I watch her as she speaks; she is staring at Josh with an expression that doesn’t change, her eyes glassy, seeming to gaze beyond his. Her face is difficult to read at times – as difficult as his is – but I find these types of clients the most fascinating, relishing the challenge that getting to know them in more colour offers me.
‘What makes you feel this way, Lydia?’ I ask. ‘When you say “bad”, what are you referring to?’
Her eyes leave Josh’s face and she casts her focus to her lap for a moment before finally looking at me. ‘I don’t know,’ she says with a shrug. ‘Just life, I suppose.’ She laughs, the sound forced. ‘If living was easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?’
There is no humour in the words or in the tone with which they are delivered; instead, her gaze rests on me as though she is silently trying to communicate something else. When I look at Josh, his expression tells me that he too realises his wife longs to tell me more than she feels able to. He is glaring at her, his cool grey eyes fixed in a hard stare.
‘I’d say your life is pretty good, all things considered,’ he tells her coldly.
Lydia sits back and offers me a small smile as she adjusts herself in her seat. Her hair is pulled too tightly against her head, making it look as though it must be giving her a headache. There is something prim and harsh about her appearance, as though she is trying to make herself less attractive than I suspect she really is. I wonder what she looked like on their wedding day; if, all those years ago, she was unrecognisable from the woman who sits here today. Does Josh regard himself as living with a different person to the one he exchanged vows with; can the same be said for Lydia too? Too often people come to believe themselves deceived. They expected one thing; they ended up with something else entirely.
My first husband, Damien, reminded me regularly that I wasn’t the girl he had married. ‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ he would say, as though my silences and dark moods had been disguised during the early days of our relationship in an attempt to trap him. When stress made me lose weight, he would tell me I was getting too thin. When I ate, I was greedy and getting too fat. If I stayed at home, I was lazy; if I went out, I would be accused of being with other men. It was no wonder I was no longer the girl he had married, though he could never see that he was responsible for what I had become.
‘Lydia,’ I say, wrenching my mind from thoughts of Damien Hunter. ‘Tell me what you liked about Josh when you first met.’
We wait a few moments as she composes her answer. Is she being careful not to offend or upset him, I wonder, or is she genuinely struggling to remember the things that had attracted her to her husband all those years ago?
‘He was nice,’ she says eventually. ‘I mean, I know that sounds a bit boring, but isn’t nice what most people want really, even if they don’t realise it at the time?’ She dips her head and runs a hand over her hair, taking her eyes from me for a moment. ‘He was kind. He was attentive.’ She looks at Josh, who has been listening intently to her every word. ‘He was a good man.’
I note her use of the past tense. He was a good man. So what is he now?
‘How have things changed for you, Lydia? Josh, you’ll have a chance to give your thoughts on all this in a moment.’
I offer him a smile, but nothing is returned. He is too preoccupied with studying his wife, his focus fixed on her face as though trying to bore into her brain to see what lies within. He is looking at her as though he is unsure who she is. It’s an expression I have seen on the faces of so many people who have sat with me in this room, as if entering the place has made their partner someone different, someone they fail to recognise once they’re removed from the familiarity of their everyday surroundings. Being here seems to offer an opportunity to say the things that can’t be aired anywhere else, and sometimes this is all that is needed for old wounds to be finally healed without leaving scars.
In other cases, it has been the very thing that has dragged a marriage to its painful and messy end.
‘I just …’ Lydia waits, seeming to be gauging Josh’s possible reaction to whatever it is she is about to say. ‘It’s probably just a marriage thing, isn’t it? I mean, so many years down the line, it’s never going to be the same as it was when you first met.’ She fiddles with the hem of her dress, smoothing it out between her thumb and forefinger. She is right, of course, but there is obviously far more going on here than the simple loss of a honeymoon period.
‘When we spoke on the phone, you mentioned frequent arguments. Can you tell me what they tend to be about?’
Lydia takes a deep breath and exhales loudly, hissing out air between pursed lips. She pushes her fingertips to her right eye, and I notice for the first time how long her make-up-free lashes are. She isn’t a conventionally pretty woman, not what many would consider to be beautiful, but there is something attractive about her; something sharp and angular that exudes a certain kind of sexy. It is contradictory to everything that is evident in her character.
‘We just don’t seem to get along any more, not like we used to. He works a lot and when he’s home we just … I don’t know. The bickering seems endless. He’s tired a lot of the time—’
‘Because of work.’
Lydia sucks in her top lip. ‘I get that, but sometimes you make me feel … I don’t know. Like I’m not important enough to you.’
Josh rolls his eyes. ‘You’ve had everything,’ he says defensively. ‘You live in a lovely house, you wear nice clothes, you go on expensive holidays.’ He looks at me and shrugs, his hands flung skywards as though admitting defeat; as though all these references to material stability should be enough to justify anything else that might lie beneath the surface. ‘What more does she want?’
