by Carol Mason
My heart is racing. I cover my mouth, trembling and silently gasping at the same time, mentally talking away the urge to throw up: that drink on an empty stomach. I hear the muted thump of music and bursts of squeals and laughter. I pull up Sally’s number on my phone.
‘Where are you?’
I tell her.
‘I thought he was coming at seven?’
‘I can’t face him. I can’t look at him, Sal! I can’t do it! I can’t hear what his reasons are!’
‘Al! You’ve got no choice!’ She sounds as panicked as I am. ‘Get it over with! It’s already gone on far longer than it should have. You’ll be okay,’ she says, her voice softening. ‘You will get past this. Sometimes, you just have to face what you fear the most. It’s shitty, but it’s life.’
I listen to her words, letting them calm me down. Then she says, ‘What do you fear most, Al?’
I perch on the sill by the open window just to be near fresh air. I think about what it is, what it really is, while I try to breathe. ‘Well, finding out, obviously. But it’s also that moment when I realise he really and truly is gone. That there’s no going back. How I’m going to feel.’
‘I can promise you it’s not going to be as bad as you think it is.’
‘You’re the last one who would know that.’ There was no one but John.
‘True. But deep down, you know this yourself.’
I look out of the window, which may not have been washed in years, on to Pilgrim Street below, and hear the voices of street life, a rustle of church bells. She’s right. It is only Justin, not a hangman and spectators. And how bad can it be when I’ve already imagined the worst? ‘Thanks,’ I tell her.
‘Go!’ she says. ‘And remember, Alice, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to you in your life, you’ll look back on it and be thankful for that. I promise.’
‘I’ll try.’
I go back into the dining room, thrust forty pounds at Victoria’s friend for my share of the bill, and run.
It’s 7:25 when the taxi pulls up at my building. All my instincts say he’s been and gone. I pelt up two flights of stairs. When I reach the door, I stop and try to catch my breath.
I can barely get the key in. Please God don’t let him have been and gone.
When I go in, I see that his things are still there, exactly where I left them, in the middle of the floor. I gaze at them in baffled relief.
He hasn’t been.
He isn’t coming.
This is some sick game.
The flat is deadly quiet; not even the molecules in the air move, I think. I pluck at the strap of my bag, and let it drop off my shoulder, to the floor.
And then I’m aware of a presence.
Justin is sitting on the sofa, carefully watching me.
TWENTY-SEVEN
He’s wearing a high-collared, pea-green shirt, open at the neck, and a new gunmetal-grey suit. He has one arm extended along the back of the couch, legs wide apart, like a sitting statue, the kind you see in the gardens of Parisian stately homes.
I sink into the nearest chair. ‘Justin.’
Despite wanting to hate him, when I look into his face right here and now, I just want to go back to the way it was. I’d give anything.
‘I thought you’d been and gone. That I’d missed you . . .’ I’ve never seen such shadows under his eyes. Such rapid weight loss, especially in his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days.
He’s ill. I knew it all along.
‘Been and gone? Good heavens. No. Why would you think that?’
He’s still wearing the ring I slid on to his finger just over two weeks ago, which gives me a crazy sense of hope. And yet I see the distance in his eyes.
He studies the hand I’ve placed over my stomach. ‘Are you okay?’
I nod, then quickly say, ‘No, Justin. How can I possibly be okay?’ I’m just trying to process all the mixed messages I’m getting. He continues to stare at me, but I could be a stranger he’s mildly concerned about. Someone who slipped in the shopping centre.
‘What about you? Is there something wrong with your health?’
He shakes his head, seeming surprised. ‘No. Of course not. I told you, I’m fine.’ Then after a moment or two, he says, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I just took off. I just . . .’ His misery, his conflict, is written all over his face; it’s palpable. ‘I’m sorry, I wish I could, but I can’t really explain it to you.’
Our eyes lock and stay locked, for all the things that neither of us can say. Then tears spill down his face.
This stuns me. I have never seen him cry. Justin usually only displays his feelings once he’s reflected on them, packaged them and positioned them. He is staring at a fixed point in space, just letting tears roll as though he can’t even feel them.
After what seems like a very long time of my watching him like this, he rests his head on the back of the sofa. The shadows either side of his nose look more like bruises. I literally cannot get over how ghastly he appears. I stare at his prominent Adam’s apple and feel a frustrated surge of pity. ‘Why would you be so deliberately unkind, Justin? Who marries someone when he’s got doubts, and then changes his mind a few days later and just walks out? What kind of person does that? And what was I? Blind, and stupid, and so into myself and my own happiness that I managed to miss the fact that my own fiancé didn’t want to marry me?’
He raises his head and looks at me now. ‘I didn’t have doubts, Alice. I loved you, and that still hasn’t changed. But other things have.’
‘What?’ I practically shoot up from the chair. ‘Just tell me, for God’s sake! I know you’ve got someone else. I’ve virtually seen it with my own eyes.’ My throat prickles. I have never shouted at anyone like this before. ‘I know. But I don’t know why.’
