‘I can’t tell you how to fix your marriage,’ Megan said calmly. ‘I can only help you try to work out what the issues are so you can work on them together.’

‘But how am I supposed to do that if Adrian will barely talk to me?’

‘He definitely won’t come to counselling?’

I snorted. ‘No way. No offence but he thinks therapy is a scam.’

Truth be told, I was starting to wonder if he might be right.

‘That’s a pity. I can only help those who want to be helped, so if Adrian refuses to even consider couples counselling, then dragging him here may well be a waste of time anyway.’ Megan’s gaze drifted to the clock on the wall. ‘I’m sorry, Ashling, but I’m afraid we’ve run out of time so we’re going to have to wrap things up. However, I think it would be good if we see each other again while you’re going through this trying time. Next time we can talk about some of those highs and lows you mentioned.’

As I walked out of Megan’s office, I felt like throwing something at her, but I started to calm down on the way home. She may not have provided me with solutions but she’d certainly given me a lot to think about. It was clear that Adrian and I hadn’t been prioritising ‘us’ and that if we had any hope of saving our marriage, we needed to spend more time together.

The question was, how was I going to get him to commit to that?

Chapter 20

20

Friday night, the doorbell rang as I was making dinner. My heart leapt with the prospect it was Adrian. Following my counselling session, I’d tried to call him and when I got his voicemail, I’d left a message that I wanted to catch up asap. My plan was to talk to him about some of the issues Megan had brought to my attention and ask him for the chance to work on them.

He’d replied via text message a couple of hours later: Is it about the kids?

What kind of question was that? Whatever happened between Adrian and me affected the kids, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. I’d ummed and aahed about saying yes, because he’d make time if he thought it was for Saxon or Payton, but in the end, I couldn’t lie. I didn’t want to meet him under false pretences.

I went to see a marriage counsellor today and she’s given me lots of things to think about. I’m not sure how long you had to get your head around all this, but it was a shock to me, and I’d really like us to have a chat so I can understand more.