Chapter 4 - What I Did With Eleven MinutesI did not go home that night to confront Callum quietly across the kitchen table, the way some better, calmer version of myself might have managed. I went home, packed a bag for myself, called my sister, and by the time Callum walked through the door with his usual apologetic, sideways explanation half-formed on his face, I already had a solicitor's letter drafted and a locksmith booked for the following morning.
He tried, that first night, the same argument he'd tried in the school office doorway. That it was complicated. That he'd never meant for it to go this far. That he loved Elsie, still loved her, would never have done anything to disrespect her memory.
"You had her calling herself by our dead daughter's name," I said, "so that a woman who wasn't even in the room would think you were still checking in on the daughter you actually raised."
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He didn't have an answer for that either. He hadn't had an answer for much, since the school office. I don't think he'd expected any of it — not the resemblance catching up with him, not the condemned flat, not an eleven-year-old finally, quietly, asking a stranger in a cardigan whether she was allowed to be angry.
The divorce took eleven months. It was not, in the end, complicated in the legal sense — infidelity, undisclosed paternity, and a pattern of behavior toward a minor that the family court did not treat lightly once Priya Ramaswamy's full report was entered into evidence. What was complicated was everything else. Junie.
