Battle Lines by Andy McNab

Author:Andy McNab
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407069449
Publisher: Transworld

Chapter Twenty-one

THE LETTER HAD an official court stamp which gave the contents weight and finality. Jenny read it quickly.

‘Yes, you’re divorced,’ she said softly. ‘That’s all it says.’

Eugene did not respond. Outside, a horse wearing a blue rug suddenly threw up its head and chased a grazing horse wearing a red rug, teeth bared. The grazing horse jumped and ran off and the pair cantered around the field, nipping at each other. Were they playing or fighting?

Jenny said: ‘You don’t have to read this. I’ll put it away in the divorce file and we’ll be able to close it now. We can take it out of the filing drawer and put it in the cellar with all the other closed files.’

He nodded. He did not look at her. Her heart beat sympathy and sadness around her body. Didn’t his wife know how lucky she was to be loved by a good man like Eugene? Was she snuggled up with her tennis coach somewhere now, feeling twinges of regret for all she had given up and all the pain she had inflicted?

‘Eugene?’

‘Twenty-five years of my life. A closed file,’ he said at last.

‘Closed files mean you can open new files.’

‘Some people go out together and have a divorce lunch when their decree absolute comes through,’ he said, snorting at the impossibility of doing such a thing with his ex-wife.

‘You’ll be friends one day,’ Jenny assured him. Not because she knew this would be the case, but because she wanted it to be. She found the idea of a partner of twenty-five years turning into a stranger unbearable, no matter what they had said or done.

‘That’s rather hard to imagine. You know my financial position as well as anyone. Fiona had nothing when I met her and she seems to be rather well off now. I’ve had to borrow vast amounts to hang on to Tinnington. I had hoped it would stay in the family for my children …’

Jenny did not know what to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.

He stood up abruptly. ‘I’ll walk the dogs now. When I get back, I wonder if you’d be kind enough to have lunch with me?’

She nodded as if she would like nothing more in the world, while inside her nodding head she was doing childcare calculations, about the nursery, about Adi. The longer she was out of the house, the harder it was to re-establish a comfortable home with the children. After lunch she would pick them up and then there would be that moment when she walked in through her front door, Jaime crying, Vicky whining and a stack of chores waiting.

‘Are you sure you can organize your children?’ he asked.

‘I think so.’

‘I’ll try not to drone on too much about Fiona,’ he promised.

‘I don’t mind, Eugene. Say whatever you like.’

‘We’ll go to the White Horse, over by the river at Fulton,’ he said, walking out of the room. ‘Could you ring and book a table for one o’clock?’

‘I’ll do it now.

He paused in the doorway.

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