The Good Divorce Guide

‘Oh?’ Babette looks a bit put out. ‘People usually come here because they want to avoid divorce.’

‘Well, we know what we want.’ Jonathan gives me an encouraging smile. ‘We just want to take all the proper steps.’

‘So you know what you want…’ Babette echoes Jonathan, and her tone is ever so slightly ironic. Her dark eyes settle on me: ‘You too, Rosie?’

‘Yes,’ Jonathan interrupts. ‘The divorce is a mutual agreement.’

‘Mutual?’ Babette raises a well-arched eyebrow. ‘You rolled out of bed one morning, one on the right, the other on the left, and said, “Hey, let’s get a divorce”?’

‘Well…’ Jonathan begins.

‘This divorce,’ Babette’s voice is warm and intimate, ‘is your idea, Rosie?’

‘No…’ I sound uncertain. I shoot a look at Jonathan beside me on the couch. He smooths down the linen of his trousers. I’m suddenly conscious of feeling uncomfortably hot in this elegant but airless room. ‘But…but the separation was!’

‘I see.’ Babette grants me a smile so small you’d think she had to pay for it. ‘And so the separation didn’t work and you now want to go down the divorce route?’

‘I…agree that this is the best way to go.’

‘Best for whom?’ Babette asks, readjusting her silk scarf.

‘Best for…’ I begin lamely, looking around for Jonathan’s support.

‘Best for us,’ Jonathan weighs in, ‘best for the children.’

‘You think so, Rosie?’ Babette again looks at me. She’s spotted the weakest link.

‘Hmmm…?’ I’m scared of being caught out.

‘Are you succeeding’—Babette speaks slowly and articulates carefully—‘in keeping your divorce painless?’

‘Oh yes.’ I try to sound enthusiastic, but it’s difficult when Kat’s sobs last night woke me up and brought me to her bedside: ‘Oh, Mummy, will Daddy and you really never be together again?’

‘Not together as before,’ I attempted to comfort my daughter. ‘But still friends.’

But my twelve-year-old kept sobbing.

‘Yes, we’re making great progress.’ Jonathan’s optimism sounds forced. His mother hung up on him when he announced he was moving out, and she’s refused to speak to him since. When he told the children Linda would be coming along to Dim Sum last Sunday, Freddy kicked him in the shins, screaming ‘I hate her I hate her I hate her!’ And Kat very ostentatiously hugged and kissed me on the doorstep, in full view of the car waiting down below.

‘Amicable divorces rely on both parties feeling that their needs are being met equally.’ She smiles, pauses, turns to me again. ‘You, Rosie: you don’t feel bounced into the decision to split?’

Do I? I ask myself, almost surprised by the question. Babette Pagorsky’s put her finger on what has been bothering me all along. I may no longer be in love with my husband; I may no longer see my future in terms of his; but the timing of this divorce is not of my choosing. We’re not moving towards a parallel situation: Jonathan’s moving straight to Linda; I’ve got no one of my own. If I’d been able to choose, we might well have parted—but not until the children were grown up.

‘No one,’ Jonathan volunteers before I can say anything, ‘is putting any pressure on Rosie.’ He crosses his arms. I can see from the slight flush that has spread over his features that he’s annoyed.

‘That’s true.’ I nod. I give Babette a quick, uncertain smile. ‘I agree with Jonathan that there was something missing in our marriage.’

‘What’s missing, then?’ Babette gives a little tug at the scarf round her neck. ‘Have you identified the problem area?’

I sit, completely silent. I’m stumped. What was the problem? We agreed on how to raise the children. We agreed on how to spend our money. We had great sex once a week…

‘We’—Jonathan gives me a quick look—‘don’t have the same sense of fun.’

I’m stunned by Jonathan’s betrayal. ‘OK, OK’—I hold my hands up—‘I admit it, making a list of all our DVDs—alphabetically—is not my idea of fun.’ I shake my head. ‘But apart from Jonathan, is it anyone’s?’

Jonathan looks shocked. ‘I thought you found it amusing!’

‘What about talking?’ Babette seems to be studying the oil painting of a vase of roses behind our heads. ‘Do you talk in your marriage?’

We answer in unison.

Me: ‘Always.’

Jonathan: ‘Never.’ Then, with a sheepish look in my direction: ‘I mean, of course we communicate at some level.’ He shifts uneasily in his chair. ‘Rosie and I talk about the children, about the house, DIY, the garden…’

I feel a lump in my throat. It sounds so banal, so dreary, so boring.

‘The problem is,’ Jonathan won’t look at me, ‘Rosie’s never been able to understand what I do. Which makes our relationship rather limited. I can’t discuss a lot of things that are important to me.’ He is looking only at Babette. ‘It’s frustrating.’

Babette raises an eyebrow. ‘Please can you give me an example? We have to learn not to generalise but be specific.’

‘I love reading—proper, serious books. About my work—or general knowledge. Rosie doesn’t.’

‘I do read. Just not about hair follicles or the height of the Himalayas.’

‘You feel your interests are being ignored?’ Babette is asking Jonathan.

‘He ignores me ALL the time,’ I snap back.

‘Only talk about “I” not him,’ Babette chides me gently. ‘Remember that “he ignores me” is not the same as “I feel ignored”.’

‘I feel ignored, too, you know,’ Jonathan mutters.

‘You know what I’m hearing in all this?’ Babette tucks her legs to one side, and clasps her hands as if about to start storytelling. ‘I hear: “I want attention!”’

I open my mouth to deny this, but then I shut it again. Because maybe she’s right, maybe that’s what I feel Jonathan has been withholding: he’s good at noticing what I wear, the scent I’ve got on, the new haircut. But when did he last notice what I say—and what I don’t say?

‘When did you last notice me?’ Jonathan asks. And suddenly he turns directly to me. ‘Really notice what I’m up to, or what I’m saying?’

Hold on a second. I’ve played out the whole of my life reacting to, or predicting, Jonathan’s moves. I didn’t leave HOME for the course on substance abuse at Bristol because he said he couldn’t bear the thought of commuting to see me. I didn’t go with Jill on her round-the-world, year-long trip because he kept hinting that he was about to propose. I put my training as a counsellor on hold when he convinced me that to leave the children when they were young would jeopardise their well-being. It seems to me I pay very close attention to his needs.

But what about him?

‘What about YOU?’ I cry out. ‘You don’t notice anything any more. I had to remind you that we’d sent our deposit for the cottage back in February, that I changed my office days from Tuesday to Wednesday and that your mum not mine was hoping to come at Easter. You’ve been sleepwalking for months now. Sleeping with her and walking away from us.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Are you going to lie about this as well?’