Just the Two of Us

Chapter One

Day One

Julie Marshall stepped out of the shiny offices and glanced furtively up and down the busy street. The brown envelope seemed to burn her fingers and she shoved it hastily into her shoulder bag, grateful that she’d thought to bring the big zebra-patterned one she knew Michael hated. It seemed apt. Once she’d handed the papers over, it wouldn’t matter what Michael hated. She’d be free to do and live and be however she wished.

“Free!” she said out loud, trying to convince herself. A passing couple looked at her askance. They were young and handsome and their fingers were interlaced with tight confidence. “Don’t worry,” she threw at them. “I’m not drunk, just getting divorced.”

They scurried away, pulling even closer together as if she was some sort of curse they needed to ward off. Maybe she was.

“Free,” she said again, quieter this time, but it still didn’t sound right. It still didn’t fight off the other words struggling to batter their way out of her head: alone, useless, failure.

She shivered and turned determinedly toward the car park. It wasn’t a failure to end her marriage. It took strength to admit a relationship wasn’t working anymore, or so everyone said. The problem was, she didn’t feel strong. She was doing a good impression—walking strong, talking strong, acting strong—but underneath she felt as stable as a vodka jelly.

Earlier, when she’d gone into the estate agent’s to pick up details of flats for rent, she’d been so shaky she’d dropped half the leaflets. The young man had looked at her with such concern that she’d blurted out that her daughter had had a nasty break-up. She’d been instantly ashamed of the lie but she was even more ashamed of the truth—that somehow, without noticing, she’d slid from having the sort of marriage she’d smugly known other people envied to the sort that, well, that wasn’t really a marriage at all.

She blinked ferociously. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to go back to the dark days. No way. She’d dragged herself out of that mire and she owed it to herself to stay out of it. She still had things to do with her life and she wasn’t going to let some idea of failure hold her back. People divorced every day and felt better for it. Her own sister had been like a different person when she’d emerged from her marriage ten years ago, hadn’t she?

Julie pushed thoughts of Clare aside. Her little sister spent her days lurching from one unsuitable relationship to the next, but that wasn’t how Julie was going to do it. She wasn’t leaving this man to find another, but to find herself. She groaned at the cliché and fumbled in her bag for the plastic ticket that would let her into the impossibly secure car park. The envelope was in the way and she pushed it impatiently aside as she scrabbled amongst the more usual detritus for the ticket. Her fingers brushed the fluffy ball of a key ring that Adam had given her for Christmas last year—“Let’s see you lose this, Mum”—and her heart juddered. She hoped the kids wouldn’t be too upset.

They’re not kids, Julie, she reminded herself. The girls had long since left home, and, with Adam in his fourth and final year at university, he might as well have done. They were grown-ups with their own lives now and she couldn’t stay miserable just for the pretense of a happy home.

Again the tears threatened. Again she pushed them back behind her eyelids. She hated that her marriage had turned to dust, but she no longer had any idea how to hold it together. These days she and Michael shared little more than a front door. They slept in different rooms and managed to keep themselves so busy in their jobs and separate social lives that they could go days without actually seeing each other.

Julie couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper conversation, one that went beyond informing the other that they’d taken the bins out or that dinner was in the fridge. They cooked for each other but rarely ate together. They took the clothes off the washing line but never off each other’s bodies. They didn’t even bloody argue any more. She’d tried to fix things over the last few years—she really had—but she’d accepted now that their marriage was beyond repair. And with their thirty-fifth anniversary just a month away, she had to do something. Celebrating a dead marriage would be nothing more than a farce, and it was time to face up to that. Divorce was for the best.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t sad.

Her fingers closed gratefully around the plastic ticket and she pressed it to the door pad. Nothing. The big gray door stayed resolutely shut. She turned it over, pressed it again. Still nothing.

“Please let me in,” she begged. The door paid no attention. For the third time that afternoon, Julie blinked back tears.

“Pain in the arse, aren’t they?” a cheerful voice said, and she turned to see an older woman bustling up behind her. “Just a minute.” She dumped handfuls of shopping bags on the floor, gesturing self-consciously to them as she dug for her own ticket. “Supplies. In case we go into whaddyacallit—lockdown.”

“Lockdown?” Julie asked. “It won’t come to that, surely?”

The woman gave her a sideways look. “Where’ve you been, dear?”

With a divorce lawyer, Julie wanted to say, but the woman was far too smiley to be hit with that sort of unpleasant detail. She felt foolish suddenly—the world was going mad and she was fretting about one little marriage. But it was her marriage, or it had been, and right now it felt all-consuming.

She looked down at the woman’s bags, spotting toilet roll, a multipack of custard creams and a large bottle of Baileys.

“That’s in case we run out of milk,” her new friend said, bending and patting the liqueur as she might a small dog. “It’s lovely on cornflakes. Now, here we go!”

She pulled a ticket from her bag and held it up to the pad. The door sprung obligingly open.

“How did you do that?” Julie asked.

“Magic!” The woman smiled and waved Julie ahead of her as she gathered up her shopping. “Did you validate your ticket when you arrived?”

Julie groaned. “Probably not. I’m hopeless at things like that. My husband’s always saying…” She stopped. My husband! For thirty-four years she’d had a husband. Soon it would just be her.

“Are you OK?” The woman was looking at her in concern, and Julie realized she’d stopped dead halfway up the concrete stairs.