I think of the number of couples who have had this same conversation in this same room. I could spend the rest of the day contemplating the mistake so many people make in considering material possessions their priority. The most intelligent, well-balanced people get drawn into this same trap: this race to make money and to have, have, have, as though consumption is the key to success and ownership is the measure of a happy life. I feel justified in saying it because I have been one of these people, at a time when I believed that wealth equated power and belongings would buy me a status that would somehow keep me protected. And then I found out that that isn’t the case, and with this realisation came the crushing truth that all of it is meaningless and that time is the thing that makes you powerful, while you still have enough of it.
I should have known it already, years earlier, but the impression of a successful life was used as a shroud to cover everything I had experienced in my first marriage, as though hiding what had happened behind a glossy veneer could take away the truth of its existence. I wanted to earn money; I wanted to have nice things. My home would present a reality that couldn’t be further from the one I’d left behind in my old life: a life in which I had next to nothing, and what little I had was controlled by Damien. My clothes would cover the body that had been used repeatedly as the release for his violence, as though by dressing it differently I could change its past. But the past can’t be changed, and it can never be hidden from, not for ever.
‘How often do the two of you talk?’ I ask. ‘Not about work, not about the kids, not about bills or anything connected to the house. I mean how often do you spend time actually talking about you – your hopes, your dreams, your fears?’
Their answer is evident in the blank expressions upon each of their faces. It’s the standard response the question tends to receive. Life entangles people in all its day-to-day complications. It becomes easy to lose yourself, and when losing yourself is easy, losing someone else is inevitable.
Josh looks at me with confusion, a slight smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘Do people really do that?’
Next to me, Lydia sighs gently, finding little humour in her husband’s nonchalant response. She pushes her fingertips to her eyelids again, her face pinched as
though in pain. ‘This is what I get, you see. Any time I try to talk to him, really talk about anything, he just makes some flippant remark like that.’
‘Josh, can you share with us what Lydia already has, please – how you met, what attracted you to her, what you liked about the relationship in those early days. You were twenty-seven when you met, is that right? So Lydia, you would have been…’
‘Twenty,’ she says. ‘I fell pregnant quickly,’ she explains, as though reading some of my thoughts, though she must know I had already worked this out with the information she had provided before they came here today.
‘It was the best thing that could have happened,’ Josh says quickly, ‘but apparently she doesn’t feel the same way.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘True, though, isn’t it? If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard the words “if I could have my time back” …’ He mocks his wife with a cheap imitation of her voice.
Lydia looks at me, that same pleading look in her eyes. ‘It’s not the same for men, is it? Their lives don’t change in the same way a woman’s does once a child comes into the picture. I’m not complaining, it’s just a fact. But he doesn’t realise how hard it’s been for me at times. He doesn’t understand how lonely I’ve been.’
I say nothing, knowing there’s nothing I can say to this. I don’t pretend to understand situations in which I’ve never found myself. I’ve heard other women, other mothers, make similar comments during sessions, but the kind of loneliness they refer to is an isolation that is alien to me.
‘Josh,’ I say, remembering that the focus is now supposed to be on him. ‘What line of work are you in?’
‘I’m a doctor.’
His answer surprises me, though it seems naïve that it should. Doctors, dentists and teachers are no longer the tweed-jacket-wearing men I remember from my childhood. I have met several doctors during my years as a counsellor – both men and women – as well as lawyers and politicians, and even a famous television personality who managed to keep her marital problems hidden from the attention of a media that would have paid a small fortune to get its hands on the story.
‘GP?’
‘No. Hospital. The hours aren’t regular, and they can be antisocial. She knew that from day one, so I don’t know why it’s suddenly such an issue.’
‘Let’s go back to day one,’ I suggest. ‘Tell me how it happened for you.’
‘The party or the first date?’
‘Either. Up to you.’
Josh stretches one long leg out in front of him, his foot twitching in his brown boat shoes. He isn’t wearing any socks; the look is something pulled from the pages of a fashion magazine: the young professional, casual and successful. There is something too try-hard about it, and I wonder who he’s making the effort for.
‘I met a girl at a bar,’ he says, sounding like the blurb of a romantic novel. ‘It’s not very original, I know, but that’s how it happened. She was pretty, we got talking. She mentioned where she worked, so I thought I’d surprise her. We met up that evening and went for a drink. One drink led to quite a few, for her at least. I thought maybe it was a confidence thing, you know, or she was a bit nervous, whatever. Most of us have probably been in that situation at some point, where you’re tense and you have a drink to take the edge off. I know I have. I didn’t really think much of it at the time.’
Lydia’s drinking is obviously an issue here, raised once again by her husband, but I don’t want to delve too much into that, not during this first session. Scratch the surface of a problem too soon and it can do more harm than good, though it is a reminder that not everything here may be as black-and-white as it seems. The extent of Lydia’s drinking is still unclear, as is the effect it has had on both their lives. I judged Josh quickly, but there are elements to Lydia’s character that I believe have also yet to be revealed.
‘What did you like about Lydia when you met?’
