The President's Wife

The Beginning

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
That same question that every grown adult asks you when they've run out of small talk. Or when they just want something to laugh over at dinner with their partner.
I mean, it's not as if we know what we want to be...right? I mean sure some of us were destined to be famous, or doctors, or lawyers. But I bet you anything that the rest of us just went with the flow, maybe we liked our toys that day and wanted to be a Princess, or a Dinosaur. Or one day we saw our favourite singer and wanted to be them, even though our singing was probably a sign we should have taken the Dinosaur ambitions more seriously.

But I can tell you this.

When I responded to each of those adults who looked at me with a glimpse of humour and hope in their eyes, I never said a wife.

And yet on this cold bitter day, I'm now outside the archway where my future husband stands waiting for me. I'm in a sparkling white princess dress which would probably be much more suited to a royal wedding and yet I resent it for leaving me cold.
My dad is here, looking at me with sorrow and resignation in his eyes. I can't look at him.

If he loved me he wouldn't have chosen this for me.
He wouldn't have chosen my mother over me.
And yet that is exactly what he has done.

We walk down the aisle in the pouring rain to the sound of thunder. He kisses me on the cheek and retreats into the darkness.

Is this not what he had imagined for his little princess?

Now I turn to see him. My future husband. The man who offered my parents what they couldn't refuse. What they would sacrifice their daughter for. My body is shaking but I can't tell if it's from anger or the cold.

"Molly?" The vicar looks at me meaningfully.
I cough, why does my throat feel so dry?
"I do."

"And do you Hugh..."
He looks at me. There's no shame in his face, no love in his eyes. Just a man who finally got what he wanted.

I'm taken out of my reverie to someone grabbing me. Oh it's that time already?
He takes me by the shoulders and mashes my face into his even though there's no one to watch us apart from the extremely uncomfortable vicar.

And with that kiss it was sealed. I would be no more than his lackey, his secretary, his waitress, his hooker.
It shudders me to think of him in bed, and yet that's exactly what we'll be doing tonight. He wouldn't expect anything less, this is my life now.

We walk back down the aisle to the car that will take us to his home and it feels like a funeral. I need to grieve, this wasn't my dream.
This was my nightmare.

I'm Molly. And I never wanted to be a wife.