Chapter Text
The spark faded, because all sparks must, at some point or other.
You’d imagined that it would happen quickly, like a candle snuffed between damp fingertips. It was much slower than that - it crept up on you, disease-like and quiet. Only when the symptoms turned sinister did you begin to truly see your marriage for what it was: a vacuum, a space so empty that it echoed. Louder those echoes grew, to the point you could discern no other sounds. You thought often and enviously of those sparks extinguished in an instant, the kind you read about in gossip magazines. Your own had the unfortunate quality of being rather more difficult to put out.
Sebastian Barreau might have been a kind man, in another universe, one in which kindness is merely comprised of extravagant gifts and platitudes. Take your dress, for example. Not something picked up from a rack, but made to measure for you and you only. He takes you to Savile Row every month, like clockwork, and has a dress made for you. He loves nothing more than clothing you in the finest London has to offer. Harrods is another favourite haunt of his, where he presses banknotes into your palm like a kiss and lets you ransack the Cartier boutique. Your wrists weigh heavy with bracelets after every visit, and his inexhaustible wallet grows lighter in turn.
My sweetheart, he often used to call you, in those early days. He told you once that he knew he had to have you, from the very first moment you met. You've never been quite sure whether that was true, but he said it with such earnestness that you very nearly believed him.
He had been on a visit to the university, with his very own table at the week-long careers fair. A favour to a lecturer friend, he had told you, sitting blonde and dazzling in the assembly hall. Freshly twenty, you had lingered by his stall; his placard boasted that he worked in finance, and it just so happened that you were studying for a degree in economics. In your charity shop dress and well-worn shoes, somehow, you caught his wandering eye. He was handsome in the same way that catalogue models always are; beautiful and statuesque, but empty. Your classmates had fluttered around his table, fawning, but Sebastian's gaze kept drawing to wherever you happened to be.
Thinking only of wringing him out for advice, some guidance, you sought him out as he was packing his briefcase. Those eyes, light-green and with a vaguely reptilian quality about them, lit up at the sight of you.
“Walk with me?” he had suggested, deep and coaxing. He always posed his questions more like demands. “Let’s get some coffee.”
In a crowded café off the high street and far away from campus, Sebastian had made any excuse to touch you. Reaching across the table with his big, clumsy hands to brush yours. He managed to knock over the sugar caddy, spilled tiny white crystals across the Formica tabletop. Those hands fascinated you, the knowledge that they moved unfathomable amounts of money as though counting mere pennies. An entire world away from shuffling through crumpled pound notes and coins at your parents’ struggling greengrocer’s.
You had, tremulously, tried to ask him about his work in finance. His father’s firm was one of the biggest in the city, if not the whole country. You’d imagined that, after enough batting of eyelashes and innocent touches, he might whisk you away from the degree you were failing and give you a little desk job at the firm. Instead, he had lifted his eyes to the ceiling with a faintly sardonic smile.
“Let’s not talk such dull things, sweetheart. At least, not before I take you out to dinner.”
He was never so easily satisfied, Sebastian, nor was he particularly accustomed to not getting what he wanted.
So you had smiled, sweetly as you could possibly muster, and let him take you out. Every night of his visit to the university, you wound up dining with him, always somewhere uncomfortably extravagant. Who were you to be taking a meal at Oslo Court, in your hand-me-downs and clumsily applied makeup? You had cringed inwardly at the menus and their absence of prices, the incomprehensible wine lists. If you were to squeeze anything from this wealthy, coldly charming man, you would have to fit in somehow. A small mercy that your looks afforded you some forgiveness for your commonness. Sebastian had stared at you each night as though you were the best thing he'd ever laid eyes on, and delicately skirted around topics of money and upbringing.
That in itself was an issue. He wouldn't hear a bar of talk about your degree, his father's firm, or anything remotely interesting to you. He instead bombarded you with overblown tales of his own time as a student at Cambridge, boasting friends in high places and distant connections to French aristocracy. You were never completely certain of how much of this he cut from whole cloth, and how much was the truth. He seemed bent on impressing you, and after a time, it began to work.
Sitting across from him in those dim booths made you feel something. Yes, he was beautiful to look at, in the same way a statue from ancient times could be beautiful. He stood at six foot, wiry and straight-backed, sporting wavy blonde hair tamed back with brilliantine and a set of too-white teeth glinting between his lips. An aquiline nose and strong chin lent him a regal sort of handsomeness. But he was also boring to look at. Men always are, you found yourself thinking. What really made you shiver was his absolute command of a room, the way he lent you a little morsel of that heady power on those evenings together. You would go back to your parents’ cramped flat above their shop, and think of all the things he might give you, if only you gave up a little of yourself in return. The thought twisted up your stomach into knots.