He continues to look at me, calmly. Calm but distant. It strikes me that we were closer when we first met than we are now, as husband and wife. I can’t rush to him and have him hold me, to have him ease and reassure me. It’s illogical, almost. The emotional stop sign is right there. I can see it. He can, too, given he’s the one who put it up.
I swipe tears with the back of my hand.
‘It’s not like that. Not at all what you’re thinking.’ He sighs, shakily, and I honestly can’t tell which of us is finding this more traumatic. I know it’s coming. I am listening and pushing it away with all my might. But I can’t look away. ‘What I should have told you, Alice, is that I have a son. His name is Dylan. He’s three months old.’
I am falling in slow motion from a twenty-storey building and have just hit the ground. There should be profound pain, but I’m just too busy thinking how I could possibly have fallen from such a great height and still be alive.
‘You have a son?’ Oddly, despite my shock, a small part of me is thinking, Is that it?
‘With Lisa.’
‘Lisa.’ I repeat the name of his ex-girlfriend. It echoes, trying to form significance, but it can’t quite get there.
‘It happened right before I met you. Literally, a few days. I ran into her at the courthouse. We went for dinner, probably because neither of us had anything better to do. I hadn’t seen her in a very long time. She ended up back at mine. It was just that one time. But I suppose it’s enough, isn’t it?’ He shakes his head as though still unable to fully fathom it. ‘I didn’t use a condom. I wasn’t thinking. We never used them because she was always on the pill. I suppose I was falling back on old practices.’
He has a son, but he hasn’t cheated. With his ex. The one he hadn’t loved enough to marry. It was before we met. ‘I don’t understand. You’ve got a baby with Lisa. Okay, well . . . that’s one thing. But how does that affect us?’
‘I only found out the day before our wedding. She hadn’t intended to tell me – perhaps never, actually. I don’t really know.’ He frowns. ‘That’s a whole other story I can’t get into. She didn’t want me coming back to her for the wrong reasons.’
I can’t take some woman’s motivations on board right now. ‘You went to see them? To her house?’
He frowns. ‘Yes. How do you know?’
‘I found the note in your pocket. The one you wrote that day when I walked in on you, and you were on the phone.’
He thinks for a moment. ‘Ah.’
‘I’ve driven to the house, Justin. I talked to your plumber. I know you’re living with her.’
I remember him once briefly saying that Lisa wanted a baby, and that getting her pregnant wasn’t something he was going to take lightly. I’d filled in the blanks: Justin didn’t feel secure enough about their relationship to commit to having a child. That was why he had ended it. It had made me feel good: clearly, he loved me more. ‘I bet she wanted you back. Sex one time, then ending up pregnant . . . How do you even know he’s yours? Maybe she’s tricked you.’
‘He’s mine, Alice. And she didn’t trick me.’
‘But she wasn’t going to tell you, then miraculously she ends up telling you the day before our wedding?’ He was set up. How can he not see it? All my protective instincts rise to the surface. She will not win.
‘Alice . . . That’s not why Lisa told me, to dissuade me from marrying you. Far from it. She told me because she’d just found out that our child was born with a heart defect. Dylan suffers from a very serious condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.’ His eyes brim with tears again. ‘Basically . . . it’s one of the heart conditions that’s commonly referred to as sudden death syndrome.’
I hear him, but the words fail to register. Sudden death . . . Heart condition. Baby. Justin and his family with heart problems. The men who died young. His own father.
I stare at him in disbelief. ‘Your baby has a heart problem?’
He pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Quite a significant one, actually. Lisa only found out the week we were getting married. She needed to see me because the doctors needed to know my full family medical history. They said that talking to me could influence the course of his disease.’
‘But . . .’ It’s like a puzzle with a missing piece. ‘Why didn’t you just say so? Why wouldn’t you tell me there and then?’
‘Because it was a day before our wedding! Everything was planned. You were so happy. I was happy. And then I get this news. I didn’t even know I had a child, let alone a very ill child, and they wanted to know all these details from me, about my health, my family’s health – things I could barely remember. It was crazy. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know where the hell I was . . .’ I can’t take my eyes off him, off his turmoil. ‘I thought, okay, we’re only going away for a week. As soon as we get back, I’ll deal with it, and that’s when I’ll tell you. I’ll deal with it then.’
‘But we could have postponed the wedding, if you’d needed to!’ I can’t really picture the late-stage logistics of this, but I’m sure it would have been possible.
‘Maybe. But at the time I thought I had it sorted.’
‘How did Lisa find out about his condition?’ I don’t know which question to ask first. There are so many. I don’t even know why I want to know. I just want a picture.
‘A few things. His feeding. His breathing. The feel of his chest, apparently, when she touched it. It was like his heart was trying to jump out of his body because he was working so hard to breathe.’ He puts his head in his hands.
He’s thinking it’s all his fault.
I shake my head, dazed. Dazed and disbelieving. ‘So what does this mean, Justin?’
‘Well, at this stage we don’t really know. He’s just had surgery, and he’s still technically in recovery. There are a few possible outcomes. He could lead some version of a limited normal life. Or it could lead to progressive heart failure, and he may require a transplant. Or, of course, worse. It’s still too early to say.’
‘He’s just had surgery?’
