Love You However: A Sapphic Novel of Marriage and Self-Discovery by Katherine Blakeman

Author:Katherine Blakeman [Blakeman, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Nine

True to her word, she did make the cake that afternoon. I’d hoped that baking would have its predicted therapeutic effects, but she seemed just as edgy afterwards as she had done in the car. After a quick dinner, she retired to bed, claiming exhaustion and repeating her need for as much energy as possible before the last half term.

I went up to bed a couple of hours later, and as I got in she rolled over and sleepily batted at me until she found my hand.

“Seven weeks, Jean,” she mumbled. “Don’t forget.”

“Seven weeks, you got it,” I whispered, parroting her phrasing from earlier, but that only served to bring the incident to the front of my mind again. This time, it was accompanied by a bolt of anger. Why should I have to sacrifice my wife’s love completely for the sake of her job?

Because that school and all its kids would be lost without her, my mind reminded me. And it’s better for you to be lost without her than for them to be lost without her. Damage limitation.

And then of course we were up and running again in the morning. It was Monday, so another six a.m. shift for me. Petra actually got up with me at a quarter to five – getting up together two days in a row was quite a feat for us now – and was still yawning into her coffee cup when I left for work.

The whole time, neither of us said anything. But it wasn’t an awkward silence, per se. We just didn’t have anything to say to each other.

I found myself being grateful for the morning rush of customers. They were mostly rude, harried, perpetually-running-late commuters due to our position just off a main road in the middle of nowhere, but in they streamed one after another, rinsing my kiosk of vapes, tobacco products and cashback, and running the coffee-to-go machine dry.

After the rush, however, the shop went dead and, of course, my thoughts came flooding in. Perched on the shabby little seat that by this point was more plastic base than sponge covering, I felt my eyes glaze over as I tumbled into myself, my back hunching as I ran through the events of yesterday.

I’d had a panic attack. I could see that clearly now. There had been a time just after Lyndsey died that I’d had them on the daily, but they’d always been full-blown, all-consuming, crying-and-hyperventilating types. Yesterday’s had been far more low-key – one in which I’d appeared perfectly fine on the outside, but had been screaming on the inside. I mused that in public, it was probably the best type to have. Less embarrassing than the few times I’d had a meltdown in public. The trigger yesterday had been cigarette smoke. It had reminded me of what I’d lost in my sister – and now my parents.

And Petra had noticed. Which was a good thing. Well, noticed afterwards, when the worst of it had been over.

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