What She Never Told Me Read Online Free PDF

make it worse by doing stuff like that. Okay?’
    ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Look, I’m starving. I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I don’t suppose you fancy meeting up for lunch? My treat.’
    We meet at one of the cafés on Westbourne Grove and order food. I start to ask for a bottle of white wine, but Ursula jumps in and tells the waiter we’re going to have two glasses, small ones. I protest, telling her that it’s cheaper to order a bottle than to order four glasses.
    ‘We’re not having four glasses. We’re having two, one each, and you’re lucky I’m letting you have even one,’ she says.
    Ursula is bossy, but I give in. She’s right. I’ve been drinking too much for too many weeks. It’s time to cut back.
    ‘Any word from Sandy?’
    ‘Not since yesterday morning. He called to wish me a happy birthday. God, Ursula, don’t ever let slip to him that I . . .’
    ‘That you shagged some stranger? It’s none of his business. But don’t worry, I won’t. So what’s the latest? I suppose you’re still hoping he’ll come back?’
    I shake my head at first. I try to keep telling myself that there’s no hope of saving my marriage, that it’s finished and that I have to move on. But that’s not what I feel deep down. I would have him back in a trice.
    ‘I still don’t understand why he left, what I did to make him leave. I asked him if he’d met someone else and he said he hadn’t,’ I say.
    She nods her head up and down. She has heard it all before, over and over.
    ‘Oh, fuck, Ursula, I miss him so much.’
    Ursula doesn’t do soft. She either says what she thinks, which is most of the time, or she keeps quiet. You never have to wonder where you are with her.
    ‘It really pisses me off when you keep talking about what you may have done to make him leave. I hate to upset you, Lou, but there probably was a woman. There always is. “Space” my arse – men make their own space all the time, no matter where they are, and women have to fit into it. They’re all liars, even men like Sandy. They can’t help it. It’s just the way they are. And they can’t bear to take the blame, so they learn how to make women feel guilty. Don’t do this to yourself,’ she says.
    Easier said than done. It doesn’t take much effort to recall the moods and silences that led up to the night Sandy told me he was moving out for a while. I had been tearing my hair out for weeks on end, wondering what was going on. Whenever I asked him if he was all right, I got a curt ‘I’m fine’ in response. Or he might say, ‘I have a lot on at the moment.’ It didn’t occur to me that he was preparing to leave.
    On what turned out to be his last night in our flat, he was monosyllabic and I was a bag of nerves, treading on eggshells around him. We were in the middle of supper when he told me he needed some space for a while.
    ‘What do you mean, “space”?’ I stared at him.
    ‘Just that . . . I need a bit of time by myself. It’s not you,’ he said, not looking directly at me.
    ‘Sandy, for God’s sake, we’re married! We’ve been married for ten years and suddenly you’re talking about needing space. You’re not a child.’
    I had raised my voice, but I wasn’t shouting at that point. And then another thought struck me and I did shout.
    ‘You’re having an affair! That’s it, isn’t it?’
    ‘There’s no one else involved in this. I’m trying to tell you something and you’re blowing it out of proportion.’
    ‘ I’m blowing it out of proportion? You’re my husband and you’re telling me you don’t want to be around me. Jesus, Sandy, you’ve been like a month of wet Sundays for ages and I’ve stood back and worried but said nothing, and now you spring this on me. Don’t play games with me. Just tell me the truth. Have you met someone else?’
    He still didn’t look at me directly, just sighed and shook his head.
    ‘This isn’t about anyone else. It’s . . . hard to