I let my wet hair out of the scrunchy that’s holding it in place, rewind it into a messy bun again and secure it. It didn’t need touching, it’s just a nervous move as I try to think how to tell Conner what I’m about to say next.
“Pearce was working with Marcus Newman at his dad’s law firm and doing well. Over the next few years, Marcus asked me out a few times. I always said no. I threw myself into work and didn’t really date anyone. That aside, I just didn’t want to go out with him.” I swallow a few times and run my tongue over my teeth. “My brother and Marcus started coming to the salon for haircuts and would turn up wherever I was out at the weekends and, of course, Marcus continued to ask me out. Eventually, I said, yes. There was nothing there, it was just…” I shrug my shoulders, acutely aware of Con’s eyes on me. “I didn’t feel anything for him. So there was no chance he could hurt me in the way that I’d been hurt before.” Conner squeezes my hand. “Then he drops a bombshell and asks me to marry him. I tell him no, I’m too young, too busy, just not ready.” Talking about this, telling the story to others makes me even more aware of what an idiot I was. “We keep seeing each other and he tells my brother that he’s going to ask me again. My brother… my loyal, trusting big brother, tells me that his career is riding on my response. If I don’t say yes to Marcus’s marriage proposal, he threatens to go to the press with a story about how Conner Reed had sex with an underage girl and got her pregnant, then abandoned her to go out and sell drugs, leaving her alone in the hospital after she miscarries their baby.”
I watch Conner rake the fingers of his left hand through his hair. His right hand, never leaves mine.
“What a wanker. What a complete and utter wanker,” Josh says.
“Oh, but it gets better,” Sophie adds.
“Then he tells me, he wants all the money back that he loaned me. At that stage, it was still about one hundred thousand. The business was doing well, but we were just about to open our second or third salon, I can’t remember which.”
I look Conner in the eye. “So I did it. When Marcus asked, I said, yes.”
His stare gives nothing away. “You married Marcus Newman?” he asks. I nod.
Josh and Conner know Marcus. We all went to primary school together and they would’ve seen him around town with my brother over the years.
“And that’s who you’re divorcing? Who you’ve been married to for the last eight years?”
I nod again. “He was safe, Con. I wouldn’t survive having my heart broken again, and there was no possibility he would be able to do that. I didn’t love him, so I was safe. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t try. I did. I tried to be the perfect wife for him. I gave myself over to him. I let him, my brother and my parents mould me into what they wanted me to be.” I don’t want to cry, so I decide to end the story there.
“So why the divorce? What happened to you being the perfect wife and daughter?” Conner asks.
I let out a long sigh and look over at Soph, who gives me a small nod, encouraging me to go on. “I was so lonely. After all the begging and pleading Marcus had done to get me to go out with him and to be his wife, once he had me, he wasn’t the slightest bit interested. We have nothing in common. He’s away most weekends playing golf. We only really go out together if it’s a work function for him, or some political event my mother insists we attend. But because I’m this stupid na?ve woman, I’d convinced myself that we could make it work. That if we had a child together, it’d make everything right between us. But I can’t even get that right.” A tear drips from my lash and rolls down my cheek.
“Meebs,” Conner says very quietly, shaking his head. I put my hand up, I need him to know what he’s in for if we’re going to give a relationship a go.
“When I miscarried, they found out I was suffering from polycystic ovaries. It doesn’t mean that I can’t have kids, but it could mean that it’s more difficult for me to conceive and carry a child to full term, but yeah anyway, it’s irrelevant now. We tried for a while to have a baby but it never happened and now, with hindsight, that’s probably for the best.”
“The bloke’s unstable. I know you want kids Neen, but you were lucky not to fall pregnant with him.”
Conner’s eyes flick from Sophie to me. “Why’s he unstable?”
I let out another one of those breaths that they write about in books. “He came home drunk one night and for no reason he attacked me.”
“What the fuck, Meebs?” Conner pulls his hand from mine, laces his fingers together behind his head and glares at me. His brows drawn down into a deep frown. “Did you press charges?” he asks.
“He’s a lawyer, Con, he’d lose his job. Be struck off even.”