happy. Successful. So fucking perfect that our friends used to tease us incessantly, claim that nobody could ever live up to what we were. Or so we thought.

I glance at the clock again. I’m pushing it, timewise. I really need to get ready, so I head upstairs, but I’m only halfway up when I stop, turn around and come back down. I need to check that Michael locked the door behind him. Our home, it’s quite isolated. A converted barn set in its own grounds, our nearest neighbours are within sight but not walking distance. It’s all very private.

So, I just need to check that Michael locked that door. But of course he’s locked it. He’s as paranoid as I am. Now.

If somebody had told my thirteen-year-old self that one day I’d be a successful businesswoman running three beauty salons and a day spa; that I’d be married to a gorgeous, brilliant professor, I’d have laughed in their faces. My thirteen-year-old self had no ambition. No prospects.

I was brought up by my grandparents in a small mining village in County Durham. The kind of place where everyone knows everybody and nobody’s business is private. Mine certainly wasn’t.

I’d just turned thirteen when I went to live with them, an angry, disillusioned teenager who fought against everything. I had my reasons.

People didn’t think I’d amount to much, not even my own family. They assumed I was too damaged, and maybe I was. I certainly spent the first few months I was with them proving everyone right. I didn’t try hard at school. I didn’t think there was any point. My grandparents had done okay, they didn’t have much but they had enough. They’d spent their life ‘getting by’. Managing. And for them that was fine. For a while I thought that was fine, too, and nobody encouraged me to try otherwise.

By the time I’d turned fifteen I’d realised I wanted more than that. ‘Getting by’ wasn’t enough. I wanted to buck the family trend and be someone. Do something with my life. I wanted to show the small, insular community I was growing up in that the damaged kid I once was could be something more than just another casualty of a fucked-up family.

I stared working harder, grew a thicker, tougher skin, learnt how to look after myself. I channeled all my anger and frustration into proving everyone wrong. Nobody thought I could do it. But I did, do it. I became someone. I did something. And I did it all on my own. When nobody else believed in me, I had to. Michael believed in me. Michael was the icing on the cake, so to speak. To have a man like him – a handsome, clever, successful man, from a background the complete polar opposite of mine; to have a man like him fall in love with me, that’s when my world became complete. But now – now my world is becoming increasingly less certain. My world is changing. My world has changed …

‘It looks like you’re all set for the opening on Friday, then.’

I swing around at the sound of his voice, my heart beating hard against my ribs. I’d been so deep in thought there, he gave me a shock. ‘Jesus, Liam, don’t creep up on me like that! What are you doing here anyway?’

‘I’m on my way to a meeting in Newcastle, so, I thought I’d pop in, see how it was all going.’

I walk back behind the front reception desk and switch on the computer. I need to check all our booking systems are up and running before we open the spa in just a couple of days’ time.

‘It’s all going fine.’ I raise my gaze and smile slightly, but I’m too busy for his company this morning. I can do without any more distractions. I already have enough.