When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (26 page)

I
woke
up alone on the morning of my thirtieth birthday. Even Lucien had abandoned me that morning, having already taken himself outside, or to Mrs Wilkins’s for breakfast. For a long time, I didn’t bother to do much more than to open my eyes and stare at the ornate ceiling.

I felt as if there was a heavy weight on my chest that morning, even as I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I leant on the counter and stared into the mirror, surveying my bleary eyes and increasingly lined face. Maybe I needed a day at a spa. I glanced at my hair, and decided at the very least I needed a visit to the hairdresser – my colour was only a few shades lighter than my natural shade by then, but the roots were starting to grow through.

And then I saw it – a tiny patch of silver, right above my right temple – just a centimetre or two wide, so narrow that no one else would ever have noticed it. I lifted my hair and stared at it, tilting my head this way and that, trying to see if it disappeared. No, I was definitely going grey. I was thirty, and my hair was turning silver. Was it worry? Was it going grey prematurely like Mum’s? Or maybe it was a perfectly appropriate thing for my hair to do, given I was now in my thirties?

There were balloons at work and flowers from colleagues and Mum took me out for lunch, but the whole time, I felt
forgotten
. This was not how it was supposed to be. Leo should be home by now to make a fuss over me – instead, I got an email from him that was nothing more than a promise to call me later that night.

I went to Penny’s house for dinner and we lamented our absent husbands while the kids bounded around and distracted us with hilariously poor tricks they’d been trying to perfect since receiving a magic kit at Christmas. But eventually Penny grew tired of dropping pointed yawns in my direction and told me that she had to go to bed. Shortly after I got home, Leo called and I listened wearily while he talked about the amazing interviews he’d been conducting and unconvincingly attempted to downplay the danger he’d been in outrunning a rebel squad earlier in the day. He did not seem to notice my depressed mood, or at least, if he did, he didn’t bother to acknowledge it.

Later, I climbed the stairs to our bed and stared at the ceiling again. The house felt endlessly empty and I thought about the life and colour and sound of Penny’s house, and the inevitability of my greying hair. I was aging, faster and faster by the day it seemed.

That’s when I decided that if Leo was going to leave me for eight months out of the year, I would have to build my life without him until he was ready to settle down. So my thirtieth birthday drew to a close; I had a tiny patch of grey hair at my temple, but I also had the seed of a new dream in my heart.

I wanted to have a baby.

‘
O
kay
, we’re going to get you up on your feet again now, are you ready?’

I’m concentrating so hard that sweat has soaked through my clothes and I feel it pooling in the curve of my lower back. I nod towards Tracy and grunt as I pull myself up to a standing position against a frame.

‘One… two… three… four…’

My legs give way, and I collapse again. Tracy is operating a pulley system which easily catches me as I flop, and she is triumphant.

‘
Yes
! That was almost five seconds before I had to assist you, Leo – that’s brilliant progress!’

I am out of breath, and as she lowers me into the chair, I focus on regulating my breathing again. Tracy the physiotherapist might be an attractive young woman, but she’s also a brutal taskmaster and I am finally making some progress. Rationally, four and a half seconds in a standing position does not seem like a victory, but it is
something
– and even though progress is still slow, at least I’m moving in the right direction.

‘Again?’ she says, as soon as I have recovered.

I grip the standing frame in my hands and take a moment to focus. Closing my eyes for a minute, I picture myself walking – running – standing proudly on the karate mat – dodging a bullet on the battlefield – chasing a toddler down a hallway – standing to kiss Molly again. ‘Again,’ I say flatly.

Tracy adjusts the pulley in readiness and says, ‘Go when you’re ready.’

I haven’t told Molly about the minor milestones I’m achieving while she’s at the office. It’s not that I’m deliberately keeping it a secret from her, rather I’m looking forward to surprising her one day. When I’m strong enough, I’m going to stand up to greet her when she returns from work one afternoon.

‘You’re the most motivated patient I’ve ever worked with,’ Tracy tells me as she leaves that day, and I nod.

‘I have a lot to lose and a lot to gain.’

‘It
will
get easier the more we practise. Let’s see if we can get past that five-second mark tomorrow. If you can stand for ten seconds, we’ll start working towards a step, okay?’

