บททั้งหมดของ The wife I forgot to love: บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

Camila had lit candles.That was the first thing Damian noticed when he walked through the door. Two white candles on the dining table and the low warm light of the living room lamp and the smell of something cooking coming from the kitchen. She had music playing. Something soft and French that she had discovered a few weeks ago and played constantly now. The apartment looked the way it always looked when she had decided the evening was going to be a particular kind of evening."You are late," she called from the kitchen."Sorry." He put his keys down. Took off his jacket. "Work ran over."He did not mention the detour to the south side of Velmont. He had not decided yet what he would say about that or whether there was anything to say. So he said nothing.Camila appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing the dark red dress she knew he liked. Her hair was down. She looked polished and warm and deliberately beautiful in the way she often was when she wanted the evening to go a ce

The scene was not going the way Helena wanted it to go.Not badly. Jordan had not stopped her or asked for anything different. The takes were landing the way they were supposed to land and the crew was moving on schedule and from the outside everything looked fine. But Helena knew the difference between fine and true and this particular scene was sitting somewhere in between and she could feel it even if nobody else could.She sat in her corner between the second and third takes with her script on her knee and went over the last line again. The problem was not the words. She knew the words. The problem was that she was arriving at the line from the wrong place. She was building toward it logically instead of feeling her way there and the camera would see that even if the words came out correctly.Jordan had told her in the first week that the camera sees everything you are thinking not just everything you are doing. Helena had written that down and looked at it every morning since.Sh

Marcus came over on a Sunday evening with a bottle of whisky and no particular reason.That was how it had always been between them. No occasion required. Twelve years of friendship and neither of them had ever needed a reason to show up. Marcus would call and say I am coming over or sometimes not even that and just arrive and Damian would open the door and that would be the whole of the explanation needed.Camila was at her sister's. The apartment was quiet in the way it was only quiet when she was not in it, which was a thought Damian noticed and set aside without examining.He got two glasses. Marcus poured.They sat in the living room the way they always sat. Marcus in the chair. Damian on the couch. The city outside doing its Sunday evening things. They talked about a match they had both watched separately and had opinions about. They talked about a deal Damian's firm was closing that week and the particular headache attached to it. They talked about Marcus's sister who had moved

It rained on Wednesday.Not the polite kind of rain that arrives quietly and leaves without making a fuss. The kind that comes sideways and means it. By the time Helena arrived at the warehouse the car park was already a shallow lake and she ran the last twenty metres with her bag over her head and arrived at the entrance slightly damp and completely unbothered by it.Jordan looked at her when she walked in."You are wet," Jordan said."I am slightly wet," Helena said. "I am also on time."Jordan turned back to her clipboard. "Fair enough."It was a good morning on set. The scenes were running well and Helena was in the kind of focused groove that she had learned not to question when it arrived. Just accept it. Use it. Say thank you quietly to whatever part of herself was showing up today and keep going.At the break she went to her usual spot on the wall outside.Then remembered it was raining.She stood in the corridor just inside the side door instead, leaning against the wall with

Helena had not been expecting anything on Saturday.That was the best thing about Saturdays now. They asked nothing of her. No call time. No Jordan. No lines to run. Just the city and her own company and whatever she decided to do with eight hours that belonged entirely to herself.She had walked to the market on the east side the way she had been doing most Saturday mornings since she moved into the apartment. She liked the market. She liked the noise of it and the particular smell of it and the way it required nothing of her except presence and small decisions. This cheese or that one. These herbs or those.She bought rosemary because she always bought rosemary now.She bought a coffee from the stall she liked and walked back through the east side streets with her bag and her coffee and the cool clear morning around her.She turned the corner onto Greystone Avenue without thinking about it.It was a route she had taken a hundred times before. The market was on the east side and her