The Man Who Forgot His Wife by John O'Farrell Page B

worried the extra time would be added on to my bill. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Vaughan, but we have been absolutely adamant on this point up till now.’
    ‘See, mate, you paid nearly all of the contributions into the pension,’ interjected Gary, ‘so you didn’t see why she should receive half of it.’
    ‘But if she was looking after the kids or whatever, how could she pay any money in? She was making, like, a non-cash contribution, wasn’t she?’
    ‘That is the point that
her
lawyer will be making. But one of the reasons you are having to go to court is because you don’t agree with what you just said.’
    ‘I don’t?’
    ‘
No, you don’t
. We have consistently agreed that she could have worked when the children were young if she had wanted to, but that she
chose
not to.’
    ‘Ah, well, that’s a difficult one, isn’t it?’ I mused philosophically, pressing my index fingers together. ‘I mean, was there a genuine choice? Deep down, you know? If I was working so hard at my job – teachers’ bureaucracy, staff meetings, marking, cleaning the blackboard … do teachers still do that? – perhaps all that closed off the possibility of her resuming any meaningful career after we had children.’
    My lawyer pressed his fingers to his temples as if he had suddenly developed a powerful headache, and his exasperation seemed to increase as I went on to question the pre-arranged position on the division of the house and the custody of the children. ‘I just think we are pursuing a rather hard-line and unreasonable stance.’
    ‘This is the Divorce Court, Mr Vaughan, not Disneyland. You either fight your corner or you get utterly destroyed.’
    The lawyer insisted that there was no alternative but to proceed on the basis already agreed, and Gary pointed out that if I won, I’d look all the more generous to Maddy if I didn’t insist on all the court’s terms. But I was alarmed at some of the stands adopted by my former self. To solve the practical problems of my demand that I have custody of the children, my lawyer had suggested that the kids move schools to the comprehensive where I was a teacher. Gary drew breath at that one.
    ‘I’m not sure you want to do that to them, mate …’ Now it seemed wrong to want to cause further disruption to the children’s lives; I couldn’t understand the thinking of the Vaughan who had previously gone along with this. Finding out more and more about myself was like peeling an onion. And the more I peeled away the layers, the more I felt like crying.
    ‘Right, shall we go in?’ suggested the lawyer before I complicated things any further. I discovered that Gary would not be allowed in the courtroom, and so I alone was solemnly escorted to the innermost chamber where marriages went to die.
    The courtroom itself was smaller and more modern than I had anticipated; nothing like the great oak-panelled room that had been planted in my subconscious by climactic trial scenes in forgotten TV dramas. It smelt of furniture polish and new carpet tiles, and on the wall hung an old portrait of the Queen to remind divorcing couples that there were always families more dys-functional than their own. We were joined by a pupil barrister and then a solicitor and trainee, and eventually Maddy and her team bustled in and placed themselves at the parallel bench. I felt my insides fizzing as I saw her again and I leaned over and attempted a smile, but she had clearly decided that our final divorce hearing was not the occasion for friendly little waves across the room. Her lawyer mumbled at her for several minutes and she listened in intense concentration, only glancing up once, accidentally making eye contact with me and then quickly looking away. She was wearing a smart dark jacket and skirt, with a plain white blouse underneath. ‘That’s exactly what you should wear for a divorce hearing,’ I thought. Well, if you were a woman, anyway. Though if you wore that when you were a man, at least the