When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (15 page)

What if he never felt at home here after I changed it? Had that been part of the reason why he never seemed to want to come back here to me?

‘What would you do differently?’ I ask him. He had been staring at the new television, but his eyes sweep back to me.

‘I don’t hate it, Molly,’ he says. ‘I told you, it’s beautiful. I’ll adjust.’

‘Do you remember anything here yet?’ I desperately want him to reassure me with some very positive memories of
loving
the changes we made. I’m disappointed when he shakes his head.

‘I thought today would be like yesterday at the Quay when the memories just reappeared easily. But today – maybe I’m trying too hard. I can’t remember ever being here with you, let alone renovating it.’

Something about this statement reminds me that I was going to try to keep his focus on the rest of his life, other than me, and I sigh a little as I realise how badly I am failing at that task.

‘Can you remember anything else of the last few years here? I mean – do you remember working on any of your articles here? Your office is virtually the same as it was when I moved in – you weren’t so keen for me to change that space.’

‘I wish I could get up there, maybe that would help.’

‘I’ve already ordered chairlifts,’ I tell him. ‘Once you can move yourself in and out of the wheelchair, you’ll be able to get up and down the floors. They’ll be installed next week.’

‘Thank you – that’s wonderful – but how will I get from the first flight of stairs to the second? Will I need a wheelchair on each floor?’

‘Oh no, they’re going to install the rail so that it goes all the way from the bottom to the top and if you want to go to the bedroom, you’ll just stop it there. And you’ll fold the wheelchair up and hook it to the side so it goes with you.’

Leo tilts his head to the side and I see the faintest smile hover on his lips. ‘You really do love me, don’t you, Molly Torrington?’

‘Molly Stephens,’ I correct him automatically, but then I think about what he has said.

Do I really love him? Still?
What if I did?

If I still loved him, then it is for nothing anyway, because he doesn’t love me anymore and even if he did, he would always love his job more. If I still loved him, then at some point very soon his memory is going to return and I’d have to lose him all over again. If I still loved him, then my plans to move on and start afresh without him would be doomed to failure.

So I have to
not
love him – I have to make sure that I don’t love him.

My eyes fill with tears and I know immediately that I’m not going to be able to stop them. I lower the coffee cup back towards the table, but move so fast that it spills all over my thighs and then I panic. I’m flapping my hands and the tears are turning to sobs and Leo is watching all of this with a bewildered kind of shock on his face. He catches my shaking hands in his, and then he says very gently, ‘Did you burn yourself?’ I shake my head, and I look at him, stricken and embarrassed. ‘What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong?’

‘I just need a minute,’ I say, and I pull out of his grasp and run to the bathroom at the back of the terrace near the laundry. I close the door behind myself and I lean on the basin and stare at myself in the mirror, then I splash my face with cold water again and again, but it’s not working. There’s a gentle knock against the bathroom door, and Leo calls hesitantly, ‘Molly? Can I open the door?’

‘No,’ I choke.

‘Come on, Molly. Come out.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t stop crying.’ Admitting this aloud makes me cry even harder and I’m mortified. Leo doesn’t remember me well enough to know this is a one-off. He’s going to think I’m one of those weepy women who cries at the drop of a hat. He’s going to hate me. He already hates me – he’s just forgotten.
Oh God! This is all so miserable.

Leo pushes the door open. The sight of him there and the concern in his eyes only makes things worse. He catches my hand and gently tugs me towards him and when I’m close, he pulls me all the way down onto his lap. I try to pull away. ‘I’ll hurt you, I’m too heavy,’ I protest.

‘Don’t be silly, you’re a lightweight,’ and he pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me, and after a minute, I relax to lean against him. ‘Cry,’ he says.

‘You must think I’m some kind of hysterical idiot.’

‘You’re telling me what to
think
now,’ he says wryly. ‘What a nag!’

I manage a laugh at his pitiful joke, and then realise I’m just going to have to ride this out and deal with the aftermath later. So I press my face into his neck and I breathe in his scent and I feel his arms around me and I let it all out. I’m relieved and I’m grieving and I’m ashamed all at once. I cry and I cry, and he waits patiently, rubbing my back and occasionally murmuring comforting words into my hair.

When I finally feel the storm has passed, I extract myself from his embrace and stand. I straighten my dress, and I step back into the bathroom. I wash my face, and dry it on the hand towel, and then I finally make eye contact with Leo.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say stiffly.

