When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (30 page)

I put the letter down, and I think again about the man in that bar that day.

He was a man who truly knew what he wanted – he just didn’t know how to get it. Or maybe he did, and maybe he just didn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done.

I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and make my way back towards the stairs.

I
had spent
a lot of time that year thinking about what it would feel like to see a second line appear on a pregnancy test. I’d even stared at myself in the mirror and practised the joyous, maternal smile I’d wear when I told Leo our news. I had imagined his equally joyous reaction so many times that I felt like I’d seen it for real.

The reality of that moment in our lives was nothing at all like those fantasies. Leo was asleep in the recliner in the office when I went into the bathroom, and he was still asleep when I watched the second line appear.

I put the test in the bin and then I took Lucien for a walk into the city. He stayed close to me, which ordinarily would have suggested he was not in the mood for exercise, but that day I knew that he was picking up on the tightly-strung emotions that swirled around in my gut.

I couldn’t think about the baby; I wouldn’t let myself accept the reality of it. All that I could think about was the mess that I was in, and the added chaos that I had created.

I thought if I walked long enough, I’d figure out a way to make things right – but all that walk did was to convince me that there
was
no way to make things right. When Lucien started falling behind me, I called for my car and went home.

Leo was sitting at the dining room table, eating toast and reading the newspaper. He glanced at me when I stepped into the room, then looked back to the newspaper without a word. I stood opposite him and I did not take a seat.

‘I’m pregnant,’ I said. I didn’t make excuses or deny that this was my own doing. I wouldn’t insult his intelligence like that.

In the end, it wasn’t anger I saw in his expression. It was a myriad of other painful emotions – hurt, confusion and realisation, and then right after that an icy and terrible hatred. Leo rose, picked up his wallet from the kitchen bench, and walked out the back door – slamming it behind him. The slam echoed in the empty house long after he was gone. I knew that it represented the death knell for my marriage.

H
e returned hours later
, drenched in sweat and clearly exhausted. I knew he’d gone to the gym. I had a feeling there was a punching bag or a treadmill there that would probably need replacing.

I couldn’t look at him. He came and sat at the other end of the couch.

‘Are we going to get past this?’ I asked him. My voice was hoarse.

‘I don’t know,’ Leo admitted, and finally he looked at me.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Just… give me space.’

‘Okay,’ I whispered, but it was frustrating beyond words. Leo
always
said that –
give me space
– and if I wasn’t so broken, I might have asked him just how much bloody space a man could possibly need.

After a day a day or two, I actually started to wonder if we were somehow going to be okay. We had settled into a surprising kind of calm. The space between us felt fragile, but not as tense as it once had – not so taut it might shatter at any second – now it was a sensitive thing that we had to nurture carefully. We did not talk about the baby or what I’d done – although Leo returned to our bed, and I woke several times to find his hand resting on my belly.

And then, at dinner one night, Leo told me that he had booked his flights to return to Syria and that he and Brad had finalised the plans he’d been working on. He’d tried to tell me in Istanbul, but I’d been so resentful at that stage that I’d always cut him off or changed the subject before he could really explain the project.

My husband was planning to spend three weeks embedded in a group of jihadists.

He said it so calmly. If I’d listened to the tone and not the words, he might have been talking about something dull, and I might have missed the reality that he had signed himself up for a suicide mission. This was a whole new level of crazy and a whole new level of stupid. These were extremists who lived and breathed an irrational dogma that Leo despised as much as anyone.

‘
No
,’ I said. ‘No, you can’t. I won’t let you.’

Leo looked up from his meal. ‘You won’t let me,’ he repeated.

‘That’s not an assignment – it’s a suicide mission. No one would have approved that.’

‘Not that it’s any of your business, but Kisani has worked through the plan as closely as Brad and I have. We’re not even the first to do it, and I have a guarantee from…’

‘
No
,’ I said. I did not want to hear it – the false promises of his safety that he might give me, as if they would mean something. ‘You can’t do this. You’re going to be a father, Leo –
Jesus
, Brad has
three
kids now! You just can’t be so careless with your lives anymore. This wasn’t Brad’s idea, was it?’

