“Pack your things, Ive found my first love,” declared her husband. Yet an hour later, it was he who stood with his bag in the hallway.
Andrew returned from his school reunion on a Sunday evening. Jane was just finishing up the washing up in the kitchen.
He seemed differentalmost exuberant and flushed, as if fate had just handed him a promotion or he’d won a raffle. Jane glanced at him, drying her hands on the tea towel, and thought, “Looks like they had a jolly time.”
Andrew said nothing, simply hung up his coat and went to bed.
The next morning, he was at the dining table, hands folded and gaze solemn, just like in one of those old British dramas. Jane placed a mug of tea before him and started rummaging through the fridge, sorting out leftover shepherd’s pie. Thats when he spoke.
“Jane. We need to talk.”
She thought, “Well, here we go.” Those words always led to disaster.
“I met Laura yesterday. Do you remember? My first love.”
Jane remembered. Laura’s name cropped up every few years, usually after Andrew had a tipple or two and grown nostalgic. “We were just daft kids,” hed sigh. Nothing unusual.
“We talked. For quite a while. And, well, I think you should start packing.”
Jane turned around. The shepherd’s pie sat neglected in her hand.
“…Pardon?”
“Weve decided to give it a go. Me and Laura. Do you see?”
Jane stared at her husband.
“The flats in my name, anyway,” Andrew added, just covering his bases, with a tone that left little argument. “Best find yourself somewhere.”
Jane put the leftovers back. She shut the fridge gently, so the Manchester magnet wouldnt fall.
“Youve really made up your mind?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She nodded and walked to the living room.
Jane perched on the edge of the bed, gazing at the wall. There hung a calendar with kittens, something they’d picked up at the market last January, because they needed a calendar and this one had cost just a couple of quid. January had long gone, so had February, yet the kittens stayed put. A ginger kitten with a bow eyed her with sage sympathy.
“So thats it,” Jane thought.
Twenty years she’d spent with a man who now sat in the kitchen, waiting for her to start packing. Twenty years is a long time.
There was the first flat in Hackney they rented, where water dripped from the pipes and the neighbour, Pete, yelled into the night.
There was the bankruptcy, with Andrew pale and silent for months and Jane pretending not to notice how he slipped onto the balcony for a drink each evening.
There was the rush to hospital at 3am with Andrews appendix, and the surgeon saying, “An hour more and itd have been curtains.” There was the end-of-year leavers doJane used to teach Englishwhere Andrew showed up with daffodils, nervous and chuffed. It had all been real. And now, apparently, it counted for nothing.
Jane stood, paced the room, and stopped at the wardrobe.
On the top shelf, in the far corner, lay their papers.
Andrew was still at the table, clicking at his phone, probably texting Laura, grinning shyly and a bit victorious, like someone waiting for applause after a grand gesture.
Jane sat, placed the folder on the table.
“Collecting your paperwork?” Andrew asked, suspicious.
“No. I want you to see something.”
She opened the folder.
“Jane, do you have to”
“Hush for a bit.”
Jane found what she wanted and placed it before him.
A prenuptial agreement. Fifteen years ago, when Andrew fancied himself a builders merchant, their solicitor had insisted on it. Andrew was barely interested”Its just a formality, Janey. Were a family.” So Jane had popped to the solicitor on her own, signed it, and brought back a copy.
“That’s grand,” Andrew had said at the time, shoving the paper in a drawer. Later, Jane quietly moved it to the wardrobe.
She wasnt trying to be sly, just meticulous.
Oh, and that businesswholesale building supplies, grand plans for years aheadlasted barely over a year before collapsing, as misguided ventures do.
The debts were massive. Jane, for the first and last time, suggested selling the flat to put it all to rest. Andrew refusedhed sort it. And in the end, he did, but it took six long years of dribs and drabs. Jane worked overtime and never complained.
Andrew picked up the paper and started reading.
Jane poured cold tea and drank it.
“Hang on,” Andrew muttered, his voice suddenly smaller. “It says here”
“Yes,” Jane said.
“The flats yours after a divorce.”
“Yes.”
“But how”
He read it again. Then lowered the paper.
Jane waited. Fifteen years earlier, hed had time to read it properlyhe hadnt. Now he did.
“And the business debts?” he whispered.
“Theyre yours. Read clause four.”
For a moment, silence hung in the air. His phone screen blinkedLaura was likely asking how things were going. He didnt reply.
“Jane,” he ventured.
“Yes?”
“Thisdid you keep these on purpose?”
Jane pondered, answer straight:
“No. I just never throw away anything important.”
It was true. Jane filed every bill, guarantee, manual, and hospital certificateshe was just a careful soul.
Andrew glanced from the document to the window.
Jane picked up the folder, rinsed her mug in the sink, then turned.
