The Day my Husband Left for Mars

The day my husband left for Mars, we had beans on toast for tea. We sat around the table, the children and I, stabbing beans with our forks, and looking out of the window at the dusky sky, wondering if one of the little silvery dots was him.

 I cried, of course, when he told me.

 ‘You might as well be dead,’ I said.

 Tom said it wasn’t like that. He said we would stay in touch, with video messages and emails.     

 He said, ‘Just think how proud the kids will be, when their Dad is one of the first humans on Mars.’ 

 I said, ‘They won’t have a Dad anymore.’

 He said, ‘This is a once in a lifetime chance.’

 I said, ‘What about your life with us? What about our life together?’

 He said, ‘This has always been my dream – to be an explorer, to be a hero.’

 I said, ‘I dreamed of growing old with you.’

 He said, ‘Please don’t try to stop me.'

Tom bought the new Lego Mars set for the children, and James spent hours constructing the model habitation pods and rover vehicles, moving the little astronauts in their Mars suits around the encampment.

‘Look, maybe this one is Daddy!’ he said, and I had to look away.

I didn’t go to the launch. I stayed at home, and washed the kitchen floor, tile by tile. James and Catherine went with Tom’s sister. James took the little Lego astronaut with him, clutched tightly in his fist. I don’t think they really understood that he wasn’t coming back. How could they?

After he’d gone, I grieved. It was a strange sort of grief – angry, despairing, lonely, disbelieving, - but interrupted with emails and messages from Tom, from ‘the other side’.  He wrote about space-sickness and dehydrated food. He said he missed us.

Mum and Dad brought round pies and hot-pots to make sure we were all eating properly, and I pushed the food around my plate, trying to hide bits under my cutlery like a naughty child. Tom’s parents came too, but I could hardly bear to look at their stricken faces, the mirror of my own.

My friends were divided. There were those in the ‘forget him!’ camp who talked as if Tom had left me – I suppose he had. This camp urged me to get out, start having fun, start dating. Unthinkable – in my head I was still married -a Mars widow.

The other camp didn’t know what to say to me. They averted their eyes, crossed the street to avoid an awkward meeting. I didn’t blame them.

It’s been a month since Tom left.  He wanted to be a hero, but it turns out that the world soon gets bored of grainy pictures of people floating around a space-ship. He’s old news now, until something more exciting happens - they blow up, they crash land, they kill each other – something like that. After all, it will be eight months until they even reach Mars.

I am, however, much more news-worthy.  The week after the launch, I was on TV. I sat on the daytime chat show sofa, opposite the sympathetic host with a tear in her eye.

 ‘And how are you feeling now?’ she asked, her head on one side, to emphasise her concern. ‘Do you worry about him?’

And it was then that I realised that I barely thought about Tom, hour by hour, day by day. I didn’t wonder what he was doing, or worry whether he was safe. I was too busy dealing with his absence.

I didn’t say any of this, of course. I smiled, bravely, and I said, ‘I am so proud of my husband. He is fulfilling his dream, and that is enough for me.’ The audience erupted into spontaneous applause. The Twitter feed went into overdrive.  The show went into a feature on hair-care in zero gravity, but, at that moment, I became a worldwide icon for the brave, selfless wife. 

Now our daily life is consumed greedily, examined and discussed, scrutinised and shared.  We are followed, we are photographed; there is talk of a movie.  Everyone knows who we are, and there is no escape, no possibility of return to our old lives.

Tom hurtles on in his claustrophobic capsule, into forever. He has left us, but by an equal and opposite reaction, we are leaving him, too.

At night, I dream of space. I am hanging, lightly tethered to a bit of rock, cocooned in a cumbersome suit and helmet. I am surrounded by a deep blackness, scattered with tiny points of light. I cannot touch anything, I reach out with my gloved hand and there is nothing, and more nothing. I am adrift.