His stint at the university ended, as it must, but not before he took you to his Mayfair flat and had you for the very first time. For all of the three minutes he lasted, you lay beneath him, quite frozen and stiff. He was your first. It hurt, and you bled onto his brushed-cotton bedsheets.
“Amazing,” he had gasped out, when he came. “God, you're amazing.”
He was affectionate for no more than a minute after, before promptly rolling over into a dead sleep. Perhaps this was what it was supposed to feel like, you pondered, as he snored deep enough to make the mattress quiver. You lay awake most of the night, sore between your legs and faintly sick in your heart.
Within a matter of weeks, you'd completely fallen in with Sebastian and his affluent circle. Parties, members’ clubs in Soho, new jewellery and clothes waiting for you before each outing. Dressed more finely, deliberately softening your accent for the benefit of his friends, your confidence burgeoned. His well-heeled companions fawned over you; both the men and the women treated you with equal measures of kindness and condescension. Always with a sheen of distrust about their eyes, though. A reminder that you did not belong with them, that for your pretty face and all your lovely dresses and jewels, you would never truly have a place amongst their kind. You plastered on smile after smile and bit back every snide remark that threatened your lips. You were close, so close, to what you’d been working towards. His friends’ approval or lack thereof weren't going to stop you from getting there.
Barely five months in, Sebastian proposed in front of your parents, looking appallingly out of place in their little flat. With one knee on the threadbare rug, he asked you to be his wife. And you, feigning surprise with a manicured hand pressed against your lips, trying to muster up a few tears for your mother’s benefit. The ring nestled in Sebastian’s hands was topped with a huge, princess-cut diamond, throwing spots of light around the nicotine-stained walls. He slipped it onto your finger without waiting for an answer.
“Oh, Seb,” you’d breathed. “Of course I will.”
Your father clapped him on the shoulder, called him son, while your mother smiled and fluttered as though she hadn’t cornered you only the previous night.
“He’s quite a bit older, chick,” she had said, when you’d told her of his intention to propose. “Are you sure? You don’t want to wait a while, wait ‘til you graduate?”
“Mum, he's only thirty. And we both know I’m not going to graduate. It’ll be fine, really.”
Her face had crumpled, briefly, somewhere between concern and guilt. They couldn't keep you forever, not with the shop's takings dwindling by the day, and your studies an expensive and pointless drain on resources already stretched thin. Sebastian had landed in your lap like a gift, and your mother tried her hardest to be pleased for you, but her eyes held myriad untold reservations. She said no more about it and joined in your crocodile tears, cooed over your engagement ring.
To Sebastian's credit, he made sure your wedding day was nothing short of perfect. He booked the entirety of a stately home just outside London, and invited more guests than you knew what to do with. On your side, your parents and a smattering of aloof cousins; on Sebastian's, what seemed like every well-to-do person in the city. His groomsmen leered at you after a few pints at the reception, their eyes beady and covetous. But it was perfect, truly. Sebastian had your gown and veil custom-made, and you'd scarcely recognised the girl in the mirror. She was more than a greengrocer's daughter, more than a pretty wallflower; she was the wife, the pride of London's most sought-after man.
After a whirlwind honeymoon, lazing for two weeks on white Caribbean beaches, Sebastian revealed he had ‘a little surprise’ for you. The surprise turned out to be a huge, white-walled Georgian house in Clapham. Gated and impossibly grand, it was as a castle to you. High ceilings, intricate cornicing and a baby grand in the reception room, a billiards table in the parlour. Sebastian had laughed, vaguely patronising, at your awestruck face as he ushered you into your new home. He held the keys over your head as you would taunt a child with a bag of sweets, relinquishing them only after a wet, lingering kiss. So far removed from the two-bedroomed, slightly musty flat in Barking you'd called home for some twenty-one years. This unbelievable place was utterly perfect, and all yours. You received his touches and kisses as payment for this gorgeous, ludicrously extravagant gift.
Shortly after, you dropped your degree. There was little point labouring under the delusion that it would be of any use to you. Sebastian urged and supported the decision, of course. I want to take care of you, sweetheart. You're much too pretty to be cooped up in an office for the rest of your life. You were only too willing to oblige.
