The Heart Chose Warmth
“You’re leaving me for that plain Jane?” Marina’s voice trembled with fury and hurt.
“Don’t call her that, Marina. It’s my choice. I’m sorry,” I muttered, hastily packing my things, avoiding her gaze.
“I hope you come to your senses soon. You’ll be the laughingstock of the neighbourhood! The colleagues, the neighbours—everyone will gossip! Who have you chosen? Some rough-around-the-edges woman from the sticks! What do I tell the kids? That their refined father ran off with a country cook?” Marina crumpled her handkerchief in her fist, her face flushed.
“The kids? They’re grown, Marina. Liza’s about to get married, and George is off doing his own thing. We’re not their keepers. As for the neighbours and colleagues—I couldn’t care less what they think. I don’t meddle in their lives, and mine’s none of their business.” I tried to sound gentle but firm, hoping to convince her.
It didn’t work. A family breaking apart is always a knife to the heart, for both. Marina turned to the window, her shoulders shaking. I didn’t feel sorry for her. Just emptiness, like after a fire.
—
Marina was my third wife. When I first saw her, my heart raced like a teenager’s. Beautiful, polished, with regal posture. I wasn’t exactly lacking in charm either—I knew women fancied me. I had options, but I kept falling in love and marrying without thinking. The spark always faded, and I’d bolt. The kids only came with Marina.
I thought she was my destiny, my safe harbour. But love, like a ripe apple, eventually shrivelled into a raisin. In public, we played the perfect couple—smiles, gloss, performative happiness. The neighbours envied our “stable” family, the old ladies by the lifts whispered, and we sailed past them like we were on a catwalk.
Behind closed doors, though, everything crumbled. Marina wasn’t a homemaker. The fridge yawned empty, laundry piled up like Everest, and dust settled over everything like a winter frost. Meanwhile, she was impeccably manicured, freshly styled, flawlessly made-up. Marina saw herself as the sun, and the world revolved around her. She didn’t love—she allowed herself to be loved. Her heart was closed off, even to the kids.
My mother, Margaret, lived with us. She endured the chaos for years before stepping in. Wisely, subtly, she taught Liza and George how to cook, clean, and fend for themselves. Marina, fancying herself aristocracy, called them by their full names—Elizabeth and George—and kept them at arm’s length. The kids clung to Granny’s warmth and fairness, drifting further from their mother.
Marina forbade me from chatting with the neighbours, dismissing their conversations as “common.” She never got past a frosty “hello.”
For the first few years, I was blind. Happy, in love, living each day. Liza shone at school; George barely scraped by. It baffled me—same family, same upbringing, yet polar opposites. We dragged George through his exams, but he stubbornly refused to try. By Year 11, he resented his sister for her success. Sometimes I’d break up their fights, feeling the cracks in the family widen.
—
It was the wild nineties. After school, George fell in with a bad crowd and vanished. Three years—nothing. We searched, filed missing reports, but it was hopeless. We mourned, we grieved. Mum, eyeing Marina, would whisper,
“The boy lost his way because his mother never showed him the path.”
Marina would fume, lock herself in the bathroom, and sob. Hope flickered, then dimmed. Then, out of nowhere, he appeared—gaunt, scarred, hollow-eyed. With him was his wife, just as life-battered. We took them in warily, fearing his temper. George watched us with suspicion, silent, skittish.
Liza left too, shacking up with some odd bloke, no wedding. She’d visit with bruises but deny everything.
“Liza, leave him, he’s a bully! He’ll kill you one day,” Mum begged, tearful.
“Granny, it’s fine. I fell. It’ll heal,” Liza said, a far cry from the star pupil she’d been.
—
Then I, forgetting my age, fell in love. Didn’t see it coming. Grey at the temples, heart like a schoolboy’s. Home held no appeal—just rows with George, Marina’s chill, Mum’s lectures. “Three marriages, and what for? Kids like strays, wife couldn’t boil an egg.”
At the factory canteen where I worked, there was a cook named Hope. Cheerful, unpretentious, warm-hearted. For years, I’d overlooked her—plump, rosy-cheeked. But her laugh, like a babbling brook, cracked my armour one day. Hope joked, teased, radiated comfort. I lingered in the canteen, finding excuses to chat.
Hope was Marina’s opposite. A simple headscarf, nails bare but for a slash of lipstick. Yet she glowed. Her flat smelled of fresh pies, her fridge always stocked—stews, roasts, puddings. She fed neighbours, friends, shared her warmth freely. With her, I felt alive, like drinking from a cold spring.
I wooed her—flowers, cinema, walks. Hope hesitated.
“Andrew, I like you, but you’ve a wife, kids. I won’t be the other woman,” she said.
I wavered. Leaving felt like stepping onto thin ice. But gossip reached Marina. “Well-wishers” spilled everything—who Hope was, where she lived, how long I’d been sneaking off. Marina screeched, called Hope a “backwater bumpkin,” threatened to end it all.
Six months later, I packed my bags. Hope welcomed me but set terms:
“Andrew, show me the divorce papers in a month, or I’m gone.”
I divorced. We married. No regrets. Liza and George visit now. Hope feeds them silly, and they soften. Liza’s ditched her brute. George’s cleaned up, looks healthier, expecting a baby. Seems he’s had enough of the dark side. Hope reconciled them:
“You’re family! Stick together, not drifting like tumbleweed.”
Now they’re close again. Mum’s passed, her scolding silenced. Marina’s aged, her snobbery long gone. She turns away when we pass. We live streets apart, but I don’t backtrack.
Maybe I’ll be judged. But it’s my life, my choices. And only I answer for them.
—
This happened in a sleepy Cotswold town, where I hunted happiness but only found it in the warmth of a simple, cosy woman.
