Love You to Death

IV: Henry Pelter

The world disappeared. I was sitting in the truck in the middle of a black void. Hands on steering wheel, I stared ahead, tasted salt on my lips and felt wet drops on my cheeks.

It's not like I didn't know.

For two days I'd chased away the emptiness in the bungalow, filled my head with the lie I told Henry: Ethan's on a business trip. He'll be home soon. Home Soon. But reality grabbed hold of me, shook me, forced open my eyes and said, look. He's here. You can't lie about it anymore. He's here and you're not. Here filling in the empty spaces of another person's home.

Sorrow plunged its hands into my body, tightened fingers around my stomach, pulled out my heart with the other. Severed the strings, cupped it and squeezed so valves burst beneath treacherous fingers.

There was heat at the back of my enclosed throat and ugly sobs boiled deep inside me that threatened to rise and spill over. I was seconds from allowing this to happen only the truck door opened and Henry slunk in.

I found a rumpled McDonald's serviette wedged in a dashboard pocket where Ethan keeps money for car parks. It was sandpaper against the rims of my eyes, but at least it got rid of any tears.

'Damn hay fever,' I sniffed. I don't, have never had hay fever, but Henry didn't know that.

Henry said, 'I'm sorry.' He sat all scrunched up in the seat, like he didn't want to make connection with anything in the world because the touch of an object would remind him that he wasn't going to wake up. This was real. A pair of sunglasses had materialised on his face.

'What on earth for?'

'My girlfriend's shagging your husband.'

Shagging. It's a horrible, harsh word. It summed up the situation perfectly.

'It's not your fault.' I turned the key in the ignition and the engine shuddered to a start. Why didn't Ethan take his truck? Did he walk all the way to Tulip Crescent?

'It's not my fault.' But I didn't convince myself. I was stuffed with doubt and questions. Had I annoyed him, wasn't I good enough in bed? Had he ever love me? Or had he been waiting for someone better to come along?

I drove back to the bungalow in silence, forgetting Henry was in the car, and it was only when he coughed as I pulled onto the drive that I remembered. I pretended that me driving him here was intentional.

My stomach twisted, my intestines knotted. 'Come in for a drink,' I said, and Henry obliged because I guess like me he didn't know what else to do.

I placed two cups of tea on the dining room table and Henry, taking of his sunglasses and placing them on the table, feigned interest in the houses in the brochures: 'This one's got a nice garden,' and 'wow look at that second bedroom.'

I fingered the edge of one of the pages, the paper sheet stuck to the sweat on my palm. And Henry stopped, realisation slipped behind his eyes. These belonged to an alternate reality where Ethan and I will always be married and our children play amongst the white daisies peppering the back lawn.

Instead we talked about our jobs at Good Grocer, and the night when an old lady tried to smuggle out a bag of spuds under her cardigan. The room echoed with empty laughter. We talked about the weather and discontinued chocolate bars. We talked about everything accept the elephant in the room because neither of us knew what to say about that.

Soon, too soon, Henry stood, scratching the back of his head. 'Thanks for the tea. It was nice.'

No. It wasn't.

Nice is meeting up with an old friend for coffee. Nice is strolling hand in hand along the promenade with your lover, not sitting opposite the guy who's girlfriend stole your husband, with a burnt tongue because you drank your tea too quick.