AMELIA - BEFORE

Itold him I was sorry. I cooked his favourite meal. And after the night before, I could potentially be the mother of his child. Instead, he preferred to carry on lying to me. I wanted to follow him and be vindicated that my efforts had been appreciated, but he never arrived there. Instead, he drove to Filey once again. I wasn’t content with just watching the tracking on my phone, and I needed to find out why he was going there, so I chose to follow him. I remained at a close distance the entire way there, still tracking him on my phone as I drove. I could see him bopping his head along to some music or the radio, and it was making me seethe with anger.

Who can lie like that directly to their wife’s face? I’d given him ample opportunity to come to me with the truth, but he refused to. He pulled up outside a dingy set of flats and started looking around like he was there to meet someone for the first time. Was he cheating on me with multiple females? He saw a woman and pointed at her, and they both laughed and went inside. I imagined all the acts of depravity that were taking place in those walls involving my husband, and they were inside for at least an hour. The longer it dragged on, the more my anger turned to inconsolable grief. Had he been meeting random women on these trips to Filey to sleep with them? Was he trying to humiliate me?

I saw the woman leaving the block of flats with him, and she shook his hand, which I thought was odd. They were both dressed immaculately, and their exchange looked professional, more than anything. It dawned on me; she seemed like she was showing him around the place. Once Harry returned to his car, I got out of mine and slowly started following her. She got in her vehicle, and an estate agency was advertised on the back of it. I took a picture of the advert on my phone and watched her drive away.

In my ignorance of what had just happened between them, I found some relief. Maybe he wasn’t cheating on me this entire time, and there was an innocent explanation for all this. But when I really thought about it, the real explanation was far more threatening. Harry was here to find somewhere to live when he finally plucked up the courage to leave me. It wasn’t a heat-of-the-moment decision, and he was diligently planning it. It felt cold and calculated.

I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. I thought the night before was a step in the right direction, but Harry never intended to take any other steps. He was nodding and smiling and telling me what I wanted to hear, but behind my back, he was planning his escape. I was still standing in the alleyway that I’d followed the estate agent down, and I dropped to my knees and started sobbing. Once I’d calmed down, I made a call to the estate agent’s office. They didn’t take much convincing that I was his wife, and they confirmed what I thought. I didn’t know how to approach this with Harry. Why couldn’t he just love me like I loved him?

I needed a drink.

I didn’t know who or what they looked like, but there must have been someone else. Someone had got inside his head and contaminated him against me. Some jealous little bitch who wanted someone she couldn’t have. Was it Becky? Or someone from his past? I bet he even had the blessing from his mother and sister, and they were all conspiring against us to try and split us up. I touched my stomach. If Harry’s child was in there, I couldn’t believe he would so readily give it up to be with some unknown tart. He might have set up his little love shack, but I wouldn’t let him go that easily. I got back into my car and started the journey back to Manchester.

I kept imagining Harry sleeping with another woman. Or women. I wondered what it would be like to raise his child on my own whilst he galivanted off with his mistress. The farther I travelled away from him, the more my rage bubbled and boiled in the pit of my stomach. I began to hyperventilate, and I knew a panic attack was coming again. But instead of fearing it, I demanded it. That would show him if, on learning he was planning to leave me for someone else, I had a massive panic attack and crashed on the way home. I urged the panic attack to come on strongly and make me lose control of the vehicle, but it did neither. I couldn’t even get that right.

I loved Harry, and I wished he could truly see just how much. I decided to give him one last chance to come clean. I needed to show him what he would be missing if he walked out on me. I had to get back to basics and remind him why he fell in love with me in the first place. When I got home, I made dinner again, like the dutiful wife that I was. I knew he would keep up the fairytale that he had been to work so he would be back home at the usual time. I spent hours slaving away in the kitchen. The roast beef was cooked to perfection and exactly how he liked it. It wasn’t dry at all and even had a slight amount of pinkness in the middle. The roast potatoes were crispy and buttery. I’d even conceded to a long-standing disagreement and made Yorkshire puddings, which he incorrectly claimed were essential with a roast. I plated it all up, lit some candles, and waited for his return by the door with an opened bottle of beer.

An hour passed.

The beef had dried out on the plate and was stone cold. The Yorkshire puddings, once crispy and proud, had shrivelled up to a hard mass on the plate. I checked the GPS tracking on his car, and he was back at the office. He was probably with his assistant, the whore, “I was working late,” he would then tell me. I’d had enough of the games. If Harry wasn’t going to step up and tell me about everything that had happened, I had to do it for him.

I dispensed of the wifely niceties. I checked the time; he had another hour to make an appearance. I was going to sit Harry down and tell him everything I knew. Tell him that I’d been following him, and I knew all about the affairs. I was sick and tired of waiting in the background for him to have the courage to come clean himself, but against my better judgment, I wanted to give him a final opportunity to explain himself.

The food I’d prepared lay disappointedly on the dining table and the candle wicks had almost been drowned by the melted wax surrounding them. I’d put so much effort into it, and he had the nerve to stand me up. I did think about drinking the beer I’d opened for him and then drinking everything else I could get my hands on, but thought better of it. Harry didn’t know it, but that was his last opportunity to do the right thing. I sat at the dining table, swirling the beer I’d opened for him aimlessly, with one eye still on the clock. I promised myself I wouldn’t drink or get physical, but the temptation was almost too strong to defy.

