When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (21 page)

O
n the morning
of our wedding day, I woke up in Leo’s terrace. It was my terrace too by then, at least in theory. We had moved the last of my clothing in the weekend before, and we were going to be leasing out my apartment as an executive holiday rental accommodation. The terrace did not yet feel like home to me but we were discussing renovations. It was the smallest home I’d ever lived in and it would cost a fortune to make it a comfortable space for me but I knew I would build a wonderful life there… as long as Leo was happy.

He was lying on his side beside me, wide awake; he had been watching me sleep. I turned towards him and stared back at him in the early morning light. He’d had a haircut the previous evening, and except for a shadow of dark growth over his cheeks and neck, he was almost clean-shaven. Leo tended to let his hair and beard grow wild between haircuts, but I loved the civility of his look when he was newly shaved.

‘Hey,’ he whispered.

‘Watching me sleep, huh?’ I whispered back.

‘I didn’t want to go back to sleep in case I woke up and realised this was all a dream.’

I smiled softly and touched his cheek with my hand.

‘I know how you feel.’

‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.

I shook my head. I wasn’t at all nervous about marrying Leo, or the ceremony, or even the reception we’d planned – but I
was
nervous about Dad. He hadn’t responded to the invitation. I’d called Mum, and she told me he didn’t want to come, but she was working on it. I’d asked her if she’d come alone if he refused. She didn’t answer me.

I could not believe I was about to marry the love of my life but without my parents there to see it happen. . . without my father there to walk me down the aisle. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

‘I just wish Dad was coming,’ I said.

‘I kind of wish that too,’ Leo whispered.

‘You
do
?’

‘For you I do.’

‘They might surprise me. Mum said she was working on him.’

‘Will she come without him if he refuses?’

I swallowed. ‘I really don’t know.’ I tried to keep my voice steady but failed as I whispered, ‘I don’t want to walk down that aisle by myself. It’s the only part of today that won’t be just as I dreamt.’

‘It makes me so angry that they can’t just be happy for you, Molly.’

‘Maybe if we hadn’t embarrassed them at the awards dinner…’ I said. Leo’s jaw tightened, and I added hastily, ‘I didn’t mean that you did the wrong thing. I just meant maybe if I’d been honest and told them upfront earlier, maybe things would have been different.’

‘Things
couldn’t
have been different because the awards dinner wasn’t the problem, love.
I’m
the problem, you know that.’

‘You are
not
a problem.’

‘To your dad, I am. I don’t fit in his world – I’m a worker bee, not royalty. You’re marrying beneath you.’

I regretted bringing the topic up. I pushed Leo onto his back and straddled him, and when he looked up at me with surprise, I said, ‘Well if I
have
to marry “beneath” me, I may as well make the most of it!’

A
s I’m pushing
myself into the obstetricians for Molly’s appointment, I realise that I have recovered a memory from the first year of our marriage. It happens like that sometimes – there’s a feeling or some vague familiarity and all of a sudden I know about a moment that had been completely lost to me just seconds before.

It was a sense of being out of place that triggered today’s memory. I was looking around, marvelling at the immense windows and the photos of celebrities nursing newborns on the walls of the lobby. I wondered how much this medical care was costing her – costing
us
, I corrected myself – and then suddenly I remembered terse discussions we’d had in the early days of our marriage about combining our finances.

Molly had been determined from the outset that we should just roll everything together. It didn’t seem a big deal to her, just the logical next step. I’d been carrying on as I always had – automatically paying the bills on the terrace on my own. For me the best-case scenario was for us both to live at my place and for me to manage the bills on the house, and then we could just separately manage our private expenses. I didn’t even want
to know how her money situation worked – the trust fund, her shares, her assets – I wanted to stay ignorant.

I had set my heart on an outcome where I could continue to pretend that the vast difference in our net worth wasn’t actually real. I’d always felt rich before I met Molly. I had no debts and plenty of savings – more money than I could have dreamt of when I was a kid. But then I married the love of my life and I couldn’t escape the reality that, comparatively, I was still a pauper after all. It bewildered me why Molly was so determined that I should have access to her money, but over time, it became harder and harder to avoid it.

‘It’s
stupid
for you to pay all of the bills here, and impractical for us to try to split them. Leo, my money is
your
money. It would be so much simpler just to roll it all together now so we don’t need to worry about a budget for the renovations. My tastes are expensive…’

Eventually I did as she asked, but only because I could see she was getting upset about my refusal and I still felt a little guilty about insisting she move into my terrace in the first place. We rolled my savings account and salary over into the trust fund and Molly somehow set up for all of our bills to go to her personal business manager.

