**The Heart Chose Warmth**
“You’re leaving me for that common girl?” Marina’s voice trembled with fury and hurt.
“Don’t call her that, Marina. This is my decision. I’m sorry,” I hurriedly gathered my things, avoiding her gaze.
“I hope you come to your senses soon. People will laugh at you! Colleagues, neighbours—they’ll all gossip! Who have you chosen? Some rough-around-the-edges woman from the countryside! What do I tell the children? That their refined father ran off with a village cook?” Marina crumpled a handkerchief in her fist, her face burning.
“The children? They’re grown, Marina. Lizzie’s about to get married, and George is already on his own path. We’re not their keepers. And as for the neighbours and colleagues—I don’t care what they think. I don’t meddle in their lives, and mine is none of their business.” I spoke gently but firmly, trying to convince her.
It didn’t work. A broken family is always a knife to the heart, for both. Marina turned to the window, her shoulders shaking. I didn’t pity her. Inside, I felt hollow, like after a fire.
—
Marina was my third wife. When I first saw her, my heart raced like a teenager’s. Beautiful, polished, with a regal bearing. I wasn’t bad myself—I knew women fancied me. I had options, but I fell in love and married without thinking. Except, routine killed the passion, and I always ran. The children only came with Marina.
I thought she was my destiny, my safe harbour. But love, like a ripe apple, withered into a dried-up husk. In public, we played the perfect couple—smiling, glamorous, a picture of happiness. The neighbours envied our “perfect” family, the old ladies by the lift whispered, and we strode past like royalty.
Behind closed doors, everything crumbled. Marina wasn’t a homemaker. The fridge stood empty, laundry piled up like mountains, dust settled like snow. Yet she was flawless—manicured, coiffed, immaculate. She saw herself as a star, the centre of the universe. She didn’t love—she allowed herself to be loved. Her heart was locked to me and the children.
My mother, Margaret, lived with us. She endured the chaos but finally took charge. Quietly, wisely, she taught Lizzie and George to cook, clean, care for themselves. Marina, pretending to be aristocracy, called them “Elizabeth” and “George” and kept her distance. The children clung to Gran, to her warmth and fairness, while drifting from their mother.
Marina forbade me from chatting with neighbours, dismissing them as “vulgar.” She never got past a cold “hello.”
In the early years, I was blind. I loved, lived, cherished each day. Lizzie excelled in school; George was the opposite. It baffled me—same family, same upbringing, yet different as night and day. We pushed George, but he stubbornly refused to learn. By secondary school, he despised Lizzie for her success. Sometimes I broke up their fights, feeling the family unravel.
—
Those were the wild days. After school, George fell in with a bad crowd and vanished. Three years—no word. We searched, filed reports, but nothing. We mourned.
Mum, eyeing Marina, muttered, “A son strays when his mother leads him wrong.”
Marina raged, locked herself in the bathroom, muffling her sobs. Hope for George flickered, then dimmed. Then, suddenly, he reappeared—haggard, scarred, hollow-eyed. His wife, just as rough, was with him. We took them in warily, fearing his temper. George glared, silent, distrustful.
Lizzie left too, living with some odd bloke, no wedding ring. She visited with bruises but never spoke.
“Lizzie, leave him—he’s a brute! He’ll kill you one day,” Mum begged.
“Gran, it’s fine. I fell. It’ll heal.” Lizzie wasn’t the star pupil anymore.
—
Then, at my age, I fell in love again. Didn’t expect it. Grey at the temples, heart racing like a schoolboy’s. Home was unbearable—rows with George, Marina’s iciness, Mum’s sighs. “Three wives, and for what? Children like strays, a wife who can’t keep house.”
At the factory where I worked, the canteen cook was Joy. Cheerful, down-to-earth, kind. For years, I hadn’t noticed her—soft around the edges, rosy-cheeked. But her laugh, like a bubbling brook, pierced my shell. She joked, teased, radiated warmth. I lingered in the canteen, making excuses to talk.
Joy was everything Marina wasn’t. A simple headscarf, nails bare but for red lipstick. Yet she glowed. Her flat smelled of fresh pies, her fridge brimmed with stew, roast, porridge. She fed neighbours, friends, spread comfort. With her, I felt alive, like drinking from a cool spring.
I courted her—flowers, films, walks. Joy hesitated.
“Andrew, I like you, but you’ve a wife, kids. I won’t be the other woman,” she said.
I wavered. Leaving felt like stepping onto thin ice. Then Marina found out. “Helpful” souls gossiped—who Joy was, where she lived, how long I’d been sneaking off. Marina screeched, called Joy a “clumsy bumpkin,” threatened to end herself.
Six months later, I packed my bags. Joy welcomed me but set a rule:
“Andrew, show me the divorce papers in a month, or I’m gone.”
I divorced. We married. No regrets. Lizzie and George visit now. Joy feeds them heartily, and they seem to thaw. Lizzie’s left her brute. George looks healthier, expecting a child. Maybe he’s tired of the dark side. Joy brought them together:
“You’re family! Stick together, not drift like tumbleweed.”
Now brother and sister are close again. Mum’s gone, her scolds silent. Marina’s aged, her glamour faded. She avoids me. We live streets apart, but I don’t walk the old paths.
Judge me if you will. But it’s my life, my choices. And mine alone to answer for.
—
This happened in a small town in Kent, where I searched for happiness but found it only in the warmth of a simple, loving woman.