Another hour passed.

That was it. Harry had missed my imaginary time limit. I didn’t know if he planned on coming home at all, and for all I knew, he might have dumped his car and be shacked up with some slapper in his new flat in Filey. I took the bottle of beer in my hand and threw it into the fireplace. It smashed onto the hot coals in a cloud of bitter-smelling steam. He’d made his decision, and so had I. If he wanted to leave me, so be it. I was done playing the laughably oblivious housewife. I left the meal I’d prepared to rot in the open air and made my way to bed.

I heard him come in later that night, he crept into the bed, and I could smell traces of the whore’s perfume that tainted his skin. It took everything I had not to leap out of bed and kill him there and then, but I kept my cool. I needed him to think I was none the wiser, just for a little longer.

“Where have you been?” I asked, pretending I’d just woken up.

“Sorry, I had to work late,” Harry explained.

I knew it. Cliché.

“You work so hard for us,” I swooned falsely.

“I forgot to mention that next weekend, we need to go back to Filey. Steve’s having a party, and I said we would be there,” Harry explained.

“That’s the same weekend we will find out if we are going to be parents.”

“I know, but he’s had it planned for ages. I’d just forgotten to tell you, Ames, I’m sorry.”

“It can double as a celebration! I’ll follow you up there after the appointment at the clinic.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. You should be with your friends,” I smiled.

He was perfectly comfortable blatantly lying to my face in our marital bed, knowing exactly what his ulterior motives were. I didn’t sleep a wink that night; I just gazed at a spot on the wall and started to plan my response to his betrayal. Every time I thought I was going too far, the scent of the woman he had been with all night wafted into my nostrils again, reigniting the rage. If I couldn’t have him, no one else could.

The following days went pretty much exactly how I thought they would. He kept trotting out the same clichéd excuses. He would say, “I forgot something at the office,” and then disappear for a few hours to later return with the same cheap stench coating his skin and hair. Or he would tell me he’s going to work and then drive back to Filey. Maybe he was going furniture shopping with his mistress, I thought. With each passing day, the more he treated me like a fool, the more crazed I felt. I’d removed the tracker from his car. I wasn’t interested in where he was going anymore. Only where he would end up. I continued to treat him like a king until the morning of the clinic appointment. I was even making him a packed lunch for the trip. He was blissfully ignorant of my plans, just like he thought I was blithely unaware of his.

We got to the morning of the clinic appointment; it should have been one of the happiest days of our lives. But it wasn’t. I had a splitting headache, and I thought I would vomit at a moment’s notice. The more I continued my devoted wifely routine, the worse I felt. Harry was upstairs in the shower; I could hear the water rushing down the pipe outside the kitchen window. I heard something, and something within me snapped.

It was whistling.

Harry was in the shower whistling some merry tune, which was beginning to rub me up the wrong way. Just the simple act of him whistling made me realise that it was the day he was going to leave, and that’s when I made my final decision. Harry should have felt exactly how I felt. He should have been mortified that our marriage was ending or desperate to reconcile things. But he had made his decision, and he was giddy about it. I knew what I had to do, but I’d take no pleasure in it,

I opened the kitchen drawer and got my tablets out; I could feel the anxiety burning a hole in my chest. The blood started to rush up my neck, and it swelled under the pressure, closing my throat just enough for me to struggle with every breath. I swallowed the tablets and closed my eyes. He was never going to tell me about the affair. He wasn’t going to declare his love for me. A child wasn’t going to fix everything. That day would be the last day I ever saw him.

He was going to leave me.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

From the cupboard I then retrieved the pestle and mortar in which I put two of the tablets. I ground them down into a fine powder and then added two more in. I continued the process until I didn’t have any tablets left. I took the bottles of water I’d planned on packing for his trip and opened the caps carefully. I divided the powder between the two and replaced the caps. I was just placing them in the bag when Harry arrived from his shower, ready to leave.

“Not having any breakfast, Ames?” Harry asked, deceitfully shoving a fistful of toast into his mouth.

“I can’t. I feel sick,” I breathlessly replied.

“Amelia, whatever happens, we will deal with it,” Harry started, “do you not want to try the old-fashioned way one more time before I leave?”

Not a chance in hell.

“Funny. No, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“I didn’t know I had that effect on you.”

“It’s just nerves about today.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to cancel? We can always go up together tomorrow. I don’t mind waiting.”

“No, it’s fine. I can’t bear to see Yvonne’s face if I robbed her of an extra day with her precious son.”

“What’s this?” Harry asked, pointing to the packed lunch I’d just prepared for him.

“Just a little survival kit in case you get hungry. A few drinks and snacks.”

“You really are the most amazing wife in the entire world, you know that?”

Why are you leaving me then? I thought. I knew that the right thing to do was to be vulnerable and talk to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to give him the satisfaction. Our marriage was broken beyond repair, and I knew that, but so did he. We were doing this little song and dance, both pretending to be happy but knowing the truth. He was positively bouncing around the kitchen like he didn’t have a care in the world. If I had been ignorant of the truth, I would have guessed it was because of Steve’s party or because he might have found out he was going to be a father. But I knew the truth. That day was the day he was going to leave me. I almost broke character but replaced my scowl with a smile before Harry caught on.

“I can’t have my man going hungry, can I? Or eating questionable service station sandwiches. When do you need to set off?”