The Diary of an Unloved Wife novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: One Sentence

By ten o'clock the fourth floor had gone quiet in the particular way of people who've just stopped talking about you.

Two students by the coffee machine looked at their cups as I passed.

Someone had stuck a sticky note on the office door that said "4C" with a little heart.

I took it down and put it in my pocket.

Malachy's desk was empty.

At eleven my advisor knocked on the open door.

She came in and closed it behind her, which she'd never done.

She sat on Malachy's chair with her grey braids over one shoulder and her hands folded.

"I've seen the video," she said.

"Everyone has."

"I don't care what happens in your marriage, Margaret. Truly. But the Endicott gift was announced on Monday, and the chair is getting phone calls." She paused. "I need you to keep your private life out of this building."

"I didn't bring it in. He did."

"Nevertheless."

That was all she said.

She stood, patted my shoulder and left.

I sat looking at the window for a long time.

Then I heard laughter from the seminar room across the hall.

The door was propped open.

Eight or nine students from my year and the year above were sitting round the long table.

Someone had a laptop open at the end, turned so everyone could see.

Keira's voice came out of it, small and broken.

"...she followed him to New York..."

I walked in.

The laughter stopped.

The boy with the laptop reached to close it, and I put my hand flat on the lid and stopped him.

"Leave it open," I said.

They all looked at me.

I looked at each of them in turn, the way my father used to look at a jury.

"I signed the lease on 4C on January the tenth," I said. "He signed the lease on 4A last Wednesday, and she's crying on my floor because he locked his door in her face."

Nobody said anything.

"You can ask the landlord. You can ask the woman in 4D, she watched the whole thing in her housecoat." I took my hand off the laptop. "That's all I'm going to say about it, in this building or anywhere else."

I went back to my office.

A few minutes later there was a horrible scraping noise in the hall.

Malachy was dragging his desk through the doorway.

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