My husband invited his ex-wife to his birthday dinner because, according to him, she was “still part of the family.” What he didn’t expect was the surprise I had waiting beside every plate.By pudding the smile had gone off his face, and his ex-wife had stopped breathing.
Desmond and I had been married seven months.
I was four months pregnant with our first.
At the start he was everything I had hoped for. Attentive. Affectionate. He thought about things.
But there was one thing I could never quite get past.
And my mother, who was not at that dinner and who I have not mentioned once.
She was at the wedding. She bought a coat in the January and she cried in the register office at Vaudry and there are photographs of her holding my arm on the steps.
And I rang her on the twelfth of October, the morning after, and told her the whole of it in about six minutes.
