(Continued from last issue)
David and Diane have been married for years; then there is Julie, the young secretary whose axis collides with the couple’s in ways none of them saw coming.
JULIE
I had worried about what effect David moving in would have on our relationship, and within a week of the move, it was clear that my fears had not been unfounded.
First, was the sheer increase of my daily workload; not only did I have to get up early to get Junior ready for day care, but I now had to ensure that everything was ready for David, including breakfast on the table by the time he emerged from the bedroom.
The only time I had to get myself ready for the day, was between the time he left for work, and the time the driver returned with the car to pick up Junior and me.
After that, I would drop Junior at day care and then rush to the site; because he had lived in his own home for so long, David was uncomfortable with living in a rented apartment and now wanted work on not just the manager’s unit, but one of the beachside villas on the site accelerated too.
A shorter timeframe to get the work done, meant hiring more workers, ordering more deliveries, and generally putting more work on my plate. Thankfully, after work, he would go to spend a bit of time with his other children, which gave me a few hours to pick up Junior, tend to him and have dinner ready by the time David returned to the apartment at around eight.
It was a gruelling schedule, and one that left me feeling physically drained by the end of each day. If that had been countered by the closer relationship I had envisioned David and I having once he moved in, that would have made it easier to deal with.
However, that had not happened; once he got back, he would head for the shower, have dinner, and then plonk down in front of the TV with Junior until they were both ready for bed.
Furthermore, even though he and I shared a bed each night, there had not been much action in it, and on the few occasions that something had happened, it had been brief, rushed – perfunctory almost.
I tried to tell myself that it was just part of the adjustment period, and that things would eventually settle down, but another part of me worried that the idyllic future I had envisioned when David said he was moving in, was just that – a picturesque dream with no place in reality.
DAVID
I could never have imagined that moving out of the house, and in with Julie and Junior, would be as hard as it turned out to be.
For starters, even though I saw the children every day, I still missed them; I missed waking up and hearing them getting ready for school, and I missed going to bed knowing they were asleep, safe and sound in the next room.
More irrationally, I missed the house; I had put so much of myself into it, that it was a part of me that had always given me a huge sense of pride and accomplishment.
To now wake up in an apartment that was less than half my house’s size stung, and desperate to get out of it, I poured everything I had into getting the manager’s unit at the Katosi site ready to be moved into as soon as possible.
At the same time, I knew that while the manager’s unit would work in the short term, just to get me out of the apartment, it was not my next home. For that, I had picked the prime lakeside spot of the estate that once developed, would house an extravagant five-bedroom villa, as I realized that only by building something bigger and better than my first home, could I ever hope to shake the sense of loss I felt at leaving it.
On her part, Julie was doing everything she could to help; I knew she was pushing the engineer, workers and suppliers as hard as she could, and, in all fairness, work at the site was moving faster than I could have expected, thanks to her.
Besides that, knowing how particular I was about clean spaces, she kept the apartment spotless, and each time I walked through the front door, I was met with the aroma of a delicious dinner wafting out of the kitchen.
And yet, no matter how clean she kept the apartment, or how many delicious dinners she prepared, sometimes I wished she would just stop fussing about mundane chores and simply be with me.
That was another thing I missed; before I moved in, she had always made time to focus on me; if I needed to talk, we would talk; if I wanted to make love, we would make love; but now, she seemed to be too busy to talk, and too tired to make love, and more than once, I had caught myself wondering, after all the stress and strain that moving out of the house had caused, if this was all I got in return, then maybe it had been a mistake to move.
DIANE
The week since David moved out was a nightmare, with my emotions on a constant rollercoaster of hurt, pain, denial, rage and shame, and I felt myself slowly falling apart.
I cried myself to sleep every night, and if it were not for the fact that I had to get the children ready for school each morning, I don’t think I would have found the energy to get out of bed.
I forced myself to go to the boutique, telling myself that it would provide an escape from the barrage of thoughts that plagued me, but the truth was, it simply changed the location of where I had them.
Ironically, even though it was David who had walked out, I was the one embarrassed by his leaving, and had not told anyone, including Tracy. As my best friend, she could tell that something was wrong and guessed it had to do with David and his whore, but when she asked for details, I simply said he was being an arse and that I did not want to talk about it.
Thankfully, she respected my wishes and did not press the matter, leaving me to my thoughts and pain. To his credit, David kept his promise to come and see the children every day, and each evening after work, he was at the house listening to stories of their day and helping them with their homework.
While Daniel remained cold and detached towards his father, the girls appeared to be dealing with his moving out better than expected.
In any case, they were certainly dealing with it better than I was; although he came to the house every day, my emotions were still too raw for me to face him; so, I kept myself cooped up in the bedroom while he was around – usually with a bottle of wine to drown my sorrows, and some music playing to drown out the sound of his voice.
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