I would never have to pay a bill again. The idea was less comforting than I might have imagined it would be. Was I technically a ‘kept man’ now? I didn’t like that idea one bit. I did not marry Molly for her money – in fact, I had married Molly
in spite
of
her money. If I’d had the ability to take her but leave the trust fund with Laith, I’d have done it in a heartbeat.

It bothered me immensely that the source of our wealth was Laith Torrington. If I had despised the man following my encounters with him around Declan’s death, I positively hated him after he refused to come to the wedding. I wished I could have convinced Molly to just cut ties with it all and start a
real
life with me.

I am not surprised by these memories as they rise, but now, as I see her in the waiting room, I wonder if I’ve made peace with it all. I really hope I have, and that our former tensions were not a foreboding hint of things to come. She had been looking at her phone, but now she sees me approaching and the relief on her face is undeniable.

‘Didn’t you think I was coming? I told you I’d be here,’ I say. She leans forward and I kiss her cheek.

‘I know.’

‘How’s your day been?’

‘Busy. Yours?’

‘The usual. Failed PT, frustrating OT, lunch and then I escaped to come here.’ Her smile is a little too sympathetic and I realise my self-deprecating humour hasn’t translated as I intended. The lack of progress with my mobility is really getting to me. I was so sure I’d be walking again by now. ‘Just joking. It’s been fine. What happens today?’

‘I don’t know. They gave me a referral for tests to have this week but I can’t remember what they were for…’

‘You’re about twelve weeks so I think it was probably the nuchal translucency screening scan and blood test,’ I murmur, and I point towards the corridor. ‘There’s a sonography unit here and I saw a pathology collection room, maybe we can still have them done today.’

‘You’ve already been reading, haven’t you?’ she says, and she raises an eyebrow at me, then narrows her eyes.

I grin at her. ‘Maybe.’

She’s right – I was up researching until very late. I am still a little ambivalent about the pregnancy but there’s one thing I feel one hundred per cent sure about, and that’s how I feel about Molly. I will make myself an expert on all things baby-related if only to support her as we move forward.

I
n the next
few minutes I learn that Molly’s blood pressure is perfect, that she’s avoided morning sickness for the most part but she feels a little queasy if she gets hungry, and that she’s feeling utterly exhausted all the time. When she says that last bit, I frown at her because although I’ve noticed her tiredness, I had no idea how bad it has been. She avoids my gaze. Later, we go through for the ultrasound. It takes some shuffling to fit the wheelchair in beside the bed, but soon I’m holding Molly’s hand while the sonographer starts waving the wand on her belly to locate my child.

My child
. I keep saying the words to myself, trying to get used to them and trying to drown out my odd uncertainty about the whole idea. It’s a human-shaped blob, really – but there’s a steady heartbeat, and as the wand moves, four limbs come into focus. The baby does a sudden somersault away from the wand and we all laugh quietly.

‘Is it just me, or is that a particularly athletic baby?’ I say. ‘Definitely gets
that
from me.’

I see the shape of the baby on the screen again and I suddenly picture my parents’ faces when we tell them. I smile at Molly and ask, ‘Can we get prints?’

She gives a surprised laugh. ‘Settle down, Leo,’ she says, ‘Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first.’

‘You can have images, Mr Stephens,’ the sonographer confirms. ‘But your wife is right, we do have some actual work to do here first.’

My wife. My child
. ‘Absolutely,’ I say, and I squeeze Molly’s hand and look back at the screen. We watch as the measurements are taken and we share grins when the sonographer confirms that everything looks good. I see tiny little fingers that will wrap around mine one day and a tiny heartbeat that I want mine to beat in rhythm with. I’m so terrified and in love with that baby by the time the sonographer leaves to print off some images for us that I’m almost overwhelmed by the storm of it all. Molly seems so much calmer than I do. She’s been watching the screen just as I have, but she hasn’t shown much in the way of a reaction. As soon as we’re alone, I kiss the back of her hand.

‘That’s one awfully amazing kid you’ve got hidden in there.’

‘Leo,’ she sighs. ‘It’s the size of a plum! You
can’t
know if it’s amazing yet.’

‘Oh yes I can,’ I assure her. ‘I’ve met its mother. It’s doomed for greatness.’

‘Stop it,’ she sighs, but she’s smiling a little bit now. I kiss her hand again.

‘Blood tests now and then if you’re up for it, do you think you could spare me a few more hours?’

‘Oh?’

‘I know it’s a big ask, but I’d really like to go tell Mum and Dad in person.’

