All Chapters of The wife I swore I’d never be : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

99 Chapters

Chapter 21 — One Small Thing

ANITA POV The jacket had been sitting in my mind for three weeks. Finished. I had solved the shoulder and, since then, I had drawn it six more times from different angles, different fabrics, different bodies. Each version cleaner than the last. Each one telling me the same thing—that this was not a sketch anymore. This was something that wanted to exist in the world. I knew the difference. I had always known the difference. A sketch is a question. What I had now was an answer. I sat at the kitchen table on a Wednesday morning with the sketchbook open and my coffee going cold and looked at the most recent version for a long time. Then I opened my laptop. I told myself I was just looking. Just checking. Like looking something up without committing to what you find. I searched a name. Cheng Textiles. A supplier I had used in university… a small import company that brought in West African textiles that nobody else in the city stocked at the time. Mr Cheng ran it

Chapter 22 — Both Things Can Be True

KELVIN POV Daniel was standing at the edge of the set when I came out of the third take. I saw him before he saw me. Hands in his pockets. That expression he had worn since he was fifteen — somewhere between concern and a decision already made. He was in a good suit. Hair cut recently. He had driven from across the city without calling first which meant whatever he had come to say he had decided could not wait. He had been looking older than his age since he was nineteen. I finished the scene. Said the right things to the director. Let someone touch up my face with a brush I barely registered. Signed something someone held out. Then crossed the floor. “You could have called,” I said. “You would have told me you were busy.” “I am busy.” “I know.” He looked around the set. The lights. The equipment. The thirty people moving with purpose in every direction. A woman adjusting something on a camera. A man checking his phone between takes. All of it moving without him. “You

Chapter 23 — The Weight of It

ANITA POVSaturday morning I told Donald I was going to the market.Not a lie exactly. The warehouse was on the east side and there was a market two streets down and I had been to both before. I said it the way I said most things to Donald… flat, unremarkable, offered as information rather than a request for permission. He was at his desk with his coffee and his laptop and he nodded without looking up.I drove across the city with the window down and the radio on low and the address in my phone and something in my chest that I was deliberately not examining too closely.Cheng Textiles was exactly as I remembered. A warehouse front with a modest sign and two large wooden doors that were already open when I arrived. Inside it smelled like fabric and cedar and something faintly chemical that I associated with the dye room at the back. The light was good… high windows, natural, the kind that showed you what a fabric actually was rather than what it wanted to be.Mr Cheng was at the back c

Chapter 24-sorrel

Anita pov I stopped for coffee on the way home. Not a plan. Just a decision that happens when you have been carrying something for two hours and are not ready to put it down yet. There was a place I liked on Verity Street ….small, no music, light that made you feel like you could sit there indefinitely without anyone noticing. I found a corner table. Set the fabric parcel down beside my bag. Ordered without looking at the menu. I had been sitting there for twenty minutes, turning the sample maker’s number over in my fingers without quite deciding what to do with it, when I heard my name. Not Mrs Hargrove. Anita. I looked up. She was standing three tables away with a coffee in her hand and an expression I recognised immediately… She crossed the room. “I thought it was you,” she said. “Helen Marsh. Second year studio. You sat in front of me for two terms.” I stood up. “Helen.” “You look exactly the same,” she said. “You don’t,” I said. It came out befo

Chapter 25 — Bones

Anita povHelen had a studio above a print shop on Calloway Street.Three rooms.Good light.A long table she used for client meetings and mood boards and everything in between.She had texted me the address two days after Verity Street and I had saved it without telling anyone I had done that.Thursday morning I told Donald I was having lunch with Priya.I drove across the city with the fabric parcel in the backseat and the sketchbook in my bag.Helen was already there when I arrived.Coffee made.The long table cleared.She had printed three images and pinned them to the corkboard on the wall — not my work, reference points.A coat from 1994.A jacket from a small Parisian label nobody outside the industry had heard of.A photograph of a woman on a street somewhere, no label, no context, just the way she stood in what she was wearing.I looked at them for a moment.“Tell me who she is,” Helen said.“Who?”“The woman who wears Sorrel.”She sat down.“Not demographics. Not age range.

