LITMIR.BIZ

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home, once he’d peeled off his limp clothing and had a cold shower, a message on his answering-machine awaited him.

      It was from Sarah.

      ‘I’ve heard your offer, and it’s insulting. We’re preparing a counter-offer over the weekend, and your lawyer will hear from mine on Monday.’

      Am I that out of touch with reality? Dylan wondered, after he’d erased the message. We were only married for two years. I was working. She was working. We employed a cleaner. We ate take-away meals, or I cooked. We kept separate bank accounts, and split the mortgage payments. For six months of that time, I was on rotation in Townsville and we only saw each other every second weekend.

      In fact, they’d been far too scrupulous about maintaining a degree of separation in their lives, he now considered. Sarah hadn’t wanted to come to Townsville. Perhaps their marriage would have lasted longer, and been happier, if they’d joined themselves to each other more completely. And perhaps he would then have felt that Sarah was entitled to the top-heavy percentage of their assets that she was obviously planning to claim.

      Still stewing over it, and over the wedding fiasco, he made himself some salad and one of those nutritionally challenged instant dried pasta meals that people took on camping trips. Then he bored himself with television for several hours and dropped into bed at eleven, seeking oblivion.

      It didn’t come. He felt like a heel and resolved to himself, I’ll make it up to Annabelle. That’s the least I can do.

      Go and see Alex, try and explain. Cover the cost of the reception. Ring each and every guest personally. Anything. Whatever Annabelle wanted.

      Had this whole mess happened because of the divorce, or because he was a really terrible person? Until things had gone pear-shaped with Sarah, he’d have said his life was in an impeccable state. Priorities in order. Heart in the right place. Career on track. Judgement damn near flawless.

      Hang on, though! Had he lost that much faith in himself? Rebellion began to stir inside him.

      Annabelle Drew, I saved your backside this afternoon, no matter how you twist your definition of marital happiness.

      Poking at his feelings a little more, he discovered, to his surprise, that he was angry with her. Disappointed, too. Somehow, she was a woman of whom he would have expected better. Better priorities. Better principles. Better sense.

      I will make it up to her, if she’ll let me. But she’s wrong to blame me for this!

      Rolling onto his stomach in a twisted sheet, Dylan slept at last.

      ‘Thank heavens that’s over!’ Helen Drew said to her daughter, as the final straggle of wedding guests headed for their cars, later than both of them had hoped. She had her portable oxygen close beside her, and really should have been using it more tonight. Her breathing sounded terrible, despite the use of her inhaler, and she looked even worse. ‘You did a fabulous job, darling. I was proud of you.’

      Annabelle felt her mother’s arms wrap around her like a comfortable quilt. On the dais vacated by the departing string quartet, Duncan had fallen asleep at last, about fifteen minutes ago. And Linda had gone, too, thank goodness. She was a good and loyal friend, great at helping Annabelle with tax and finance questions, but was useless, and knew it, with kids, the elderly and sick people. Her ineffectual offers of help had, in the end, been something of a strain.

      ‘You mean the fact that my face felt as if it was about to drop off didn’t show from the outside?’ Annabelle said to her mother.

      ‘Well, of course it did, but people expected that. They knew you were upset.’ Annabelle’s mother hesitated for a moment. ‘Life will go on, you know.’

      ‘Oh, I know that, Mum.’ Although she couldn’t quite imagine it at the moment.

      She felt like one of those cartoon characters who stepped off a cliff, but didn’t start falling until the gravity of their situation hit home. Her mind ticked and rattled like an engine out of tune.

      Cancel the hotel for this weekend. Cancel the two-week honeymoon, planned for just over a month from now, at a time when Alex had been able to make some space in his schedule. Thank goodness she hadn’t handed in her notice at the hospital yet! Where was Alex right now? At home?

      ‘And anyway, you and Alex, I’m sure, will patch things up,’ Helen said. ‘It would seem silly not to get married just because some idiot of a man decided to get clever during the ceremony.’

      Which of those misconceptions, if any, to tackle first? Annabelle wondered.

      First misconception—she and Alex weren’t going to patch things up. She knew that. Their relationship was over.

      He had put so much thought and time and money into making theirs a perfect, elegant wedding, befitting the strong and sensible partnership they had hoped to create together. He’d wanted a ceremony and reception that would set a benchmark for friends and colleagues to aspire to, the sort of occasion that people would talk about for years. Well, they’d achieved the latter goal! Unfortunately, not in the way he’d wanted.

      And he was a very stubborn man. Slinking off next week to a sparse little ceremony in a bureaucrat’s office wouldn’t make the grade, even leaving out the question of Alex’s loss of face.

      Which Alex would never leave out. And he was probably right—people would gossip.

      Second misconception—Dylan Calford wasn’t an idiot.

      She’d known him, on and off, for three and a half years now. In some ways, she knew him better than she knew Alex, since there wasn’t such a gap in status between them. She knew what he looked like first thing in the morning, fresh from a snatched sleep in the doctors’ on-call room. She knew what he ate for lunch, and the places he’d been to for holidays since his marriage. They called each other by their first names.

      He was proving himself as a fine surgeon, he was good to work with, and by all scales of character measurement, he was a pretty decent man. What Annabelle knew of him, she liked—had liked until today—and along with the rest of the hospital staff who worked with him, she felt for him over the issue of his divorce. He wasn’t quite the same person he’d been a couple of years ago. Harder. More cynical, and less patient.

      And, finally, he hadn’t ‘decided to get clever’. He hadn’t intended his words to be overheard. Possibly, he hadn’t intended to speak them out loud at all.

      Which means he genuinely thinks our marriage would have been a mistake.

      How could something be a mistake when you needed it so badly? Annabelle knew that she and Alex weren’t in love the way most couples believed themselves to be when they married. They’d talked about that, seriously and at length.

      Alex had exhibited his worst qualities today—as he sometimes did in surgery—but in their private time, he was thoughtful and interesting. They respected each other. He approved of her. They could talk about plans without friction. He was a tender, undemanding lover, and he worked hard at his relationship with Duncan.

      And, oh, dear Lord, she’d needed their marriage! She needed to be able to give up work for a few years in order to focus her attention on caring for her mother and Duncan. She needed Alex’s financial support, not for herself but for the people she loved.

      When they’d started going out together four months ago, it had been like being rescued from a dragon’s lair by a white knight. She’d started sleeping again. She’d seen light at the end of the tunnel.

      Whereas now…

      Suddenly, she felt sick. Anger towards Dylan Calford rose in her throat like bile. The concern he evidently had about the dire possibility of her making a mistake in marriage, of her ‘being unhappy’, was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

      ‘I wouldn’t have let it be a mistake!’ she muttered to herself. ‘I would have made it work, no matter what it took. I would have been happy! Imposing his cynical stance on other people just because he’s having

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