When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (19 page)

At the park, I unclip Lucien’s lead and he trots off into the centre, but is immediately distracted by a butterfly. Leo and I watch as he does a series of insane acrobatics trying to catch it in his mouth.

‘How was physiotherapy this morning?’

‘The same,’ Leo says. His words are curt. He hasn’t said so, but I can tell that he’s starting to worry about the lack of progress he is making with his physical therapy. ‘But I had this random thought this morning. I thought it might have been a memory surfacing.’

‘What was it?’

‘It’s actually really silly. I knocked some toast to the ground and wondered if it had landed on the buttered side. As I thought about that, you came to mind quite strongly.’

‘Did you think anything in
particular
about me?’ I can’t help myself – I giggle and I feel a warm flush creeping up my cheeks. I take a few steps away from Leo and sit on a park bench.

‘Maybe. Why?’

He comes closer, pushing the wheelchair easily off the path, but moving the wheels with more effort as he nears the chair. To my surprise, as soon as he’s lined it up beside me, he leaps out of it to sit on the bench seat. He moves himself along until he’s right next to me and then slides his arm around my shoulders. I relax into him instantly, and it’s pure bliss to feel the strength of his body against mine again. He is still so strong and solid. I was always particularly taken by Leo’s heavily muscular frame.

‘I’d actually forgotten about that myself until you said it,’ I murmur. ‘But when we were first dating, we used to play this really silly game…’ I stop laughing, and clear my throat a little awkwardly. ‘It was a silly ritual we got into the habit of. Say we’d order a coffee in a café and you’d say something like, “I bet you it’s going to have latte art on the froth.” And I’d say, “Nope, I reckon it won’t this time.”’

‘And?’

‘And the loser of the bet had to…’ I gesture towards his groin with my elbow. I’m blushing, which is ridiculous – because this is Leo, my husband, the person I played this game with – but our relationship was immensely different back then. ‘Let’s just say, we were usually both winners in the end.’

Leo chuckles and the sound reverberates in his chest. I lean into him even more and he rubs his hand up and down my upper arm.

‘Well, that’s actually a relief to hear,’ he murmurs into my ear. ‘I have to admit, I got a bit worried when a piece of toast falling off the table was enough to give me a raging erection.’

I laugh, and then pause. ‘Actually, I think we
did
have a bet over a piece of toast on the floor at some point.’ It comes back to me slowly. It was a lazy weekend and we were having breakfast in my dining room. Maybe I knocked the toast or maybe it was Leo – but before I could reach down to get it, he caught my chin in his hand and held my gaze. The need in his eyes was intense before the game had even begun.
I reckon that landed on the buttered side down
.
Usual stakes?
I looked under the table and saw that the buttered side was up, but I glanced up at Leo and smiled as I slid off my chair onto my knees.

‘I’m remembering more and more of those months,’ Leo says, startling me out of my daydream. I clear my throat again and resist the urge to fan my cheeks with my hand.

‘That’s good. What’s the last thing you remember?’

‘It’s not really like that… I get fragments of memories and I don’t always understand the meaning or the timeframe at first. Like the toast. I knew there was something there, but I didn’t actually understand it until you explained it.’

‘And now?’

‘I’m pretty sure that later… I saw that the toast was
actually
butter-side up,’ he says. The unseasonably warm day suddenly feels quite scorching. I pull away from him and turn to face him. Our eyes lock – the current between us is intense. He leans forward and kisses me. ‘I think I miss you, Molly.’

I miss you more
.

‘How long has it been?’ he asks me, his voice a whisper.

‘Since we…’

‘Yeah.’

I swallow. ‘A few months.’ The last time had been in Istanbul, where I went to surprise him on one of his trips. It was a disaster and I shut the memories down immediately. It’s not even the sex that I miss – it’s the closeness.

‘Months?’ Leo repeats, and he sighs. ‘I was away too much, wasn’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish I could stand up out of this chair and walk home and be your husband again.’

It amazes me how the conversation flips from our recently non-existent sex life to Leo’s wheelchair. I frown at him and say carefully, ‘You
don’t
need to walk to be my husband, Leo.’

He flicks his gaze away from me, towards Lucien in the park. ‘If I am in this wheelchair,’ he says quietly, ‘I can’t be the man I need to be.’

‘That’s not true. You’re still the same man you always were. And you won’t be in the wheelchair for long. I know it’s frustrating, but you
will
get there, I know you will.’

