“You never want to talk.” I didn’t want to sound accusatory, but I couldn’t seem to hide it from my voice.
“We go out with your work mates, and you have so much to say to everyone. I turn up at your office, and you’re deep in conversation with Mel, Liz, or Cassie, or any one of the other women there, but when you come home to me, all I get is silence.” My bottom lip trembled as I said the last few words. I hated myself for it.
“Sarah, I don’t talk because I didn’t think that I had to.” His voice was so soft that it filled me with sadness. I felt it right down to my bones. “You’re my sanctuary, my safe place. I come home to you and our babies, pull on my sweats and lie on the sofa with my hands down the front of my jocks, and I chill out. I can’t do that anywhere else. No one else sees me like that, just you and the kids. I leave all the shit that I deal with at work at the office. I spend the entire day counting down the hours till I can come home to you. Till I can bath the kids, tuck them in and eat dinner with you. I can’t wait till I can then lay with my head in your lap and switch off my brain.” His jaw was now trembling as he spoke.
Mine mimicked his, and we both broke a bit more.
“I’m not ignoring you when I do all of that Sarah, I’m soaking up every moment. I’m cherishing every fucking sight, sound, and smell of our home so that I can recall them the next day while I’m sitting in my office and things are going to shit. Those thoughts, feelings, and memories are what get me through each and every day. You . . . you, the home, and the life you provide me and the kids with, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. So don’t ever fucking tell me I don’t see you.”
He wipes his nose across the back of his hand.
“Sometimes, the only conversation I get to have with an adult is at the supermarket. The girl or boy on the checkout ask me how my day has been more than you ever do. Have you any idea how that makes me feel?” I was full on crying. I just let it go. My throat ached from the sobs I tried to speak around. “Lonely, isolated, worthless,” I spit out. “I look forward to you coming home all day, and then you just don’t turn up. No call, no text, nothing. It’s like I don’t exist anymore, like I’m just not important enough to bother with.”
He shook his head continuously as I spoke and looked at me in utter disbelief.
“It’s not like that—” I held up my hand to cut him off. I needed to get this out, and now that I had started, I couldn’t stop.
“And then on the nights you do come home, you take the kids up for their baths, you sit and eat dinner with me—giving me the tiniest scraps of your attention—and then you pass out cold on the sofa. Then, I’m alone again. Alone and feeling worthless. Like my life has no purpose other than to wipe arses and noses and cook dinners.”
His arms fell to his sides and the expression on his face was one of agony.
“I fucking love you!” he screamed. “Never, never have I considered you worthless and without purpose.” Tears streamed from his eyes as he spoke, his face twisting as if he were in physical pain. The machine monitoring my heart was frantic with its beeps, and the blood pressure cuff was tightening again. Nurse Judy barrelled through the door this time, eyebrows drawn into a frown, looking like she wanted to inflict harm instead of help me sip water.
“This is a hospital, can you please keep it down? Otherwise, I will have to ask you to leave.” Her eyes met mine and softened. “Are you okay, Sarah? The doctor shouldn’t be too long now.” I nodded my head and gave her a small smile through my tears. She looked pointedly between us. “She’s been through enough, you really should give her a break right now,” she told Liam.
He shook his head, but she gave him a long look before she shrugged her shoulders and left.
“All you had to do was talk to me, just open your mouth and say the words. I would’ve listened. I would’ve gotten you help. I would’ve done anything, any fucking thing for you, Sarah, but this, what you’ve done . . . I don’t . . .”
“I had an abortion.”
There, just like that. Four little words, and my dirty secret was out there.
He stepped back, no, he staggered back from my bed. His mouth hung open as he drew in air.
“What? When? I don’t . . . Why?” Confusion, panic, disbelief. I saw it all in his eyes. There was nothing but sheer horror written all over his face.
“Six months ago. I knew I was pregnant almost immediately. It happened when we were in the South of France, when I forgot to take my pills with me. That last night.”
He closed his eyes tightly, bent over, and gasped in air like he had just run a marathon.
“I went two whole weeks without contraception, and you promised you’d be careful. You . . . we weren’t.”
He stood up straight and looked right at me.