Chapter 20
950 Words
20
Benjamin Newell stood, hands in his trouser pockets, a few feet behind the bench his new wife was sat on, watching as she gazed off at the treeline, the bottom of her flowing white dress resting on the grass.
The other guests had gone back inside, leaving the two of them to say whatever needed to be said. Lisa, however, didn’t seem to be in the mood to say anything. He could tell everything from her face the moment he turned and saw her, the moment he realised she’d seen everything. In that split second, he’d realised he’d thrown it all away.
It had taken him years to prove to Lisa that he’d changed. Although she’d always said she trusted him and had faith in him, he knew the proof was in the pudding and she’d never be one hundred percent sure until he’d proven himself. And, in a few seconds of drunken madness, he’d undone all that hard work and lost everything he’d toiled for.
It certainly wasn’t the way he’d envisaged his wedding day panning out. By now they were meant to be on the dance floor, sharing their first dance together as man and wife. Instead, they were out on the impressive lawn that led up to the venue, trying to work out what was going to happen to their fledgling marriage.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Benjamin said, as he took a few steps towards the bench.
‘Don’t say anything. And don’t you dare come any closer,’ Lisa said, her teeth gritted, not even bothering to turn and look at him.
He’d seen Lisa get angry and upset before — of course he had; he was no angel — but this was something completely different. There was an atmosphere that told him he’d ruined everything. There was a sense that he’d broken her trust, the faith she’d put in him in believing that he’d really changed, that he was no longer a bad person. To realise after all that the old Benjamin was still lurking beneath the surface somewhere must have hurt her enormously, he realised. He knew it had. It had hurt him, too.
‘Lisa, I really don’t know what happened. I’ve never been like that before, I promise. It’s just... A few drinks, the emotion of the day, and then when he started... Look, I’m not making excuses. I’m just trying to make sense of it myself.’
Lisa shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘Sometimes you don’t need to try making sense of things. They just are.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It doesn’t need to mean anything. Leave me alone.’
Benjamin’s shoulders sank. He knew he couldn’t go back into the venue — not on his wedding day, with all his family and friends in there, most of whom would have now been told what had happened. Even if he managed to patch things up with Lisa he’d forever be the guy who started a fight on his own wedding day, the former criminal who never changed his ways and managed to suck a poor, innocent primary school teacher into the mix.
‘Lisa, can I at least explain what was going through my head? I can completely see your point of view. I just want you to see mine.’
Benjamin heard what he thought sounded a bit like a laugh.
‘I really don’t think I want to know what’s going through your mind. You led me to believe you’d changed. Four and a half years. What, were you just bottling it all up, waiting to get the ring on my finger so I couldn’t change my mind? What happened? He was the first person you saw who you didn’t like the look of, was he?’
Benjamin tried to stay composed and keep his voice calm. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. He was making... comments. Really lewd stuff, saying how he’d slept with you, talking about the stuff you’d done.’
Lisa kept looking off into the distance, but nodded slowly. ‘And did he say when?’
‘Before we met. When you started working at Sanderson Lees.’
‘So, in other words, nothing to do with you.’
‘That’s not really how it works, Lisa. He—’
Lisa spun around on the bench to face him. ‘No, that’s exactly how it works. You had a life before me and I chose to ignore it and forgive it. How many people have I physically attacked because they mentioned something you’d done in your past? I’ll tell you. None. Because I knew — I thought — you’d changed.’
‘I have changed,’ Benjamin said quietly.
‘Yeah. Looks like it.’
Benjamin took a couple of steps closer to his wife. ‘Lisa, that’s not fair. I made one mistake. One mistake in four and a half years. You know how much I’ve changed, how different I am from the man I was before. I did one stupid thing. One. You can’t hold that against me.’
Lisa stood up and walked over to Benjamin, her face neutral, until she was almost toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose with him.
He looked at her, her eyes darting back and forth between his as he tried to work out what she might be thinking.
After a few seconds of silence, she finally spoke. ‘It was our wedding day. Our. Wedding day.’
And with that, she hitched up her dress and strode off back towards the venue.
Benjamin stood for a moment, staring into the space where Lisa had stood, trying his level best to get his head around what was happening. Was this it? Was she telling him it was all over, that he’d ruined it in front of all her family and friends? Was this going to go down as the shortest marriage in history?
Before he could torment himself too much about what had happened, his phone vibrated in his pocket; the familiar sound of a Formula 1 car zooming past as his chosen text tone. He pulled the phone out and glanced at the screen, seeing a text message from a number he didn’t recognise — one that wasn’t saved in his Contacts list. Regardless, he knew exactly who it was from based purely on the contents of the message.
He’s out. We need to meet.
- Writer