Molly nods. ‘Of course, Leo.’

‘And when are you going to tell Laith and Danielle?’

She shrugs and sits up, then starts to button her shirt. ‘I’ll figure that out. I guess I’ll go see them and thank them for letting me use the jet when you were sick… I’ll go soon, anyway.’

‘Do I ever see them?’

‘No,’ she says flatly. There is nothing subtle about her body language now; she’s even leaning at an angle away from me as she fixes her clothing.
Can we not even discuss her parents?

‘It’s never gotten
any
better?’

‘No.’

Molly slides off the bed. She pulls her skirt up to her waist and smooths a hand over her hair.

‘Is that Laith’s fault, or is it mine?’

‘I’ve never even tried to get you in the same room. Neither one of you would want that anyway.’

‘What about when the baby comes?’

She glances back at me and shakes her head. ‘I still see them occasionally, especially Mum. We’ll figure it out.’

‘And at his first birthday party? Will we just not invite them? What about his graduation, or his eighteenth?’

‘
His
?’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘
That’s
all you took from that sentence?’

Molly sighs. ‘These are all things we have to figure out. It’s going to be okay, one way or another. Lots of families have to have two parties for a child’s special events.’

‘I really don’t like the idea of that,’ I frown.

‘
Really
,’ she scoffs, and now she’s glaring at me and I have absolutely no idea why.

‘What?’

‘You really don’t like the idea of two happy birthday parties for a kid instead of one tense birthday party? That’s pretty rich coming from the man who asked me for a divorce not so long ago.’

‘Do you really think it’s fair for you to throw that in my face when I don’t actually remember doing it?’ I say, as gently as I can. Molly’s face turns beetroot and I can’t tell if she’s angry or embarrassed, until her gaze narrows. Definitely angry, but I’m not going to apologise – surely she sees my point?

‘You and Dad haven’t spoken a word to each other since that god-awful awards dinner, and I think it’s better that we leave it that way,’ she says flatly. She bends to pull her shoes on, and while she’s crouched, I suddenly know that she’s wrong.

‘I spoke to him on our wedding day,’ I say. Molly stands and shakes her head.

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did. Twice, I think.’ I’m still startled by this memory, and the detail returns to me slowly. I remember taking her phone while she was in the bathroom and copying his mobile number into mine. I called Laith the first time from the car on the way to Dad’s house and he hung up on me as soon as I identified myself.

I was going to leave it at that, but it didn’t feel like I’d tried hard enough – so standing in the lobby of the church just before our guests arrived, I blocked my number and tried calling one last time. I started the conversation with a pleading apology and then all but begged him to come, grovelling in a way that made me feel sick.

I’m sorry, Laith. Please. This isn’t about me, or even you – it’s about the one thing we have in common – Molly. Please.

I was ready that day to put
all
my hatred for Laith behind us. She’d been so fragile and so wounded as she lay in bed that morning, talking about how much she wanted her father to walk her down the aisle. I didn’t get her need for his approval and his blessing and I didn’t want to be taking my vows with Laith’s disapproving glares on my back. But bigger and bolder and more important than
any
of that, I wanted Molly to be happy. I knew I’d forever regret it if I didn’t try to get him there. I didn’t want to see disappointment on her face as she walked down the aisle towards me to start our life together.

‘I think you’re mistaken, Leo,’ she says now. She’s got her handbag on one arm and her other hand on the door. I unlock the brake on the wheelchair but remain still.

‘No, I definitely did. I tried to convince him to come to the wedding. It didn’t work, obviously – but I called him. Twice.’

If you think I’m coming to give my blessing to the biggest mistake of my little girl’s life, you’ve got another thing coming, Stephens
.

Please, Laith, it means the world to her. Don’t do it because I’m asking you to – do it for Molly.

Don’t worry, I’ll be there for her when she divorces you. I’ll be ready and waiting.

‘You never told me that,’ Molly says. ‘You hate Dad, Leo. You even hate that I still see them. You throw
that
in my face all of the time.’

‘I must still be missing something – there must be a reason I’ve never told you this,’ I sigh. ‘I’m not saying I’m your father’s biggest fan all of a sudden – it wasn’t
that
big of a knock to my skull. I guess I’m just saying if you wanted me to try to reach out to them before the baby comes, I could. Give it some thought.’

She stares at me from the doorway, and then she says very quietly, ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. It might be a disaster.’

‘It means a lot to me that you’d offer that. It shows me that you really do want to work on this.’

‘I told you that last night.’

‘I know. But – thanks.’