Once the therapist has left, I shower and then go through to the office to do some reading. I’ve been working my way through my articles chronologically, and now I’m re-reading stuff that I wrote during our second year of marriage. It’s been an interesting exercise and I’m gradually gaining an insight into my own state of mind during that year.

I hear Molly return to the apartment and I call out to her a greeting. She comes to the office and leans against the door. I see the shadow cross her face when she sees the pile of magazines on my desk.

‘How was physio today?’ she asks me quietly.

‘Good,’ I say simply, and she nods towards the desk.

‘Any memories today?’

‘I’ve only just started reading – Tracy stayed a little longer today.’

‘Those editions are from 2014?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That was our second year married.’

I nod, and she enters the room and sits on the desk beside the magazines. She picks the top one up and surveys it.

‘Do you remember much about us from that year yet?’ she asks me.

‘Kind of,’ I murmur. ‘What I remember most about you when I’m reading these is just a sense of missing you.’

‘We were growing distant. I used to buy
News Monthly
so I could find out what you’d been doing while you were away. You never told me, not really.’ She closes the magazine and rests it against her thighs. ‘You know if you try to carry water in your hands, no matter how tightly you hold them, the water still runs through the cracks? That’s what that year felt like to me. Our marriage was slipping away from me, more and more as the year went on.’

‘I felt like that too,’ I say, and she looks at me in surprise, then frowns at me.

‘
You
pulled away. If you knew how much damage that was doing, why didn’t you just stop?’

‘I remember how I’d pause at the door as I left to go to the airport, and how hard it would be to force myself to walk through it, especially when things between us started to get rough.’

The magazine slides from her hands onto the floor. She slips off and bends to pick it up, and I see the awkward way she moves, avoiding a bend at her waist. Her pregnancy is still not showing yet – but the thickening at her stomach is obvious.

‘Well, you never had a problem leaving anyway,’ she mutters, as she drops the magazine back onto the desk. ‘And you called me less and less as that year went on.’

‘I remember times when I
could
have called you, but I didn’t. It was too hard to hear your voice,’ I admit, and because she’s standing right beside me, I gently press my palm to her belly. ‘I remember one time when I’d had a really rough few days, and I called you and as soon as you picked up, we had an argument because I
hadn’t
called you for a week. Do you remember that?’

‘That description covers quite a few of our phone calls, actually,’ she whispers, and she sits her hands over mine on her tummy.

‘Well, I can only remember one so far. I remember you were so angry with me, and I understood why, but Brad and I had seen this IED hit a troop carrier that afternoon and…’

I break off – startled as I remember exactly how brutal that scene had been. How many men died in front of me that day? Eight, I realise, as I remember the spider tattoo that I had added onto the back of my left shoulder.

‘You never used to tell me about the things that went wrong, Leo. You never told me the specifics – this is the first time I’ve heard about an IED explosion right in front of you,’ she frowns at me.

‘It was ugly and frightening, and I thought you’d worry more if you knew how close I was to the danger.’

‘I worried anyway,’ she says. ‘I never knew when you were safe, so I assumed you were at risk of death every second of every day.’

‘I called you that day because I missed you and I wanted the comfort of a conversation with you. But then as soon as I called, we were fighting and I really didn’t
want
to fight with you, plus you know, I’d crave the sound of your voice and then I’d hear it and I’d miss you more. So sometimes when I didn’t call you, it was because
not
calling you was the only way I could bear to stay away so long.’

‘That’s completely bloody stupid, Leo.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Every time we talk now, I realise how easy it might have been. If you’d just opened up to me like this…’

‘You know you’re thinking about those phone calls and those arguments and you’re thinking to yourself,
if only Leo had called me more and opened up to me more, we could have stopped things from getting ugly
?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I was looking at those same arguments thinking,
if only Molly supported me more in my job, then maybe I’d call her more, and we wouldn’t be drifting apart
.’

