The Torn Up Marriage Read Online Free PDF

morning, no,
a whole day,
to fill. A day in which her thoughts might be enough to send her over the edge. She needed to keep busy, yes, that was the best way. Maybe she’d take Emily to feed the ducks by the river later on; nursery finished at noon. That would fill an hour or so this afternoon. And she had things to get from the supermarket. She could do that this morning. The milk was low and she hadn’t anything for supper. Dinner – was Michael coming home? Oh, God. Blank it. She’d just go back home for now, carry on as normal, make a list and go and do the weekly shop.
    Standing in the vegetable aisle. Carrots or broccoli…? Potatoes. She’d need potatoes. She was going to make a roast-chicken dinner. They all liked that. A real family meal. That’s what she needed to do. A proper family meal; all of them together. Huh! More like the last bloody supper.
    She moved on. She should have made a list. She always made a list.
    “S’cuse me, love.”
    Her trolley was blocking the aisle. An old man trying to get by.
    “Sorry… sorry.” She moved it aside absentmindedly.
    What was it she was looking for anyway? She found herself staring blankly at a wall of pre-packed pork chops and sausages.
    What if he stayed, had supper and then stayed? The image of her and Michael going off to bed fixed in her mind. The thought of him touching her… But he had been touching someone else just the day before, in another bed, with different arms around him. The imprint of
her
lips in his memory. The intimacy that had been before, the scent of
her
still on his skin. Would Kate be able to smell that? She couldn’t blank that out. She knew she couldn’t live like that, though, for sure, some women would have done. How could they ever be the same after this?
    She re-focused on the pinky-blood colour of the pork chops. Damn, she couldn’t think what it was she needed on this aisle. A swirl of panic set off inside her. Meat, it must have been some kind of meat. She gripped the handle of her shopping trolley, trembling, looked down, the vegetables in it giving her no clues. People wove around her with trolleys half full, baskets laden, reaching past her.
    How to protect the girls? If this was all going to blow up tonight, how could she stop the huge row, or whatever might happen next, from hurting them? They couldn’t discuss it in front of the children. She wouldn’t say anything more while they were still up.
    The old man had taken a while choosing what to buy for him and his wife’s supper; she’d been a bit poorly lately, in bed with a bad cold. He wasn’t used to going shopping alone, felt a bit lost without her, really. He noticed the woman whose trolley had been in his way, still there, immobile. She looked very pale, a bit out of it. He wondered if she was about to faint, instinctively reached out his arm to steady her.
    “Are you alright, love?” His voice was kind.
    What was it she needed? How could she not know?
    An old man was looking at her, his face seemed friendly, his words echoey. “Are you alright…?”
    He seemed to be talking to her, his tone concerned.
    And that moment of kindness broke her. The tears began streaming down her cheeks, uncontrollable now. A flutter of people, chatter, movement.
    She found herself sitting on a plastic seat at the end of the store past the tills, clasping a damp tissue in her hand. A woman in her fifties was smiling gently at her. “Are you sure you’re okay, madam. Is there anything I can get you? Anyone I can call?” The lady was in a uniform, navy with an orange piped trim on it, her name badge labelled her Carol.
    Oh, good God, Kate realised she’d been taken and put on that row of plastic seating where the old ladies waited for their buses and bored six-year-olds leapt on and off until their parents finally finished at the tills. Her eyes felt sore and gritty and there was the tissue in her hand. Bugger! She must have been crying. This wasn’t her. This wasn’t like