"Please, Claire," pleaded Dad.

"Oh, all right then." I sighed, putting down the pen I had been using to make notes with.

"James," I said into the phone, "what do you want?"

"Claire," he said, sounding cross, "have you come to your senses yet?"

"I wasn't aware that I had taken leave of them," I said politely. He ig- nored this.

376

"I've been calling all day and your mother says you don't want to talk to me," he said, sounding angry and put out.

"That's right," I agreed pleasantly.

"But we've got to talk," he said.

"No, we don't," I said.

"Claire, I love you," he said earnestly. "We have to work this out."

"James," I said coldly, "We've worked out as much as we can. And now we're at the end of the line. You think you're right. I think you're wrong. And I'm not wasting any more time or energy trying to convince either of us to change our minds. Now, I wish you well and I hope we can keep this civilized, especially for Kate's sake, but there really is nothing further to discuss."

"What's happened to you, Claire?" asked James, sounding shocked. "You were never like this before. You've changed so much. You've gotten so hard."

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" I said casually. "My husband had an affair. It kind of made an impact on me."

Very unkind, I know. But I couldn't resist it.

"Very funny, Claire," he said.

"Actually no, James," I corrected him, "it wasn't funny at all."

"Look," he said, starting to sound annoyed, "this is getting us nowhere."

"That's fine by me," I said, "because nowhere is precisely where we're going."

"Very witty, Claire. Very droll," he said nastily.

"Thank you," I replied with excessive sweetness.

"Now listen," he said, suddenly sounding all official and even more pompous than usual. I could almost hear papers rustling in the background. "I have a...um...proposition for you."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "Claire, I do love you and I don't want us to split up, so if it makes you feel better I'm prepared to um...make...um...a concession to you."

"What's that?" I asked. I was hardly interested. I barely cared.

377

I realized, with a shock, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could say now to make things better.

I didn't love him anymore.

I didn't know why or when I stopped.

But I had.

James continued to speak and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

"I'm prepared to forget all about you having to change when you come back to live with me," he was saying. "You obviously feel very strongly about having to try harder at being mature and considerate and all the other...um...things we discussed. So if it means that you'll abandon this idea that we're splitting up, I can put up with you being the way that you were in the past. I suppose you weren't that bad," he said grudgingly.

Anger surged through me. I forgot for a moment that I no longer cared. I mean, the sheer gall of the man! I could hardly believe my ears.

I said as much.

"Are you glad?" he asked cautiously.

"Glad! Glad?" I screeched. "Of course I'm not bloody well glad. This makes it all even worse."

"But why?" he whined. "I'm saying here that I forgive you and that everything will be fine."

I nearly exploded. I had so many things to say to him.

"Forgive me?" I said in disbelief. "You forgive me? No, no, no, no, no James, you have it all wrong. If there's any forgiving to be done around here, it's me forgiving you. Except that I'm not."

"Just a minute..." James blustered.

"And this is supposedly the reason you had the affair with that fat cow. Me being immature and selfish. But you're prepared to overlook it now, at the drop of a hat. Yet it was important enough for you to be unfaithful to me. Make up your mind, James! Either it's important or it's not."

"It is important," he said.

"Well, then you can't overlook it," I said furiously. "If you want me to be a certain way and it's important, then what kind of relationship will we have if I can't be that way?"

378

"All right then," he said, sounding a bit desperate, "it's not important."

"Well, if it's not important then why did you have an affair because of it?" I said triumphantly.

"Can't we just forget it?" he said. I could hear panic in his voice.

"No, James, we can't. You might be able to, but it's not so easy for me."

"Claire," he pleaded, "I'll do whatever you want."

"I suppose you would," I said sadly. "I suppose you would."

I didn't want to bicker and argue and fight with him anymore. I couldn't be bothered.

"James, I'm going now," I said.

"Will you think about what I said?" he asked.

"I will," I agreed. "But don't hold out any hope."

"I know you, Claire," he said. "You'll change your mind. Everything is going to be fine."

"Good-bye, James."

In fairness, I did think about what James had said. I owed it to Kate.

The arguments in favor of and against reuniting with James went back and forth in my head like a tennis ball.

But the one thing I couldn't ignore, the one thing I couldn't argue my way out of, the one thing that I couldn't convince myself was otherwise, was the fact that I no longer cared about James.

I mean, I cared about him. I didn't want anything too terrible to happen to him. But I didn't love him the way I used to. I wished I knew what had caused this to happen. But it could have been so many things. He had had an affair--much as he'd like me to overlook it. That must have done a lot to destroy my trust in him. And my getting the blame for it, well, I wasn't too happy about that. Or it could be the fact that he wasn't man enough to own up to what he had done and just apologize? That went a long way in destroying any respect I might have had for him. Even now he wouldn't admit he was in the wrong. Even though he was scaling down his require-