The two of you lived quite blissfully for all of six months, while you yet held some fondness for him, and he for you. And it could have been something close to perfect, were it not for the snag, as your mother would have called it.
For all his efforts - more his than yours - you just couldn't get pregnant. Nothing took, and month after month Sebastian grew more sullen. He invaded you laced with frustration each night, in a manner somewhat accusatory, as though you were withholding a baby from him by sheer lack of will.
Too proud to seek private fertility help, and paranoid of being spotted in one of ‘those places’, he simply stopped trying after a while. You feared that he might just find some other young girl who could give him a child. But the idea seemed to lose its lustre for him, and soon enough he started only sleeping with you after nights of particularly heavy drinking.
It's been like this for some time now, and there's a certain relief to be had in the absence of his careless hands on your body. You touch yourself often, only when he's out at work, and battle a burgeoning shame for your own wants, bitterness for his lack of interest in fulfilling them. He's never once felt the need to ensure your pleasure when you couple. Instead, he drowns you in more gifts, more riches, and that turns you on more than any of his touches ever could.
With no need to work, and even less desire to do so, you sit alone in your pretty, too-large house every day, and wait for your husband to get home.
This is my lot, you tell yourself, so often that it loses all meaning. Any girl in London would kill for this life. I'd kill for it, too, if I had to.
––––– ⛓ –––––
The day of your first wedding anniversary rolls around, far too quickly for comfort, and Sebastian invites what feels like the entire city to the party. It boggles your mind to wonder how many friends he has, when he's really quite annoying to be around.
You greet these near-strangers with a smile and kisses on the cheek, and your home comes to life with garrulous voices, snatches of easy laughter. Sebastian mills around like a benevolent god, swanning through the rooms in his dark suit and polished Oxfords from Loake Brothers. Your dress is new, of course; long and heavy and a little tight around the middle. You've been indulging perhaps a bit too much in wine over the viscous, slow hours while your husband works. He's taken to prodding this new softness of your belly, ostensibly playful, but you sense the disdain behind his joking.
Though any ordinary house would be bursting at the seams with so many bodies crammed inside, yours accommodates them comfortably. And still it feels too much, all this noise and clamour. You’d much sooner celebrate your anniversary quietly, perhaps over dinner, but Sebastian had been adamant.
“You’ll love it,” he’d said this morning, as though commanding you to enjoy yourself. “We deserve it, babe. Just a few drinks and some friends, eh?”
Some friends included Sebastian’s parents, but not your own. They’re back up in Manchester, visiting one dying aunt or another. Your mother had been apologetic on the phone last night, but you could tell she’d been crying. Her voice hinted at lingering sniffles, a glass of brandy too many.
“I'm sorry, chick. Your dad's proper cut up about not coming to your party,” she had sighed, but you could hear the football match in the background, your father shouting obscenities at the screen. “We'll take you and Seb out when we're back, promise.”
That, you know, will likely never materialise. You've seen less and less of your parents over the last twelve months, without being quite sure how it happened. Though she'd never say as much, your mother doesn't like coming over to your house. She shrinks into herself every time she visits, as if she feels cowed by the sheer size of it, made smaller under the dizzyingly high ceilings. And your father simply does what she does, goes wherever she goes. It's been the same for twenty-odd years, an unspoken routine they can’t - or won’t - fall out of. He did, after all, trot happily down to London with her on a whim, while she was pregnant with you all those years ago.
In turn, and perhaps in a confused sort of retaliation, you've lessened the frequency of your visits to their flat. It serves as a discomfiting reminder of what you used to be, before all of this. You wind up feeling awfully hemmed-in whenever you do get bored or guilty enough to drop in on them.
“It's fine, Mum. See you when you get back,” you'd muttered back, after a long pause in which you both let her empty promises disappear into the ether.
Late, because of course they are, Sebastian's parents come through the door last. Bernard and Felicity are perfectly pleasant, in their own detached and eccentric sort of way. They’re the image of any upper-class couple with too much time and money on their hands. Bernard's eyes tend to linger perhaps a moment too long whenever you find yourself alone together, and he speaks nothing but praise for his only son. A jowly, jocular man of sixty with not a single hair on his head, he can do little more than leer and boom out his opinions, which are many and unfailingly dull.
"Soon take over the business, that boy," is one of his favourite refrains. "Modernisation, you know? Seb's the future, that's for certain. Good head on his shoulders. And ever so lucky to have found a lovely little thing like you.”
