When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (12 page)

I
t’s always
busy on Circular Quay. When we arrive, there are hordes of tourists and inner-city types swarming around the ferry wharf and along the foreshore enjoying the afternoon sunshine.

‘Where to first?’ I ask Leo, and he glances back at me with a wry smile.

‘You’re telling this story, Molly. Where does it start?’

I look around the Quay. There’s First Fleet Park, where he told me the truth about my brother. Then there’s the café up in The Rocks where we shared coffee and then dinner and I caught my first glimpse of the exhilaration that came from hearing him talk about his work with such passion. Just around the corner there are the Botanic Gardens, where we shared countless walks when we were dating, and God – right in front of us is my apartment building, and we had countless significant firsts there.

‘We spent a lot of time together around here in the early days. There’s just so much here…’ I say, and I tail off, suddenly uncertain. ‘I don’t even know what you
do
know, Leo.’

‘Forget what I do and don’t know. I remember some things about our early days together, but it’s so patchy and I have no way of knowing what memories are missing. Why don’t you just tell me about your favourite memory of us here?’

That narrows it down. Those early memories are all good – but the thought of only one night can still make my heart race.

‘Let’s go to Circular,’ I say, and I point eastward towards the restaurant beneath the Opera House. We make the short journey around the ferry wharf and along the pier beneath my apartment building. We opt to sit at a table by the big glass windows, looking out over the harbour. After we order coffees and I convince Leo to share some cake, we’re alone again. I look out at the bridge for a moment, and when I turn back to him, I find he is staring at me.

‘We had dinner here, right?’ he asks.

‘We did.’

‘I think I remember some of that night,’ Leo frowns as he focuses. ‘You wore that dress… was it pink?’

‘Yep, rose pink chiffon,’ I say, and I’m surprised. ‘I can’t believe you remember that.’

‘I can’t believe I ever forgot it – you looked incredible.’

I’m strangely touched by the thought that Leo had tucked that little detail away in his memory at all. I smile to myself, and I ask hesitantly, ‘So, do I still feel like a stranger to you?’

‘No. When I first woke up, all of this seemed completely impossible. I couldn’t imagine how
we
could have happened… It felt like everyone was playing a particularly complicated trick on me. The details of my memories are slowly coming back, but it’s very different with the feelings – they’re kind of simmering below the surface, and every time we talk I’m reminded that you’re actually familiar to me. It’s like….’ he raises his hand and points to his head. ‘I’ve forgotten you up here…’ his hand lowers, and he points to his chest, then grimaces again, as if this is a painful admission to make, ‘but I always knew you here.’

My breath catches in my throat. I am devastated to realise that already Leo has rekindled emotions for me – that seems like a brutally unfair thing of me to allow, given that we are
actually separated, and what he’s remembering is long gone. When he told me he wanted to separate, we had a conversation that was drenched in sadness, but neither of us even had enough passion left to fight for the marriage – it felt almost inevitable. So I know that Leo really doesn’t feel this way anymore – if he did, he would never have walked away.

At the same time I feel I am being drawn back towards him, even as our eyes lock. Leo is a charmer – he is someone who knows how to work with people and how to make them feel comfortable enough to open up to him. But he’s not great at talking about feelings, particularly
his
feelings, and he’s not a romantic by nature – he’s the kind of guy much more likely to flirt than woo. This quiet declaration seems like an unusual level of vulnerability from him, although I suppose he feels safe to make it because he knows that we are married.

I love the way he’s looking at me, as if he could drink me up with his eyes or find contentment just by keeping me in his gaze. And I connect very suddenly with a realisation that just as the feelings might be ‘simmering below the surface’ for Leo, they are doing so for me too. That thought is so startling that I panic and try to lighten the mood with a joke.

‘You do realise that is the
corniest
thing you have ever said, right?’

Leo smiles at me, gently and kindly. ‘Why do you think I’m wearing this face?’ he says, and then he pulls an exaggerated expression of disgust and points to his cheek. I burst out laughing, and then we laugh together, and the two sounds mingle and I feel that just for a second, we’re truly connecting – somehow, through that laughter, we’re one again, just as we used to be – and I love that every bit as much as I miss it. I stop fighting my resurging feelings for just a second and I let them be. The ugliness will return, I know it will – but I make the most of this brief moment of togetherness. Leo quite casually reaches across and entwines our fingers, then rests them on the table between us.

‘Do you remember when we held hands the first time?’ I ask him. Leo stares at our hands, and I watch the laughter lines around his eyes relax and the way his expression shifts and morphs into something very intense. After a moment he raises his eyes back to me and searches my gaze.

‘I remember being completely lost in you.’