He looks back to me. My heart aches at the sadness in his gaze. ‘And if I don’t?’

‘I haven’t given it a moment’s thought,’ I lie.

‘You should at least think about it.’

‘I won’t. And you shouldn’t either. Keep your focus on getting better.’

‘I just don’t know how I’m going to get back to work if I can’t walk,’ he murmurs absent-mindedly. As I disentangle myself from him and slide off the bench, he tries to catch my arm to stop me leaving. I pull away from him easily. ‘Don’t go, Molly.’

‘Lucien has gone too far,’ I point into the distance, where Lucien is on the other edge of the park, still chasing the butterfly by the looks of his sporadic leaps into the air. I start to walk after him, and then I break into a jog and then the closest thing to a sprint I have any desire at all to ever achieve. I am running to the dog – but much more than that, I am running away from Leo.

As I run, I give myself one luxurious minute to be completely selfish, and I send up a prayer into the universe that Leo will be stuck in that wheelchair for the rest of his life, just so that I can keep him in mine. I feel immediately guilty and I’m furious with myself, and I try to chase the thought right out of my mind.

By the time I reach Lucien, he is flat on his belly in the grass and I know immediately what that means. I groan as I clip the lead onto his collar and then again when, as feared, I take a step back towards the bench and the dog refuses to budge.

‘Come on, Lucien,’ I mutter. I drop the lead and run ahead of him, which sometimes gets him moving again, but he just stares at me. My frustration quickly mounts and I pick up the lead and tug gently. ‘Don’t do this today!’

‘Lucien, come,’ Leo is approaching at speed on the pathway and he calls to the dog. Lucien leaps to his feet and runs for Leo, pulling the lead from my hand. I puff the air from my lungs and run my hands through my hair. Lucien heels at Leo’s side – I know he’s just a dog, but I swear he is trying to look innocent.

‘I hate it when he does that!’ I exclaim. ‘I spend so much of my life trying to be good to him and it’s like he’s trying to
punish
me for it!’ Leo leans over to scoop up Lucien’s lead and I snatch it out of his hands. This time, Lucien follows me and I walk past Leo in a huff. He quickly catches up with me again. ‘Doesn’t he understand that the more he does that, the less likely I am to walk him? What’s the point of having a pet if all he does is cause me frustration?’

‘He’s a dog, Molly. I don’t think he’s analysing his decisions in any depth,’ Leo says carefully. ‘He’s just lazy, and he used up all his energy chasing the butterfly. It’s not personal.’

‘Well, it’s not
good
enough. And I’m not going to put up with it anymore. He can’t have it both ways,’ I say sharply, and when Lucien gets distracted by a piece of rubbish on the ground, I pull him back into line. I’m not rough with him, but I’m not as gentle as I would normally be. Immediately I feel guilty again and that unwelcome sensation adds to the turmoil of bad feelings simmering in my gut.

‘Molly,’ Leo says quietly. ‘You’re angry with me. Don’t take it out on Lucien.’

‘Don’t tell
me
what to do!’ I snap, and I know I’m being childish and churlish, but we were having a moment back there and really connecting. Why did Leo have to bring up his work right in the middle of it? It was like a slap in the face – a disappointing, painful reminder of why all of this closeness and tenderness between us is utterly pointless. ‘I think we should just go back to the rehab centre.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, “no”?’

‘No, I’m going to stay until you cool down and then we are going to talk about what just happened back there.’

At this I stop dead in my tracks and I hook the lead over the back of the handle on Leo’s chair, then I all but stomp back in front of him.

‘I
am
going back. You and Lucien can continue your walk, I’ve had enough for today.’

But Leo and Lucien are right behind me the whole way – despite the wheelchair I still can’t outrun him and even that is frustrating. When I reach the gate to our courtyard, I grudgingly hold it open for Leo and then wait at the back door, where he unclips Lucien’s lead and gives him a gentle pat. Lucien makes a beeline for Mrs Wilkins’s place and Leo looks at me.

‘Let’s talk,’ he says quietly. He goes to the couch and lifts himself onto it, and I look at him from the kitchen. He is getting stronger by the day – more accustomed to working around his injury – and sitting there on our couch, it could almost be an average day in our ordinary lives and as much as I don’t want to, I love even the thought of that. ‘Love,’ he says gently. ‘Come on.’ I approach him slowly. I sit on the couch, but not close to him. ‘What did I say, Molly?’ he prompts, and I glance at him.
How can such an intelligent man be so completely stupid?
‘Is it the wheelchair? Is it too much?’