Felicity is the quieter half of the pair. Blonde and pretty like Sebastian, but with a touch more warmth about her. She tries to spare what little she has for you, but the reserve seems to be ever-dwindling behind her glazed eyes. You've long suspected that she enjoys prescription drugs just as much as the next bored, rich housewife. Perhaps in years to come, you’ll find yourself becoming just like Felicity, glassy and vacant but still poised. A pleasant-looking part of the backdrop, beautifying the space without imposing. Sebastian would probably like that.
“Mr Barreau, Mrs Barreau,” you smile as they cross the foyer; Sebastian forbade you very early on from using their Christian names in front of them. “So lovely to see you both. Thanks so much for coming.”
Bernard kisses you sloppily on the cheek, too close to the edge of your mouth, and Felicity just smiles back in a faraway sort of manner before drifting off to find herself a drink.
“Congrats, sweetheart. A year, God!” Bernard rumbles, steering you with a puffy hand on the small of your back with no apparent destination. “Our Seb's such a lucky boy, eh? He thinks the absolute world of you, you know. Can’t stop him waxing lyrical about how much he adores you, and who can blame him? Ah - there's the man himself…”
Sebastian stands in the reception room, leant up against the baby grand with a circle of strangers drinking in his every word. He waves a thick cigar as he talks, loudly enough that you know he's already half-cut. His glass of whisky rests precariously on the piano; your piano. You grapple with the urge to go and snatch the drink up.
“...Barreau and Thompson, yes. We'll drop the Thompson bit when Daddy retires, I reckon. Barreau on its own sounds so much nicer, don't you think?”
A titter of agreement rolls through those gathered around him.
“I'm not dead just yet, boy!” Bernard guffaws at his son, startling you. Fortunately, he takes his hand off your back, and you capitalise on the ensuing laughter to slip away. Sebastian doesn't notice, already clasping his father by the shoulders and beaming the way he beams at almost no-one else. His teeth have begun to stain from his affinity for port and black coffee.
For all your intentions to find somewhere quiet, to breathe for a moment, the demands of your guests douse that particular thought. You thud up and down the cellar steps with fresh crates of wine and whisky until your back twinges, downing the odd drink as you go. Sebastian really ought to have hired some help for the night. At least he had the foresight to have the party catered, but the dishes are already depleting fast, with so many tipsy and hungry mouths to feed.
There comes a brief reprieve when Bernard gets into full swing of one of his colourful stories, and every ear in the place turns his way. You creep upstairs unnoticed, certainly not missed.
Though the house is old, its walls are wonderfully thick and solid. Only a muted hum of the din from below reaches you up here. You fidget listlessly in the bedroom, then the bathroom, tugging compulsively at your dress, touching up your makeup. The party has left you fatigued after barely two hours, and a mist of uneasy thoughts descends on your mind, as they often do when you’re overwrought and not quite drunk enough to drown them. You swig from a bottle of champagne and sit on the edge of the bed, letting those thoughts take shape and settle. The drink does little to quell them, and you’re too worn out to put up much of a fight.
The past year has hurtled by like a runaway train, dragging you along in its slipstream. You don’t feel at all the same girl who walked up the aisle clinging onto her father’s arm. And yet, you can’t quite figure out what, exactly, has shifted within you. Everything in your orbit has changed, whilst you feel a mere observer to the alarming mutability of your life. All around you, the rewards for your patience and restraint: this gorgeous house, the expensive things within it, and your darling husband downstairs. But he isn’t so darling when it’s just the two of you.
He frightens you, and he knows it. Sometimes you wonder if he even enjoys it.
He’s never raised his voice towards you, nor his hands. His temper is a much quieter thing, but it’s liquid, too; mercurial and impossible to predict or divert. On those rare instances you dare to voice any sort of disagreement, his demeanour shifts from affectionate pity to something so cold that your bones shiver with it. His pretty mask slips, like one that has been worn too many times. His deep voice grows soft, the same way that lava is when it first slides over the lip of the volcano. And it terrifies you. The very idea that he holds back his shouting or his fists is a threat all of its own.