She stiffens, and pulls away from me. ‘I
was
supportive,’ she snaps, and when she continues speaking again, her voice is loud and her words are short, ‘Do you know how many women would
tolerate
…’

‘Molly,’ I interrupt her very gently, trying to de-escalate. ‘I
know
that was idiotic and close-minded of me. In hindsight, I can’t believe how stupid I was, but from where I stood then, that was all I could see. I am simply telling you what I was thinking at the time. I had a blind spot. And maybe you did too.’

She stares at me, frowning, and then sighs and nods. ‘I can see that.’

‘We’re talking now. We’re opening up now. That’s what’s going to make the difference this time.’

She nods, and then she says, a little sheepishly, ‘I’m starving, and it’s making me cranky.’

Our gazes connect, and we both smile.

‘Okay, let’s get some lunch. Why don’t you go get changed while I finish up here?’

She walks through to our bedroom and I pick up the magazine again. I open it up to the article I was reading and sink back into a memory of coming home. I was always thinking I’d take a few months off at some point to reconnect with her, but then there was always something more pressing to do – some bigger story to chase, some greater opportunity in the field that I just couldn’t pass up. I hadn’t realised it at the time, the faith I had in our love had actually left me blind to its fragility. I thought no matter the distance that grew between us, we’d always come back to one another when I
did
find my way home. That seems so selfish now that I want to go back in time and punch myself in the face. I sigh and put the magazine down.

Every time I went home and took her back into my arms, it felt like I’d never been away – but of course, I
had
been away, and she’d been carrying on with her life without me.

L
eo came
home on Valentine’s Day after almost three months away – our longest separation ever. He was exhausted from the trip and had lost far too much weight during his travels, but the minute I saw him, I fell every bit back in love with him. The months of anxiety and fear and even anger disappeared. The second his arms were around me, I thought I had forgiven his every transgression.

I had taken the day off work and he was exhausted and jet-lagged, so we stayed in bed for a full day. I lay on Leo’s chest while he slept and I listened to the sound of his heart beating against my ear, and I felt the hairs on his chest tickle my face when I moved. I stayed in that position until my neck had cramped and my joints were sore. I was afraid to take my arms away from around him, as if I was somehow anchoring him to me and that was all that was keeping him safe.

The love I had for Leo was still the most remarkable thing that I had ever experienced. I marvelled that it had somehow continued despite the separations and the fear. I hoped that our love might create a child that would manifest what was between us in a miraculously physical form. As I lay there that day, I could almost feel the movement of my imaginary baby beneath my heart. I could see it in my mind as if I already knew it. I could imagine Leo’s joy at returning home to us and his pain at leaving us. I could see the ratio of
away
to
home
shifting and gradually reversing. Perhaps
I
wasn’t enough to compete with his job, but surely our child would be?

A baby was the way forward for us, I was absolutely sure of it. I knew I had to pick my moment to raise the subject, but I also had a sneaking suspicion that Leo would be flying out quickly and I needed to talk to him about it in person. The other complicating factor was that I was more excited than I’d been about anything in quite a long time – apparently far too excited to plan my request. We made love on the morning of his second day in Sydney. My heart rate was only just returning to normal in the blissful moments of peace immediately after when I blurted it out.

‘I want to have a baby.’

‘What?’ Leo jumped a little. ‘What did you say?’

‘I think I’m ready, Leo. I’m not getting any younger, and…’

‘Molly…’

‘Please, at least think about it.’

‘Honey, this is really
not
the time,’ he said gently. ‘This year is going to be insane for me – you know that.’

‘What about for
me
, Leo? What’s this year going to look like for
me
?’ If I’d planned it better, I would have figured out a way to keep the whiny, self-pitying tone out of my voice at least until we were further into the conversation. But I hadn’t planned it better. I was not much more than a clucky, desperate, lonely mess.

Leo shuffled away from me in the bed and sat up, sliding his legs over the edge and turning his back towards me. ‘I can’t deal with this now.’

‘When
will
we deal with it then? How long are you even going to be here for?’

‘
Molly
!’ he was immediately exasperated and I recoiled, confused by the sudden escalation of his impatience. ‘I’ve only been home for twenty-four hours. I need to shave and shower and eat something and
then
you can start at me about how I’ve been working too hard and I’m not meeting your needs. Okay?’

He stood and walked into the en suite, slamming the door behind him.

