When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (27 page)

‘Do you not want children anymore?’

‘You
know
I do.’

‘I don’t understand, Leo. I don’t understand why we can’t even talk about this now.’

‘Because I’m not ready, Molly. It’s not something you can nag me into, I’m either ready or I’m
not
.’

‘You at least owe me the courtesy of an explanation.’

‘You know how much my job means to me.’

‘This has nothing to do with your
job
.’

‘Are you seriously trying to convince me this
isn’t
a way to guilt me out of travelling so much? Do you even want a kid?’

‘You
know
I do!’ I exclaimed, ‘More than anything.’

‘More than
us
?’

‘What is
that
supposed to mean?’

‘It means, if you keep pushing me like this, Molly – God – I don’t know whether I can take much more of this. You
have
to respect my decision.’

I got up from the table and slammed my chair roughly back into place, then walked up the stairs, stomping my feet like a child. Leo didn’t come after me – I didn’t even expect him to.

E
ven as the
tension between us began to wind tighter over the months that followed, I still rejoiced whenever Leo came home. I’d be so excited when he walked in the door that I’d struggle to contain my enthusiasm, even if he was exhausted, even if he smelt like a man
smells
after weeks in a war zone. I’d force myself to wait up for him, or to wake up early so that I could greet him, but then when he walked in the door I’d have to give him space to make his damned vegemite on toast and take a few moments to decompress.

Inevitably, though, he’d join me on the couch and he’d pull me close against him and bury his face in my hair and tell me how much he’d missed me, and how wonderful I looked, and how difficult it had been to stay away so long. Those moments were the golden jewels that I lived for. The times in between were becoming more fraught by the day.

I told myself many lies in trying to deal with this reality. I could almost convince myself that he was just really caught up in his work. And he was busy – travelling regularly between Syria, Iraq and Turkey at that stage. He was excited that he’d been asked to consult on Middle Eastern affairs for
News Monthly
’s parent company. More frequently he started accepting invitations for television interviews, giving commentary and explaining the crises for an international audience.

So his career was soaring, but sometimes, when he rang, all
we
did was fight.

‘You haven’t called for six days, or emailed. The only time I’ve had any contact at all with you this week was when I saw you on television.’

‘Molly, you know I’m busy––’

‘I’m busy too!’ I snapped. ‘My work is important
too!
You don’t ask about it, you don’t even know about it anymore. My assistant knows more about my life than you do.’

‘If you’re wondering why I hardly call at the moment, it’s because whenever I do, you’re like this. I don’t know what you think I can do about this. Do you want me to
resign
?’

And then we were talking over one another, and we were each rushing to speak fast so that we could fit more words in before we got cut off – and anything that even looked like communication between us stopped.

‘I’m
going
! I’m standing in a war zone, for Christ’s sake! Families are being torn apart by this war, get some perspective…’

‘I want to
see
you, Leo. Can’t you understand that? I want so much for us to be a family and…’

‘I told you, I’m thinking about it.’

‘Yeah, you told me. Plenty of times. Just how
long
does it take to make a decision? Do you even realise that time doesn’t stop just because you’re not here?’

‘I’m going, Molly.’

‘Fine. Fuck you!’

I knew that at least part of the reason he was pulling away was that I was pressuring him about starting a family. But in some ways my desire – and increasingly – my
desperation
for a child was not at all a rational thing. I thought about it constantly – every night I dreamt about what it would be like to be pregnant with Leo’s child. It seemed as if every woman I knew was pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant – Teresa had just given birth to River, there was a bunch of women at work who were pregnant too, but the most difficult pregnancy for me to deal with though was Penny’s. She looked absolutely ripe with fortune and love – there wasn’t any way I could have been more jealous of her. We’d become fairly close but I started visiting her more often, wanting to look once more at that lovely pregnant belly and to feel the movement of the baby beneath her skin.