He looks at her in the same way she not so long ago looked at him, a curious kind of emptiness behind his eyes. I feel an unexpected sadness tug at my chest for this couple I barely know anything about. Whatever has gone on between them, they both look lost. Though I’ve worked with many couples during my career, I have only known a few of which this could be said, and I’ve usually escaped the trap of becoming too emotionally embroiled in the lives and lies unravelled before me. It has happened, but I have tried to learn from it.
‘She was nice to look at – I mean, that was obviously the first thing I noticed about her. I didn’t know her, so I didn’t have much else to go on. Then we got chatting and she seemed pleasant enough. She was very family-orientated – she talked about her parents a lot. I liked that. And she seemed interesting, you know, not like a lot of other girls I’d met. She had interests that were a bit more unusual. That’s why I took her to see that play.’
Josh’s unyielding reluctance at being here loosens as he speaks; the more he talks, the less hostile he becomes. The change in him serves as another reminder that nothing in this room is ever as it first appears. I have seen acts played out in front of me on many occasions – performances delivered with convincing skill, though nothing has ever come of them other than disappointment – and I know better now than to take anything at face value.
‘And you were happy when she became pregnant early in your relationship?’
‘Very.’ He nods. ‘I always wanted a family. Perhaps I hadn’t thought about starting one so soon, but I never had any doubt it would be the best thing to happen to us. And it was. I still think it was, despite everything. I love the kids.’
Lydia shoots him a look that is so filled with contempt it takes me by surprise. The way Josh speaks about his children would surely make most wives happy, yet her hands move to the arms of the chair, her nails gripping its sides as though keeping her from falling forward. I cannot understand her reaction; not unless what he says about his children portrays something far different to the relationship she witnesses at home.
But why lie here, to me? I think. People have done so in the past, to save face or to make themselves appear a better partner than they are, but they are lying to themselves too, and wasting everyone’s time, mostly their own.
‘What do you think has changed, Josh? Over time, how has the relationship altered for you?’
‘I don’t feel like a married man,’ he admits. ‘I go to work, I come home, I spend time with the kids, but beyond that, there isn’t anything any more. She doesn’t talk to me—’
‘You don’t listen.’
‘She drinks too much—’
‘You mentioned that already.’ Lydia continues to appeal to me for help, as though I might be able to stop her husband raising this issue that she apparently wants to keep behind closed doors, for the time being at least.
‘It’s almost like living with a friend,’ he says, ignoring her for a second time. ‘But not even that really, because at least friends get on with each other. I don’t know what we have in common any more.’
It seems to me that this relationship is a case of too much, too soon; something I have seen before in this room; something that also applied to Sean’s relationship with his daughter’s mother. Sienna was born just eighteen months after they met, when her parents were both in their early twenties. They separated before her second birthday, though the relationship remained civil and they worked together to give their daughter a stable and happy childhood, but having a baby so soon into their relationship meant they had little time to get to know each other. I wonder if the same applies to Lydia and Josh.
It takes years to get to really know a person. Sean and I moved in together two years after meeting, and even six months on from that I found myself surprised at the things I was still finding out about him, those seemingly small, everyday things that when seen recurrently come to form a part of someone’s character, sometimes without them even being aware of them.
‘These things you describe,’ I say, ‘are very common.
Life is hectic – it’s probably busier for people now than it’s ever been. It’s easy to lose each other a bit along the way.’
Lydia is looking at me, waiting for me to wave a magic wand and give a simple, single-sentence solution to the problem. I wish one existed.
‘Is that what you think of us?’ she asks. ‘That we’re lost?’
Her tone is so difficult to read that for a moment I wonder whether her words are an accusation. I’m not sure what she wants to hear from me, so I do what I always do in these circumstances: I answer her with a question of my own.
‘Do you think you’re lost?’
Lydia shrugs. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel.’
‘There’s no particular way you’re supposed to feel,’ I tell her, wondering whether that’s something Josh attempts to dictate. My first husband would have controlled my thoughts if he’d been able to. Men like Damien Hunter have become easier to identify over the years: they are detached, flawless; they are never to blame for their own actions. Already there are elements of Josh Green’s character that remind me of him. ‘What I mean,’ I add, feeling the need to clarify my point, ‘is that there’s no rule book. There’s no right or wrong to whatever you’re feeling.’
‘I don’t feel lost,’ she says. ‘I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.’
She holds my eye with an intensity that implies her words suggest more than she can articulate. I wonder what she means by it, knowing that I should try not to read too much into what hasn’t been said.
‘So how do we start to put things right?’ she asks, breaking the silence that has descended between the three of us.
I glance at Josh, who is staring at the clock on the wall. We have just a few minutes of the session left, and he appears to be counting them down.
‘Firstly, you need to make time for each other. Proper time. I’m going to ask you to do something for me. Between now and this time next week, I’d like you to go out somewhere, just the two of you. Is there someone who can look after the children for an evening?’
The Divorce: A gripping psychological thriller with a fantastic twist Page 3
