He was thinking about her as he made his way home.
They weren’t happy thoughts. They never were. Truth to tell, it wasn’t long after their marriage that he realised what a horrible mistake it had been. Two people, agreeing to share the rest of their lives together really had to think long and hard about the commitment they were making. Sounds simple, he thought, despite knowing how wrong they themselves had got it. It wasn’t until they were living together that their differences, in other words the things they didn’t like about each other, started to show up.
For him, it was probably the bathroom thing that had started it. It was the way she would always leave the bathroom in a mess, specifically, leaving her towel on the floor when there was a towel rail right there. As for the cap of the toothpaste tube, she didn’t use it, never put it back on, would leave it sitting on the side of the sink.
Also, she was such a noisy eater and often talked with her mouth full. Then there was the really annoying habit she had of tapping her shoe against the kitchen’s table leg. Then there was the way she was always exaggerating the most trivial matters. The way she spent too much time on the internet, and too much money placing orders on it, for stuff they simply didn’t need. The way she would sit continually clicking her pen. When they were out, the way she would leave her shopping trolley in the middle of the car park. The way she would stop and hold a conversation right in front of a doorway. He didn’t want to think about how many years he had put up with it.
As he opened the front gate, he told himself how much he hated it when these acrimonious thoughts came tumbling in.
However, as he unlocked the front door and entered the house, all these negative and disturbing thoughts where quickly blown away, as was often the case, with the comforting realisation that the woman was dead.