‘Leo, I don’t give a shit if you’re in a wheelchair! I mean, I
do
–
but
only
because I know how hard it is for you. It’s not the wheelchair I’m worried about, I promise.’

‘So, what is it?’

‘You’re going to walk again, Leo. I know you are,’ I say, and I can see his bewildered frown at my tone, so I add in a whisper, ‘And then you’re going to go back into the field.’

‘Yes?’ he prompts.

‘It’s that simple, and it’s that impossible: you love your job, and I hate it. There is no middle ground.’

‘So, what do we do about that?’ Leo asks me, frowning. ‘You’re not suggesting I don’t go back to work…’

‘No.’

‘So…’ He’s looking at me as if I have the answer, but if either one of us did, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all. I shake my head.

‘I don’t know, Leo.’

Realisation dawns on his face. ‘
This
is what the tension between us is about, isn’t it?’

‘Most of it,’ I whisper.

‘This is
also
why I was never going to marry,’ he murmurs and then he sighs. ‘I just fell so hard for you, I think my brain glitched out.’ I offer him a weak smile, and he leans across and takes my hand. ‘Do we need to figure this out today, Molly?’

I shake my head, and he tugs me towards him. I let him pull me all the way until I’m pressed up against him.

‘Do you want to watch TV for a while?’ he asks softly against my hair.

‘Now I know you have lost your mind.’

I know that there is only so long we can put this discussion off, and I’m conscious of the fact that this was my chance to tell him that we are separated and about everything else that has happened this year – and I have squandered it. But I’m only sorry for a minute because if I had come clean with him, I wouldn’t have been spending the afternoon on the couch in the strong circle of his arms. Sooner or later, this will catch up with me but it looks like I’ll keep on choosing later until it’s no longer possible.

M
olly tossed
and turned in my bed after we left the gym that night. I kept drifting off to sleep but waking again when she moved.

I’d insisted that she help set up for a class when we’d arrived at the gym, but even the simple task of laying out the mats had been maddening to perform alongside her – she moved slowly and put as much energy into complaining as she did working. But later, she drifted off to talk to some of the kids, and every time I saw her, there was no doubt that she was connecting with them. I’d been able to keep track of where she was by listening for the bursts of laughter she gave off. She seemed happy again – brought back to life somehow by the spirit of the kids of my community, and that’s all that I’d been hoping for. When we got back to my place, she’d quietened a little, but she seemed thoughtful rather than sad… But then at two in the morning, I realised that she was still wide awake.

She was lying on her stomach, staring at me in the darkness. I rolled over to mirror her position and reached to rub her back.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Leo,’ she said. ‘Tell me about your childhood.’

‘
What
?’ I was immediately aghast. ‘Where’s this coming from?’

‘You grew up like those kids I met tonight, didn’t you?’

‘You can’t generalise,’ I said, withdrawing my hand from her back. ‘I grew up black? Yes. I grew up poor? Yes. That doesn’t make them the same as me any more than it makes
you
the same as the Queen of England because you’re white and you grew up in a big house.’

‘I was
not
generalising, Leo. I meant only that you had to struggle just as some of those kids do. You
saw
my childhood. You have an unfair advantage in this relationship because you know why I’m a spoilt brat.’

I laughed, but Molly stared at me.

‘Please.’

‘There’s not much more to tell,’ I said. I reached for her back again, and watched the gentle massaging motions of my fingers so that I could avoid her gaze. ‘Mum fell pregnant with me when she was sixteen. His name was Mike. He wasn’t around much when I was young, and Mum had no real skills and couldn’t get a job. We lived in one of the worst public housing towers. And Mike was a bastard. That’s about it.’

‘Please, Leo. If it’s too hard to talk about, you don’t have to tell me but I’d really like to know more – if you can.’

I frowned as I looked back to her face. She’d rolled up onto her elbow and she was staring at me. I recognised reverence in her eyes, and it terrified me. Who was the man Molly thought she saw when she looked at me? Did I really deserve such respect? It felt like these moments with her were my reward – the culmination of decades of hard work building a new life for myself. At the same time it was almost too much – like when Brad and I heard that we’d won the Pulitzer and we’d almost convinced each other it was a clerical mistake.

I felt my breathing coming faster, and anxiety rising in my chest. She knew all of my other secrets and she was still here. I wanted to tell her, I didn’t want to talk about it – but I also wanted her to know me. It was the same battle I always faced whenever it was time for new intimacy with her. And just like all of the other times, I waited a while and as the minutes passed, I started to want her to know me more than I needed to hide.