“How will I get out?” she asked, feeling ridiculously shaky again.

“Go to the office, dear; they’ll soon sort it.”

Julie smiled her thanks and stumbled in the direction indicated, but her thoughts were back at the shiny lawyer’s offices, and she clutched her zebra-print bag and its dark contents close against her as she approached the car park attendant.

“I wonder if you could help me?” she asked in her politest voice. “I’ve messed up, I’m afraid, and I really need to get out.”

“Course I can, love,” the burly bloke agreed with a grin. “Follow me.”

Julie did as she was told, suddenly wondering if she’d actually be better off stuck in this car park than heading for home. It was one thing getting the divorce papers from the lawyers; quite another to hand them over to her husband. How on earth had it come to this?

Half an hour later, Julie pulled off the village high street and onto their quiet cul-de-sac, trepidation rising within her. In the spring sunshine her home looked far too welcoming for comfort. The cherry tree in the middle of the tiny front lawn was just starting to blossom, and the pots either side of the porch were also sending up promising green shoots. She killed the engine and sat on in the car, gazing at the place she’d called home for the last twenty years. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it certainly looked good against the blank little flats whose promises of “bijou living” and “cleverly designed spaces” were lurking in her bag alongside the divorce papers.

To get the space they’d needed for their growing family, they’d had to drop their dreams of a cutesy cottage in favor of a 1950s box, but Julie had rapidly grown fond of the smooth white walls and wooden bay windows. When Michael had added a pretty timber-framed porch in an early rush of energy, they’d smugly pronounced it better than any cottage, and it had certainly proved a happy home. Bright curtains hung at every window, and over the side gate you could just catch a glimpse of the large back garden that led out onto the fields beyond. With three energetic kids, all that outdoor space had been the clincher, and they’d made an offer on it twenty minutes after the first viewing. It had been one of the best decisions they’d ever made. But recently her heart had dropped every time she’d pulled onto the drive, and that couldn’t go on.

Grasping her bag, she leapt out of the car and let herself in through the front door. It was deathly silent inside; gone were the days when her home reverberated with the happy noises of family life. Michael, however, should be here. Yesterday he’d announced that his engineering company was ordering everyone to work from home, and he was going to set up office in Briony’s room. The thought of having him around all the time was what had sent her to collect the papers from the lawyer at last; now all she had to do was hand them over, pick a flat and leave. And with the government bringing in measures in response to the virus and normality starting to shut down, the sooner she did that the better.

She stepped cautiously inside, her heart beating as if she were about to go on some scary fairground ride. There was no sign of her husband in the living room or the kitchen, and it didn’t feel quite right to shout a cheery “hello” as a precursor to delivering an affidavit of a goodbye. He must be up in his new office, she thought, and was turning to head for the stairs when a movement outside caught her eye.

Michael was out in the garden, bending down to feed something to Mr. Nibbles, Briony’s ancient rabbit. He was chatting unselfconsciously to him and Julie watched, feeling strangely voyeuristic. Her husband was smiling, and she realized that she didn’t see that often these days. He mainly nodded or grunted or just shuffled past her. Any words they did exchange were terse and practical; gone were the days when he’d chatted to her as he was doing to the rabbit now.

Sadness pierced her and she clutched at her bag, hearing the envelope crackle under her arm as he rose and came back toward the house. She knew he’d spotted her because his body tensed up. It was sad, but it was also reality; they’d grown apart and it was pointless pretending otherwise.

“You’re back,” he said gruffly as he came through the door.

“I’m back, yes.”

“Nice day?”

“Hmm.”

He edged past her, making for the stairs, and she swallowed and forced herself to speak again.

“Actually, no, not that nice. Michael, I need to talk to you.”

He stopped, back to her. “Now?”

“Ideally, yes.”

She reached into her bag and her fingers closed around the envelope. No point in dragging this out; she just had to get on with it. So why were her hands shaking? “It’s important,” she stuttered.

He turned toward her with a frown and she braced herself for him to snap.

“Are you OK, Julie?”

To her surprise, his voice was soft, kind. He’d always been kind, actually. She could remember her mum saying that when she’d first brought him home: “Oh, well done, love—you’ve picked a kind man. They’re very much the best sort.” She swallowed again.

“I’m OK. Well, actually…”

She tried to take the envelope out of her bag, but it felt impossible, as if there was a Star Wars-style force around her, stopping her from delivering it to him. Ridiculous! Taking a deep breath, she pulled it out decisively just as Michael’s phone rang and he looked down.

“It’s my boss,” he said with an apologetic grimace. “I’d better take it.”

“But…”

“Can we talk later? After the PM’s briefing maybe?”

“The briefing. Of course. Let’s talk after.”

He lifted the phone and cut off the bleat. “Geoff! How are you?”

Julie stood there, divorce papers behind her back, as he sidled apologetically off down the corridor. The rush of relief was enormous—except, of course, that it meant the deed still had to be done. Ah well. Just having the papers in the house made the decision more real, and a couple of hours to get used to that wouldn’t hurt. She slowly drew the little sheaf of property details out of her bag. Perhaps, if she chose a couple, she could set up viewings for next week.

Yes, she decided, as she heard Michael’s voice rumbling away up in Briony’s room, she’d get changed, make some dinner and settle her nerves a little. Then, after listening to whatever the PM had to say, she and Michael could talk. It was time to find a new, separate path into the future, and hard as that was, it would surely be better for both of them in the long run.