‘I’ve put you through hell,’ Leo says quietly. ‘
You
have nothing to be sorry for.’

I look down at the floor. He has no idea just how right he is about that first statement – he
has
put me through hell. But he also has no idea yet how wrong he is about the second. I really do have my share of the blame for the way I’m feeling right now.

I
was gone
for six weeks in the end. We emailed a bit, and I called Molly a few times to satisfy myself when the missing became too distracting. I kept those calls to a minimum, though, because each time I spoke to her, I felt the sound of her voice pulling at me. I’d ring expecting to feel relieved to talk to her, and hang up desperate to go home.

Our return flight landed back into Sydney airport mid-morning. I watched the hours tick past on my phone, waiting for 5 p.m. so that I could call her. When I did, she answered on the first ring. ‘Are you back?’

‘Hi. Yes, I got back this morning.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and I could hear disappointment in her tone.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Why are you only calling me now?’

‘I thought you’d be at work.’

‘I don’t give a
shit
about work if you’re back. Can I see you?’

‘Please. Yes, I’d like that.’

She was on my doorstep within twenty minutes and as I opened the door to her, she barged inside and pushed me hard up against the wall. Her kiss was hot and hungry and it took me some time to realise there were tears on her cheeks. I pulled away from her and stared at her flushed cheeks and the puffiness of her eyes.

‘I missed you so much,’ she blurted.

‘I missed you too,’ I admitted.

‘I was so worried about you.’

‘I told you I knew what I was doing.’

‘I know you do. It’s not
you
I don’t trust, it’s rogue governments and rebel militia.’

‘I’ll have to go back. There’s something bad spiralling there.’

‘Don’t tell me that now,’ Molly shuddered, ‘let me pretend it’s over. At least for a few days.’

She had been hurt by my absence. I studied this realisation for a moment and then was struck by another:
I
was hurt by it too. The strange angst I’d felt being separated from her had gone deeper than just ‘missing’. It was a pain and a
wrongness
– something which had only been made right in that very moment when she was back in my arms.

‘What
is
this, Leo?’ Molly whispered suddenly.

‘This?’ I whispered back.

‘Us.’

It was the first time we’d addressed our relationship directly – the first time we’d needed to. I drew in a deep breath, and shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I thought we were just having a fling,’ I was speaking to myself as much as I was speaking to her. Perhaps it indicated my lack of self-awareness when it came to Molly, but it was only now that we were back in the same room that I realised how deeply relieved I was that she was beside me again. I met her gaze. ‘This isn’t a fling.’ We stared at each other. ‘Do we have to know what to call it?’ I asked and after a while, she shook her head.

‘Of course we don’t.’

‘Let’s just call it “
us
”, then. And when the time feels right, we’ll give it a proper name.’

‘Okay,’ she agreed softly, and then I kissed her again.

From that moment on we were inseparable. I didn’t spend much time thinking about what the future might hold for us but I was absolutely sure that our present was pretty bloody amazing. My life looked lighter and brighter than it ever had before.

Just a few weeks after my return from that first trip, we realised we’d be at the same industry function together the following Saturday night. We didn’t discuss the logistics, but we both understood that we would be at the same event – separately. I wasn’t thrilled about this situation, but just like her request that we avoid public affection, I understood where it came from.

The ceremony was held each year at a plush function centre on Darling Harbour and it was a glittering event – black tie, formal dress. That Saturday morning, we stayed in bed until noon and then Molly spent the afternoon at a day spa, having her hair and make-up done.

I walked into the city centre from Molly’s apartment and had a haircut and a long overdue clean shave. Afterwards, I took a shower then pulled on the tux I’d hired. I stared at myself in the mirror of Molly’s stupidly oversized bathroom. I looked good, I supposed – but I felt uncomfortable. The tux was much more constricting and felt much less natural to me than my body armour.

‘Dear God! Someone has broken into my apartment and swapped Leo for a handsome, clean-cut stranger!’ Molly’s lightly teasing voice came from the door and I turned back to her. She was wearing the skin-tight red sheath dress she’d laid out on the bed earlier that day, with some heavy jewellery that I figured was probably worth more than my bike. I ran my eyes over her body and settled them on her face, and had to force myself to breathe.