‘He used to beat Mum. I hated him – I
still
hate him. He’d go away without telling us if he was coming back, and he’d leave us with nothing – no money at all. There were months on end when she’d be begging from welfare agencies for food packages, or we’d be relying on her family to keep us going. Then he’d waltz in as if nothing had happened. Looking back on it, I think he probably had another family somewhere.’

Molly shuffled closer to me and rested her face against my chest. She draped one arm over my torso, and then tightened it. Automatically I held her closer as the memories buffeted me. I would
always
remember the shame of not being able to protect Mum. I didn’t dwell on it because I would not be a victim of those days, but they shaped me. Some of the shaping was good – because it made me strong. The rest of it I could only hope I’d pushed down deep enough that it couldn’t burst to the surface too often.

‘Did he hurt you too, Leo?’ she whispered.

I didn’t say a word; I didn’t need to. She was close enough to feel the way that I had tensed. I could still hear the sounds sometimes; the creak of the door and the stumbling of his feet and the realisation that he’d drank all our money again. He would be angry to have been cut off at the pub, and he’d be looking for someone to punish. I’d hear Mum trying to defend me, and the tenor of her voice would rise and rise as she grew more desperate, but regardless, Mike would still come closer to my room. I was a magnet to his rage – and while I never really understood why, I was a teenager before it had even occurred to me that I didn’t actually deserve it.

Sometimes Mum would sob at the sickening sound of a fist striking flesh. Other times, I’d hear that same ghastly sound – the crunch, and then the wailing – but then my door would fly open and it would be my turn to cower. He always seemed so immense and his anger and the violence of his rages seemed unstoppable.

Other kids I knew watched superheroes on television, but I felt that even they would be powerless against the vastness of Mike’s power: I was helpless, and I was hopeless.

‘I was always in trouble in those days,’ I said stiffly. ‘I hung around the kids from the building – we’d break into a few houses, steal a few cars – and the older I got, the more I convinced myself that I was just like him. I thought that was who I was.’

‘What changed?’

‘I had a growth spurt after I started high school. Mike did his disappearing act one time and when he came back, I suddenly realised I was big enough to stand up to him. This was years before Andrew’s anti-truancy programme – in those days he just ran martial arts classes at the gym, and I’d heard a bit about him from kids at school. I couldn’t afford the fees of course, and Andrew wouldn’t let me come for free unless I stopped skipping school and came for tutoring twice a week, so I did that too, and I quickly learned that I wasn’t the dumb shit I’d always assumed.

‘The harder I studied, the more classes he let me join and then I realised that I actually
did
know how to work hard. I trained like a maniac and I studied like a scholar and everything just turned around. The next time Mike tried to hit Mum, I got in the middle of it. I broke his jaw and we haven’t seen him since.’

‘Leo…’ she whispered. I heard the pain in her voice and I tensed further.

‘Don’t,’ I said. The word was clipped and much harsher than I intended, but I was struggling hard to remain open to the conversation. Every instinct within me was telling me to shut it down. I hadn’t intended to go this deep – I was going to keep it lighter, and to summarise the high level points.
My father was an arsehole. I survived. Life goes on.
‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Molly. I don’t need your pity. The night I hit that bastard was the night I was
born
. When he scurried out the door I knew that I was a better man than him. I woke up the next morning and I felt like I ruled the world – and it was that night I saw the news article about the Iraq war. I redefined my own destiny. I could be someone important – someone good.’ I felt moisture strike my chest from her cheek and I realised Molly was crying. Tears I could handle – tears for
me
were a whole other story. ‘Don’t cry about it,’ I whispered, and I was suddenly struggling not to cry too and it was humiliating and infuriating.

Could she tell? God, I hoped not. I clenched my jaw and stared hard at the ceiling.

‘I can’t help it,’ she whispered into my chest.

‘Don’t.
Please
.’

‘I love you,’ Molly said suddenly. ‘I love the way that you see the world. I love the way that you show it to me. I love the way that you care for me. I love the man you
are
, Leo. But I
hate
that you had to go through that to become this man.’

I love you
…
I gently lifted her shoulders and she raised her face towards me. Her cheeks glistened in the semi-darkness.

‘I love you too,’ I said. I was looking right into her eyes and the words left my mouth as easily as any other words would on any ordinary day.

But that was no ordinary day… That was the day that I knew I wanted to spend my life with her.