Penny was always keen to catch up over dinner or coffee, even if we’d only seen each other a few days earlier. But the more I visited her, the more aware I was of how much better Brad was at staying in touch than Leo. He called at least once a day and he always stayed on the line or video chat long enough to talk to Penny and both kids. Somehow, she was
always
up-to-date with his travel plans and she seemed to know all of the details of whatever it was he was working on.

All I knew most of the time was that Leo was in danger. In fact, I only found out he was coming back, because I was at Penny’s house when Brad called, and Leo yelled from somewhere in the background, ‘Tell Molly I’m coming too. Thursday night!’

I saw the look on Penny’s face that night; she pitied me.

On Thursday night, I waited on the couch for Leo as I always did. The door opened and he stepped inside.

‘Hi,’ he said quietly.

‘Hi,’ I said. Leo dumped his bags on the floor and walked through to the kitchen. He made his vegemite toast and I waited there in the lounge. Every second I waited was torture, as it always was. I couldn’t wait for him to come and sit beside me and to envelop me in those strong arms. That was the one moment in the awful cycle of leaving and returning when everything was okay.

Leo finished his snack and he started walking back towards the living area. I sat up – eagerly anticipating
my
moment. When he turned at the stairs and disappeared towards the bedroom, I finally realised that my marriage was in serious trouble. By that stage I was battling two furiously competing voices in my head whenever I considered our situation. There was the incessantly demanding voice that constantly suggested that only a baby would solve the difficulties we were facing. A baby would surely bring us closer together, return his focus to me, and to us, and that would mean a fresh start. Our love could be like it was – maybe even better.

The demanding voice also reminded me of all of Leo’s flaws – of how much he’d hurt me over the years of our marriage by prioritising his work over me – of how guilty he made me feel when I complained, because how could my emotional needs possibly compare to the work he was doing?

Resentment had taken root in my heart, and it grew every time that demanding voice reminded me of the promises made on our wedding day, and how Leo seemed to have accepted without any fight at all that our emotional intimacy might disappear altogether. Resentment breeds disdain, and that’s an ugly, toxic element in a relationship. It is the opposite of respect – the two things simply cannot exist in the same space.

Disdain meant that when I talked to Leo, I was bitchy and I was mean. Disdain meant that when he was dismissive of me, I felt I had the right to demonise him. I forgot the good in him and overlooked all of the fine qualities of the man that I had fallen in love with – when disdain took hold all I wanted to see was the
bad
.

Then there was the sensible voice – the voice of love. This voice was quieter and gentler. It worried for Leo. He had always loved his work but it had taken on a completely obsessive focus that I just couldn’t understand. The sensible voice pointed out to me that Leo and I were barely communicating and that this lonely, tension-filled home was not a place to bring a child into. The sensible voice told me that the way forward was not a baby but the hard work of reconnecting with Leo and dealing with our issues.

The sensible voice had convinced me to enrol in a course of therapy. The demanding voice made me sit in those sessions with the very patient psychologist and play the victim, focusing on all Leo’s faults, forgetting this was also the man that I loved with all my heart. Those sessions were not about me finding a way through the pain of our situation, they were about me convincing the psychologist that I deserved her pity because my situation was bad and entirely out of my control.

Every time Leo and I fought, the sensible voice grew weaker and the demanding voice grew in power. Yes, Leo was apparently fixated on his career but I was well on my way becoming irrationally baby-obsessed too. A long while after he went to bed that night, when I knew he’d be sound asleep and I wouldn’t need to face him, I walked up the stairs to the bathroom and took the prenatal vitamins I’d been taking every day for over a year, and I stared at the foil contraceptive pill packet that rested behind it.

I hadn’t actually stopped taking my pill. That seemed sinister –
evil
– unfair. Instead, I had become very forgetful about taking it and that month’s packet represented a polka-dot pattern of inconsistency.

L
eo was
home for a week that time and for all of our ups and downs, we’d never had a period like that before. Even when we were in the same room he felt distant, and when he looked at me his eyes were always cold, almost hostile. In the seven days he was home, he did not touch me once, not even an accidental brush of our hands. The one time I tried to get through to him we were walking from the car to Brad and Penny’s house. I reached for his hand and he shifted away from me and stuffed it in his pocket.