L
ater
, Leo apologised. He came back to bed and he cuddled me, and he promised me he’d give it some thought. By the time he left again, we’d actually gone as far as to talk about seeing a GP together on his next visit so we could discuss any prenatal testing we might need.

‘As soon as I’m back, okay?’ Leo had promised me. And I smiled at him and I embraced him and in those moments, I felt more positive about our immediate future than I had in some months.

He was gone for five weeks on that next trip so I saw a doctor on my own. I started prenatal vitamins. I wondered if I was imagining a further drop-off in how often he called, and how long those calls lasted.

I didn’t mention trying for a baby again while he was away, and when he came home, I did make a determined effort to hold back my enthusiasm until he’d had a chance to settle back in. In the end, I didn’t need to raise the subject the second time. A few days later, we were in the bathroom dressing together when he saw the prenatal vitamins.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, and he held the bottle towards me.

‘We talked about it last time, remember? I saw the GP, she said to start them as early as possible.’

Leo put the bottle back in the medicine cabinet and closed the door. He didn’t say anything else, but the furrow in his brow spoke volumes.

‘Leo… don’t you want a baby too?’

He sighed and rubbed his hair with a towel, looking at me from the mirror. ‘I just don’t think that this is the year.’

‘We
can’t
put this off forever. Do you really think next year is going to be any quieter for you?’

Leo hooked the towel onto the rail and turned to face me directly. ‘Give me a year,’ he said.

‘A year?’ I repeated. My heart sank. ‘But…’

‘Molly, I’m not ready. When we do this, I want to do
it properly. I want to be here for you… with you. We’ll talk about it this time next year, okay?’

He brushed a kiss on my cheek as he passed me, but he didn’t wait for my reaction – he headed straight upstairs to his office.

‘Leo,’ I called, and ran up the stairs after him.

‘On the phone,’ he whispered, as soon as I entered the room, and then louder, ‘Oh, hey, Brad! Yeah – how did that editing go?’

But I wasn’t going to let him off that easily – I stood behind him for several minutes, and then when he continued to ignore my presence, I walked to his desk and pushed some paperwork aside to sit right in front of him. He frowned at me.

‘Hang on, Brad.’

‘You can’t walk out on a conversation like that.’

‘And
you
can’t force me to be ready when I’m not,’ Leo said pointedly. ‘I’m on the phone, Molly. We will talk about this – and soon. But not right now.’

‘
When
?’

He sighed impatiently, and turned his back on me to resume the phone call. ‘Yeah, I’m back. No – nothing. Just Molly.’

I
convinced
myself that the gradual fading off of Leo’s communication with me was simply a consequence of our marriage now being a couple of years old, so over the next few months I decided I would make a determined effort to reach him more often.

When a day passed and he didn’t call me, I’d send him an email, even if it was just a line or two asking how he was and telling him about my day. Sometimes he wrote back, sometimes he did not – but I felt better for having made the effort. When he called me one night, I asked him.

‘Leo, can you call me more often?’

‘Honey – it’s so difficult, you know what it’s like. I’m travelling all of the time and often not in the best circumstances…’

‘Can I call
you
, then?’ I had always been reluctant to call the satellite phone, knowing instinctively that I should save that intrusive method of contacting him for an emergency. His sigh stung and I was instantly defensive. ‘Don’t
sigh
at me! You were only ever going to travel for three weeks at a time, remember? Six trips a year, you said at one point? You’re away
all of the time
now. I’m supportive – I’m patient – but you need to make some kind of effort.’

‘I have a
job
to do, Molly, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Brad has the same job, Leo. And he calls Penny and the kids every single day.’

There was silence on the line and I thought it had dropped out altogether. I swore and moved to hang up.

‘I’ll try harder,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, okay?’

‘I don’t mean to nag you, Leo. I just miss you so much.’

‘I know, honey. I’ll try. We can do better.’

For a week or so he did call more frequently, but the calls quickly dropped off again and so in June, I decided I’d mark his calls on a calendar so that I could track when I
did
hear from him. It seemed inconceivable that Leo might be distancing himself from me even more, but when I looked back at the end of the month and saw a clearly decreasing pattern of contact, I really started to worry. I emailed to ask him when he was coming home, and he replied quickly and told me it was still a while off. Upset, I called Penny.

