When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love. (3 page)

I rub my eyes with my fists and sigh, but then I remember that this isn’t even all of it. I grimace at the doctor.

‘And the rest? Why does he think it’s 2011?’

‘It seems to be a case of what we call partial retrograde amnesia. Was Leo shot during the Libyan civil war?’

‘Yes, in the shoulder.’

‘That’s actually the last thing he remembers. He feels like that happened earlier today and he’s just woken up,’ Craig says. ‘Obviously you didn’t know Leo in 2011?’

I’d known him as a kid, but I don’t have the energy to explain any of that now, so I only nod.

‘We met shortly after that, actually.’ I try to figure out what Leo’s last memory of me would be and realise that it would be of Declan’s funeral. No wonder he was bewildered when he saw me. ‘Did you tell him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

Craig smiles ruefully. ‘He didn’t believe me. I had to do a Google image search to show him some paparazzi photos of you two together. He said he needs to think about it. I am pretty sure he thinks we’re playing a practical joke on him.’

‘God!’ I groan and rub my forehead. ‘Doesn’t this just complicate
everything
? So I’m a stranger to him?’

‘Try not to panic,’ Craig says quietly, and I suddenly wish I’d kept count of how many times he’s said those words since I first met him. I suspect the tally would be into the hundreds by now. ‘He’s on the list for a full neurological assessment from the specialist in the next day or so anyway, but I’ll try to speed things up. In any case, this kind of amnesia really is unlikely to be permanent. Hopefully, his memory will return quickly and in the meantime we’ll just make sure he’s calm and focused on getting better, okay?’

‘How much should I
tell
him?’

‘He’s going to be very drowsy for a while yet, so I don’t think you need to worry too much about bringing him up to speed. If he asks specific questions, answer them – but don’t feel you have to repaint the memories for him. Just keep it vague enough to give him the chance to remember for himself.’

‘Okay,’ I sigh. So much for getting Leo home and getting on with my life. ‘I thought things couldn’t get any worse.’

‘Ah, Molly,’ Craig laughs and pats me on the back a little patronisingly. ‘Things really could be a
lot
worse, trust me. This is the last series of hurdles, hopefully.’

A
s instructed
, I am trying not to panic but I’m failing miserably, and my own energy levels have reached an all-time low. I force myself to return to Leo’s room and am relieved to find he is already asleep.

I have no idea what I’m going to say to him. What is there
to
say that will satiate the questions he will have, and at the same time help him to stay calm? Leo knows who I am, but not who
we
are. How exactly do you educate someone on the entire circle of a relationship – particularly one as complex as ours? So we met, fell very deeply in love, got married and then…

And then there’s the worst part – the messy months in this current year of our life together. It is too much to contemplate and after all the tension and stress, this amnesia feels like one more blow to what has already been the worst period of my life.

Leo would snap at me if he knew just how sorry I am feeling for myself –
get some perspective, Molly! There are children starving to death in Syria, you can survive a few awkward weeks with me
. I try to console myself and to stay grounded. I need to calm myself too, and there are real positives here. Leo is alive, against all the odds. He can move – well, mostly – and he can speak. There could very easily have been infinitely worse outcomes from this accident.

I have somehow drifted into a light doze at Leo’s bedside when I am woken by movement. Hesitantly I open my eyes and see Alda standing beside him, setting up a tray on the mobile table.

‘I feel better every time I wake up,’ I hear Leo murmur quietly.

‘This good, Mr Stephens.’

‘Please, call me Leo. It’s Alda, isn’t it?’

‘
Si
, Leo,’ Alda confirms.

I stay in my chair, watching from a distance, unsure of what I should do. Do I approach the bed, or does he want privacy? There has been no dignity in the care he’s required in the last few weeks, but at least he didn’t know about it – his consciousness presents a new layer of sensitivity that I will need to navigate carefully.

‘I’m
unbelievably
thirsty and hungry,’ he says now, and Alda laughs quietly.

‘You no eat or drink for two weeks – I’m not surprised!’ she chuckles. I hear her tearing open packaging. ‘I feed you?’

‘No. God, no!’ he says, and he takes a spoon from her. ‘Apparently I can’t move my legs or remember what year it is, but I can definitely feed myself.’

