My husband was planning to spend three weeks embedded in a group of jihadists.
He said it so calmly. If I’d listened to the tone and not the words, he might have been talking about something dull, and I might have missed the reality that he had signed himself up for a suicide mission. This was a whole new level of crazy and a whole new level of stupid. These were extremists who lived and breathed an irrational dogma that Leo despised as much as anyone.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, you can’t. I won’t let you.’
Leo looked up from his meal. ‘You won’t let me,’ he repeated.
‘That’s not an assignment – it’s a suicide mission. No one would have approved that.’
‘Not that it’s any of your business, but Kisani has worked through the plan as closely as Brad and I have. We’re not even the first to do it, and I have a guarantee from…’
‘No,’ I said. I did not want to hear it – the false promises of his safety that he might give me, as if they would mean something. ‘You can’t do this. You’re going to be a father, Leo – Jesus, Brad has three kids now! You just can’t be so careless with your lives anymore. This wasn’t Brad’s idea, was it?’
‘How does that matter?’
‘Because you keep pressuring him into these things and one of you is going to get killed! I won’t let you, I forbid you to do this.’
‘You forbid me?’ Leo scoffed. ‘What are you going to do, Molly – go behind my back and stop me from going? Do my wishes count for nothing at all now, not even with my work?’
We both knew exactly what he was really referring to, but I couldn’t believe how quickly the conversation had spun from me being terrified for him, to him attacking me over what I’d done. My face felt hot and my gaze drifted to the silk flowers on the table between us. ‘Don’t, Leo!’ I whispered.
‘Well, what would you have me do? Do you want me to leave my job and do something that makes me miserable just because you’ve tricked me into fatherhood? I suppose a boring desk job is the last thing you’ve got left to manipulate me into.’
I gasped and stood so violently that my chair tipped over onto the floorboards behind me. ‘You bastard!’
There was a minute flash of guilt over Leo’s face, but almost instantly it was replaced by scorn.
‘It is true, isn’t it? This was what Istanbul was about, right?’ That wasn’t the case at all – but I couldn’t deny the accusation of manipulation. I had tricked him into it – not as directly as he thought, but the little facts around our situation did not diminish my guilt one bit.
‘If we’re going to catalogue all of the things we’ve done to hurt each other, let’s talk about my life the last year. Why don’t we talk about what I have given up for you?’ Pain twisted the words in my mouth until I was snarling at him. ‘How about my family? How about my home? And for what, Leo? To live here, in this shitty shoebox alone for ten months of the year, with a husband who is so self-obsessed that he can’t even be bothered to bloody call me every once in a while. I am so fucking sick of you treating me like this…’
‘You “gave up” your family? Please, Molly, you didn’t give up your barely functional family – your parents forced you out when you decided to rebel against your father by sleeping with me. And you still see them – do you think I don’t know that?’
‘I see them on special occasions, like Christmas. You might not be familiar with what that is – it’s one of the many days each year when my husband doesn’t bother to come home.’
When he didn’t respond, I felt a completely fresh and unexpected burst of anger and I apparently decided to spiral the tone of the conversation down even further. When I spoke again, my words were a spiteful, awful hiss. ‘You try to make it sound noble, Leo, and no one else can see through it – but I can. We both know that you only take the risky assignments because you need the adrenaline rush to make you feel like a man.’
I saw the pain in Leo’s eyes at that last brutal insult and just for a second I felt triumph – I was glad to have hurt him. I wanted him to suffer like I was suffering.
‘Maybe there’s some truth in that. I certainly don’t feel like a man when I talk to you these days. When was the last time you actually spoke to me as if I was someone you didn’t loathe? Why won’t you come home more, Leo? Because I despise being here with you, being reminded every fucking minute of the day how much you resent me. You should have listened to your father and stayed well away from someone of such poor breeding.’
‘Fuck you, Leo! Fuck you and your false promises and your goddamned messiah complex! I do hate you, I can’t do this anymore!’