She is waiting for me to make eye contact again, and I’m still not sure I can do it without showing her how deeply she has hurt me, and how furious I still am. But the seconds stretch and I realise that the only way I am getting out of there is to let her say her piece. I drag my gaze back to hers, and if I thought I was hurting before, I am in agony after I finally face the mirrored pain in her eyes.
‘Leo Stephens,’ she whispers, and then she gives me a teary, almost pleading smile as she chokes, ‘You have never needed to be a hero to be my hero.’
I look away, and I feel the stupid tic at my jaw, and those words delivered with surprising softness land like daggers in me anyway. She’s not done yet, either. I hear her draw another heavy breath and her voice is low as she adds, ‘You promised me we wouldn’t end up back here. You promised me there was a solution – a compromise. Well,’ she stands suddenly, and she steps away from me. I look to her expectantly, and she raises her eyebrows as if issuing a challenge. ‘Go find it so we can be a family.’
I ask the van driver to take me to the terrace. For a while I play with Lucien in what’s left of my courtyard, and eventually Mrs Wilkins brings me a cup of tea and her legendary scones. We share them at the dining table. It’s like an ordinary, pre-Molly afternoon in my old life, except that my apartment now looks like something out of a Home Beautiful magazine.
After Mrs Wilkins leaves, I stare at the chair-lifts on the stairs for a while before I lift myself onto the seat. It takes a while to figure it all out, but eventually I hook the wheelchair onto the side of the chair and turn the machine on.
Molly wasn’t kidding when she said it was slow. It takes almost a minute to rise from the ground floor to the bedroom, and then another minute to get up the remaining stairs to my office – but the destination is worth the wait. I actually give an odd laugh of relief when I see my desk come into view.
I look at my books for a while, then take myself to my desk and I stare at the computer – the laptop is closed. I pull it towards me, intending to open it, but a letter was resting beneath it and that immediately captures my full attention. As I pick it up, I feel the definite shifting of something in my mind. All of the other memories have come back to me slowly – almost like an image loading on a poor internet connection, pixel by pixel swimming into focus. This time it’s more like a bucket of ice water dumped unceremoniously over my head. As I stare at the piece of paper and I read the address, the last few pieces of the puzzle of my mind start to fall into place.
The letter is from Brokeshaw Solicitors and their office is right next door to the bar where I thought something special had happened with Molly. I don’t read any further than the letterhead before it becomes completely overwhelming. I close my eyes – hoping I can slow down the barrage of memories by blocking out the visual trigger that’s causing them: it doesn’t work.
I’d arrived at the solicitor just in time for my appointment at 4 p.m. I had walked from the News Monthly office to give myself time to think. I thought I would be ready by the time I got there, but as I was about to walk up the stairs, my legs froze. I can stand in a battlefield and dodge bullets and feel only exhilarated, but that day, standing in an ordinary stairwell in a very safe city, for the first time in my life I felt a real sense of panic.
I couldn’t do it; I just could not go in. So I slipped my phone from my pocket and I dialled, and I lied: I told the receptionist that I’d been caught up in a meeting and I would be at least half an hour late. Then I turned around and I walked into the bar next door. I sat at the bar and I ordered a Scotch and stared into it as the ice-cubes floated around the top.
Molly. All I could think about that day was Molly. When I closed my eyes, I saw her in my mind – a montage of the extremes of the moments of our life together – screaming anger, hysterical sobbing, gentle smiles and radiant love.
She had betrayed my trust, and she had hurt me, and I was so burnt by the lack of support that she’d offered me. All I’d ever wanted was to be someone worthy of her. All I’d ever wanted was to deserve her love – but the harder I worked to be the kind of man to deserve a woman like Molly, the more I disappointed her. It was a situation where I couldn’t win because the very thing that I needed to feel worthy of my wife was the same thing that had destroyed my relationship with her.
In the bar that day I had wanted to fix things with Molly. In that moment, I wanted to be with her so much that it physically pained me to be apart from her. I had missed her – my whole life was missing her – but I felt crushed under the weight of failure and guilt, as if I had squandered a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
How had I let the best thing that had ever happened to me go to waste?
Eventually, I got up, and I walked next door and I went inside and talked to the solicitor. I gave him no details – he didn’t need them. I just set the wheels in motion and told myself I was doing what needed to be done.
I open my eyes. My glasses have fallen onto the desk and there are drops of moisture beside them. I pick them up, and the text of the letter swims into focus.