“Andrew. One of us does need to find a new place,” she said. “Youre right.”
She returned to the bedroom.
Andrew sat in the kitchen another twenty minutes.
Or thirty. Jane didnt count. In the living room, she did what anyone does when the world is absurd: nothing much at all. She piled the novels beside her pillow, shifted the geranium onto the shelf, dusted the wardrobe. Busy hands quell noisy minds.
Andrew appeared at the door.
“Jane.”
She turned. He held the contract, like a deed that could saveor doomhim.
“Lets talk, properly,” he pleaded.
“Alright,” Jane replied, voice level.
“That agreementit was ages ago. Back then… we never thought”
“Thought what?”
He couldnt finish the sentence. That theyd split? That this silly bit of paper might actually matter?
“Solicitor stamped it all,” Jane said. “Perfectly legal. I checked.”
“When?”
“Five years back. Just in case.”
Andrew stared at her as if seeing a stranger.
“You were planning?”
She thought a moment.
“No. Just careful,” she repeated.
It was the truth. Five years earlier, shed called the solicitor for something about her mums will, and as an afterthought asked about the contract. “Still stands, not to worry,” the solicitor had replied. Jane nodded, hung up, and forgot all about ituntil now.
Andrew retreated to the kitchen. Jane heard him pacing, then quiet, then rummaging.
She peered round the door.
He stood in the corner, staring.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
No answer.
Jane filled the kettle.
“Andrew,” she said, “mind if I askwhere are you planning to go?”
He looked at her.
Silence.
“I see,” said Jane.
She understood. Andrew, clearly, had pictured a very different scene: he would declare his piece, Jane would sob, storm out to a friends. Hed stay in the flat. Laura would move in. Simple.
The idea that Jane would produce a long-forgotten contract: that didnt fit the story at all.
The kettle boiled. Jane made tea.
“Im not going anywhere,” she told him. “Its my flat, and Im staying here.”
Andrew was silent.
“But where am I supposed to”
“To Lauras,” Jane reminded him. “You said yourselves. Together, remember?”
About Laura, Jane felt nothing much at allno anger, not even interest. Laura was just a character from someone elses reverie, summoned on champagne and faded nostalgia. Jane was the wrong protagonist for that story.
So be it.
“She…” Andrew started, faltering.
“What?”
“Shes not sure yet. We havent sorted it… Shes not quite ready for it all.”
Jane set her cup down.
“Andrew,” she said softly, “you really told me to pack when you havent even arranged a place to go?”
His silence answered for him.
Some men love making Big Decisions. It’s the details that get them.
Jane fetched a brown overnight bag from the cupboard and set it on the table.
“Here,” she said. “Take what you need.”
“Jane”
“You made a choice, Andrew. Ive taken note. Now see it through.”
He looked at the bag. And something broke inside him.
He started packing.
Jane listened as he opened and closed drawers, zipped his bag, gathered things. Twenty years. And all his belongings fit in one bag.
An hour later, Andrew stood at the door, bag in hand, wearing the look of a man who hadnt quite reckoned with his own drama.
“Jane… Ill ring.”
“Alright, then,” Jane replied.
“Well… need to sort the paperwork. You know, divorce and all that.”
“Call me, well sort it.”
He lingered, as though expecting tears, pleading, an uproarsomething normal to restore the world. But there was none.
Andrew opened the door and left.
Three weeks later, Jane heard from Mrs. Simmons, her old colleague and lifelong local gossip, that things between Andrew and Laura hadnt exactly blossomed.
Laura was staying with her sister. A tiny flat, crowded with her sisters familyhardly the romance Andrew had pictured. He hadnt moved in. Instead, he’d rented a room in Croydon from an elderly landlady who had rules about guests and didn’t put up with smoking.
When Laura learned about the Croydon bedsit and the absent flat, she quickly cooled. Perhaps the romantic notion of leaving everything for love paled in comparison to the reality of one bag and unpaid debts. First love always shines at a distanceup close, its never quite the same.
Jane listened, nodded, and poured Mrs. Simmons another cup of tea.
“How are you, love?” Mrs. Simmons asked, her face ready for however much sympathy was required.
“Fine,” Jane said.
And it was true. In those three weeks, shed signed up for massage lessons shed always meant to try, phoned up her old friend Grace for a long, overdue cafe catch-up, even bought a season ticket for the local pool. Small things, but thats what a life is made of.
Sometimes, late at night in the quiet flat, Jane thought of Andrew. Not with anger, just idle curiosity. Once, she caught herself thinking how lucky she was that hed opened that door. She might never have done it herself.
The kitten calendar still hung on the wall. January, February, and the ginger kitten in its bowstill watching. Jane thought she ought finally to turn it to the proper month.
But then she thoughttheres no rush.
