‘We only found out a few weeks before your accident,’ she whispers. She seems incredibly tense and I can tell she is still reluctant to talk to me about it, although I can’t understand why. ‘I haven’t had time to even think about it. And I didn’t know when to tell you – I didn’t want to put any pressure on you…’
A baby. I try to understand what this is going to mean for me: I am going to be a father. On some level, I’ve always wanted children – I just hadn’t expected to settle down well enough to have them. And with Molly? God, how could I possibly be disappointed – she’s remarkable. So why do I feel so uncomfortable?
‘Are you not happy about this, Molly?’
‘With everything else that’s been going on, I’ve just had to shelve it all for a bit. But you’re doing so well, and I think I have to have an ultrasound this week… I’m going to start showing soon and I just can’t put off dealing with this anymore.’
The shiver of displeasure is growing, not abating. I consider it curiously, studying the feeling as if it’s something detached from me; simply a puzzle I need to figure out.
‘How did I feel about it?’ I ask her gently. Molly shakes her head. I think for a minute that she’s not going to answer the question, then she says, ‘It took some getting used to.’
‘Was it an…’ I almost say the word ‘accident’ when I realise how negative it sounds and so I correct myself, ‘a surprise? Is that what you mean?’
She nods, but she’s turned away from me now and I can’t see her face, and the confused disappointment in my gut isn’t shifting or fading. I force myself to stop thinking about the pregnancy so that I can start thinking about what it will actually mean: a baby, a child.
And I hate it that one of my very first thoughts is about how much more difficult it’s going to be to leave when I need to go back to work. I don’t dare consider what Molly would say if she knew what I was thinking.
‘How many kids do we want?’
‘We hadn’t decided,’ she whispers back. ‘You wanted lots, maybe a few of ours… maybe some foster children too. Are you upset that I didn’t tell you until now?’
‘Hell, if you’d told me on that first day, I think I might have gone right back into the coma.’
She doesn’t laugh. Instead, she turns back towards me and stares right into my eyes. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Is this why you’ve been…’ I struggle to put into words the concern that I’ve not been able to shake. I have memories of us now – all the way up to our engagement, and I now remember a tremendous closeness with Molly that I’ve not felt since my memory has started to return.
It is as if I’ve reminded her of that fact with my question. She is a little slumped, leaning over the table as if the admission has drained the strength from her. Now though, she straightens and she turns back to face me fully, and I see fight in her eyes.
‘There’s more, Leo,’ she says. ‘I just – I don’t know how to tell you the rest. I should have told you already, but it was…’
‘It’s okay, love,’ I say gently, because she’s in pain and although I am a little nervous about what more there could be, my first instinct is to calm her. ‘You can tell me now.’
‘You have to promise me you will try to understand, Leo. I only hid this from you because I didn’t know how to tell you. I have tried to tell you several times, but…’
‘Molly,’ I whisper very slowly as I brush her fringe out of her eyes. I’m trying very hard to ignore the rising sense of dread as I reassure her, ‘Whatever it is, I can handle it, okay?’
‘We separated, Leo… You filed for divorce,’ she whispers.
‘We couldn’t have,’ I say instantly, and I pull away from her to stare at her – a hard stare, a questioning stare, because she is speaking utter nonsense. ‘Especially if there was a baby. We just couldn’t have.’ There are tears in Molly’s eyes now, and I am bewildered. I have just recovered the magnificent memory of her accepting my proposal. The world was our oyster five minutes ago – now she’s trying to tell me that we let that slip away? It is simply impossible.
‘It’s not like this anymore, Leo.’
‘What does that even mean?’ I’m growing impatient. I have been frustrated ever since I woke up, but this is a different kind of frustration. It’s an immense and overwhelming sensation, like being completely lost all over again just as I was beginning to feel I could understand my life, because I knew with absolute certainty that the central point of it was her.
I cannot imagine any scenario where I would allow us to be pulled apart. And she has said that I filed for divorce? I can’t accept that; I won’t accept it.
‘Molly,’ I say, and I force myself to speak calmly and clearly, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘That last year… has been really tough,’ she whispers unevenly. ‘We fought so much. It just wasn’t working, Leo.’