I am not awful enough to confirm the fact he gave his own mother a stroke but I can see the guilt raging through him in this rare show of emotion. I almost feel jealous I never saw this much when we were married. I stand back from him.
‘I was cruel. You know the last thing she said to me before she collapsed? That I’d turned into my father. A man who walked out on us for another woman.’
I turn to the window. She wasn’t wrong and I’d sensed this, that despite his father not even being a part of his life, despite me never even meeting him, that the worst parts of him were in his biology. His dad was the worst sort. He kept his distance, he threw money at them, pretending that he was involved. But to confirm or rebut anything feels insincere at a time like this.
‘She came to see me. A few weeks ago. After that morning in my house. We invited her in for dinner.’
He turns like he’s waiting for the punch line.
‘What did you tell her?’
I don’t reply.
‘You should have said something?’
‘Your mother came round for some garlic dippers. She had a nice evening with her granddaughters. My sisters were there, we cracked open a Merlot. To be fair, we hardly talked, I sensed she just wanted… ’
‘Answers?’
‘Company. It was her birthday. And I felt like she wanted to clear the air… Redeem her son’s mistakes?’
Was that cruel? Who knows anymore?
‘Do you need anything?’ I ask him.
‘I screwed things up with Susie too. She’s not letting me see the baby or Oliver anymore.’
‘I was thinking more a cup of tea? Do you want me to check on progress?’
He looks at me like these are nonsensical details. I came here to try and be helpful, be kind. I don’t want a heart-to-heart and most certainly not in this room, right now.
‘Do you want me to call Susie?’ I ask.
‘I tried, she wouldn’t take my call.’
‘So you called me instead?’ Always the second choice.
‘I actually called you first.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re at the top of my contacts.’
‘Why?’
‘I never changed it. I actually think you’re still my next of kin.’
I don’t reply. Next of kin was the first thing I had changed when we separated. I trust Lucy more now with decisions about my life and that’s saying something.
‘Did I turn into my father, Ems?’
‘I never met your father.’
‘Mum was furious about the Susie thing anyway. Then I told her she’d had the baby and that we couldn’t see him and then…’
‘The truth trickled out.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘The baby has a name. He’s called Louis.’ He looks up at me, confused.
‘Susie came round to my office to confront me and she went into labour. I delivered your baby on my office floor.’
He swings his head around, shock embedded into his face. ‘You did what?’
‘She went into labour crying about you.’
‘You delivered our baby?’
‘I believe we’re both qualified to do that?’
‘How was he? Was he OK?’
‘He has your chin. But yes, when he left me, he was well.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘Tell you what? Your mistress came to see me? I helped bring her baby into the world? No. Our doorstep never felt like the right place to bring it up.’
‘We’d agreed on calling him Harry.’
I am silent. Harry was on our list when I was pregnant. We never found out the sex of ours but it was always there in reserve so this feels slightly cruel.
‘Louis feels a little common.’
Now that’s cruel.
‘I think it’s from Louise, my middle name.’
‘Oh.’
‘I told the girls too.’
‘Our girls?’
‘They’d been fed a few lies about these boys. I thought it was important they knew who their brothers were.’
He pauses in disbelief. ‘I’m not sure that was your responsibility?’
‘I’m only their mother, Simon. I didn’t want them lied to anymore.’
He rubs at his temples. The bags under his eyes weigh his face down; a normally clear complexion is faded and ashen. I don’t know how I should be feeling at this moment. I don’t want to stand here and preach that the pain he feels is deserved or wallow in his suffering but I can’t generate any form of sympathy either.
‘We need to tell them about this too.’
‘Can you?’
‘We’ll do it together.’
‘I can’t… I have to sort work, I have to…’
‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, SIMON!’
He jolts at hearing me shout. I rarely did it. Had I been scared of him? Even in the worst parts of our divorce, my anger was sublimated by my sadness. He gives me a look like I have to be nice to him, given his mother is downstairs being operated on.
‘I am so sorry about your mother. No one deserves this. But I won’t lie to those girls anymore and I won’t do your job for you. You left me to tell them about our marriage ending. And I was the one who told them about their brothers. Have the decency and the balls to sit down with them and explain to them that their grandmother is poorly.’
‘And that it was my fault?’ He sobs quietly. ‘I don’t want them to think badly of me.’
‘But in the end, they will if you’re not honest with them.’
There is silence as he blows his nose, wiping his eyes. Where were these tears two years ago? I hate to say it but they summon an unexpected jealousy in me. At least I know he cares enough for his mother that his heart is not completely missing.
‘Did Linda have high blood pressure? Maybe something was just missed?’
‘You think I missed something? That I’m a doctor, I should have noticed?’
‘Don’t put words in my mouth.’
‘If I hadn’t cheated on you and not met Susie, had Oliver or Louis, as he’s now called, then my mother wouldn’t have got so emotionally stressed and most likely wouldn’t have stroked out.’
‘Correction, if you hadn’t lied – about any of it.’