You’ve had to find smaller, inoffensive ways to get under his skin. Forgetting to put his lunch in the fridge, leaving a plug upturned where he might just step on it and hurt himself. When he complains of these nuisances, and you see his anger forming as beads of sweat on his brow, you need only affect a show of doziness and fuss over him. He soon cools off, but lately you’ve wondered if he genuinely believes that you’re merely forgetful or daft. There’s a shard of distrust in his eyes that was never there in the beginning. You often wish you weren’t so petty, that you could happily exist in your husband’s periphery, as Felicity does. It would be the right thing to do. But there’s a certain addictive quality to testing Sebastian’s limits of self-control, and an undeniable satisfaction in watching him struggle against it. While he remains ignorant, what harm are these spiteful little diversions, really? What else are you to do for entertainment in this cavernous old house?
The tinkle of glass and a particularly loud burst of laughter downstairs rouses you; you really ought to get back before someone comes looking. This celebration is half for your sake, after all. It wouldn’t do to shut yourself away for the duration.
As you leave the bedroom, you overturn another plug by Sebastian’s side of the bed.
Things have settled down somewhat when you rejoin the party, and no-one appears to have taken note of your absence. Sebastian soon spots you loitering, catches your eye with a frankly repulsive attempt at a wink. He’s quite drunk now, evident from his loosened tie and a few of his curls knocked askew. Most of the guests have wound their way into the reception room, where they flick cigarette ash onto your floor and leave black trouser marks on your wallpaper.
“There you are,” he crows. “Come here, darling. I have a little surprise.”
Another one, you think feebly, stretching your lips into what you hope is a smile. Sebastian pulls you to his side as you come within reach, and he reeks of sweat and whisky. Across the room, Bernard stands a similarly perspiring figure, snorting into a glass of port. For a split second, you see your own husband thirty years from now in the old man’s face, and a trickle of bile burns your throat.
“Thank you all for coming, you beautiful bastards! What a turnout!” Sebastian shouts to the gathered mass of bodies, over the din, and all heads turn his way. A few of his friends hoot and whistle. “I have some very exciting news, and you lot are the first to hear it.”
Your stomach judders and makes a sickening dive towards your shoes. What now? He’s said nothing of the sort to you. Nothing but bland droning about work, his father, work again, his darling mother. What could possibly be so exciting that he hasn’t thought to share it with you, his wife?
“Right! Can everybody hear me?” A deafening shout of assent rises up, and Sebastian grins before pressing on. “Alright. So, you all know of my work with my father, the inimitable Mr Bernard Barreau over there…”
Bernard’s jowls quiver when he hears his name, and he looks up from staring at the tits of another man’s wife. He beams like an aged cherub and thrusts his drink into the air, slopping port over the edge of it. Sebastian proceeds to spew some drivel about forward motion and the future of the company. The guests listen politely enough, but you know for a fact they’re just as bored as you are. They daren’t let it show too plainly on their faces, though. Neither do you, still smiling beatifically at your husband and his dreary, masturbatory performance. You could repeat this speech verbatim, so many times you’ve heard it before.
“...and that’s where my big news comes in,” he says, at last veering towards the end of this torturous monotony. “We’re on the cusp of a big - no, not big, enormous - deal at Barreau and Thompson. One that will cement my father and I as the city’s biggest players in finance. And to seal that deal, I’ll be leaving London tomorrow...”
For effect, or perhaps just too drunk to remember his own rehearsed spiel, he takes a lengthy pause. He’s leaning up against you for support, to hide his swaying. And you’re mildly cheered by his little announcement, actually. A week apart, or even just a day or two, might do you both some good. Sebastian draws himself up to round off his speech.
“...to go to America for three months!”
The guests start up a round of shouts - Amazing! Congratulations! What an opportunity! - while your heart plummets, and your smile freezes in place.
––––– ⛓ –––––
“...God, yes. Just what I needed,” Sebastian groans, pulling out of you roughly. He puts his hairy arms behind his head and sinks against the pillows, a self-congratulatory smile curving his lips. Wary of dripping onto the sheets or carpet, you clench your thighs and go shuffling, penguin-like, to the ensuite. With a grimace you thud down onto the toilet, wince as his fluids exit you, mixing with a stream of urine. You pray that whatever is left behind doesn't latch on, doesn't form a wriggling life and shatter yours in the process. It'd be just your luck if it were to happen now, just before your husband goes gallivanting across the pond for several months.
“You are happy for me, aren't you, babe?”
Sebastian's shouted question makes you jump. He'd normally have fallen asleep by now, as he always does after sex. You dither cleaning yourself up, washing your hands. You need time to consider your answer. When you pad back through to the bedroom, he's looking at you in a peculiar way. Too intensely, too lucid for a man so drunk and high on his own achievements. His eyes flicker with that increasingly familiar sheen of doubt.
