Oh dear!
Tomorrow is their 10 year anniversary.
She has been his wife for a decade.
There is one thing she's sure of, she still trusts him with everything she is.
She's calmed down now, a lot. Since last night.
Of course, by that point, he's gone to work and she is half way through the school run.
So it's only when she gets Hannah down for a nap later in the morning that she gets the chance to redeem herself to him.
She rings his phone. No answer. She rolls her eyes, imagining his stubbornness. Imagining him seeing 'Home' pop up on the caller I.D. and pushing the reject button before throwing the phone back down. She feels another pang of guilt at this, he's been frustrated for a good while now, and she hadn't made it any easier; choosing now to be clingy and needy, rather than his tower of strength when he needed it, for a change. She's not so sure she's ever been very good at the whole supportive wife thing…
She rings Leo, and when he does answer, she barely gives him a chance to say hello.
"Leo, Is Harry around? I really have to speak to him. We had a bit of a…tiff last night and I want to apologise. I know he had a hard day yesterday with the stabbing, I just want to say sorry and I can't wait until tonight-"
He has suddenly heard enough and stops her in her tracks.
"Nikki? Are you drunk? Harry isn't here! He's on call and we haven't had any calls out! And what are you talking about a stabbing? We haven't had any homicides for days!"
The horror that spreads through her is something she cannot describe. But she keeps it together, telling Leo she must have made a mistake and blaming it on baby brain, refusing to allow him in on the secret.
It's nearly her anniversary.
And she is acutely now aware that her marriage is falling apart.
From the moment she hears the dialling tone again, she builds herself up into a complete frenzy, one that was to last for the remainder of the day.
She goes straight from one phone to another, his. Innocently, of course, only to remove her missed call. She hadn't intended to intrude, or pry. But that was until she saw the unread message in his texts. She blinks back the sting in her eyes and takes a shaky breath of air, before selecting it.
Would be great to see you at the house today,
If you can get away.
Lisa x
For a while she simply stands and stares at it, not quite sure if she believes what she is seeing. Was this all in her head? Had the things those small minded women she called 'friends' messed her head up so much she was inventing marital chaos? This was Harry. Her Harry. And Harry wasn't like this.
Running a single hand through her hair, she stands and regains her composure. With an icy cool she hadn't realised she possessed, she quietly, calmly calls Janet, asks her to pick the kids up from school and nursery later. She's remembered the date. Yes, it's because she and Harry are going out, yes, they'll pick them up later that night on the way home. No, it certainly wasn't because they had things to speak about, things that could get so messy she didn't want her children around when everything exploded.
Then she pays a visit to Anne, dropping Hannah into her Grandmother's waiting arms and promising to be back for her later that night. She doesn't stay long. Keeping up the carefully constructed façade of carefree smiles and dry eyes was making her weary.
When she gets in, she finds she has a few hours before she suspects he'll be home. And she spends them in a way she hadn't expected to want to.
She sat, she stood, she walked, around every square inch of the house, conjuring up memories, occasions, times spend in each space, allowing the thoughts to soothe and calm her, before slowly letting them drift off into nothingness. It was almost like saying goodbye, to love, to family, to the only concept of home she had ever known, perhaps in fact it was.