He didn’t pretend to be surprised. He didn’t rush to comfort me. Instead, he simply took off his shoes and looked down at me with a smirk I had never seen before.
‘It’s exactly what it looks like, Nyala. I’m done. You failed as a wife and you’re unfit to be a mother.’
‘Unfit? I’m raising her! I do everything!’
‘Spending my money, you mean,’ he spat. ‘Zaria needs a role model, not a crying housewife. And don’t think you can stop me. My solicitor has the evidence. You’ll walk away from this marriage with nothing.’
He leaned towards me, his voice lowering to a whisper that sent a chill down my spine.
‘Get ready, Nyala. Even your daughter knows how pathetic you are. She’ll testify.’
I stared at him, paralysed with terror. He wasn’t just leaving me. He was going to wipe me off the face of the earth.
That night, Tmain locked himself in the guest room. I slept on the floor of Zari’s nursery, watching her chest rise and fall, terrified that if I closed my eyes, she would be gone when I woke up.
The next morning, the war began.
I tried to find a solicitor, but hit a brick wall. Every service fee was thousands of dollars. I opened the banking app with trembling fingers. We had a joint savings account — our reserve fund. There should be almost two hundred thousand dollars in there.
Balance: £0.00.
I refreshed the page, hoping for a miracle. Zero.
I checked the transaction history. Over the past six months, Tmain had systematically spent every penny on an account I had no access to. The last transfer was three days ago.
He had rendered me helpless before I even realised we were fighting.
In desperation, I went to a legal centre in a dilapidated shopping centre on the other side of town. There I met solicitor Abernathy. He was an elderly man in a worn jacket with tired eyes, but he listened to me.
‘This isn’t just a divorce, Nyala,’ Abernathy said, looking over copies of the lawsuit. ‘This is destruction. Who’s your solicitor?’
‘Cromwell,’ I replied.
Abernathy grimaced. ‘He’s a predator. And he plays dirty. Look here.’ He pointed to a section of the document I hadn’t gotten to yet. Appendix C: Expert Testimony.
‘A child psychologist?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘We’ve never seen a psychologist.’
‘Her name is Dr Valencia,’ Abernathy read. ‘She claims to have conducted “covert behavioural observations” of you and Zaria over the past three months. Her conclusion is that you suffer from “Parenting Syndrome” and have an “unstable and hysterical personality” that is dangerous to the child.’
‘That’s a lie!’ I shouted, standing up. ‘I don’t know who this woman is! She’s never spoken to me!’
‘She doesn’t need to,’ Abernathy said quietly. ‘If the judge accepts her credentials, her word is law. Right now, her word says you’re unfit.’
I left his office feeling as if the walls were closing in on me. I had no money, I was being blamed, and some invisible doctor was diagnosing me from the shadows.
Life at home turned into psychological torture.
Tmain began a campaign to buy Zari’s loyalty. He came home early from work every day with gifts. One evening, he gave her a new, latest-model tablet.
‘For you, princess,’ he smiled. ‘It’s much faster than that piece of junk you have now.’
Zari’s eyes lit up. ‘Thank you, Daddy!’
Tmain looked at me through her little head, his gaze cold. ‘See? When you live with Daddy, you have the best of everything. Mummy can’t buy you nice things.’
I bit my tongue until it bled. If I screamed, it would only confirm Dr Valencia’s diagnosis: unstable, hysterical.
Later that night, I went to tuck Zarya in. The new tablet lay on the table, shiny and perfect. But as I smoothed the pillow, I felt a hard protrusion beneath it.
I reached out and pulled out her old tablet — the one with the cracked screen and a battery that barely worked.
‘Zarya?’ I whispered. ‘Why is it here?’
She snatched it from my hands, her eyes widening. ‘It’s mine,’ she said defensively, hiding it under the pillow again. ‘I like it.’
I didn’t press the issue. I thought it was just a comfort object, a resistance to change. I didn’t know she was hiding a weapon.
The tension exploded a week before the trial. I came home and couldn’t find Zaria. Tmain wasn’t answering his phone. I paced back and forth in the living room for four hours, panicking.
When they finally returned at nine in the evening, laughing and carrying piles of bags from the amusement park, I lost control.
‘Where were you?’ I shouted, tears streaming down my face. ‘I thought something terrible had happened!’
‘Calm down,’ Tmain sighed. ‘I was spending time with my daughter. Stop being so dramatic.’
‘You didn’t say that! You can’t just take her away!’
Tmain moved closer. I smelled something that wasn’t mine. ‘You can do whatever you want,’ he hissed. “You’re not important, Nyala. You’re boring, you’re broke, and your life is over. I have someone else. Someone smart. Someone who makes you look like the failure you are.”