‘Sorry, Molly. I can't talk now. Brad and I are just taking Zane to the movies for a special––’

‘Brad is
home
?’ I shrieked the words, and then found myself breathless, as if she’d winded me.

‘Didn’t Leo tell you? He’s been home for a few days – I thought Leo was coming soon too?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry to interrupt you.’

When Leo called me two days later, I did not pick up the call. I hadn’t emailed him since I’d learned that Brad was home, but that night I sat at the computer and I fired off a missive.

And his response was waiting when I woke up the next day.

When he called that night, I picked up the call, hung up on him, then turned my phone off. I didn’t reply to his email and he didn’t call again. Every other time we’d even squabbled while he was in the field, I’d hasten to apologise in case he was injured or killed before we could make up, but not this time. Days passed, and I felt cold inside, and desperate. Every midnight that rolled past saw me more hurt, and closer to resentment. I thought childish things – like
what if I just move out while he’s overseas and see how long it takes him to notice?
And
maybe next time he comes home I’ll get on a plane and go to the most violent war zone I can think of and hide out in a hotel for a week just so he can see what it feels like.

All I wanted was Leo. I wanted the man he was, and I wanted the love we shared. I didn’t want to change him; I just wanted to
access
him. A life with Leo was what I’d signed up for – not this endless series of pauses and delays.

I
got
the ’flu that week. I think it was a combination of being stressed out of my mind over the situation with Leo, mixed in with a decent dose of bad timing – the staff at the Foundation had been passing the bug around since the cold weather began. I was on the couch under a throw rug watching soppy movies with Lucien cuddled up on my lap and tissues strewn all over the place.

I screamed when the door opened – which made Leo scream too, because he was no doubt assuming I was at work at 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. After the initial shock, we both recovered and we spent the next hour falling over ourselves to apologise. By that stage, we’d been married long enough to have a few serious disagreements but we’d never let distance grow between us like that before and I thought the incident would be a wake-up call.

‘You mean everything to me, Molly,’ he said. ‘I know this is hard, but I sometimes forget
how
hard it is for you. I just need to focus on my career for a little longer – after this Syrian stuff settles down, I can take a proper holiday and we can spend time reconnecting.’

That visit home was different for a lot of reasons. It was the first – and only – time he’d ever left the field because he was worried about me. I was so sure it was a turning point that I dared to bring up the subject of a baby again during that week. We were each making such an effort – being careful to nurture one another and to enjoy our time together. The timing felt right to me.

I raised the subject over breakfast one morning. Leo was reading on his Kindle while we ate and I’d made a point of clearing my throat a few times. Eventually he glanced at me. ‘Are you still feeling sick?’

‘I’m fine. I was trying to get your attention. Do you remember what we talked about last time you were here? I know you asked for a year but I just thought maybe we could think about it now.’

He sat the Kindle down and looked at me.

‘I don’t think it’s the right time. I want to be
here
for you and the baby when the time comes.’

I took a deep breath, better prepared for this discussion than I had been the first time.

‘It takes some couples years to fall pregnant and
we
are rarely in the same room, so I’m assuming it will take us a while. And even if I did, by some miracle, fall pregnant straight away, it takes months for a pregnancy to progress. You don’t need to be
here
for the pregnancy.’

‘Molly…’ he pleaded with me.

My hand was on the table and I waited for him to reach for it, but he didn’t, and for some reason that stung. I raised my chin. ‘There are so many things that suck about being your wife,’ I said flatly. ‘I am here alone most of the year and I hate it. I am frightened for you all of the time. But you
can’t
ask me to wait forever for this too. I can’t miss my shot at motherhood because you love your job too much to let me have it.’

When we were talking face to face, there was never any doubt at all when I’d pushed Leo too far. His withdrawal was often a physical one – even when he didn’t just get up and walk away from me, I could watch his expression close off.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said – but I knew that he was not going to think about it. I knew that he was simply paying lip service to my request. There was no doubt at all in my mind that if I did not ask again, he would never raise the subject.