‘You look amazing.’

‘Don’t I always?’ she did a playful pirouette, and then came close to brush her lips very lightly over mine. When I tried to kiss her properly, she laughed and swivelled her head away from mine.‘Hell no! I can’t fix this make-up if you mess it up but if you behave tonight, I’ll let you mess it up properly later.’ She leant on the bathroom counter and stared at my reflection in the mirror, then said a little reluctantly, ‘Leo… you know Dad is going to be there tonight, right? He always comes to this dinner. I’ll have to sit at his table.’

‘I did assume you’d be seated with the important people.’

‘You’re important.’

‘I’m not exactly “
Torrington
” important. It’s fine, I can admire you from afar.’

‘You can come home with me, if that’s any consolation.’

‘I like it better when
you
come home with
me
.’

Molly stood behind me, and wrapped her arms around my waist. She rested her head against my back and murmured, ‘Okay, your place tonight.’

T
here were
hundreds of people in the function room by the time I arrived. I automatically scanned it, looking for Molly, and saw her standing next to her father at the front of the room by the stage. We’d probably been to this function at the same time in previous years, but I’d never even said hello to her in the past, so I knew it wasn’t all that likely I’d find myself at her end of the room. Instead, I found my place-setting at the
News Monthly
table and started chatting with some colleagues. Brad’s wife Penny was beside me. I took a glass of wine from a passing waiter and glanced at her.

‘Must be good to have Brad home,’ I said to her.

‘It is, although you know as well as I do that it won’t be for long,’ she said. I didn’t need to ask her what she thought about this – her opinion was clearly written on her face. She was staring at me as if his working habits were somehow my fault.

‘He’s in a rush to get back?’ I surmised, but I wasn’t surprised. That was the curse of the war correspondent – we were never
really
anywhere – when we were at home, our eyes were on the world stage, looking for the next adrenaline rush. And when we were in the field, we were constantly thinking of home and how amazingly blessed our peaceful real lives were. After enough years, ‘field’ and ‘home’ both felt a little wrong, because nothing really felt like home anymore.

‘Aren’t
you
in a rush to get back?’ Her eyes accused me. ‘He told me you two will probably be focusing on Syria for at least the next year.’

‘Yeah, I’d say so.’

Penny sighed and reached for her wine. She brought it to her lips for a sip, then tipped it back and downed half the glass in one smooth motion.

‘You’re smart, you know,’ she turned her gaze on me again.

‘I am?’

‘To stay single. It’s just too hard otherwise.’

She’d said that to me many times before. Ordinarily I took it as a compliment – that night, it was an uncomfortable reminder of the realities of the life I’d chosen. I shrugged again and scanned the room.

‘Where is Brad?’

‘Somewhere here. Look – over there with Kisani.’

Kisani Hughes was our editor at
News Monthly
, and she was standing in a group of other senior staff. Brad was at her side, staring at the floor, clearly bored out of his mind. As if he felt our eyes on him, he suddenly turned and started walking towards us.

Penny sighed and tapped her wedding ring against the stem of her wine glass.

‘He just needs to stick around here long enough for Imogen’s birthday in a few weeks. Do you reckon you can help make that a reality, Leo?’

‘I have a few things here I need to take care of before I can even think about getting back on a plane.’

‘Good.’

‘Christ!’ Brad sat down heavily beside Penny and rubbed his eyes. ‘Why is it that when people get promoted to a job with a title that contains the word “executive” they are instantly bat-shit boring?’

‘It’s the way of the world,’ I said smoothly.

‘Hey, Leo,’ I heard Molly say quietly, and she took the seat beside me – the seat marked with Kisani’s place-card.

‘Hi,’ I said softly, but I quickly scanned the shocked expressions of my companions.

‘Just thought I’d pop by and say hello.’

‘Molly, this is Brad and Penny Norse,’ I said, leaning back in my chair and motioning towards Penny at my left. Molly leant across me to shake her hand, and then Brad’s.

‘Lovely to meet you both,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘You’ve –
what
? You have?’ Penny said blankly.

‘Molly and I know each other from way back,’ I said smoothly. ‘I mentioned some of our exploits in the field, Brad.’

‘
Exploits
?’ he repeated, and shot me an incredulous, questioning look that I avoided with some determination.

‘Are you having a nice night?’ Molly asked me quietly.