He is quiet.
‘When your mother showed up on my doorstep, it was because she was so sad that you weren’t the man she thought you were, that you’d lied to her all that time. It’s just been a cycle of lies and you not taking responsibility for anything.’
‘Wow, Ems. Just say it like it is, why don’t you?’
I really don’t know why I’m here. But I didn’t come here to be an emotional punchbag, to be someone he could deflect his grief off. Emma, she’ll put up with my crap, I’ll invite her along. I turn to pick up my bag.
‘I’m so sorry, Emma. Please stay. I really have no one else.’
‘Friends?’
He laughs under his breath. I join him by the window and we stand overlooking the car park, gazing at the cars driving in circles, searching for spaces. A man with a giant bouquet of flowers walks past, his helium balloons dancing in the breeze.
‘You were my only friend,’ he says.
‘I was your wife, Chadwick.’
‘You were. You haven’t called me Chadwick in years, not since medical school.’
I flash back to a simpler time when we had matching university hoodies and we’d test each other on the parts of a kidney whilst walking into lectures, sitting next to each other, sharing pens and cans of Lilt.
‘Well, I became a Chadwick too. It would have been confusing.’
He laughs under his breath. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Sure.’
‘Am I bad person?’
I try to find the right words. ‘Not… bad. Damaged maybe. You are a good father. Our girls adore you but you were a shit husband.’
‘I’ll take that. Why… why damaged?’
‘It’s not my job t
o work you out anymore.’
‘Did I do anything right as a husband?’
‘It’s a small list.’
He cared about dental hygiene, he loaded the dishwasher correctly and he was excellent at spelling. That’s all I have but I won’t say it out loud. He looks out to the car park again studying the cars circling for days, looking for spaces.
‘How do I fix this, Emma?’
‘You? How do we fix you? Therapy? Counselling?’
‘Shouldn’t we have done that? Together.’
‘I did that on my own.’
‘You did?’
‘You thought I just split up with you and got on with real life?’
‘It certainly felt that way.’
‘You broke me, Simon. I needed to speak to someone about it who wasn’t my mother or—’
‘One of the sisters. You think the counselling worked?’
‘I said what I needed without judgement, she listened. I worked out my issues.’
‘Which were?’
‘Where do I start? Self-esteem, my hurt and worry about the girls, trying to figure things out. Speaking about it gave me clarity. Made me realise that despite my best efforts, it was unsalvageable.’
‘You told her everything?’
‘It’s a confidential service in case you’re worried?’
‘Well, what did you say?’
‘I spoke about the time with the nannies. The French one and the Australian one.’
‘That wasn’t my fault.’
‘See? Nothing to do with me, I’m just a slave to a high sex drive. A reaction like you didn’t really care, complete apathy.’
‘I did have a high sex drive. You knew that.’
‘Then watch some porn, wank into your hand? You used it as an excuse. You made me out to be the problem.’
‘You weren’t.’
‘Good to know now, I guess.’
‘You were a good wife.’
‘Why do I feel like you’re going to pat me on the head?’
He laughs under his breath.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ I take a deep breath. ‘How did you meet Susie?’
‘Through the hospital. It was a one-night stand and I was careless and she got pregnant with Oliver.’
I take pause to hear him talking of his son as a careless mistake.
‘And you’ve been together since Oliver was born?’
‘We kept in touch, I gave her a deposit for her house. Made sure she was looked after. When we finally split, we became a couple.’
It seems trivial to query where the finances came from but I ask the question that I desperately want answered.
‘Do you love her?’
‘I think I do.’
‘You think?’
‘Have you been faithful to her?’
‘I’ve made sure that her and that boy were looked after.’
‘You didn’t answer my question. Why did you keep them a secret, from everyone? Even your mother?’
‘I don’t need sanctimony now. They’re still my sons. I have a right to them.’
‘Well, I’m not a lawyer. Cat De Vere can help you with that.’ I smile, knowingly.
‘You know I’ve slept with her, don’t you?’
‘We were together for well over a decade, Simon. After a while, you became a little predictable. I’ll assume Susie doesn’t know.’
‘No.’
‘Lucy spotted it a mile off too.’
‘Well, if there were four other people who hated me more than you did, it was probably them.’
‘Five, you forgot my mother.’
‘How is Fiona?’
‘She has a business selling voodoo dolls of you. She’s made a fortune.’
Simon smiles momentarily then looks out again into the night sky. He touches his nose. Lucy obviously got her left arm from our mother as he had to have surgeries on it to correct the damage she’d inflicted. He’s snored ever since and his nose still curves slightly to the left.
‘And I didn’t hate you.’ I’m not sure why I add that aside.
He pauses. ‘I didn’t hate you either.’
‘It sometimes felt that way. It certainly didn’t feel like respect. Or love.’
‘Of course I did. You know that, right? I cared for you greatly. I had such admiration for your intelligence and the way you gave me our girls. I think there was love there.’
‘You think? Well, if it made a difference, I loved you.’
