The Parting Gift

This day will remain with me forever. It was the day I finally said goodbye to my wife.

It was the usual story of two people deeply in love who had kids and steady jobs whilst balancing a busy social life. But then life gets in the way if you're not looking forward enough.

I blamed her. Kerry blamed me. There was no point in the end. We'd failed each other by not talking about the issues and coasting through the days as if we were waiting for the death knell of our union. The kids never suffered and we'd been conscious enough to make sure we remained friends.

I still loved her but in the way we'd started out? Probably not. I just hated the way I'd failed at something that, in my mind, should have lasted forever. But that's not the way it goes sometimes.

Kerry had stepped out for the morning while I started to stack my belongings haphazardly packed away in brown boxes or large carrier bags. The kids were being dropped off at her parents' place.

After an hour of moving things then wistfully staring at the outside world through the rain stained windows then moving things aimlessly again I sat on the arm of the sofa.

"Echo!" I bellowed, thinking that the room, devoid of my things, would sound hollow. It didn't. There was a pang of disappointment with that. Not even the house would miss me.

My eyes scanned the room. One more time before I started to load the car. There was a small brown package near the television cabinet that I was fairly certain hadn't been there before.

After making a concerted effort to stand up I reached for the rectangular parcel. I thought it might have been something for Kerry but in bold black marker pen was my name. For Michael.

Kerry wasn't really someone who did surprise gifts so this was somewhat of an unusual thing to see. It was definitely her handwriting with that little extra flourish at the end of the name and the scroll-shaped underline. As I started to peel back the thick brown paper I noticed the box was very heavy. I hesitated for a moment thinking that she might try and bomb me, and I had to chuckle at that. It was stupid.

So I continued to unwrap the paper, being careful not to rip it just in case it wasn't meant for me. This is me. You could tell me something is mine, write my name on it and mail it to me with a cover letter explaining how and why it's mine, and I would still find a way to justify it not being mine.

I could feel a steel plate in the box once the lid was opened so I took a closer look. There was some text written on it.

Always remember to be you. You are amazing!

I rolled my eyes, placed the box on the floor and moved over to the stacked belongings in the centre of the living room then started shifting them from the house to the car in the driveway.

After a few hours of moving boxes, filling bin bags with unwanted crap and making important phone calls I headed back into the living room. That brown box with the steel plate inside. I wondered why she would leave me something with a dumb FaceBook quote etched into it and lifted the box once again but this time I pulled the the shiny metal object from the box. Turning it over in my hand I was hoping there was a statement of irony on the back, and yet there was nothing of the sort.

I was bloody disappointed. I certainly thought she knew me better than that but the thing I held in my hand was clear evidence she'd forgotten. I felt a wave of melancholic injury dance across my face, rising slowly to my scalp and that tightening of embarrassment that perhaps I thought too much of myself. I would take the plate, I wasn't so self-absorbed that I could freely toss a gift into the trash of the very house I'd received it in. The box and brown wrapping, though, they were a different matter. After making my way to the kitchen I stepped on the pedal of the metal bin raising the lid and dropped the wrapping in with little care.

Ping!

Now I know the sound of metal on metal. I pulled out the brown paper that had been used to wrap the gift box so I could examine it closely. Turning it round in my hand I noticed something, a small square of the same paper seemingly glued on the inside. When I peeled the little square away a small black painted key greeted me with a tiny message written next to it.

Use this in your new home. The plate was a joke.

I caught myself releasing a huge sigh of relief as the message told me what I wanted to hear. Yep, I knew I was that insecure but needed to know someone understood me in some way. Some things made me feel low just for the littlest reasons and knowing that someone I'd spent a large amount of my life with could at least let me know they knew what I was about was reassuring. Looking back at the key after staring at the wall with a blank expression drooping down my face like a poorly fitted mask whilst in my puddle depth feelings it didn't go unnoticed that the written message wasn't from Kerry's hand.

I must've sat for an age looking at the writing trying my best to decipher to whom it belonged. My bizarre illogical thinking methodology was not helping with my amateur sleuthing. I decided to go to my new home and find out what the key was for.

I pulled up to the narrow terraced house that was to be my new home. It was pretty dreary, even dreadful, but it was somewhere to live for now. It was two storeys high, constructed of old brown-red bricks and had decrepit sash windows with a very rough paint job finish. It was what my mum would've called a hovel. But she wasn't here. She was in Lowestoft with the "girls" having drinks and enjoying bingo.

Leaving the car on the single yellow line before five thirty in the afternoon, defying the parking demons, I approached the paint-chipped blue wooden street door and inserted the house key. With a slight jiggle left then right, then up and then down, and then pulling it out slightly and turning it again the door lock opened. The feeling of disappointment bubbling away in my guts was incredible. It just seemed to make the whole experience of divorce and moving out that little bit more hateful. A little more jarring.

Setting foot upon what once resembled a carpet leading from the hallway to the lounge area, I moved swiftly as if slowing for a moment might end with me being swamped by fleas or mites. What did I do?

There was furniture, if you could call it that, dotted about the house. Some of it was held together by tape. Things were beginning to look very bleak. But there was no time for any of this crap. I had to find out what this stupid key was for.

