My husband might be the doctor among us—or so he liked to say, but come on, podiatrist?—but I felt qualified enough to give him an official diagnosis. ‘You. Are. Insane.’

‘What?’ Adrian sounded genuinely confused and his ears twitched as they always did when he was irritated.

I shook my head. ‘You can’t think I still want to try and make things right after what you did in our bed? What you said at therapy! Forget about marriage counselling. I suggest you get yourself a lawyer, because I’ve just hired one of the best.’

‘You’re filing for divorce?’

‘In ten months, one week and two days I will be.’

The most disappointing part of my meeting with lawyer extraordinaire, Alexandria Honeymen, had been the discovery we had to have been separated for twelve months before either of us could file for an actual divorce. Twelve whole months. The agony!

Now that I’d made the decision, I didn’t want to wait twelve days, never mind twelve months. I couldn’t bear to be married to him a second longer. I’d already discarded my ring—well, put it away in a box in case Payton ever wanted it—and had begun the process of changing my name back to Murphy.

‘But although we have to wait to make this official,’ I added, ‘we can get started sorting out everything else.’

‘Everything else?’

‘Yes.’ I sighed loudly, watching our daughter run about on the pitch rather than look at him. ‘We need to formalise our custody arrangements for the children. I think we should continue with our nest-parenting set-up as the kids are used to it. We don’t want to unsettle them any more than necessary.’

‘Right … I see.’

‘So that means we’ll have to keep the house somehow—we should probably see a financial planner together to work out how we’re going to divide all our assets. Apparently, we don’t need to wait for the divorce before finalising this stuff either. I was thinking maybe you keep the business, but I get the house and you pay rent during the weeks you’re there with the kids.’

‘Me pay you rent?’

‘Either that or we keep the house in joint ownership until Payton is finished school and you buy me out of the business. I’m going to get a job, but it’s unlikely I’ll be earning as much as you, so there’ll be child support to work out as well.’

‘Are you sure about all this, Ashling? This is all moving pretty fast. I thought you wanted to try and work things out?’

And I’d thought he’d be relieved to receive this Get Out Of Marriage Counselling Free card, but he didn’t sound it. Probably because I was the one making decisions when he’d always been used to calling the shots.