‘Fine so far,’ I told her. ‘Are you?’

‘I was seated between my parents tonight, I had to swap the place-cards. It’s as if I couldn’t be trusted to be here without strict supervision, even by the organisers,’ she laughed. ‘In any case, I’ll be on my best behaviour.’

She looked up towards her own table and I saw her smile disappear in an instant. I followed the path of her gaze and realised Laith Torrington was staring at her, the skin on his face beetroot red. Danielle was pulling on his arm, as if trying to get his attention.

‘I’d better go,’ Molly muttered, and I saw that she too was flushed. She shot me a look of frustrated impatience as she rose. It took quite a bit of energy to stay in my chair, and even more to stop myself from catching her arm and suggesting she stay right by my side, where I could protect her from the disgusted look in her father’s eyes.

‘Talk to you later,’ I said softly. We all watched her walk away, and then Brad and Penny spoke at exactly the same time.

‘What the hell…’

‘You didn’t tell me that you knew…’

‘Guys,’ I cut them both off with a determined smile. ‘I’m
sure
I would have mentioned at some
point that I went to uni with Declan Torrington.’

‘You did,’ Brad said. ‘You forgot to mention that you wanted to bone his sister, though.’

‘Leo,’ Penny said, wide-eyed, ‘surely you noticed that she was all but drooling over you?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I muttered, but I was delighted to hear Penny say it. Brad barked a laugh.

‘Oh God! Can you imagine it? You could swap war stories. She could tell you about the horrific time they ran out of gold-plated toilet paper in their mansion, and you could tell her about the time your hotel was bombed in Egypt. You’d have so much in common.’

‘She’s actually quite down to earth.’

‘That is complete bullshit and you know it,’ Penny laughed. ‘Down to earth?
Please
! She probably has someone on staff to tie her shoelaces.’

‘You’re both hilarious, do you know that?’

‘Just promise me one thing, Leo,’ Penny said suddenly, her tone very serious, and I turned to her expectantly. She took a deep breath, and looked me right in the eye. ‘Just make sure that if you marry her, you get a pre-nup. I just don’t want her going after your money.’

This time, the whole table laughed and I rolled my eyes at Penny and looked back across the room. Molly was standing with her parents. Her back was to me, but a small crowd of Torrington executives were staring at her, and I assumed she was telling a story that had caught their attention. She seemed okay, and the simmering in my blood started to cool.

M
uch later
, I heard the first whispers of trouble at the Torrington table. Kisani had been to the bathroom and when she returned to her seat, she stared at me quizzically.

‘Everyone in the “ladies” is talking about you.’

‘Aren’t they always?’ Brad quipped. Kisani shook her head and laughed.

‘No, Brad. No, they aren’t always.’ Her gaze returned to me. ‘What did you do to Laith Torrington?’

I felt the muscles through my torso tense in readiness for… something. I frowned at her.

‘Nothing. What do you mean?’

‘Apparently, Laith tore strips off Molly earlier and had her in tears. Their whole executive team saw it.’

‘What’s that got to do with Leo?’ Penny asked.

‘One of the TM wives said that the whole thing was
about
him, that’s what.’ Kisani laughed a little. ‘So, tell me. Did you upset Laith, or was it Molly? I know you think you’re invincible, but you really should be careful going around making enemies at
that
end of town.’

‘He made her cry?’ I repeated slowly. Suddenly I could hear my pulse in my ears and there was a throbbing anger rising in my chest. The muscles in my arms had locked as if I was about to step into a ring to spar.

‘Apparently. What happened?’ Kisani prompted.

‘She was only here for a minute,’ Penny interjected defensively. ‘Leo barely said hello to her.’ When several seconds passed and no one spoke, she tried to lighten the mood with a joke, ‘I mean, he all but undressed her with his eyes, but Laith was on the other side of the room – he wouldn’t have seen that.’

‘Exactly
what
did Laith say to her?’ I asked Kisani. My tone was so dark that Kisani’s eyes narrowed.

‘I don’t know – wasn’t actually there, remember.’

‘And you’re sure Molly was crying?’

‘Leo, where do you think you’re going?’ Brad spoke very slowly and he had risen, and I realised belatedly that I had done so too. I was stuck on autopilot, acting without thinking. Molly was upset and I had to go to her – there was no alternative course of action. My entire table was staring at me now.