I returned home one evening to find Emily arranging the table in the kitchen, the soft glow of the pendant lights turning the room amber. I took her hand, asked her to pause and sit with me for a moment, because I had something urgent to say: I want to file for divorce. She lingered in silence, then asked why. I could not answer, and my mute stare sent her into a frantic frenzyplates clattered, she shouted incoherently, fell silent, and shouted again, until the night dissolved into tears that seemed to flow from a well she could not close. I understood her sorrow, yet I could offer no comfort; my heart had drifted away from her and settled on anotherSophie.
Guilt tightening around my chest, I slipped a settlement paper across the table, promising her the flat in Kensington and the BMW wed bought for £45,000, but she tore the document into shreds and flung the pieces out the window, then began to weep anew. I felt nothing but a gnawing remorseten years of shared life now felt foreign.
Regret for the years spent under the same roof pressed me, and I yearned to shed these shackles and soar toward a new, true love. The next morning, a crumpled note lay on the nightstand, outlining her conditions for the split: she asked me to postpone the filing for a month and, during that time, continue playing the part of a happy family for the sake of our son, Harry, who faced his Alevels. She added a bizarre requeston the day of our wedding I had carried her into the flat on my arms, and now she wanted me to lift her out of our bedroom each morning for the whole month.
Since Sophie entered my life, Emily and I had drifted into a mechanical routinejoint breakfasts, joint dinners, and sleeping at opposite ends of the bed. When I first hoisted her in my arms after that long pause, a strange turmoil rose within me. Harrys delighted applause snapped me back to reality; Emilys face wore a fleeting, contented smile, and an inexplicable ache settled in my chest. From bedroom to kitchen was a tenmetre trek, and as I walked, she closed her eyes and whispered, barely audible, Dont tell Harry about the divorce until the appointed time.
On the second day the role of the loving husband came a little easier. Emily rested her head on my shoulder, and I realised how long I had stopped noticing the features I once adored, how they had faded from the tenyearold portrait in my mind. By the fourth day, lifting her, I thought of the decade she had given me. On the fifth, a tender pressure in my chest responded to the vulnerability of her small, trusting body pressed against mine. Each day the act of carrying her grew lighter.
One morning I caught Emily standing before a wardrobe, bewilderedher clothes now seemed enormous, as if the fabric itself had expanded. I finally saw how gaunt and frail she had become, and why the weight I bore lightened day by day. The insight struck me like a sudden blow to the solar plexus. Almost instinctively, I brushed her hair, and she called Harry over, embracing us both. Tears rose, but I turned away, unwilling to alter my decision. I lifted her again, carried her out of the bedroom; she clutched my neck, and I pressed her to my chest as tightly as on our wedding day.
In the final days of the agreed month, confusion churned within me. Something shifted, turned upside down, beyond any name I could give. I went to Sophie and told her I would not divorce Emily. On the walk home, I mused that the monotony of married life does not arise from loves departure but from forgetting each others significance. I veered off the path, bought a bouquet of roses, and attached a card that read, I will hold you in my arms until the last day of your life. Breathless with a strange excitement, I entered the flat, searched every room, and found Emily in the bedroomstill, silent, her eyes closed.
Months had slipped by while I, dazzled by my love for Sophie, floated in a cloud, unaware that Emily had been battling a grave illness in quiet desperation. Knowing she had little time left, she summoned the last of her will to shield Harry from stress and preserve the image of a good father and loving husband in his eyes.
