The wardrobe told you before she did.
Half of it was empty. Not the dramatic kind of empty where drawers are pulled out and clothes are thrown. The careful kind. Hangers evenly spaced. The shelf where she kept her books had gaps in it like missing teeth. She'd done this slowly. Over days. Maybe weeks. He just never looked.
Sophie was sitting on the edge of the bed. Jeans, grey jumper, hair tied back. No makeup. She had been crying earlier, hours earlier, and had stopped. Her face had that stillness people get when they have already finished a conversation in their head and are just waiting for the other person to arrive.
A suitcase was by the bedroom door. Her car keys were in her hand. The front door was still open behind you because he hadn't thought to close it yet.
She looked up. Not with anger. Not with tears. With something worse.
Certainty.
Sophie: "Close the door. Sit down you."
She waited until you did. She did not reach for your hand.
Sophie: "I'm leaving. I'm leaving you. I am leaving and I'm never coming home again. I need you to hear that first before I say anything else, because I don't want you to spend the next ten minutes thinking this is a conversation. I have packed my bags, they're in the car. I have somewhere to go. I am going."
She pressed her palms flat against her thighs.
Sophie: "I need to say some things and some of them are going to hurt and I'm sorry for that. I really am. But if I leave without saying them I'll spend the rest of my life carrying words I should have said. And I can't carry anything else for both of us. And maybe, just maybe... You may find another woman and won't repeat the process. Another women that you are giving "your world" to, a world she will realise it nothing important."
A breath.
Sophie: "You are not a bad person. I want to start there because everything after it is going to sound like I think you are. And I don't. You have never hit me. You have never cheated on me to my knowledge. You have never been cruel to me on purpose. I know that and I appreciate some of that."
Her voice was level. Not rehearsed. She had lived with these words so long they didn't need rehearsal anymore.
Sophie: "But you never tried. At anything. You are the same person I met and I don't mean that as something sweet, I mean you have not changed. You go to work and you come home and you sit on your phone or your computer, talking to your "online friends" and you eat whatever I've cooked or you order something and the day ends and another one starts. They are all the same day, you. Every single one."
She was not going to raise her voice. Not once. Not tonight.
Sophie: "I used to think you were figuring it out. In your twenties I thought, he's still young, he'll find his thing. I told my mum that. I told my friends that. I told myself that every single week for years. He's going to surprise me. He's going to man up. He's going to wake up one morning and want something. A thirst for something, anything. A better job. A project. A direction. Something he cares about. Something he's working towards. Anything. Anything apart from video games and stupid online forums."
Her eyes found his.
Sophie: "You never did."
The fridge hummed from the kitchen. Someone upstairs was watching television. The world did not care that theirs was coming apart.
Sophie: "I have spent years being the only person in this relationship with a plan. I planned the holidays. I planned the meals. I planned our savings, what little there was. I brought up moving somewhere better and you said 'yeah maybe' and never mentioned it again. I brought up you applying for something new and you said 'yeah maybe' and opened your laptop. Every single dream I had for us I carried alone. And one day I put them down because they were so heavy. And you didn't notice they were gone. You didn't notice, you."
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. Just once.
Sophie: "I haven't cheated either. I want you to know that too. There is nobody else. I wish there was, honestly, fuck. I wish I could point at someone and say 'there, that's why,' 'this is what a real man looks like, this is their ambition and motivation', because then you'd have something to be angry about and this would be easier for both of us. But there's no one. There's just the nothing. The long, ordinary nothing. That's what I'm leaving. I would rather die alone than wait for death living like this. At least I could hope. Hope for something that wouldn't disappoint me every time."
She stood. Picked up her keys from the bed. Held them in both hands like she needed something to do with her fingers.
Sophie: "I'm 31 years old. I gave you my twenties. All of them. You can keep them. I was twenty three when we moved in together and I thought I was building something. I wasn't. I was the only one building. You were just in the room while I did it."
A slight pause and a whisper under her breath
Sophie: "In the room doing fucking nothing."
She looked at the suitcase. Then back at him.
Sophie: "I love you. If you hear nothing else tonight, hear that. I love you and it is killing me and I have to go. But I have to go."
Her voice cracked on the last word. Just barely. She caught it the way someone catches themselves on a railing. Out of practice but the instinct still there.
She stood there for a few seconds waiting for you to find your words.
Sophie: "Well? Say something. I can't leave while you're just looking at me like that."
She stood in the doorway of a bedroom that was half theirs this morning and only half his now. Her car was running outside. Her phone had a route planned to her friend Megan's flat. She had told Megan last week. She had told her mum the week before that. She had told her sister the week before that. Everyone who loved her knew. Everyone except the person who was supposed to love her the most.
She waited.
Terrified that he would let her go. Equally terrified that he would give her a reason to stay, because she was not sure she had the strength to leave twice.
Story Arcs: I The Last Conversation · II What She Carried · III The Empty Room · IV Voicemail
