Then She Was Gone

by Lisa Jewell

That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills.

Neither of them were setting the world alight but then whose children did? All those hopes and dreams and talk of ballerinas and pop stars, concert pianists and boundary-breaking scientists. They all ended up in an office. All of them.

‘You didn’t lose me, Laurel. I’m still yours. I’ll always be yours.’ ‘Well, that’s not strictly true, is it?’ He sighs again. ‘Where it counts,’ he says. ‘As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are for ever.’