To begin, I wouldn’t consider myself to be the perfect wife, I wouldn’t even consider myself to be amazing at it. But I’ve always tried my best and made my husband’s life as great as I could. I gave birth to two beautiful twins around a month before the incident. I was still recovering, dealing with the ins-and-outs of motherhood, alongside with the pains my body experienced. I was sore, sex was difficult, and I was self-conscious. This was an issue for my husband. We went from our four times a week to scarcely two. And even then, I couldn’t find myself getting too involved. Each thrust pushed another apprehensive pain into me. It wasn’t painful precisely, but the thought of my stitches coming loose, or the possibility of being pregnant again, sent me skittish. In honestly, it sometimes felt like I was shitting. Maybe I set standards too high before the babies.

He wanted children, in fact we both did. Twins? Not as much. I love my girls to the moon, but they weren’t expected. I had to give birth before I was due, go through that pain. But I did it for him, he saw me through all of it. He took the time to make sure I was comfortable at each stage of the pregnancy. The start was flowery, I still worked but I worked evenings and my sickness was always in the morning. Three months in is when we learned they were girls, and that the word ‘they’ came into the equation. About a month after this I took time away from my job. I’m a graphics designer, so working from home is great. My clientèle were supportive of the pregnancy and took precautions to make sure I was free during my later stages. My husband makes enough to support the both of us, even though we’d recently moved — for the babies of course.

Our house was, well, suburbia. I grew up in a somewhat similar environment. A large, three-bedroom house, spacious and in a quaint, and if I like to say, upper-class looking, neighbourhood. Lovely gardens, surrounding a cul-de-sac, we have a front and back garden. Large too, enough for a dog or two. Not with the twins, maybe when they’re older. I’m more of a rabbit person. Something small, not aggressive. The babies have changed me somewhat around things I can’t control.

However, this is where our issues — hopefully — stem from. My husband also works mostly from home, he’s an architect and has a home office on the first floor. The office overlooks the front yard, and is below the nursery, which I find myself becoming more and more attached to each day.

Again, I love my babies; I don’t want to sound ungrateful for them, but two children are incredibly hard to manage on my own. So, I’ve been finding I need help from my husband far more than I’d like. We find the extreme amount of time around each other hard to bare. Before I’d try to spend time working in cafes and bring my Cintiq with me.

Due to this, and our dwindling sex life, he decided we needed couples’ therapy. Which I was wholly for. The therapist suggested we spend a day a week away from either each other or from the children. This led to the babies spending time with their grandparents during some weekend days, my mother loves my babies and I trust her. I feel guilty away from them but being alone helps. It’s allowed me to do things I like in my spare time. He does the same. My husband is an incredibly messy person, wonderful brain but he gets too focused, and leaves cups everywhere, including a stack of paperwork. He also forgets to put his laundry in the wash and this leads to a lot of hassle. He’s got better since the babies were born, but he seems rather resentful about it.

To help with some of the housework, we hired a woman, Maria. She’s slightly younger than me, about twenty, however, she’s a massive help. She even decided to help with gardening on the day of the incident. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be in a much worse state I’m sure.

After I asked my husband to help out around the house, he decided that he would stop taking care of the front yard, which was usually his job. I despise gardening, all that time on my knees. But as it was getting rather messy and the neighbours were beginning to look at it like a jungle, I decided we’d all clean it up. We said we’d make a day of it. I arranged a picnic. I made coronation chicken sandwiches, a salad, our favourite. Maria helped out too, I’d become quite close with her and she was a happy welcome. We put the babies in their playpen on a blanket Maria and I were weeding whist my husband was trimming on the other side of the yard.

Well, he disturbed a hornet’s nest and, without saying anything to us he immediately ran straight past our children, grabbed his keys from the blanket, into the house and locked the door. I didn’t know what was going on, thankfully Maria had more presence of mind because as I stared, wondering what was going on, she grabbed the twins. Get to the shed, she’d said, so we dashed to the shed and hid, an angry swarm of hornets furious in the garden.

I could see my husband in the window, so I attempted to alert him, miming as well as I could. He didn’t seem to notice so I looked for my phone, which conveniently was outside on the blanket. He didn’t even react.

I think we were in there for an hour, the babies screaming and myself near tears, before an exterminator turned up. I said, thank god, he’s called them and when it was safe, I covered my babies faces and went into the house. It turns out the neighbours had been the one to call the exterminator and he was sat in his office with a half-eaten sandwich. I was livid. He claimed it was just his reaction, his flight response.

That’s far worse, it infuriated me. If the babies weren’t in the room, I’d have sworn my head off. What sort of husband’s response in an emergency is to abandon his wife and defenceless children?

I didn’t know how to go about it. I was dumbstruck, it wasn’t something I could solve. Couples therapy was an option we could further, but after that event my husband decided to pin the blame. His narrative changed from “it was flight or fight”, to “I called out and you didn’t hear,”. The therapist herself, well I don’t know what exactly she thought, but I’m sure it was similar to me.

Strictly speaking, for me, at that moment, there was no way forward. I slept with the babies for nights. He’d come in occasionally, just to try and coax me back into the bedroom. I felt like my relationship had died. I couldn’t sleep with him, and I asserted that. I asserted it often. He brought this up to the therapist and I scoffed.

“You’re punishing me for something I couldn’t change, if I could go back I would.” He’d repeat, and each time I would think to myself, Of course you would, and I’m sure you’d remember the picnic basket. Of course, my spine then wasn’t what it is now, so eventually I started sleeping with him again, hating every moment. Just in a way because I felt obliged to him. Despite him thoroughly abandoning his role as my baby’s father through locking that door, I continued the relationship with him.

When I wanted to leave, he’d remind me that I had nowhere to go. He’d remind me that the girls would be without a strong father figure in their lives. A good mother wouldn’t want that? Would she?

And of course, to top all of this, his mother got involved. I had a strictly no-contact rule with his mother after her obsession with my pregnancy, her attempt to ruin my wedding, her obsessive hatred towards any other woman in his son’s life, and at the time he agreed. But that must’ve been a lie as well, because once I’d gotten home from couples’ therapy, Maria was at our door.

“Where are the babies?” I’d asked, quite confused, it was late, but it wasn’t their bed times yet. She looked over at my husband, who was smiling. He set his arm on my shoulder.

“My mum is taking care of them.”

Oh, I thought. Of course.

My first instinct was the beat the door down, grab my babies from her spindly witch arms and kick the obsessive bitch out of my new-house. But I chose the second route, I chose to try and save my marriage.