He glances towards me and our eyes meet and lock. I have invested countless hours of my life staring into these beautiful brown eyes. I remember vividly the feeling of being close to lost in them when we first started going out – the sensation of sinking and drowning and feeling blissfully content to go to some other place with and through him. Leo’s eyes have seen the world in a way that I could never have imagined before I met him and in all of the perfect moments of those intimate stares, he shared some of that with me.

This is not one of those moments. In fact, those moments have disappeared altogether from our lives this past year. I can’t even remember the last time we really looked at each other – these days our eye contact has been reduced to passing glances and disdainful glares. Seeing the openness and curiosity in Leo’s eyes, I am sorely tempted to pretend even to myself that everything is as it always was, even just for a moment. This thought is followed immediately by guilt, as if I’m using Leo while he’s vulnerable – taking advantage of him even just in the way I’m looking at him. I drag my eyes to the floor before I greet him.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello, Molly,’ he says quietly. We fall silent as Alda pushes the little bed-table over Leo’s lap and then she flashes me a smile as she leaves the room. Then I am alone with my husband and there is no denying it – I am too nervous to even think straight and I have no idea what to do next. I stand but immediately regret it because I don’t want to move towards the bed and make him feel even more uncomfortable. After a moment of leaning forward as if I might approach him, then hesitating and stepping back, I settle on standing stiffly with my hands clenched in fists by my thighs. I will wait for Leo to make the first move.

‘I’m really sorry,’ he says suddenly. ‘About before. Was that earlier today, or was it yesterday?’

‘It was a few hours ago. And please, you don’t need to apologise, really.’ I trip over my words in my haste to console him. ‘You don’t remember anything at all about us?’ He shakes his head. ‘That must have been bewildering for you.’

‘It’s still bewildering,’ he says quietly. I can hear the uncertainty in his voice – he’s still not convinced that we are telling him the truth. I walk to the small table beside his bed and withdraw my handbag, then reach inside for my passport which I flip open and then sit on the blanket beside his thigh.

‘See? Molly Torrington-Stephens.’ I show him the text beside the obligatory bad photo and then I raise the fingers of my left hand towards him to draw attention to my rings. ‘And this, as I’m sure you remember, was your grandmother’s engagement ring. You had a new stone set in it because the old one was cracked, but the design will be familiar.’

He silently stares at the rings on my left hand. We have never talked about it, because Leo does not cry and he does not talk about crying – but I am sure I saw tears in his eyes when he slid this band onto my finger at our wedding. We made each other happy, at least that day. It was the kind of happiness that grows bigger than a person or a couple and engulfs everyone there to witness it. It was the best day of my life.

In spite of everything that came after, the idea that the memories of who we were together might be for ever lost to him is unbearable. We were good to each other – good for each other – at least for a time. I lift my eyes to his face and find him staring at the passport again, his expression unreadable.

‘If this is true,’ he says suddenly. ‘Why aren’t I wearing a ring?’

‘It’s at home,’ I say. His band is silver and, like mine, plain except for a single etched line around the middle. A line without an end, he’d pointed out to me as we stared at our hands in an exhausted bubble of bliss in the hours after the wedding. But quickly, that memory shatters and is replaced at the forefront of my mind by thoughts of the last time I saw Leo’s ring. I had walked into the bathroom to check the cabinets for make-up I’d missed when I packed. The sight of the ring was a punch to the gut and I completely lost my breath. It was sitting in the little soap-rest in the moulded bathroom counter-top – partially submerged in a tiny but still-sudsy puddle. I spent hours that night trying to convince myself that Leo might have left it there by accident; it seemed impossible that he would have been willing to take it off so quickly.

‘So, I took it off before I went to Libya,’ Leo says. He stops and carefully corrects himself, ‘to
Syria
– for safekeeping?’

I know I need to tell him the truth and this seems to be the right moment to do it – I’m just not sure how he’s going to react. I hesitate, and while I’m wondering about this, Leo continues without waiting for my response.

‘
No
,’ he says, and he shakes his head violently. I see the echoes of pain that cross his face as he does so, then he raises his eyes and his glare issues me with a determined challenge. ‘I don’t buy it. It doesn’t make any sense. What’s really going on here?’

