Fiona decided to go home by taxi. It would give her time to think. Her thoughts were of her long and happy marriage to Max. They had been late starters to this marriage business, meeting in their mid-thirties and then marrying after what some people thought was too short a courtship. From meeting to marriage it had been just three months; but Fiona and Max were certain that what they were doing was right for them, their love for each other felt overwhelming and that was all that was needed. It was all that mattered.
Max and Fiona were both successful lawyers. Fiona had her own law firm and Max was an up and coming barrister. They were more than comfortable with their joint incomes which they enjoyed to the full. Children were neither on the agenda nor the calendar. Both were very clear that they did not want to have children. They did not want the distraction from their work and, more especially, they did not want the distraction from each other. They both had lots of nieces and nephews with whom they could practice distant parenting (and spoiling with lavish gifts) and that was sufficient. Max and Fiona knew that people would think them selfish for not wanting to bring new lives into the world but this was something they could live with.
Together they had a tasteful and substantial home which they enjoyed filling with state of the art yet minimalistic furnishings and they had fabulous holidays. During their marriage they had enjoyed trips to the Galapagos Islands the see the iguanas, Borneo to see the orangutans and Antarctica to see the penguins. They visited the USA and drove from New York to Los Angeles, they visited South Africa on safari and they enjoyed so many other exotic and fascinating places. Life was good.
As they got older, however, the expected ailments of old age prevented these marvellous holiday adventures and Max and Fiona became happy enough with the familiarity of Western Europe, especially Spain, France and Italy. Each year they would enjoy two or three weeks in Cadiz and Sorrento and Nice. Fiona’s arthritis prevented hectic jaunts and Max had to be careful as angina had led to the fitting of stents in his chest to improve the blood flow through constricted arteries. This had frightened Max and he was more than happy to take holidays at an easier pace.
As retirement approached Fiona sold her law firm. She wanted to enjoy retirement and spend time in her garden, her pride and joy and main interest, while she could and before life became just too difficult. She had a gardener to help with the heavy work but Fiona adored pottering and planting, which she could manage for the moment. “Arthritis is a complete bugger,” she often said to herself.
As for Max he cut down on his work. He was not ready to leave the cut and thrust of the law yet but has happy to work two or three days a week on work he chose rather than work that was chosen for him. Max was a well-respected barrister and he knew that leaving the law had to be a slow and careful process so that he could ensure that his was a smooth departure.
Picking and choosing what he worked on and where he worked were features of his later years in the law that Max really enjoyed. He could be in London one day, Milan the next and then perhaps Leeds. He loved both the variety and the travel. Fiona didn’t mind that she was seeing less of her husband. Her garden was a source of solace and she loved seeing how happy this new way of working suited Max. But sometimes she wished she could go to these wonderful European cities with him. “You’ll be bored, darling. I will be in court all day after which I prefer to come straight home or to wherever my next case might be. Furthermore, I will be distracted if you were there with me and with the thoughts that we cannot do things together. After all I am there to work,” was Max’s usual response when Fiona suggested that she might like to come with him.
Today Fiona had been to identify Max’s body at a mortuary and the taxi had returned her home. Max had been driving to Manchester for a case and had been in a dreadful motorway pile up where he, his passenger and those in other cars were killed.
The passenger in Max’s car was a colleague who was four months pregnant. Fiona had since learned that the baby was Max’s and that he had been having an illicit relationship with this colleague for over two years. Most of the trips to Milan and Paris and Madrid had been trips with this colleague where they had enjoyed the privacy and luxury of fabulous hotels. And where they had made a baby.
Fiona could not believe this at first. Then the anger set in followed by then she felt her foolishness, her gullibility, for not reading more into his behaviour when trips abroad were mentioned- or even trips to Manchester. Fiona now felt a huge hate for the man she had loved for over thirty years. There had been no-one else in her whole life whom she had loved so fully and entirely.
Fiona had gone to the mortuary on her own to recognise her husband; she could not bear the sympathy and soothing words of others. He looked as if he was just sleeping peacefully, as if he would wake up soon and ask for a cup of tea. The post mortem had suggested that he had had a heart attack whilst driving and that this had most likely been the cause of the pile up. He would not have known a thing about the accident. “But his passenger would have known everything,” thought Fiona with not a hint of sympathy.
Fiona also noticed that the clothes she collected were not clothes she knew. They were more up to date and colourful. They were probably gifts from her, his lover. As she left the mortuary Fiona threw all his clothes into a waste bin.
Fiona knew that Max had a rented flat in London for when he was working there but it was somewhere she had never seen. Max had told her “It’s just a studio flat, my darling. Every surface is covered in legal stuff and I really do not want you to come and tidy it up – and there is nowhere for you to sit”.
Fiona then discovered that in fact it was a two bedroomed flat in a very desirable area of London. And neither was it rented. Max had bought it and his colleague/lover/passenger lived there.
Fiona had never felt such rage in her whole life. She felt that for the past thirty years she had been living a lie. How many people knew of Max’s affair? How many people looked at her with secret knowledge of this liaison especially at the occasional legal dinners to which she accompanied Max? Had his lover also been at these dinners? Had there been dinners where his plus one was his lover and not Fiona? How could he have made such a fool of her in front of people she knew and admired and who knew and admired her. As she and Max had often said “In the law everyone knows everyone else”
Fiona walked up to her front door and let herself in. She had made a few decisions. Max would have a cremation without ceremony, she did not care what might be in his will suggesting otherwise. There would be no fanfare for him, there would be no eulogy and no-one would sing his praises acknowledging his many successful years as a prominent and successful barrister.
Fiona was undecided about what to do when Max’s ashes were returned to her. Her current favourite was to flush them down the toilet, but this idea was closely followed by taking them to the tip or even putting them in one of those waste bins intended for dog mess.
As the front door closed behind her Fiona allowed the grief to hit her. She had held herself together so well all day, in fact ever since she had heard the news, the worst news ever. Despite grief being an emotion her she felt an all-encompassing physical pain. Every part of Fiona ached with sadness, with misery, with embarrassment and with even disbelief. “How could he have done this to me?” she thought and the tears flowed and flowed and flowed.
Deep down Fiona knew these negative feelings would not last but it felt right to have them for the moment. There was still a lot of pain to be faced before her life might make sense again.
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