Because this. Exactly one year ago. Although we weren’t married. That’s poetic licence to respond to the prompt ‘The Signature’ in 1 000 words. The rest is real, but I’m over it, finally.
She was already up, curled on the sofa with her morning coffee and the Sunday newspapers when he emerged, hair mussed up and still blinking against the light. She looked up and smiled, watching him make his way down the stairs to join her.
“Good morning, Lovely,” she greeted.
“Morning.” Subdued. The rest she can barely remember. Only fragments came back to her later as she replayed the moment in her head, and then out loud to others.
He sat in the armchair opposite her, and launched, without preamble into what he had probably been rehearsing for some time.
“You might have noticed my behaviour has been a little strange recently.” (she hadn’t) “The thing is, I have lost my romantic feelings for you.” After that, if he said anything else, she didn’t hear him. But that was the gist of it, no explanation, no frills, no fuss. Just like him.
Interminable silence. He refused to fill it and sat looking at anything but her.
“And so now what?” What was supposed to happen next? What was she supposed to do now? He hadn’t elaborated on the consequences of his bombshell.
“I’m sure we can continue to live here in a civilised fashion until you can move back into your house.” Rehearsed. Cold. Self-protection.
They had been married and living together in his house for exactly 5 months, creating a home from his former bachelor existence and now he wanted her to move out again. Their short marriage, the idyll, was over. It was inconceivable.
She fled upstairs leaving him alone with his relief. Still in shock, she pulled clean linen out from the cupboard and hauled it into the spare room. It would be intolerable to lie next to him from now on, knowing he no longer wanted or needed her in his bed. Her bed, actually. She did a mental inventory of everything she needed to do in order to disentangle their lives, which had become intertwined over time, but pulled apart in a mere matter of moments.
She would need to tell her tenants and give them notice. How they loved her house, their first independent, grown up home after university. But it was her home first and their feelings were secondary to her desperate need to now be gone from this nightmare that was her world crashing down around her.
The next few days were a blur. He tried to maintain a veneer of civility and adopted the friendly tone of a house mate, asking after her day, enquiring if she was in for dinner. How did he even do that? She in turn railed against him, crying, shouting, pleading, wheedling. He was immutable and met whatever came his way with the same answer.
“I’m so sorry it came to this. It’s nothing that you did or didn’t do. I cannot tell you anything different. These are my feelings and I can’t help them or change them.”
What was incomprehensible to her was the apparent ease with which he accepted his own loss, never mind hers. There had been no signs, no conversations, nothing. If he had wanted, he could have voiced his doubts earlier and found a way to work whatever he was feeling out. But he seemed simply to have flicked a switch, turned off the love tap, and moved on, leaving her unprepared to face a future without him. Talk about the rug being pulled, the ball from left field, so many clichés but only one heart break, and that was hers.
She started spending the evenings packing boxes. He assiduously ignored the sounds of the reams of wrapping paper required to swaddle her breakable goods and of the lengths of sticking tape she ripped off the roll to seal up each box, meticulously labelled for its journey back from where it had so recently been transported.
Each time he walked past the hive of activity that was her furious efforts at getting out with her belongings, sanity and dignity intact, she threw a snide comment his way. She simply couldn’t help herself. There were no visible signs of disturbance in his routine or in his emotions. He seemed impervious to her distress and she couldn’t even determine if underneath he felt a shred of regret or sadness.
On the day she moved out, he got up early. She heard him moving around and thought to get up to say goodbye, but who needs a scene at 05h30 on what was going to be one of the toughest days of her life. She let him go, listening out for the final sliding to of the front gate.
And then the day came when he asked her to meet him at his attorney’s office. She knew from that moment that there would be no going back. His decision was irrevocable and there was no room for her in his future. He had excised her from his life with all the expertise of a surgeon lancing a tumour. Clean. Clinical.
When she arrived, he was already sitting at the attorney’s board table, holding his glasses up on his forehead, not necessary for the reading of the document she knew he was about to present to her. She had pre-empted his legal move and had drawn up her own version of the final chapter of their relationship. Why should he be in charge of the entire narrative, from the moment he delivered his coup de grace, to asking her to agree to his terms and conditions. Well she wasn’t about to make it that easy for him.
He stood up to greet her, leaning in for a conciliatory? affectionate? nostalgic? kiss. She ignored the gesture and sat down. She finally felt in control and slid her document across the highly polished surface towards him.
“One or the other of us needs to put their signature to one or the other of these documents and put an end to this.” He asserted.
“Be my guest,” she retorted.