Chapter 26 — The First Crack

KELVIN POVMarcus came at seven in the morning.Early even for him. He had a coffee from the place on the corner and a folder under his arm and the look — no. He looked like a man who had been awake for longer than was good for him.I let him in.He sat at the kitchen counter while I finished my own coffee and did not rush him.He opened the folder.“Meridian,” he said.I looked up.“The property portfolio acquisition. Eight months in the making. It fell through yesterday. The financing partner pulled out forty-eight hours ago. Quietly. No statement. No explanation to the press.”I set my cup down.“How quietly,” I said.“Quiet that takes a phone call to arrange.” He looked at me over the folder. “It does not happen on its own.”I had made that call six weeks ago.One conversation with a man who owed me a favour and understood that favours had a cost. The conversation had lasted eleven minutes. I had not mentioned Hargrove Financial by name. I had not needed to.I had not thought abou

Chapter 27 — Still Yours

ANITA POV I had drawn it forty-seven times. Now it existed. A plain box. No label. Helen had arranged everything through the sample maker and I had paid in cash and given a collection address …a post office box she had opened under Sorrel’s name two weeks earlier. She had left it on my passenger seat that morning in the car park behind Calloway Street and driven away without ceremony. I drove home with it beside me and did not open it until Donald left for the office. Then I sat at the kitchen table and looked at it. Then I opened it. The jacket was wrapped in tissue paper. I lifted it out and set it on the table and stepped back. It was exactly as I had drawn it. Not close. Not almost. Exactly. The shoulder sat precisely where I had placed it in every version of that sketch. The seam line resolved the way I had solved it at two in the morning in front of the dressing table mirror. The lapel broke at the right point. The back fell clean. I had drawn

Chapter 28 — Nothing

KELVIN POV My publicist arranged it. Her name was Claire and she had been managing my public image for four years and had the patience of someone who had long since accepted that the person she was managing was going to be difficult about certain things. Restaurants. Red carpets. Anything that required a smile that lasted longer than thirty seconds. And this — being seen publicly with someone. She had raised it three times in as many months. The fourth time she raised it she did not phrase it as a suggestion. “You have a profile,” she said. “The profile requires maintenance. Being seen with someone appropriate is maintenance. It is not personal.” I had looked at her across the desk and thought about telling her it was entirely personal and that was precisely the problem. I had not said that. Claire was good at her job and good at her job meant she did not need my interior life, she needed my exterior compliance. It was not personal. Her name was Sophia. Sh

Chapter 29 — One True Thing

ANITA POV Priya was already at the table when I arrived. She had ordered bread and was tearing pieces off it — the same thing she always did when she had been waiting longer than was comfortable and did not want to say so. She looked up when I came through the door. Her eyes moved across my face before I had even sat down. “You look different,” she said. I pulled out the chair. “Hello to you too.” “No I mean it.” She was still looking. “Something is different about you.” “I got a haircut.” “You did not get a haircut.” She tore another piece of bread and set it down without eating it. “It is something else. You are holding yourself differently. You look like someone who has been somewhere interesting and has not told anyone yet.” I picked up the menu I had memorised three years ago and looked at it anyway. The waiter came. Priya ordered without looking at the menu because she had memorised it the same year I had. We had been coming to this place since before D

Chapter 30 — Four Years

ANITA POV Four years. That was what the cake said. White frosting, gold lettering, brought out between the main course and dessert while the table applauded and Donald put his arm around my shoulders and smiled at the room. I smiled back. I had been smiling correctly all evening. A smile I had learned so thoroughly I no longer had to think about it. It just happened — settled onto my face the moment I needed it, stayed for as long as required, vanished the moment no one was looking. Four years of that. Aurelius. Waterfront. Private dining room. Fourteen people who had come to celebrate a marriage that looked, from the outside, exactly as something perfect I had dressed carefully. The navy dress Donald had laid across the bed two weeks ago with a note that said for Saturday. No question. No discussion. Just the dress and the expectation. I wore it. Got in the car. The city went dark outside the window. Donald checked his phone. I watched the lights going past and rememb

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