‘How does that matter?’

‘Because you keep pressuring him into these things and one of you is going to get killed! I
won’t
let you, I forbid you to do this.’

‘You
forbid
me?’ Leo scoffed. ‘What are you going to do, Molly – go behind my back and stop me from going? Do my wishes count for nothing at all now, not even with my work?’

We both knew exactly what he was really referring to, but I couldn’t believe how quickly the conversation had spun from me being terrified
for
him, to him attacking me over what I’d done. My face felt hot and my gaze drifted to the silk flowers on the table between us. ‘
Don’t
, Leo!’ I whispered.

‘Well, what would you have me do? Do you want me to leave my job and do something that makes me miserable just because you’ve tricked me into fatherhood? I suppose a boring desk job is the last thing you’ve got left to manipulate me into.’

I gasped and stood so violently that my chair tipped over onto the floorboards behind me. ‘You
bastard
!’

There was a minute flash of guilt over Leo’s face, but almost instantly it was replaced by scorn.

‘It is true, isn’t it? This was what Istanbul was about, right?’ That wasn’t the case at all – but I couldn’t deny the accusation of manipulation. I
had
tricked him into it – not as directly as he thought, but the little facts around our situation did not diminish my guilt one bit.

‘If we’re going to catalogue all of the things we’ve done to hurt each other, let’s talk about
my
life the last year. Why don’t we talk about what I have given up for you?’ Pain twisted the words in my mouth until I was snarling at him. ‘How about my family? How about my
home
? And for what, Leo? To live here, in this shitty shoebox alone for ten months of the year, with a husband who is so self-obsessed that he can’t even be bothered to bloody call me every once in a while. I am so fucking sick of you treating me like this…’

‘You “
gave up
” your family?
Please
, Molly, you didn’t give up your
barely
functional family – your parents forced you out when you decided to rebel against your father by sleeping with me. And you still see them – do you think I don’t
know
that?’

‘I see them on special occasions, like Christmas. You might not be familiar with what that is – it’s one of the many days each year when my husband doesn’t bother to come home.’

When he didn’t respond, I felt a completely fresh and unexpected burst of anger and I apparently decided to spiral the tone of the conversation down even further. When I spoke again, my words were a spiteful, awful hiss. ‘You try to make it sound noble, Leo, and no one else can see through it – but
I
can. We both know that you only take the risky assignments because you
need
the adrenaline rush to make you feel like a
man
.’

I saw the pain in Leo’s eyes at that last brutal insult and just for a second I felt triumph – I was glad to have hurt him. I wanted him to suffer like I was suffering.

‘Maybe there’s some truth in that. I certainly don’t feel like a man when I talk to you these days. When was the last time you actually spoke to me as if I was someone you didn’t loathe?
Why won’t you come home more, Leo?
Because I
despise
being here with you, being reminded every fucking minute of the day how much you resent me. You should have listened to your father and stayed well away from someone of such poor breeding.’

‘Fuck you, Leo! Fuck you and your false promises and your
goddamned
messiah complex! I
do
hate you, I can’t do this anymore!’

‘Then
go
, Molly! Go back to your ivory tower. Go and lament with your daddy what a scumbag I turned out to be and you can even have his approval back. Just fucking go!’

I burst into tears and then I ran up the stairs and lay on our bed and just sobbed. Lucien came and lay on the bed beside me and I knew Leo would be pissed off about it, but I let the dog comfort me and then when he fell asleep there, I childishly let him slobber all over Leo’s pillows.

It was well after two in the morning when I heard Leo climb the stairs. I was still lying awake – although I’d long since stopped crying. He sat on my side of the bed right beside me and I thought he was going to apologise. Of all our fights, and there had been more arguments than I could count over that last year, we’d never been quite so cruel before – neither one of us, and I was as scared by it as I was shocked. It was a sign that all of those things that had been building – the disdain, the lack of respect, the contempt – even my betrayal of his trust – those aspects to our marriage had completely overtaken us.