‘Yes. That’s the thing. That’s what I found out while we were away. Lisa rang to tell me that Dylan had taken a serious turn for the worse. They needed to perform open-heart surgery, basically’ – he wipes at tears – ‘to save his life. And there was I, thousands of miles away on my honeymoon, sitting drinking wine on a balcony. And I’d only ever seen him once for about half an hour.’ He shakes his head. He is clearly still very much reliving it.
The phone call at 4 a.m. UK time! I knew it wasn’t from his office. ‘Well, it’s starting to make sense. But I still don’t know why you couldn’t have told me there and then. You could have explained and we could have flown back together.’
He looks at his feet. ‘I don’t know. I was only thinking that I needed to be there. Maybe there was something I could do. I . . . like I say, I can’t explain it. I just needed to leave. To be on my own. To have a chance to think.’
He’s being honest. No one could possibly lie and put themselves into this state if it wasn’t genuine.
‘But you must have known what you were going to do, Justin. Your note said you couldn’t do this any more. You must have already decided you were leaving me for them.’
He looks through me, surprised, as though this is an entirely new take on the situation. ‘I don’t know if I’d really decided that. It wasn’t that calculated. I was sitting there on the beach trying to act normal, and all I could think was I’ve put him here. This is because of me. Because of my bad gene pool. Because I carelessly got someone pregnant, Dylan will probably never know a normal life. And there I was marrying you – how could I have a child with you, now that I knew I was passing on all these problems? I could never risk this happening again. But then that’s unfairly depriving you . . .’ He looks at me, imploringly. ‘Alice, you could have a life with someone else. A family – one you can’t have with me now.’ His speech seems to wind him. ‘Do you see what I mean? This was all going round in my head.’
It’s going round in mine, too. ‘But that’s insane, Justin! If you and I never have kids, I’m fine with that. Especially if it’s because of medical reasons. I wouldn’t consider it a deprivation at all! We could adopt.’ I stare at him, and he’s watching me, listening and contemplating. I can tell he’s on a precipice, suspended between two choices; he might be persuaded my way if only I touch the right chord of his vulnerability.
‘Your baby’s condition wasn’t your doing, Justin. If everybody decided not to have children because of family health conditions, there’d be only a quarter of the population . . . It was just the luck of the draw. I’m sure Dylan could have just as easily been born perfectly fine. So you mustn’t think like that.’
‘But I do think like that,’ he says. And I know nothing I can say will change him.
I remember feeling so upset when he told me that, as a little boy, he couldn’t understand how his dad could have died so suddenly. His dad was a doctor. He saved lives for a living. Justin couldn’t understand how no one could save his.
He sits back against the cushion, extending his long legs, interlacing his fingers behind his head. I watch him as he stares and blinks at the ceiling.
‘Come home. We can make it work. I’d love your son, because he was an innocent little boy and because he was yours. Don’t you see, Dylan could have two families – one with his mum and one with us? He’d have three people who loved him. Can’t you look at that as a positive? If we adopted, he could even have siblings.’
I have never seen him appear more conflicted. He puts his head in his hands again.
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
‘But why can’t you?’
I already know the answer.
He looks at me now. ‘Because I want to be a proper father to him. I suppose for the rest of his life, whatever quality he’s got, I want to be there fully for him. I want him to know what it’s like to have a real family who love him. He deserves that. I don’t want Lisa marrying someone else and some other bloke raising my kid. Others mightn’t see that as a problem, but I do. I’m sorry.’
Echoes of everything he’s ever said about his unple
asant life with his stepfather come back to me. How he said there’s nothing worse than constantly trying to impress someone, trying to win them over to liking you, when you never can. Impossibly, it was as if everything he’s ever told me about his childhood was said to validate his decision now.
‘But you never wanted a child with Lisa.’
‘But I had one, didn’t I?’ Then he adds, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just something I have to do.’
It’s surreal. I can’t believe my ears. ‘So what about her, then?’ I say after a while. ‘Do you love her? I mean . . . you’ve moved in with her.’
‘I’ve been staying there for practical reasons. We’re not sharing a room. Trust me, sex is the very last thing on my mind. But do I love her? Well, I suppose, in some ways I still have feelings for her, because that’s the kind of person I am. I don’t get involved with people lightly. I don’t switch it on and off when it’s convenient. I’ve known her for a very long time. We had some good times and we had some less good times. She moved up North to be with me. And now by some crazy turn of fate she’s the mother of my son and she’s going through hell with this. I was never untrue to you about my feelings, Alice. Never. But life isn’t simple and cut and dried.’
It blows me over. It all does. I want to fight, but I have lost already. ‘So you think that because you’ve got a baby together, that you can be happy with her?’
He throws up his hands. ‘You know, Alice, I am thinking first and foremost of my son. Two weeks ago, he might have died. At the moment, he’s an unknown quantity. We’re just watching and waiting and praying. But as for love, well, you can love people in different ways, on different levels, and, in any case, those ways evolve over time, no matter how you start out. I once told you that I’m not unrealistic about how these things work. I’m not some starry-eyed teenager. And neither is Lisa.’
I can’t bear the words love and Lisa being uttered practically in the same sentence.