Can I Give My Husband Back? by Kristen Bailey

Author:Kristen Bailey [Bailey, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838882389
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2020-06-18T20:00:00+00:00

Twelve

653 days since Simon walked out of my parents’ house, his nose held together with tampons

It was 2014. We had just come off a private tour of St Catherine’s School where a woman called Irene had shown us round. It had been unlike any school I’d ever seen, not just in terms of the facilities and class sizes but simple things like patches of emerald-green lawn that looked like they’d been cut with scissors. Simon did what he normally did and strutted around the place in a shiny blue suit, flirting casually with Irene by using her name a lot and touching her forearm. You could tell Irene liked it from the colour of her cheeks and the fluttery giggle.

‘I think it’s the school for Iris. Have you seen the results? They speak for themselves,’ he said.

I was sifting through the prospectus that was packed with pictures of happy, culturally diverse children skipping along in their tartan wear and monogrammed cardigans. I got to the page about fees.

‘It’s a lot of money. And then we’ll have to factor in Violet too in a couple of years.’

‘Is this you going all socialist on me again?’

Simon said it so mockingly. He was from an affluent family: he’d been educated at the top-end toff palace that was Westminster and gone to a private prep school so education was nothing to him without a blazer and a debauched rugby tour.

‘I’m thinking practically. The state system did alright by me and my sisters.’

He didn’t respond. It was like he never heard me.

‘It’s not like we don’t have the money, Emma.’

‘Yes but I’m thinking ahead to university and how we invest for them.’

‘Quite.’

‘I just feel putting them here cuts them off from a whole section of society. I don’t want them to grow up with a silver spoon in their mouths.’

‘Like me then?’

The car went quiet. We had been having this discussion for months. Simon had visited local primaries and turned his nose up at sandpits and phonic boards. I had literally missiled a prospectus about boarding school across the kitchen.

‘Well, we need to decide by the end of the week because that’s how long they will hold the place for.’

I didn’t reply. Our car was sat on Richmond Bridge in traffic and I watched as the lights danced along the river, a train darted past full of commuters. I wanted my girls to be like me. I didn’t think that was a terrible thing. A terrible thing would have been if they turned into Simon. Even then I knew there were facets of his personality that I hoped they wouldn’t inherit: the arrogance, the lying. But I didn’t know how to say that out loud. I didn’t know how to communicate anything to him. Simon was getting increasingly frustrated by the stationary cars on the bridge and hit his horn quite aggressively.

‘That will help,’ I said.

He looked aggrieved, like the traffic was suddenly my fault. ‘Do we have any tablets in this car? I have a headache coming on.

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