‘That’s exactly how I felt,’ I whisper, and staring deeply into Leo’s eyes, I’m suddenly feeling that way all over again. ‘I felt like your hands were made to hold mine, and I never wanted you to let me go.’

‘Now who’s being corny?’ he says, but he whispers the words and the intensity in his eyes doesn’t diminish.

I laugh softly, and look past Leo. The waiter is approaching with our coffees and the beautiful moment is passing already. I hold onto his hand much tighter than I did that first time because now I know what it feels like when he lets go.

‘Why me, Molly?’ Leo asks suddenly.

I smile at him quizzically. ‘What on earth does that mean?’

‘You could have been with any man you set your heart on.’

‘Well, you really hate it when I go all “poor little rich girl” on you,’ I say softly, and when he grimaces, I laugh freely for a second because I know that he doesn’t need his memory to know that statement is true. I quickly sober though, and I plot my answer to his question. ‘The truth is you showed me how to see the world through new eyes. I fell in love with you because of who you are, but I
married
you because of who I became when I was with you.’

He smiles at me, and he brings my hand to his lips and kisses it very gently, then rests it on the table again. I look away from him, towards the harbour, and think about my own words.

All that I have said is true but it strikes me now that soon, I will
not
be married to Leo, and I have no idea what a post-Leo Molly Torrington-Stephens even looks like. She is more hardened than the innocent woman who married that man almost three years ago, but she is also kinder – more socially aware, more generous.

Will she be happy? This thought is terrifying. I glance back to Leo, and find him still staring at me. He’s not seeing
me
, he’s seeing the pre-Leo me, who was different again.

She
was spoilt, and selfish, and manipulative – and yet he loved her anyway.

I
woke as soon
as the sun hit Molly’s windows the next morning. She was sprawled diagonally across her bed, her face squished against my chest, one arm draped loosely over me. Despite the slightness of her build, she had helped herself to most of the mattress, trapping me on a thin section towards the edge. She was snoring with surprising volume and I grinned as I thought about how mortified she’d be if I told her.

I shifted positions very carefully so that I could look down at her face and took a moment to soak in the sight of her. Her hair was standing up at wild angles after our energetic night and her make-up had smudged around her eyes. I pondered the almost irrational affection I had for her in that moment; she was beautiful to me, even in her sleep-rumpled state. What was it about Molly that drew me towards her? I thought about the amazing night we’d shared, but I immediately understood that the chemistry between us was only a part of the puzzle. Maybe another part of that puzzle was her confidence, and the challenge of her boldness, and perhaps even her surprisingly positive energy.

She was complex, and so was my attraction to her – too complex to really understand at that stage. I couldn’t wait to see what the day would bring, and whether I’d get a chance to explore it – and explore all of the facets of her some more. As I thought about this, I grew impatient. I tried to wake her up subtly by shifting positions a few times but when that failed, I resorted to more drastic measures.

‘Wake up,’ I whispered. Molly peered at me from beneath one fluttering eyelid.

‘Please don’t tell me you’re a morning person.’

‘I’m not normally, but then again I don’t usually wake up with a beautiful woman in my arms.’

‘I have a feeling you’d wake up with a beautiful woman in your arms just about as often as you
want
to,’ she murmured. ‘What time is it?’

‘I have no idea. Will you spend the day with me?’

‘I usually work Saturdays,’ she said, but then her eyes opened and she blinked a few times.

‘Do you need to?’

‘Not technically.’

‘Do you want to?’

Molly rolled away from me and stretched and yawned. After a minute, she rolled back until she was leaning on my chest. She stared up at me and smiled. ‘Not even a little bit.’

‘Then play hooky with me.’

‘What will we do?’

‘Make ourselves open to the possibilities,’ I said, echoing her comments at dinner two nights earlier. She reached up and kissed me.

‘Sounds perfect,’ she murmured, against my lips. ‘Where did you want to start?’ I scooped her into my arms and flipped her onto her back, and she squealed and then grinned at me. ‘Yes, we definitely didn’t finish exploring
those
possibilities last night.’

‘It seems highly irresponsible to leave a task like that unfinished,’ I murmured, as I bent to kiss her neck. ‘So let’s get it out of the way and get some breakfast.’

W
hen we finally climbed out of
bed, Molly ordered coffee and breakfast, and we spent the next few hours on the balcony together. I sat with my legs propped up on her coffee table, she rested lengthways along the rattan loveseat, using my thigh as a pillow and dangling her legs over the armrest.

