Cristina Odone - The Good Divorce Guide

Harper Press

To my parents, and to Edward and Claudia, for trying to make theirs a civilised divorce.

Cover Page

Title Page The Good Divorce Guide Cristina Odone Harper Press

Dedication To my parents, and to Edward and Claudia, for trying to make theirs a civilised divorce.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Acknowledgements

Cristina Odone

About The Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Five steps to take if you suspect your husband is having an affair.

1 Check the paper trail. If he told you that he was going to Woking for a conference on hair-regeneration therapy from the 9th to the 12th, but you found a Stansted-Venice boarding pass stub for the 11th-12th in his suit pocket, beware.

2 Study his reactions. ‘You’ll never believe this.’ I stood in the bathroom, brushing my hair and watching my husband in the mirror as I spoke. ‘Remember the Pearsons?’ ‘Doug and Ginnie?’ Jonathan continued methodically polishing his shoes. ‘Yup. She’s found out he’s been sleeping with their children’s French tutor!’ Jonathan looked up, surprised—but I could see no sign of a guilty conscience. ‘Poor Ginnie,’ I went on, eyes on my husband. Jonathan shrugged: ‘Yeah, she’s a sweetheart. Never liked HIM much.’

3 Provoke him. Saturday morning over breakfast: ‘Oh no, not another marriage quiz!’ I rolled my eyes, The Times in my hand. ‘OK, let’s see how we measure up. “On a scale of one to ten, how annoying is your spouse’s worst habit?”’ I studied my husband over the paper. Jonathan roared with laughter: ‘You’re not the one with annoying habits. I am.’

4 Make unexpected changes to your routine. Arrive home in the middle of the day. Pretend the film you were supposed to see was sold out and you came home early. Announce you’re off for a haircut but come back after a drive around the neighbourhood. If he gives any sign of irritation or alarm, you’re on to something.

5 Finally, taking a step I had promised never to take, a last resort I regarded as the stereotypical first resort of the paranoid wife, I check his BlackBerry for compromising messages. Even the most cunning man leaves some clues—like the ‘I wnt U2. Lst nght = hotvolcanicsex XXX’ that I found in the message inbox on Jonathan’s BlackBerry when it slipped out of his jacket pocket. I look at the sender: ‘L’. Who is ‘L’? Or is L for lover? lust? LOVE?

There he is, asleep on the sofa, The Lancet trembling on his chest, Newsnight on the telly. Here I am, standing beside him, wondering how to survive this revelation.

Jonathan, my husband of twelve years, is having an affair. After months of suspicion and covert investigation, I’ve found him out. I stand quite still as the answers to a hundred questions whirl around me: so this is why he’s had so many business trips recently. This is why he jumped when I walked in on him whispering to his BlackBerry last week. This explains his personal trainer, his new interest in what he wears, his locking his desk drawers. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to smash his framed photo of the 1989 University Challenge team, from which he smiles, bright-eyed and long-haired.

Yet even now I cannot quite believe it. An affair. Sneaking, cheating, lying, faking…Can this be true of my solid, steady, scientist husband? I feel as if I’ve stepped out of the house on an errand, and come back to find it burgled and vandalised. Nothing is how it should be any more. How can Jonathan be having sex with someone else when only two days ago we had a fabulous marital moment that had him whistling ‘Love is in the Air’ afterwards in the shower? How can he betray me when he told me only last Saturday that we should go out for supper, a film, anything, to have some ‘us’ time? How can he cheat on me, the woman with whom he’d once said he was sleeplessly in love? I’m not saying our marriage is perfect. We can be boring, tense, uncommunicative; but we’ve never, in a dozen years, lied to each other. ‘You’re the only person I can be one hundred per cent honest with,’ Jonathan used to repeat to me. Until now.

I don’t know where we go from here. Do I play dumb and let the affair take its course? Do I confront him? Do I fight for my husband?

Worst of all is the thought of the children. Kat, twelve, and Freddy, nine, were never to have a worry in the world. Jonathan and I were as one on that score, always: we wanted the best for them, no matter what the sacrifice involved. Even when, over the past four years, I’ve had a vague feeling that I’ve been short-changed; that instead of the best I might be stuck with an ill-fitting companion; even then, I never once voiced a complaint. How could I moan about Jonathan, or trade him in, or simply dump him and move on? To do so would have upset our family. And no amount of freedom was worth that.

I study my husband asleep on the sofa. A nice face, broad forehead under brown hair (no longer long, but still plentiful), strong jaw without a hint of a double chin. But the parted lips and low rumbling of his snoring give him a slightly comical air: a sex god, he ain’t. Which is why it never occurred to me that he would find someone else. Or that someone else would choose him or chase him. Wrong.

‘Ahhhhh…I fell asleep in the wrong position.’ Jonathan blinks and winces as he starts massaging his neck. ‘Will you have a go with your healing touch?’

‘Let me see…’ Reluctantly, I knead the flesh, wondering with a kind of horrified curiosity if I might find a bite mark or a scratch there. I’m surprised at the jealousy that fills me. This man’s MINE, I want to tell the woman who texted him her lusty message. Keep your hands off him, L.

‘Hmmm…you are a genius…’ My husband beams with gratitude.

‘You are tense.’ Worn out by his double life, I reckon.

‘Work’s been non-stop.’ Jonathan gets up, stretches. ‘Tomorrow’s Tuesday, isn’t it?’ He follows me into the kitchen in his socks. ‘I’d better go through the rubbish, just so there’s no bottle caps in with the glass.’

‘Good-oh.’ I turn my back on the fussy sorting that will now take at least half an hour. Jonathan’s big on recycling, and can spend hours discussing landfill, the merits of compost, and the logic of climate change.

‘Damn, I missed Newsnight .’ Jonathan places four bottles of wine neatly in a carton that he will bring outside tomorrow morning. ‘Tea?’

‘Yes.’ I boil the kettle, set out two mugs on the counter. We stand there, sipping from our Charles and Diana Royal Wedding mugs, surrounded by children’s school books, white cabinets half-hidden by Blu-Tacked schedules, a half-opened bottle of wine and a bowl of fruit. You’d never know one of us was getting hot, volcanic, adulterous sex.

‘Ta.’ Jonathan takes the tea from me. ‘New dress?’ He gives my new Whistles wrap-around an appreciative look. ‘Nice.’

‘Thanks.’ I feel flustered: Jonathan can look at me like that while seeing someone else?! ‘I’m off to bed.’ I climb the stairs.