‘What was that about?’ I demanded, stopping dead in my tracks.

‘What?’ he glanced back at me, but there was guilt in his gaze.

‘You just
avoided
me when I tried to hold your hand.’

He frowned and shook his head dismissively, then knocked loudly on the door. Before I could push any harder, Brad and Penny’s son Zane greeted us with wild excitement and it was time to go inside.

I couldn’t miss the contrast between Leo and me and Brad and Penny at dinner that night. Penny was very heavily pregnant, and Brad apparently couldn’t keep his hands off her. He kept making jokes layered with innuendo, which made her roll her eyes at him, and every now and again, I’d catch them just grinning at one another across the table.

Leo barely spoke to me. The one time I tried to make a joke to lighten the mood, it fell heavily flat.

‘…So I said Brad could go back to Syria next week, Leo, but if he gets stuck there and he has to skype into the c-section next month, I’ll castrate him the minute he gets back in the country,’ Penny said wryly. ‘That’s a fair deal, isn’t it?’

‘That’s so funny,’ I said. ‘Leo has decided the
only
way we’ll have kids is if he can just skype into the birth. Right, honey?’

Leo stared at me expressionlessly, and then excused himself and went to the bathroom, leaving me to deal with the awkward aftermath with Brad and Penny. Brad made unconvincing noises about checking on their daughter Imogen, who had long since gone to sleep. Penny poured me a glass of wine and pushed it across the table.

‘Drink this for both of us – I feel ill at having witnessed that moment between you,’ she said.

I picked up the wine and drank it in one long motion.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ I whispered when I’d finished the wine.

‘Go home, put on some frilly knickers, and try to pretend that the last six months haven’t happened,’ Penny suggested quietly.

‘He won’t even hold my hand,’ I told her.

She leant forward and whispered to me urgently, ‘Then you
need
to talk to him, Molly, and figure this out. You two can’t possibly go on like this.’

Leo returned then, but he didn’t take his seat again.

‘I’ve called the car,’ he said. ‘I need to do some work tonight, so we need to get going.’

We said our awkward goodbyes and travelled back to the terrace in silence. As soon we stepped inside, Leo made his way towards the stairs.

‘
No
,’ I said, with force. ‘We need to talk.’

‘I don’t have the energy to fight with you tonight.’

‘I don’t want to fight either, I promise.’

We sat at the dining room table beneath the wall of photos from our life together. I was in the unfortunate position of facing the images, so every time I looked up, I saw a happy version of myself that felt like photographs from a past life or a parallel universe.

‘What’s going on, Leo?’

I listened to the clock on the kitchen wall tick as I waited for his answer. He stared at the table for a while, and then he raised his eyes to me. ‘This isn’t working anymore, Molly. We want different things out of life, don’t we?’

‘Don’t say that. That’s not true.’

‘Isn’t it? You want a baby, I want to focus on my career – I don’t want to feel obligated to fly back to Sydney every five minutes.’

‘
Obligated
?’ I repeated, and I’d been so calm up until that moment, but the way that he said that made me feel like I was nothing more than a burden to him. My voice rose, and I knew that my promise of not arguing had been made in vain. ‘I have been so patient with you, Leo.’

‘But you
haven’t
, Molly,’ he said tightly. ‘Not really.’

‘Leo, I’ve put up with two and a half years of this part-time marriage. If that’s not patient, I don’t know what is.’ I was so angry that the words shook in time with my hands.

Leo sighed heavily, as if I was being completely unreasonable, and then he spread his palms wide on the table. ‘We are barely even friends anymore, Molly.’

‘It doesn’t
have
to be this way,’ I snapped. ‘If you don’t like it, change it.’

‘Well, how
do
we change it then?’ he said, and he raised his eyebrows at me pointedly. ‘Tell me, Molly – how do we find a way forward where I still travel as much as I need to, and you don’t spend your whole life back here feeling hard done by?’