The Marriage by K.L. Slater (any book recommendations TXT) 📕

an architect husband back then who worked hard and reaped the benefits of a very good salary, usually with the welcome addition of a juicy annual bonus. For myself, a career I’d happily reduced to part-time hours while Tom was young but that I fully intended returning to full-time at some point when he got to senior school.

In those days, I kept busy. I always seemed to be rushing around, ferrying Tom and Jesse to their various sports clubs and classes whilst Bridget worked her long and often unsociable hours.

When Tom began his lengthy sentence, it blew a very big hole in my life. An all-consuming black hole that swallowed up anything I tried to do to fill it. Nothing held my attention any more. I finished work and for the first couple of years, nothing distracted me from the horror of what had happened. I found it impossible to sit still long enough to watch a programme on television or read more than a few pages of a book.

Robert was scathing about my inability to cope. I’d never anticipated losing my confidence as quickly, allowing my self-esteem to be eroded by my husband in a clever sort of way. It didn’t seem like he was doing anything at all. The seemingly innocent comments about the way I looked, the programmes I watched on television. At the time, I chastised myself for being over-sensitive. And yet, compounded over years, those remarks and spiteful observations somehow gathered a sort of dreadful power that undermined and belittled me in a way that was hard to describe. I suppose it amounted to a feeling of not being worthy, not being good enough. Of falling short on every single level.

On better days, I flirted with the idea that I might get myself a little job, much to Robert’s concern.

‘The thing is, Jill, things move on. Systems, procedures … they’re likely to be unrecognisable to you after all this time. Think of the work involved in getting up to speed again! I think your anxiety would be sky high in no time at all. I really do,’ he’d say regretfully and I’d agree with him. The thought of starting again in a completely new environment, of having some impatient young person straight out of university having to show me what to do felt like the ultimate humiliation. It was far safer and more comfortable to stay at home.

But Robert still wasn’t happy when I considered going back to the library service.

‘These days, libraries are full of technology rather than the books you love. They’ll spot you’re a bag of nerves a mile off. You’ll end up making some dreadful error and crashing the whole IT system or something equally horrendous.’

His careless comments hit home. I would probably do something just like that. Pressing a button that would have devastating consequences, or managing to lose some historic tome through my dated and incompetent indexing skills.

In the end, I ditched the idea of returning to my career and visited the doctor instead to explain the anxiousness and the black moods that constantly hovered above me. He’d glanced at his watch and prescribed a list of medication that I’d been taking ever since.

Audrey was my saviour. She eventually persuaded me to work a few hours at the shop, and slowly, things started to improve slightly. Years before Tom was due to be released, I began planning the ways I might help him when he eventually came home.

‘It’s a bit early to start all this, if you ask me,’ Audrey said.

Now, I understood she had a point. She was trying to save me from a crushing disappointment. ‘You have to live in the moment rather than constantly looking to the future’ was one of her regular pieces of advice.

But what she didn’t realise, what nobody seemed to realise, was that obsessively planning for Tom’s homecoming was my antidote to the raw hopelessness I felt every hour of the day.

Half-heartedly, I began to whisk the eggs again. A couple of days ago, we were preparing to collect Tom and bring him home. I’d expected my life to look and feel very different by now. But this new situation felt like a fresh sort of hell.

I should have been preparing a family meal, not an omelette for one. I’d imagined people popping by to say hi. Me joking I hadn’t a moment to spare. Instead, I’d made an appointment with the doctor because I felt like my tablets weren’t helping.

I drizzled olive oil into the small frying pan and turned up the heat. Some people might say my disappointment was selfish. But it wasn’t myself I wanted to cry for; my concern was for Tom, and the future he was putting in such grave jeopardy.

When he went to prison, he had a lot of local support. People around here knew the circumstances of Jesse’s death. Our neighbours all asked about him when they found out it was close to his release date. They knew that Tom was an honest, steady sort of guy whereas Jesse was always more volatile. Given time, Tom would have easily fitted in again and begun to build a new life. Was it too much to ask to think he might’ve got married and had a couple of children in the coming years? It was hardly an outlandish fantasy.

When it came down to it, I just wanted my son back home. I wanted Tom here where he belonged. I wanted to look after him, be useful … have a worthwhile function again. An old-fashioned view maybe, but was that such a terrible crime?

I heard the front door open and rushed out, thinking that Robert had gone out without saying anything. I stopped dead in my tracks as my son walked in, clutching the front door key I’d given him. He was alone.

‘Tom!’ I whispered as he closed the door behind him. It felt as though I had conjured him up with the strength of my thoughts. Our