It was a casual morning – a relaxed morning filled with the strange tenderness I felt towards her and punctuated by the sound of her laughter. She’d amuse me with an anecdote or observation, and I’d caress her gently as she talked, or bend to kiss her without agenda. Although she wouldn’t have known it, I knew that this wasn’t my style. In the past I’d had more than my share of flings, but I couldn’t actually remember the last time I wanted to just spend time learning someone.

I wanted to know Molly; I wanted to unpack all of the parts of her that made her who she was and to be as familiar with her as I was with myself. I wasn’t thinking about the future, or even the past – I was in the moment with her, focused completely on her, and I felt content.

As the morning stretched on and we began to think about lunch, I realised I’d have to get some casual clothes – I was still wearing the dress trousers I’d donned for dinner at Circular.

‘I really need to change out of these clothes.’

‘I don’t want you to leave.’

I looked down at her, and found her staring up at me. I felt the smile spread across my face.

‘Come with me. Let’s go get some lunch, then we can go back to my place.’

‘Should I call a town car?’

I laughed. ‘Nope. We’re going to
my
place, so let’s do this
my
way.’

W
e walked away
from Molly’s apartment, back towards the city. She was wearing a cap and sunglasses, and it occurred to me that she’d donned a type of casual disguise.

‘So, should we talk about the ground rules for being seen together in public?’ I asked her quietly.

‘Yeah. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve been papped a few times. Usually when I’m doing something embarrassing or unglamorous – like wiping my nose or wearing tracksuit pants.’

‘And if that happens today?’

‘I wouldn’t mind at all, except for Dad… but there
is
that, you know… so I really hope it doesn’t happen. And it probably won’t, it’s not like photographers go looking for me – more they’ll take a snap or two if they happen to be stalking some unfortunate celebrity and I wander past. So, I guess the takeaway message is – no getting handsy while we’re out.’

‘No getting handsy,’ I repeated, and we both laughed.

‘I’m not worried that other
people might think we’re together, you know. It’s not that.’

‘It’s fine, Molly. It works for me too – God, imagine if people thought I was sleeping with you! How embarrassing!’

She giggled. There was something about the carefree way that sound escaped her lips – it relaxed me, and made me smile too. My life was full of purpose but it was not a life of laughter. Perhaps that was what had drawn me to her in the first place.

‘We’re not walking a long way, are we?’ she asked me.

‘Not far. Why, do your shoes hurt?’ I glanced down at the casual shoes she’d pulled on.

‘No, but I’m unfit and lazy,’ she laughed. ‘I love the idea of being fit, but I hate the reality of making it happen.’

‘I think you’ll like my dog,’ I told her. ‘He always tries to join me when I go for a run and sometimes he’ll run like a machine and still be jumping around like a crazy thing when we get home. But other times, we’ll get half a block down the road and he’ll decide he’s had enough. And when Lucien decides he’s had enough running for one day, that’s usually the end of the story.’

‘What kind of dog is this Lucien?’

‘He’s a ruthless, ferocious, extremely macho…’ I paused for dramatic effect, but then sighed. ‘Actually, he’s a poodle.’

‘Sure he is!’ her laughter echoed around us.

‘Truly,’ I put my hand over my heart. ‘He is a pure-bred standard poodle and his hair is a very fetching shade of apricot.’

‘You do
not
strike me as a poodle owner.’

‘Well, I’m not really his master, he kind of owns me.’

‘How do you even care for a dog with all the travel you do?’

‘My neighbour technically owns him, but she’s getting older now and couldn’t manage his activity levels.’

‘If you’re trying to impress me with what a big softie you are, it’s not very convincing.’

I laughed. But before I could say any more, we reached the train station. The look of sheer horror on her face stopped me in my tracks. ‘You have
caught a train before, right?’

‘Of course I have,’ she said, but she looked away from me as she said it, and then, ‘Maybe I haven’t caught a train before,’ she murmured and she clutched her handbag to her chest.

‘How did you think we would get back to my place?’

‘I assumed you were walking to the cab rank,’ she muttered.

I laughed. ‘Wait here, Molly. I’ll get you a ticket.’

‘You’d better keep me safe,’ she said, as she followed me through the turnstiles.

‘If it makes you feel any better,’ I remarked, ‘I have a black belt in karate.’

‘That actually
does
make me feel a bit better. No wonder you think Redfern is safe, you’re probably the most dangerous resident in the suburb!’

‘You might just be right about that.’ Her father would certainly have agreed with that statement.

She still had a death-grip on her handbag when we reached the platform and I burst out laughing. ‘Molly, you can see
your place from here.’ I gently spun her round to the window behind her, from where she could see the Bennelong Apartments just a hundred metres away. She huffed and turned around to face me.

