Gone from us

He comes home smelling of cigarettes and someone else's perfume. When he comes home at all, it's getting rarer and rarer. Even when he does come in - reluctantly, unwillingly - he's desperate to get away, to be anywhere but inside what was once his home.

The kids he used to play with and cuddle - well, now he couldn't care less about them. In fact, it's painfully clear he wishes they didn't exist.

Every now and then he passes by the house on his way somewhere, gaze resolutely forward, not a single glance in. Sometimes I go out and call his name. He'll come to me, out of a lingering memory of how things were before, or maybe just habit, but where once there was so much affection - even too much at times - now there's none. He shies away from my touch, stays the shortest possible time. The whole time he's with me, he's straining to go to her.

I can't believe how quickly this has happened, either. Ever since Vietnam, just a couple of months. Well actually, I've known she was after him since last October, but not for one second did it cross my mind he'd leave us for her. I keep asking myself what went wrong. What she offers that I can't. I keep trying to make things better, but it's not working. He just doesn't love us any more.

I went over one day. To her. To say the kids missed him, I missed him, could she please stop encouraging him. With the smugness of the preferred, she said there must be something wrong at home if he doesn't want to be there. That she can't stop him coming over. Can't stop him eating at hers. Can't stop him staying the night. That if the kids wanted, they could always come and fetch him from her place.

I really, reeaaallly dislike this woman.

I want to ask her how she can live with herself, stealing him so brazenly. Whether she can look into Téo and Lukan's sweet young faces and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt. I want to snarl at her that she only ever got to know him because of me. He wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me.

But even if I think she's completely and absolutely morally in the wrong, I can't deny the truth that he's gone from us. I can't make him love us. I can't force him to stay in our home.

Good bye Max. You'll never be able to understand it, but you are breaking our hearts.