“Of course I'm happy for you, Seb,” you murmur as you crawl back in beside him. “It's just a bit sudden, that's all. I think it's great for you. And for your father, obviously. He's really proud of you.”
“You didn't seem so happy, when I told everyone.”
He won't even do you the courtesy of looking at you as he makes the accusation. Sighing, you reach out a hand and press it against his tense flank. He's sweaty, and you want to pull away, but heading off this line of discussion is more important. You must put his mind at rest, convince him that absolutely nothing is amiss. Evidently your performance an hour ago didn't wash, and you kick yourself silently for letting the mask slip.
“I was just taken aback, darling. I want this for you,” you lie through your teeth. “It's the most incredible opportunity. You were always saying how you'd like to go to America someday.”
He grunts dismissively. “Right,” he says, drawing out the vowel in a singularly grating way. “Would it have killed you to show a bit of that in front of our guests? You looked like you'd just taken a handful of diazepam.”
You bristle, but you daren't show it. Instead, you force your eyes to well up with a few tears, making sure he sees them before lowering your voice to a strained whisper.
“Seb, I don't know what you expect me to do all on my own for three whole months,” you quaver. “We've never been apart more than a week since we first met. I just…I feel a bit lost, thinking of how long you'll be away.”
As he holds your watery gaze, some of his agitation seems to leech away. But he isn't done just yet. Ordinarily, at the sight of your plaintive tears, he would soften and pet your head soothingly. There, there. This time, he just gives a disinterested huff, as though your answer wasn't the one he sought to extract. Strange, but at least he isn't glaring at you anymore. You let a shred of relief sneak in.
“Well, I'll leave you enough money so that you don't get bored.” He shifts onto his side and faces away from you. “Why don't you do up the house, or something? You keep wittering on about wanting to. Make it all pretty for when I come home.”
You blink at his slender back. You don't recall ever saying such a thing, at least not out loud. Granted, the décor is a bit dated, but still charming enough. Maybe he's right, though. Maybe you did express that wish, and you simply don't remember. All of your days, your conversations with Sebastian seem to blur into one. You really ought to ease up on the wine, if your memory is suffering for it.
“Okay. I'll do that, then,” you say quietly. “Thank you, darling.”
A rattling snore comes rumbling out of him, and you release a shuddery exhale. Thank God. Dredging up false tears is so much harder these days, when you can scarcely muster up a solitary emotion for the man lying beside you. It'd be miles easier if you cared one jot about his feelings, if you could find it within yourself to actually love him.
You just care for what he can give you. This house, your fine clothes, a worthy name to carry with you. For his part, he asks for comparatively little in return. A warm body at night, a pretty thing on his arm when he goes out. Someone to drone at after work, rinse and repeat every day until it feels like you're living the same one on a loop. This life bores you to real tears, sometimes, but you chose it willingly. Nobody forced you to marry this arrogant, quite irritating man. He's your burden to bear.
“Ugh…” he groans, roused from sleep by his weak bladder, and lurches out of bed to use the toilet. As his foot lands on the carpet, he comes out with a squeaky yelp. “Ow! Jesus. Babe, can you please not leave plugs lying around…?”
“Yes, darling,” you call after him, watching him hobble to the bathroom on one leg. He very nearly slams the door in his frustration, but seems to think better of it at the last moment.
Now that the shock of his announcement has abated, you're oddly unsettled. He really is going to leave you alone for three months, and you're going to have to deal with it somehow. It's not his imminent lengthy absence that bothers you, not really. He could disappear for a year and you'd not feel much of anything. The wine would take care of that, anyway. No, it's something else, something you can't quite pin down. Perhaps if he'd told you first, this peculiar feeling wouldn't be plaguing you so much. Of course he had to shout it to all and sundry, because that's just who he is.
That’s probably it, you tell yourself, as he climbs back into bed without another word. You’re just stung by his blatant lack of regard for your feelings on the matter. He’d sooner boast his accomplishments to a houseful of people than confide in you, his wife. But he won’t change, any more than the leaves could stop themselves turning brown in the autumn. Sebastian’s faults are your charge, the price you pay for this charmed existence. Staring at his sweat-slicked back brings about an unignorable rush of nausea, coalescing with the unsated ache between your legs.
As he slips into his dreams once more and snores fit to rouse the dead, you sneak off to shower his scent from your body and scrub at your skin until it burns, until it forgets his careless touch.