After scouring the house for little over an hour I finally came across a section of floorboard that seemed to be loose. I prised it up to find a small silver box with a tiny painted lock on its front.

The key was a perfect fit, but then there was a wave of doubt washing over me. A series of what if questions flooded my head. What if there was a poison canister inside ready to release its contents into the air? What if there was a small bomb ready to detonate in my face? What if...

I was upstairs when there came a click of the front door. I was sure that the door was closed, plus the effort it took me to get into that bloody thing would've surely needed the skills of a safe cracker to even get near making a half turn in the lock barrel.

"Hello?" I called out. With my head turned away from the door, my ear angled to the hallway, I listened for heavy footfalls. There was nothing.

"Hel-looo?" I called again, that friendly upward inflection pinging off the pockmarked walls.

I turned back to the box and opened it with a little fear. There was only a folded piece of lined paper. Removing it and unfolding it, my eyes fell upon the same handwriting that had led me here in the first place. It simply read, "Any ideas then you moron?"

I was confused. I didn't get what the joke was supposed to be.

I heard a creak of the floorboards from the stairs. Another, more subtle creek, came from the same direction. This made me pay closer attention. It seemed as though there was someone in my house.

As quietly as I could, I made my way to the far corner of the room, furthest from the door. I needed to be able to take stock of the situation before thinking of what I should do next.

The creaking of the floorboards stopped, but it was by now clear to me that there was a person on the landing lurking in the shadows. I could just make out the shape of a shoulder and part of the head.

Suddenly, with crashing stomps, a squat figure dressed in dark clothes thundered into the room waving a long shiny silver object in front of them. They appeared taken aback when they didn't find me at the location of the box and twitched their head from left to right before they turned around and looked back outside the room.

Now was my chance. I charged, launching myself from the balls of my feet, and crashed into the gut of the heavyset man. He came off his feet with such ease I was a little surprised when he seemed to glide through the air before colliding, back first, against the door frame and landing with an audible grunt on the floor. I didn't take a moment to marvel at the strength I suddenly possessed, with the man on the floor, the object, which I now saw was a blade, far from his grasp I charged again and smashed my left foot down on his arm. There was a crack as he screamed, I knew I'd shattered his elbow. Grabbing his other arm, I twisted him onto his front.

"What are you doing here?" I shouted.

The man continued to scream. At this point I just made a phone call to the police and kept my knee in the small of his back.

When the police arrived they asked the usual questions. Did I know who he was? Did I know why someone might want to harm me? Did I have any suspects in mind?

My answers, of course, were in the negative to all. I didn't for one moment think that my ex-wife wanted me dead. I also didn't think I had done anything to anyone. I was at a loss.

As the suspect was placed in the attending ambulance, he locked eyes with me then simply said, "Ask yourself where your wife is. Ask why she didn't see you off. I wasn't going to let her run back to you. Never."

It hadn't crossed my mind. I thought the way we left things was on good terms if a little cool but was a little unsettled when she sent me a text saying I should move out with little fuss so she wouldn't help.

I knew Kerry had a boyfriend as well, I knew she was happy with him and all was good between them. But now I studied this face filled with rage in the back of ambulance. Just as the doors closed I wondered if he was the boyfriend.

I now wondered if the message was from her. And what about our kids?

Many weeks went by. I gave the police all of the evidence they needed in the wake of the revelation that the man who tried to kill me was indeed my ex-wife's boyfriend. He told the police that she had second thoughts and wanted, for the sake of the children and her happiness, to try again. It was something we'd never actually discussed. It wasn't even a remote possibility.

The boyfriend denied doing something to her, but she was nowhere to be found. My kids had been dropped off at my mum and dad's by her friend. As much as we tried to locate Kerry it was as if she had vanished from the face of the planet. It was at this point that I have to confess that all the animosity, all of the forced hate and need to get away from my ex-wife just faded from my mind. I was worrying everyday. Not just for me, it was also for the sake of our kids. They needed her in their lives.

More time passed, the police were running into dead ends. There was inconclusive CCTV footage, some spurious claims of sightings near railway tracks or a seaside up north.

I was sitting alone in the lounge whilst my children played video games upstairs. On my lap was an old photo album of mine and Kerry's happier times which I had open on a picture of a time when we had visited Greece. Her beaming smile leapt from the image. I could feel tears building at the corners of my eyes.

Any ideas then, moron?

It was a sudden realisation. This was something my ex would say. It wasn't her handwriting on the note in the box but it was something she always liked to say when she was being a smart arse. And she first said it when we'd visited Greece and I'd got us lost. She must have left me a cryptic note to check Greece.

My long shot failed. She was never found. I went for years looking under every rock. Checking for her last movements. Nothing.

Then it was on his deathbed, ravaged by illness, when her ex-boyfriend confessed to killing her. Telling police that she'd never wanted to get back with me and that he'd enjoyed the idea of me searching endlessly to rekindle a love that would never be again.

He'd brought to an end a chapter of my life that needed to finish. But it had been the cruellest way to end something and deep inside a piece of me was lost forever. I knew that I'd never be the same again. A part of me stolen by time. Another part of me stolen by a vicious narcissist.