‘We can’t do this anymore,’ he whispered.

I sat up. Lucien sat up too, and then he saw Leo and leapt off the bed and disappeared down the stairs. Leo didn’t move and he did not touch me. The room was semi-dark, illuminated only from the lights downstairs. I could see Leo’s face, but I couldn’t read it.

‘I know,’ I whispered.

‘I know we always say this, but I promise you, Molly, I mean it. I don’t want to fight again tonight.’

‘I don’t want to fight either,’ I said, and I thought about how many times I’d said that to him over the years. There was a basic essential truth to the statement. I had
never
wanted to fight with him – it was the last resort when I grew desperate. I had only ever wanted to reach him, but it is so very difficult to catch up with someone who is always pulling away.

I waited, because this was the part where he was supposed to take me in his arms and we’d console each other. When Leo did not move to comfort me, I was actually confused.

‘You know what my childhood was like,’ he said, still very quietly. ‘You know – that argument tonight? We could have had a five-year-old in the next room, lying in bed shaking with the fury of it, and we’d still have gone at it like that. We weren’t in control of ourselves. We weren’t respectful of each other and we haven’t been for a long time. What we had, it’s just gone, Molly… and what’s left isn’t worth repairing. I have seen what life looks like for a kid when a family revolves around anger. I want the defining moments of our baby’s life to be filled with laughter and love, not fury and shouting. We
can
do that for our baby,’ he stopped for a moment, and cleared his throat before he added, ‘But we can’t do it together.’

At this I lost my breath. I was forming a counter-argument even as I realised what he was saying was true. It was still habit to argue, but I had run out of energy for the fight.

‘You told me you hated me tonight. You
can’t
say you didn’t mean it, can you? Face it, Molly, I’ve done a terrible job of being a husband – I’m a complete failure at this. All I have done is to hurt you and to disappoint you.’

‘That’s just not true, Leo,’ I said, but I was surprised at the calm resignation in my voice. ‘We did have good times – we had some
great
times.’

‘We did. But we’re a long way from those days now. I know I’ve already treated you badly, Molly – I know that as well as you do. But now there’s this new thing between us that I just don’t think I can forgive. If you think things have been ugly in the past… God, it can only get worse the way I feel now. The best way forward for us is a fresh start –
apart
.’

I knew I needed to apologise, but I also knew that the words would mean nothing at all to Leo now. I had taken something from him, and in so doing, I had damaged the trust between us in a way that could never be repaired. All that I could hope now was that if I could be mature about this, I might one day regain some of his respect.

Leo turned to face me, and I could just make out the shape of sadness in his eyes.

‘This is who I am, you know. I can’t change, I don’t even want to – no more than
you
want to change. We’ve given it our best shot, and we could have kept trying for another year or two, even ten years, but the outcome would always have been this moment. Now that we are going to be parents, we can’t afford to waste any more time trying and failing. I would rather see you happy and content and peacefully settled down with someone else…’

I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else, but as he said those words, I suddenly realised that I couldn’t imagine myself with Leo anymore either. He was right – the compulsion within him to do that damned job was always going to lead him back to a lifestyle that I could never accept. Our marriage had been doomed from the start.

‘Okay,’ I said, and while I was sure that we were in the right place and that this conversation needed to happen, that didn’t lessen the pain of it one little bit, and I had to stiffen my whole body to try and force away the tears that loomed. We sat in a ragged silence for a moment or two, waiting calmly together among the ruins of our marriage and the life that we had built. I waited for Leo to leave, and eventually realised that he wasn’t going to, so I sought for something more to say – a way to work the conversation around to an apology, in case that was what he was waiting for.

‘We can rebuild a friendship before the baby comes. We can be civil…. friendly.’

‘I really hope so,’ Leo whispered, but then he surprised me as he added hesitantly, ‘Do you remember when you said to me that you weren’t looking for a happily-ever-after, and that whenever our relationship ended, you’d be glad for the time we shared?’ I nodded, and a tear escaped my eye. ‘I
am
glad for the time we shared, Molly. I
was
happy. It counts, even after it’s over.’