Thank you for continuing to read. Happy Christmas and New Year.

Morticia had been used to luxury for so long that she had forgotten the unpleasant excitement of economy travel. She was grateful, finally, to sit down on the edge of the bed and take stock of her flight (both literally and metaphorically). She stared through the massive window to the slow moving, summer-stale Siene. Right on the banks, she felt this was the room in which she would make fateful choices and she felt that it had to be right. She was at a crossroads and she needed this space to become a sanctuary. The heat of Paris pressed against the windows, closing her in.

She placed her coat over the plushly, overly stuffed velvet seat and then lifted the phone, and giving into an instinct that was less than she expected of herself, she order the finest and most expensive red-wine on the menu.

Night fell over Paris and, curled up on the window seat, half a bottle less clear, she watched the river go by slowly and pondered the last 48 hours. It was nice for the first time in years to be able to know that no one, no matter how much she loved them, could walk in and interrupt her. She was entirely, thoroughly alone and she was reluctant to admit how good it felt. It felt peaceful and serene. She watched the spider in the corner of the window, labouring lovingly over her web, and thought of how difficult it always proved to build a strong home. At that moment, with that grotesquely ordinary thought, she felt entirely hopeless.

Of course, she was spending all this time pondering her loneliness to avoid pondering the cracks that had suddenly insisted themselves upon her marriage. She was avoiding them because she could not possibly face them in a logical, thoughtful manner. She was too embroiled. She wished fretfully that she could step outwith the rope-like emotional bonds that tied her and view it entirely logically. That was the problem with emotion; you could not side-step it in favour of logical thinking.

So Gomez, she thought, holding up her bottle and measuring the remainder, what do I do about you? What do I do about my best friend when he lies? Not to mention my husband. She sighed lightly and standing up, went towards the phone. Her fingers lingered over the receiver but they would all be asleep and she did not want to wake them. And she was too much of a coward to perhaps admit her sudden decision to run had been slightly out of proportion. Perhaps she should have given him a moment to explain himself but then again, unlike any other time, he did not come after her. Gomez hadn't come after her; perhaps that was what had cut her most. He was an Addams, she was an Addams, Addamses always came back for more.

Placing the remainder of the bottle down because she was a terrible light weight and no matter how morose she was feeling, sinking her soul into the bottom of a very expensive plonk was never the answer. So she made her way towards the huge bed in the centre of the room. She needed to sleep, if only for the break from her mind that was insisting on her.

She lay down atop the bed, staring at the rings upon her finger for a moment. They had decided to become married in such a flash that he had not had an engagement ring ready for her. As he perched at the crumbling edge of the freshly dug grave, on both knees, she knew that he was truly the most wonderful thing that would ever happen to her. Here was a man, begging to worship her. A man that had so suddenly became a part of her world he had winded her with his wonder. He had thrown himself in worship at her feet. "Of course we will marry," she had responded in the cool manner, then to add some injurious passion, "Mon amour..."

So of course, as Gomez always did, he went overtly over the top with the choice of the large black diamond on a band of platinum. She smiled at the memory; the simplicity of the attraction that had hummed between them then. The immediate and overwhelming physical attraction that, unusually, persisted until this day. The fun; simple and unadulterated. Hours spent at the edge of the swamp, days filled with shopping for torture devices. She wished for that time then, not because she did not want the children or love them, but because she wanted her husband more. She wanted things to be simple again.

Then her eyes shifted to her wedding ring – nearly abandoned in her jewellery box. Heat filled her body; thoughts of passion and dancing in dark corners, of scandalised PTA meetings and extended honeymoons. Not, by any stretch of societal conventions or imagination, a normal marriage then. Just yesterday he had openly fondled her in front of those Ohioans; yet he'd forgotten to be honest with her. Where had that stopped? When had their only show of love and romance been physical? Perhaps she had missed the cue in that regard. But no, she was too perceptive for that.

She turned on her side, wishing so much for the cold, icy quiet of their bedroom. She longed for his warm hands on her back, hip, shoulder. Now that she had deprived herself so fully of it, she would not have minded his constant pawing and requests for her to say something in French again. She wished for the screams deep in the dungeon. She wished for the cranking of the rack. He fed off intimacy, so did she. But when, she thought to herself, did that become the only thing we had? She knew, perhaps, that she was seeing this too harshly, and in fact, she felt she was indeed being overly critical but it was hard when your husband had forgotten to tell you the truth.

Then her eternity ring; a cruel joke now? She didn't know.

She turned over and lay on her back. Paris. The city in which they had honeymooned. Young and carefree – they had bought, with the trepidation of any young couple in their first, tentative venture, their first riding crop here. The leather on it was worn and cracked within weeks and, being inexperienced, she had failed to use it properly so it had weakened and had very little spring in it by their first anniversary. It had long since been retired in favour of a sturdier ancestor, yet she kept it in the bottom drawer of her dresser because she couldn't bare to part with it. That was, however discreet, how sentimental she was.

The plain and simple fact of it was that she loved her marriage. She loved her marriage more than she felt capable of loving anything. She was fiercely loyal to him, to the point of quiet hysteria, and yet he had not done that for her. She had taken his name, birthed his children, given over her heart to him on a platter. For Morticia, that had always seemed like the essentials of being an Addams; assimilate, procreate, calculate, give. She had wanted, so wholly, to give him everything and she thought she had.

She had been pitted against her own child for his affections and lost. She would not admit to anyone, aside from herself, that this really stung. That this was the sharp, biting truth of the matter. She had been pitted against his flesh and blood, and hers, and she had lost to her own child. It was bitter and childish but nonetheless it felt good to finally admit it to herself. She loved Wednesday but she loved him more. No, it was not maternal, but it was true and she always dealt in truths.

He had once told her he would die for her; she had told him he could do better than that. Because nothing was ever enough. She always pushed him, he always delivered. Not for the first time in her journey, the question crossed her mind; what could she have done better to make him deliver? Where, she thought ironically, had she gone wrong?

She forced her eyes closed, willed herself to sleep and to find an answer.

She woke with a Parisian afternoon and instinctively, grievously, moved across the bed to grasp his warmth. Then after the realisation that he was not there, and would not be unless she sought him out, she cried. The tears came easily; they had awaited their time in her life as everything did in their fashion, but they flowed unrestricted on to the pillow accompanied by breathy, painful sobs. She cried herself out in the manner in which she did everything, slowly and controlled, and then dressed for a walk around the city.

Thanks for reading. Please R and R.