Two years had slipped by since that peculiar day, and now I found myself encountering her once more. Along a winding London street that dissolved into mist, a striking woman glided ahead of me, and my heart felt as though it had momentarily withheld its beat. Amidst the shifting cityscape, I recognised my former wife, Emily, the same Emily who once prompted men to crane their necks in silent admiration.
After our wedding, however, my wife became unrecognisable, dissolving into one of those women with limp hair slicked to her scalp, draped in oversized jumpers. Gone were the elegant dresses that had flattered her figure, the delicate lingerie of memory, all vanished as if drawn into a cupboard that stretched on forever.
Instead, Emily began wearing what seemed like sackfuls of loose clothes round the house: shapeless t-shirts that only grew in size, as though they were inflating dream-balloons. Neglect had crept in silently; she no longer painted her nails or brushed blush onto her cheeks. Exercise became another surreal memory, fading beyond recognition, while the softness left on her belly after giving birth lingered, joined by stubborn cellulite like clouds clinging to her legs.
In those two years we shared a home on a street that felt as unending as my confusion, she transformed altogetherexpanding, receding, always swaddled in ever-larger woollen bags. Whenever I cautiously suggested she glance in the mirror, her lips would purse, a chill would descend, and silence hung between us like a thick English fog.
It was as though Id awoken beside a stranger, grasping at echoes of the Emily Id marriedpassionate, humorous, beautiful, so envied by my mates who all mused on my good fortune. Yet with each strange alteration, she faded to someone who failed to stir any yearning within me, inspiring only a deep, inexplicable sadness.
I remember the last time Id gazed upon her that way. She wore a vast grey jumper smeared with milky patches, baggy shorts exposing her dimpled thighs, her legs shadowed in unshaven stubble. On her head perched a messy bun, gradually unravelling until strands jabbed outwards like wild thistles across an untamed field. Her face, too, had become fixed in a permanent melancholy, with deep hollows set beneath her eyes, shadowy as the passages of the Underground.
That evening, I broke and told her I could no longer remain, that she conjured only sorrow and pity but not love. Nothing more passed between us, and the passage of time became strangely distorted.
Two years drifted by in the peculiar haze of regret, until suddenly there she was again, sweeping past me along Oxford Street. Emily, my former Emily, radiant in a flowing dress, her hair a cascade of golden curls. Time had sculpted her anewno longer weighed down, she had shed her cocoon and emerged a queen. A queen who had raised our twin sons with gentle hands, their memories bound to hers.
It was thenstanding in that uncanny duskthat a strange understanding dawned. My wife had not neglected herself out of carelessness or apathy. Her every thought, her reserves of energy, had been given to creating a warm, comforting home and nurturing our children. Lost in my drifting, distracted thoughts, Id missed how utterly draining it must have been, where she found little time for manicures or gym sessions.
Sometimes, when the twins were left with me for just an afternoon, Id find myself drained after no more than a couple of hours. Yet she, in dreamlike reality, carried them all day, cleaned, cooked, and still managed to greet me with warmthnever once a reproach, never once a sigh heavier than the London rain. Amid her tireless devotion, thered been no place for finery or jewels, nor occasions to showcase the elegant dresses, not while the carpet was stained with apple juice and toy trains.
Not until it was all memory, twisted and refracted, did I see: through those long years, she had borne our family upon invisible shoulders. She never complained, always welcoming me home, never raising her voice. She conjured a home that was a haven, and I only realised the enormity of her labour when it was impossibly late. I could have helped. If I had simply extended a hand, perhaps she might have found time to remember herself.
I wandered Londons streets, racked by the sort of regret only found in dreams. I had been a complete fool, losing a treasure I had never known how to cherish. Lost in my own righteousness, I had cared nothing for her life, nor for our boys; I had managed to shatter everything, as easily as if Id dropped a cup of tea and watched it scatter.
Now, I drift past her in the restless city nights, wanting desperately to reclaim what I surrendered, but unsure if she could ever truly forgive the depths of my smallness. I tell myself I will try to speak with her, to restore even a splinter of dignity in her eyes, if only for the sake of our sons, whose growing up I had already missed these last two years.
Emily now has her admirersgentlemen who never seem as close as I once wasbut none have been permitted into her inner world. It seems I left a wound too deep for easy healing. So I walk the city, burdened by shame and a guilt I cannot shake, haunted by all I have broken, and by the strange, dreamlike memory of the woman who once was mine.
