The sensible voice had convinced me to enrol in a course of therapy. The demanding voice made me sit in those sessions with the very patient psychologist and play the victim, focusing on all Leo’s faults, forgetting this was also the man that I loved with all my heart. Those sessions were not about me finding a way through the pain of our situation, they were about me convincing the psychologist that I deserved her pity because my situation was bad and entirely out of my control.
Every time Leo and I fought, the sensible voice grew weaker and the demanding voice grew in power. Yes, Leo was apparently fixated on his career but I was well on my way becoming irrationally baby-obsessed too. A long while after he went to bed that night, when I knew he’d be sound asleep and I wouldn’t need to face him, I walked up the stairs to the bathroom and took the prenatal vitamins I’d been taking every day for over a year, and I stared at the foil contraceptive pill packet that rested behind it.
I hadn’t actually stopped taking my pill. That seemed sinister – evil – unfair. Instead, I had become very forgetful about taking it and that month’s packet represented a polka-dot pattern of inconsistency.
Leo was home for a week that time and for all of our ups and downs, we’d never had a period like that before. Even when we were in the same room he felt distant, and when he looked at me his eyes were always cold, almost hostile. In the seven days he was home, he did not touch me once, not even an accidental brush of our hands. The one time I tried to get through to him we were walking from the car to Brad and Penny’s house. I reached for his hand and he shifted away from me and stuffed it in his pocket.
‘What was that about?’ I demanded, stopping dead in my tracks.
‘What?’ he glanced back at me, but there was guilt in his gaze.
‘You just avoided me when I tried to hold your hand.’
He frowned and shook his head dismissively, then knocked loudly on the door. Before I could push any harder, Brad and Penny’s son Zane greeted us with wild excitement and it was time to go inside.
I couldn’t miss the contrast between Leo and me and Brad and Penny at dinner that night. Penny was very heavily pregnant, and Brad apparently couldn’t keep his hands off her. He kept making jokes layered with innuendo, which made her roll her eyes at him, and every now and again, I’d catch them just grinning at one another across the table.
Leo barely spoke to me. The one time I tried to make a joke to lighten the mood, it fell heavily flat.
‘…So I said Brad could go back to Syria next week, Leo, but if he gets stuck there and he has to skype into the c-section next month, I’ll castrate him the minute he gets back in the country,’ Penny said wryly. ‘That’s a fair deal, isn’t it?’
‘That’s so funny,’ I said. ‘Leo has decided the only way we’ll have kids is if he can just skype into the birth. Right, honey?’
Leo stared at me expressionlessly, and then excused himself and went to the bathroom, leaving me to deal with the awkward aftermath with Brad and Penny. Brad made unconvincing noises about checking on their daughter Imogen, who had long since gone to sleep. Penny poured me a glass of wine and pushed it across the table.
‘Drink this for both of us – I feel ill at having witnessed that moment between you,’ she said.
I picked up the wine and drank it in one long motion.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ I whispered when I’d finished the wine.
‘Go home, put on some frilly knickers, and try to pretend that the last six months haven’t happened,’ Penny suggested quietly.
‘He won’t even hold my hand,’ I told her.
She leant forward and whispered to me urgently, ‘Then you need to talk to him, Molly, and figure this out. You two can’t possibly go on like this.’
Leo returned then, but he didn’t take his seat again.
‘I’ve called the car,’ he said. ‘I need to do some work tonight, so we need to get going.’
We said our awkward goodbyes and travelled back to the terrace in silence. As soon we stepped inside, Leo made his way towards the stairs.
‘No,’ I said, with force. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I don’t have the energy to fight with you tonight.’
‘I don’t want to fight either, I promise.’
We sat at the dining room table beneath the wall of photos from our life together. I was in the unfortunate position of facing the images, so every time I looked up, I saw a happy version of myself that felt like photographs from a past life or a parallel universe.
‘What’s going on, Leo?’
I listened to the clock on the kitchen wall tick as I waited for his answer. He stared at the table for a while, and then he raised his eyes to me. ‘This isn’t working anymore, Molly. We want different things out of life, don’t we?’
‘Don’t say that. That’s not true.’
‘Isn’t it? You want a baby, I want to focus on my career – I don’t want to feel obligated to fly back to Sydney every five minutes.’
‘Obligated?’ I repeated, and I’d been so calm up until that moment, but the way that he said that made me feel like I was nothing more than a burden to him. My voice rose, and I knew that my promise of not arguing had been made in vain. ‘I have been so patient with you, Leo.’