Balls. To say those words out loud, admit that to him feels like a moment of weakness. My thumb runs at a part of my finger where a ring used to be.
‘I am sorry, Emma. I really am.’
As the words leave his mouth, I exhale, my shoulders relax. Maybe that’s all I ever wanted, for him to take responsibility for everything. ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say those words.’
And for the first time, I see something drawn on his face that I’ve never seen before. Guilt? Repentance? My gut tells me not to trust it. He’d always been so smug, such a complete dick.
‘I can’t explain it, Emma. Maybe I was like my father, I wanted to self-destruct. I didn’t understand what it was to be part of this family that I had had no experience of.’
I still can’t work out where this depth and clarity has suddenly surfaced from.
‘It wasn’t all you, though. I also enabled you to cheat. I didn’t call you out on it.’
‘You didn’t. I never worked out why?’
‘Did you expect me to beat you up?’
‘Well, no but I expected anger.’
‘It was there. I imagined and wished horrible things for you at times.’
‘Like?’
‘A plague of horrors to affect your genitals, really…’
He laughs, surprised at my attempts at humour at least.
‘You never challenged me? Even when you knew what was going on?’
‘I swept it under the carpet because I didn’t want you to get the better of me. Pride, maybe? And we had the girls. I did it for them. I couldn’t bear for them to feel the extremes of my hurt. I thought I was protecting them. So I carried on like nothing was happening.’
‘When really…’
‘It was like a punch to the guts each time. The tears I have cried over you. The moments I was paralysed, broken over how deeply I felt that pain. How it grew inside of me and just tore me down.’ I can feel myself welling up but compose myself.
‘It wasn’t all horrific though. Those years we were together? I wouldn’t have survived med school without you.’
‘True. And we had our moments. We have our girls.’
‘Those girls.’
‘I know, right?’
We pause, letting that sink in. In all this mess, they were and remain everything, some symbol of our marriage not being a complete disaster.
‘That photo you have in your living room… Why?’
‘Iris likes it. I don’t have the heart to take it away from her. That cream tea we had on the beach. Christ, they were tiny.’
‘You could fit them in your pocket. I can’t believe Iris is going to be nine. When did she get so tall?’
‘You’re six foot two, it was inevitable they’d inherit that much.’
‘Well, I’m glad they inherited all the good stuff from you.’
‘I think that was a compliment.’
‘I am capable of them.’
‘Iris said something before… She sometimes gets sad that it’s not just the four of us anymore.’
‘I get what she means… Things were simpler back then. What did you say to her?’
‘I said I was sorry things couldn’t work out between me and you. I told her I’d always be connected to you because you gave me my daughters.’
‘That’s good of you.’
‘Those girls have to believe they were born out of love. That’s the one thing I need out of all of this.’
He nods. There was love. There were moments.
The point was that for all the ways I can describe how awfully Simon behaved, it was made all the worse because it felt like he took a dump over all my love I felt for him, our family. I can’t help it by this point. I cry. Tears flow as much as I try to hold them back. All this honesty from him better not be a sham or I will cut him. He’s crying too. This is painful, embarrassing.
‘Oh, Ems.’
He puts his hand in mine and brings me in for a hug. I don’t know how this feels. It doesn’t feel right but maybe this is part of the process. I hate this but can’t seem to unlock myself from him. But then I see a shadow of his face, it comes towards me.
He kisses me. I push him away with some force.
‘No.’
‘I didn’t mean to do that.’
‘Story of your life.’
‘I’m confused. My mother—’
‘Don’t you dare use that here.’
‘I have no one now. Literally no one. Susie won’t even talk to me. You and the girls are all I have.’
‘Your mother’s not dead, Simon.’
‘But I need—’
‘You’ll need help to look after your sick mother? So you come to me? I’m not yours anymore.’
‘But Emma, all those years. We can fix it, we can go back and see where it all went wrong and we can—’
‘Do nothing, Simon.’ I can’t believe I’m hearing this.
‘But the girls, we could be a family again. The four of us. I love you?’
I laugh. He phrased that as a question? What on earth is he doing?
‘Emma?’
‘Seriously, stop.’
And then I see a boy in a bar in a Hackett top with his floppy hair and swagger, charming everyone with his eloquence and there was a time, years ago, when he once chose me. I fell at his feet. I adored him. He made me feel like the only girl in the room. But something happened. He realised the power of his charm and instead of staying in that room with just me, the girl he chose first, he invited others in. It inflated his ego, his narcissism and he covered it all with his charisma and lies. He thought he was untouchable. Until it got to a point where I chose to leave and suddenly, I was the one who walked out on our marriage. I can’t believe he’s trying to get me back in that room. I can’t believe I even set foot in it again.
A knock on the door interrupts our conversation.
‘Mr Chadwick?’ a young surgeon pops his head around the door with a nurse. I recognise that look of fatigue and relief. He looks at me and comes to shake my hand.
Can I Give My Husband Back?: A totally laugh out loud and uplifting page turner Page 26