Written by Rob

I wasn’t even aware that Jenny kept a diary, until I found it lying in the hallway. I guessed it must have fallen from her bag. I recognised immediately what it was, even though it wasn’t written on a pre-printed, pre-dated book, but rather in an ad hoc collection of thoughts, scribbled into a well-thumbed, hard-backed book. I felt guilty about reading it; I knew I shouldn’t. She’d be mortified if she knew. Although we’d been married eight years, and we’d always promised each other “no secrets”, I’d always felt Jenny had kept a part of herself in reserve. It was as though there was a locked room inside her, that she’d lost the key to. I did not doubt she loved me, but I’d never felt that she’d trusted me with her inner sanctum, the core of her, the bit that made her tick. This memoire was too good an opportunity to pass over and so I sat on the “telephone chair” and read.

The early pages were mostly taken over with worries about the children: Derek’s first day at school, Linda’s poor spelling, Derek’s cut knee, and so forth. I didn’t seem to get much of a mention until I found “Kevin is a pompous arsehole!” in thick black letters, double underlined, following a passage describing our row about the Florida trip we couldn’t afford. That made me smile. I knew Jenny had come to my way of thinking about our budget a week or so later and, sure enough, there was the grudging, “I suppose he has a point,” two pages later. Continue reading →