life in the west — sofa

This is how she began to leave him, a short time after this event, this conversation, after he went to work in the chambers in Holborn with the sentences in his ears: “I have an out of office meeting, going in late, i’ll be back late.” She says to him, waving goodbye for the last time. He left. left. left. She packed all the things she needed, bank details, keys, clothes, identity, moved money from the joint accounts, formatted his PC, trashed his ipad and left. Driving away for the last time at eleven in the morning. As she left, the cat in the carrier on the back seat, she thought she could give lessons on leaving. “Why did you leave him?” I was losing myself… “Is this someones cat?” One of the board directors asked. Mine, it had to come to work with me. She said. Would it have been a few days before when the ending began[…] It’s a Japanese sofa. she said. No it’s not, it’s a postmodern version. probably an old Conran design….he said. ((A woman who was standing across the wooden table between them, looking at cutlery and wondering how it was possible for people to argue about such things and live. People were always a mystery to her. Why did they find the sofa such a thing, a thing to argue over. Perhaps they can afford to change their partner, change their lives.)) These colours and the shape of the legs, its dimensions is not possible for a western sofa. It’s from Japan.I’m surprised at how incapable of seeing that you are. she said, I… he began to defend himself.It’s a Tsushima design. The woman looked as if she would like him to disagree with her. So that she could have a blazing row and break up in the store. Last time, last year she had left her lover with a her bag an a plastic bag full of clothes, everything else she had left behind, She turned away from him and breathing in deeply she forced herself to calm down. Later in the shops cafe, finalizing the sofa they would buy, sitting with L and J, “ no no no, she was saying, we cannot have that grey leather sofa you want, there is too much grey at home already…” She listened to her husband say he still wanted the grey leather sofa, but she wasn’t listening to him any longer. In retrospect, a few days later after she left him, she thought this was the virtual moment when she left him. She thought about the ugly grey sofa he was obviously going to buy. I need to be able to choose my own sofa, to not have to think. She did not say anything about his choosing the sofa, his terrible choice of sofa. She left him before the sofa was delivered. She had never liked the way he pleaded and cajoled when he was determined to get his own way, his insistence on buying the grey sofa was like when he was getting divorced from his previous wife, he had insisted on introducing her to her. She had to stand there and then sit whilst they were negotiating the division of furniture and goods… Was it the next day, or a few days later that she left? By the end of the year she had forgotten.