Lauren and the children returned from Los Angeles early this afternoon. By eleven at night, Lauren and I managed to reach another impasse. Another catastrophe. As I write, I am trundling back to Reading in a train crowded with dozing people. I expect to be home before midnight.

I was delighted to see her and the little ones. Truly. From the very first moment I grabbed hold of them, I could not stop kissing them, squeezing them, pinching them. Lauren was surly from the beginning, though. She would shrink whenever I would come closer to her. From time to time, she would show clear signs of displeasure. “Don’t you understand that you are hurting me!” she would hiss and wriggle out of my embrace.

It was past ten when the children fell asleep. They literally fell asleep. Exhausted from the long flight, they just conked out. I lied down on the livingroom sofa, as both Dorian and Maya were lying on the big bed in our bedroom. Lauren was unpacking. Clothes, toys, books, were everywhere. Feeling despondent, I kept out of Lauren’s way. After a while, she approached me: “What is this? After all the happiness, you have removed yourself entirely.” She was cold. She was angry, too. I just stared at her. “If you are going to be like this,” she continued coldly, “you’d better go.” I got up to collect my things, and started packing my knapsack. “You’d better call off the party on Saturday, too,” she snarled behind my back. “Just so you know,” she added under her breath, “I am taking the children back to the States tomorrow morning.”

I know women inside and out. Lauren does not love me any longer. There can be no doubt about that at this stage. More, she is in love with someone else. Craig must be the man. I am convinced of that. Only a woman already committed to someone else behaves as callously and frigidly as Lauren does. The last few days in Los Angeles, when she turned very quiet, she must have seen Craig a few times. Although I do not believe they are a couple yet, she is certainly interested in him. That is the long and short of it.

I walked out of the house. Westbourne Grove was already quite deserted. I walked to Paddington, bought the ticket, and walked into the first train going to Reading. Luckily, the one waiting at the platform was a couple of minutes late. It lurched forward only a few seconds after I sat down. The knot in my belly will probably stay with me for days.

Addendum I (September 3, 2000)

My mother was already asleep by the time I reached home. The place was dark. On tiptoe, I went upstairs to my room. I was afraid Lauren would start calling, but she did not. For fear of her harangue, I did not turn on my mobile phone, either. This I did only around ten this morning. There were no messages. I was a bit disappointed, I guess, but I was mainly relieved. This was a sign that she could have departed for Los Angeles, too.

Lauren called around noon. She wanted to apologize. “I always have hard time returning,” she pleaded. Of course, I could remember all too well how she used to return to me years ago, when our love was still whole. All she wanted was to ask me to give her another chance. Quietly, almost at a whisper, I told her that I could not but hope for some kind of reconciliation. I promised to return to London, but not immediately. “I understand,” she kept saying. She was very helpful, indeed, but she never said a word about love and hope and our future together.

For some reason that still escapes me, she needs me now. She does not want us to split up just now. I cannot see any other explanation for her apology and her invitation for me to return to London. Deep inside, I know that our marriage is over. It is only a question of time, and she seems to be bidding for time for some reason. She is angling for a piece of the jigsaw puzzle she does not yet have. When that piece is in her hands, she will give me the final kick. The way she has behaved lately, I can imagine she can be extremely cruel. In my experience, most women are very cruel, but they are especially cruel when they are in love with someone else. This is when they feel invincible.

Addendum II (September 4, 2000)

In the train, again. Going to face Lauren one more time. The last time, I dare to hope. Pulling the plug is painful, but one must have the courage to finish off a dying animal. Our marriage is on its hind legs. More suffering is not only pointless, but also cruel. Chances are Lauren is having these very thoughts as she prepares for my visit.

Addendum III (September 5, 2000)

On Lauren’s instigation, this morning we even managed to make love, but the knot in my stomach is still there. It is already entrenched. The beginning of an ulcer?

Addendum IV (September 9, 2000)

I found Lauren’s recent electronic-mail correspondence this morning, just before the ill-fated painting party. It is amazing to me how sure I was that there was another man. That is why I made an effort to look through Lauren’s mail. The only thing I did not know was that it was not Craig but a certain Mark she had slept with. However, they are both yoga instructors. At any rate, I do know women: they become vicious when they find another man. Vicious.

The first “juicy” message I found was from Lauren to Mark. The suffix of his electronic-mail address is interesting: yogainside.com. It was written on September 5 and entitled “As a Whisper”:

Read as a whisper in your right ear. Your head is cradled in my left arm, my hand in your baby hair stroking you as I lay quietly on top of you and say “thank you for the cyber kiss, dear man.”

The same day Lauren wrote to her friend Amy. In this message, Lauren writes that it is now time to find a way out of our marriage. Our life together must come to an end. Most important, she writes about having made love with Mark:

Mark and I spent Thursday night together. It was rather stressful beginning a sexual affair the last night of a trip, when the connection did not feel like the proverbial one-night-stand but rather like something sustainable. Also strange to have to choreograph a triste of this sort. Wasn’t exactly spontaneous. Lovely it was nonetheless.

On September 2, the day she returned from Los Angeles, Lauren wrote to Mark a sort of morning-after message, something she has learned from me when we met:

Our smell still lingers on me. Jet travel is so odd. Hard to imagine that twenty-four hours ago you came back to bed with that delicious smell of yours and said so gently: “Good morning.”

This is the order in which I have discovered Lauren’s messages. As I was copying these words from the computer screen into my notebook, my hands started shaking. In the end, they shook so badly that I could hardly write. I had to go over my writing again before the memory of Lauren’s words began to evaporate. At the time, I was really angry about the whole thing, but my anger had to do with Lauren’s attitude toward me rather than the fact that she had made love to another man. The latter is perhaps painful, but the former is infuriating.