I clear my throat and sit gingerly on the bed beside my passport, close to him, but careful to avoid touching him. I try to slow my thoughts down so that I can plot out the best response. Here I am worrying about how to tell him our marriage is all but over, and he still doesn’t believe it ever began.

‘It’s a long story,’ I say. ‘But I promise it
will
make sense once you remember the missing years. Why would I even lie about this? Why else would I be here? And I can
prove
the current date to you. I mean––’ I pick up the passport again and show it to him. ‘You think it’s 2011, right? Well, this passport was issued in 2014.’

‘It’s not the
date
I can’t believe,’ he says, and he’s impatient enough now to snap at me. He waves his hand between us. ‘It’s
this
. I
know
I wouldn’t have married you.’

His dismissive tone stings, and although I’m determined not to get into an argument with him, there is no way I’m going to let him speak to me like that. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask him pointedly. Leo winces just a little.

‘Obviously we are just too different. If I was going to marry someone, and I wasn’t – it wouldn’t have been you.’

‘If you can’t remember past 2011, you don’t even know me,’ I raise an eyebrow at him. ‘Besides which, it’s too late to raise these objections now. Whether you remember it or not, we’ve been married for almost three years.’

‘I don’t need to know you to know that we aren’t compatible. You’re a
Torrington
. That’s all I need to know. I wouldn’t have gone there.’

‘Leo, you’re being an arse,’ I say. The words are strained, not because I’m hurt by his stereotyping me, but because I’m infuriated by his arrogance and fighting hard to hold back my natural inclination to snap at him.

‘I don’t mean to offend you––’ he starts to say, but his tone is so patronising that I finally snap. I slam the passport shut and throw it into my handbag by the bed.

‘If you really don’t want to offend me, stop
assuming
that you know who I am just because you know my maiden name. That’s about all you remember about me, right? How dare you try to tell me that it would be impossible for someone like you to marry someone like me just because of who my family is. Imagine if our positions were reversed and I said that to you!’

Leo’s mouth is still open. He slowly closes it, and looks back to his meal. I exhale and rub my forehead wearily, and I think the conversation is over until he mutters, ‘I am
far
too old for you.’

‘Leo!’ I groan. ‘
God!
It’s only ten years and it has never been an issue.’

‘What would we even have in common? How did we even meet?’ He pushes the empty apple puree cup away and frowns at me again. ‘I don’t even
want
to get married.’

I laugh a little at that, because I know his concerns were always about how a spouse might fit into the demanding schedule he keeps – and now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that he was absolutely right. He raises his eyebrows at me and I assure him, ‘I know you didn’t. But you obviously changed your mind because you proposed and then went ahead and married me.’

‘But how? Why would I change my mind?’ Leo’s prompts are impatient and my laughter fades. I can see that he’s tiring again already, and I make a mental note to check with Craig Walker just
how
much I should be shielding him from stress. If I’m supposed to be keeping him completely calm, I’m going to have my work cut out. I take a few deep breaths and slide off the bed, and then take the seat beside him. Leo just
has
to come to terms with this because I’m all he has here in Rome. There is no one else, and no one else is coming, and I still have no idea when we will be able to leave or even what awaits him back in Sydney.

The first thing I need to do is to make him realise that he can trust me – that he
used
to
trust me – and there is probably only one way to do that. When I do speak again, I manage to do so very gently – conscious of the delicate subject I need to reference.

‘I know that until you were thirteen or fourteen, you were sure that it was inevitable that you’d end up just like Mike.’

There are two words we don’t ever use when we’re talking about Leo’s family. The first word is ‘step’ – although Teresa is technically his step-sister, and Andrew his step-father. To Leo they are simply family, and on the odd occasion when I’ve used the ‘step’ prefix by mistake, he has always corrected me instantly. The other word we don’t use is ‘Mike’ – Leo’s biological father’s name. We have had exactly three conversations about Mike in four years, and I initiated every one of them. Leo does not dwell on the unhappy periods of his childhood and he prefers not to speak about them, but I have become convinced that those times have marked him in a way that is every bit as real as the tattoos that cover his arms and shoulders.