The Moment She Left Read Free

you’ll ever know,’ she’d said when she’d finally plucked up the courage to tell him, ‘but I don’t want to be married to you any more.’
    His shock, when he’d first heard it, had frozen him for a moment before he’d stumbled into uneasy laughter. She was joking, of course.
    She wasn’t and he could see it.
    ‘Why?’ he’d asked, genuinely bemused. His ruggedly handsome face had seemed so much younger all of a sudden, reminding her of how he looked in photographs his mother had of him as a child. He was lost, vulnerable, needing someone to show him the way. ‘I thought we – you – were happy,’ he said.
    He could certainly be forgiven for thinking that, since she’d taken care to hide how she was really feeling, not wanting to hurt him, or their children, or the rest of their family. How she really felt was that she still loved him, and probably always would, but she was no longer in love with him.
    She realised now that she hadn’t been even when she’d agreed to marry him, three years ago, which was an awful irony – was that the right word, maybe mistake would be better – when they’d been together for over two decades by then and had felt no need to be married before. Actually it wasn’t a full two decades, because he’d left her for a while. After seventeen and a half years of living under the same roof and bringing up their children together he’d suddenly announced one day that he’d had enough. He didn’t want to be a house husband and stay-at-home dad any longer while she went about playing detective – that was how he’d put it – at all hours of the day and night. Apparently she was to ignore the fact that he’d managed to build a very successful Internet security business during the hours the kids were at school, and evenings when she was there to take care of them. For whatever reason he’d suddenly decided he needed to break loose of the home and travel the world, alone.
    She harboured no resentment towards him for the desertion now; however, at the time, with her police career on an upward trajectory, and two young teenagers to cope with, she’d been devastated, furious, even murderous. She’d hated him, had sworn she’d never take him back, while all the time she’d longed for him to come.
    He had, eventually, putting his aberration, as he’d called it, down to a midlife crisis that he was finally, happily, over. Wasn’t that great? Actually, in a way it was, because life had moved on quite a bit during his two-year absence and punishing him was no longer a priority for her. They’d grown in ways neither of them would have been able to if they’d stayed together – he’d sold his Internet business and made a fortune, while she’d left the Metropolitan police to take up a promotion to Detective Sergeant with the Dean Valley force. What really mattered, she’d decided then, was the history they shared, the love that was still there, albeit altered, and most of all the children, Luke and Alayna, who were desperate for their parents to get back together.
    ‘I never stopped loving you,’ he’d told her on his return. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, that I’ve ever even slept with, apart from Brigitte, and all that did was make me realise just how wrong my life was without you.’
    Brigitte. He’d found someone else during the time they were apart, but she could hardly hold that against him when, eventually, she had too.
    Maybe, if his beloved father hadn’t just died (which in truth was what had brought him back from his travels), she’d have found a way to suggest that they just be friends. However, they’d all been deeply affected by Dougie’s death, and at times like that it was normal, even necessary, for families to pull together. So, she’d asked him if he’d be prepared to stay in Kesterly-on-Sea, where she and the children had settled while he was away exploring the world.
    He’d had it all worked out. He was definitely