This Too Shall Pass Read Free

parents’ cars – I knew something was wrong, but not exactly what.
    â€˜I found this.’ He put the letter on the kitchen table, calm as always, if not a little fluttery.
    I glared at it, alarm fixing my muscles.
    â€˜Well?’ he asked, still neutral as if we were choosing a colour to paint the wall. ‘It’s that woman. I picked you up from her place. It’s her, isn’t it?’
    And I’d forgotten – he had picked me up from Renny’s three weeks earlier, on his way back from the city.
    â€˜Yes,’ I managed.
    â€˜So?’
    Unable to speak, my heart throbbing palpably, I shrugged.
    â€˜I’ll ring her.’ He nervously propelled himself to the phone. ‘What’s her number?’
    I scoffed. ‘You can’t do that.’
    â€˜Why not? I’ve got a right. I met her. I’m going to ring and ask her what she thinks she’s doing.’
    Who knows why I gave him the number – perhaps it was defiance, perhaps cowardice, perhaps the need for something to happen while not being the one to initiate it. He punched in the digits as I spoke them, his resolve steely. The thought of what was to come scorched. Dry ice to my skin.
    â€˜Is this Renny?’
    I got up from the kitchen table and funeral-marched from the room, my limbs heavy.
    â€˜Are you having an affair with my wife?’
    I slowly ascended the stairs. Standing at the end of our bed, facing away from the pillows, my arms out, I fell backwards as if floating from the edge of a very tall building. I could only hear his muted tone. I didn’t want to know what they were talking about. I kicked off my shoes, curled into a foetal ball, and sank into a heavy unwanted sleep that prevented me from asking.

SIX
    A kind of madness took over, one that felt close to disassociation – except that, as the central character, I kept being reminded of who I was and what I’d done, even when I begged the universe to render me safely oblivious.
    Eight days later, a few before Xmas, the three of us – Marcus was with my friend Ange, organised by Dave – sat at the table in our open-plan kitchen.
    Because Dave kept demanding – the same question repeated like a theme – So WHAT’S going to happen now? Renny was forced to ask what was, on reflection at least, a ridiculous question: ‘Can I have an affair with your wife?’
    I looked from one to the other, atrophied as the request pushed past me. Not only were they conversing, but they were doing so with a diplomacy that felt surreal, that could have been hallmarked for a UN convention.
    â€˜You can’t,’ Dave answered.
    Renny put both hands up, her palms open in stop signs. ‘That’s enough for me.’ She placed them then in front of her, webbing her fingers together and bowing her head in symbolic withdrawal.
    Dave turned to me.
    â€˜You’re going to have to leave me if you want a relationship with a woman.’
    And that was it, the pivotal moment, right then -the point at which the quintessential reality of what was happening fused, the exact time it soldered its al-lotropical equation in me and I saw that I was going to have to do exactly that. How strange, I thought even before I answered, the way that buttered-bread falls. Dave was sculpting his demise even as he thought he was saving himself.
    â€˜I might just have to do that,’ I said.
    â€˜She never will.’ He turned back to Renny who sat motionless, ‘So I’ve won and you’ve lost.’
    She didn’t answer, her face a cold mask, her thoughts hardened.
    He looked at me. ‘We’re meant to be going out to dinner.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜Are you coming?’
    â€˜I’ll be there.’
    I wanted him to give me some time to reassure Renny that I was serious, but that I just wasn’t able to come straight away.
    He did leave to pick up Marcus, his walk housing a strange