‘I’ve had a driver since I learned to walk. It feels
weird
to be here.’ But she released her grip on her bag. I could almost have had second thoughts about taking her to my part of Redfern if she felt that uncomfortable already, but I was far too busy giving myself a mental pat on the back for coming up with the idea. If she really wanted a ‘defining moment’, she was probably not going to find one if her entire existence revolved around Sydney’s city centre. I walked to a bench and sat down. Molly followed me, and sat gingerly on the edge of the seat. She was probably onto something there – the bench was filthy.

‘I’m going to take
you
somewhere completely out of your comfort zone and see how you like it,’ she muttered.

‘Do you think I felt at home in Circular?’

She pondered this a moment, then said, ‘Fair enough. So what’s at the other end of this adventure?’

‘Totally Thai,’ I told her. ‘It’s a restaurant near my place.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and then grinned. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that ticket you bought me is one way. Should I have packed an overnight bag?’

‘I doubt you’ll want to spend the night at my place – but I assumed you’d call your car rather than make the trek back on the train.’ I laughed.

‘Why wouldn’t I spend the night at your place?’

‘It’s a terrace. Please don’t misunderstand me – I love my house but it’s hardly the Bennelong Apartments,’ I said, a little stiffly.

Molly shrugged. ‘I just can’t wait to see where you live and meet this spoilt dog of yours.’

I wasn’t convinced. ‘Shall we play it by ear?’

‘Who says I want to sleep with you again anyway?’ she said pointedly. ‘Maybe I prefer bed partners who
don’t
wake me up at seven on a Saturday morning.’

I grinned at her ‘You weren’t complaining for very long.’ Her cheeky smile faded to one of reminiscence as her eyes darkened.

The train was approaching and Molly took my hand to pull herself up, then immediately released it. I wanted to link my fingers back through hers and hold on tight. I understood the need for discretion, and I would respect it, but it was immediately frustrating.

As the train pushed forward into the tunnels that would take us to Redfern, I watched Molly’s reflection in the glass of the window on the other side of the carriage. She was looking around the train, her wide eyes lingering on informational posters decorated with random pieces of chewing gum and graffiti.

‘Now isn’t this better than Circular?’ I quipped. She met my eyes in the reflection of the train window.

‘You have got to be kidding me.’

I
f I thought
her eyes were wide on the train, they were positively saucer-like as we walked through Redfern towards the restaurant. She walked closer to me than she had as we walked together in the city, but stepped immediately out of the way whenever anyone walked past us from the opposite direction. It was a strangely submissive gesture, and I knew it gave away the discomfort she felt at her surroundings.

It wasn’t as if I’d taken her into a war zone. In reality, Redfern was a rapidly gentrifying suburb with a chequered and changing demographic. There were exceedingly trendy cafés filled with affluent locals in designer clothes – the kind of places Molly herself would have frequented had they been a few kilometres further north. However, as we neared the area closer to my terrace, we passed empty shops with heavily graffitied shutters and a burnt-out car, half-parked on a footpath and marked with police tape. There was a shopping trolley full of rotting rubbish right near the restaurant, with a discarded syringe resting on the ground beneath it. Molly stared at all of these things, but she walked in silence.

‘What are you thinking?’ I eventually asked her.

‘I’m feeling very uncomfortable,’ she said, and when I opened my mouth to reply, she cut me off with a pointed, ‘And
not
because I’m a snob. It’s because as I
warned
you, I am lazy and yet here you are, making me walk all over the world in search of this probably mythical restaurant.’

I laughed and rested my hand low on her back to turn her towards a doorway.

‘We’re here.’

Molly looked back at me. ‘Now I
know
you’re kidding.’

The restaurant was tucked in behind a pharmacy, but without its own street front was only accessed via a long, cement corridor that was frequently vandalised. The light bulb at the entrance to the corridor was on the blink, and it flickered on and off.

It looked a lot seedier than it actually was.

‘Trust me,’ I laughed, and I stepped inside, gently dragging her with me. She sighed and stepped closer to me again, and we walked along the corridor, arm in arm.

‘It’s like you deliberately picked the only place in the city down a dark, creepy corridor just to make a point,’ she muttered accusingly.

‘I come here
all
the time. This place is amazing.’

As we stepped inside, we were greeted with great enthusiasm by the owner, who had us wait in the tiny lobby while she found us a table.

Molly had fallen silent again. She was surveying the restaurant floor and I watched emotions flicker across her face. She was fascinated, she was uncomfortable, and she was nervous. She adjusted her posture and reached up to smooth her side-swept fringe into place. I suddenly realised that the gesture meant she was anxious.

‘The food really is amazing,’ I assured her.