‘What I do is none of your business,’ I said, moving my body closer to him. ‘You’re just holding a grudge because you want more from me.’
‘I always want more,’ he said with a new, breathy tone to his voice.
I leant in to him and brushed off the gasps that made every part of me want to vomit. ‘If you tell Luke, I get a transfer. If you tell his wife, she might leave him, which would be great for me because then I could start fucking him to my heart’s content.’ My bravado was on form. ‘Either way, I’ll be thanking you. But you, Rob, I have a lot of secrets on you.’ His eyes grew wide as he pulled back. ‘I love an all-staff email. They really pull us together as a team, don’t you think?’ People love a funny story or meme to brighten up their morning. I’m sure everyone on the staff email list would love to know exactly what gets your rocks off. You know, your little fetish, the one you can’t find your happy place without. The extra grip you need,’
‘You fucking wouldn’t,’ he hissed.
‘Watch me.’
‘You bitch.’
‘No. I’m a nice girl until you cross me or the people I care about. Leave us alone. You know nothing about our situation.’
‘I knew I should have stayed away from you,’ he said as he stumbled past me.
‘No, Rob, I should have stayed away from you and your bloody rubber gloves!’
When I went back to Jamie’s room, I found him fast asleep, his handsome face turned to the side and his arms curled up in front of him. He looked so peaceful, like all the weight of the world he carried around when he was awake had suddenly started to melt away, offering me a glimpse of the man I knew before but highlighting with so much definition and clarity how much he’d changed. No amount of matching tattoos and beautiful words I’d been longing to hear again could change that.
Rob’s threats didn’t worry me. I threw my cards down and saw the look of terror as it dawned on him that an all-staff email was not a threat. It was an absolute promise.
I lay down beside Jamie and pressed my face into his neck. I wanted to blow the air back into the bubble of our imaginary world for just a few hours longer before we had to find the strength to burst it again.
Chapter Forty-Four
Jamie
Now.
‘This is your wake up call. I repeat, this is your wake up call.’ I could hear a small laugh on the other end of the phone. ‘Are you awake?’ I asked in the lowest voice I could find. I could have lied and said I was suffering from a migraine, or I could have given in to the reality of the hangover that was doing a bloody good job of stripping basic bodily functions.
‘Funnily enough, yes,’ she replied louder than I needed her to.
‘You didn’t stay.’
‘No. Did you want me to?’ She was on dodgy ground.
‘It would have been nice to pretend for a bit longer.’ Even dodgier.
‘That’s why I left and went back to my room. I couldn’t stand the breakup in the morning.’ She laughed lightly, but I heard the sigh that accompanied it.
‘Thanks for looking after me. I found the ibuprofen and I put my foot in the bin you left at the side of the bed. Nice move, by the way. You should consider a new career as a hangover mopper-upper.’ Fuck. I was regurgitating mindless words.
‘I don’t do mop-ups, Dawson. My gag reflex is delicate when it comes to other people’s sick.
‘So much I could say. So many images.’
‘I’m going to take off after lunch. There’s a few seminars I want to see this morning but nothing really grabbing me this afternoon.’
‘I have to do my seminar at eleven.’
‘I’m not sitting through that bore-fest again. Greatest cure for insomnia ever.’
‘Can I see you? I mean, will you come next door? There was something I should have told you last night but tattoos and alcohol got in the way.’
‘Sounds like my kind of night. Give me five minutes.’
Fifteen minutes later, I was still waiting. I was pacing and my hand was a permanent fixture at the back of my neck. A soft knock broke it away as I bounded over to the door.
‘I love the character assassination tops you’re favouring,’ I laughed.
She pointed to her top that had ‘winging it’ written in black across the front. ‘Life mantra.’ She smiled and everything about me buzzed.
‘God, you’re beautiful.’ I couldn’t help it. I had to say it to her. She was making me feel everything good again.
She shook her head in frustration, rolling her eyes and storming past me. ‘I don’t want you to say things like that.’ She started busying herself with picking up towels and putting the bed straight while I watched in awe, my arms crossed and my knuckles tapping against my mouth.
‘Sit down; leave all that,’ I said.
‘You always did struggle to pick up after yourself. Old habits, hey.’
‘Hmm,’ I replied, knowing that in reality, she was my habit.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ She stopped mid pillow pat, serious, self-assured. She flung the pillow to the top of the bed as I motioned for her to sit down.
This is hard, but I need you to know. It’s time you got the truth. The full truth.’ I coughed nervously and tried to stop my leg from bobbing up and down. ‘I don’t know why I’ve been so worried about telling you because it explains the situation I’m in.’
‘Situation? Is that what you call your marriage?’ she replied, hurt flashing across her cheeks in a blush.
‘Let me talk,’ I said as I found the steel in my determination to get this out, no holds barred. The truth and nothing but the truth. ‘We started talking last night about the letter you sent.’ She was covering her mouth with her hand. She had a habit of laughing when she was nervous, which could get her into a whole heap of shit from people who didn’t understand how she worked. I understood, so as far as I was concerned, if she needed to laugh, it was far better than watching her have a bloody good cry.
‘It was a bad week. Mum was struggling and I was doing the usual mind fuck of questioning everything. And just for the record, the whole letters only and no phone calls thing? The shittest decision I’ve ever made. I mean, really. It was shit.’
She nodded but didn’t speak, anxious for me to get to the point. She wrapped her fingers around the cuffs of her top and pulled the sleeves down over her hands.
‘One night, when I was sitting with Mum, I decided I was going to ring you. She was drifting in and out of sleep but I couldn’t leave her. Those times were the worst. Not just because she was becoming a shell of herself, but because I had nothing else to do but think about us.’
Abi drew her foot up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her leg, pressing her forehead against her knee as I spoke. ‘Then the letter came. I was heartbroken, Abi. It was exactly what I didn’t need to hear. I was a mess. I couldn’t believe you were moving on so quickly. I’d assumed you were as beat up as me.’
‘I was!’ she shouted. ‘I was miserable. I was holding out for your letter before your birthday. I was pleading with you to invite me down to London to celebrate together. I needed one more hit. I thought if we had one more weekend, I could either make you see how good we were together or get you out of my system.’ She pressed her palms against her forehead and splayed her fingers across her hair. ‘I crying until I heard Mum let herself in. We talked for hours about relationships, and I told her everything. Every-fucking-thing. She said the only way to get a man’s attention was to make them jealous, so I sat at the table through the night and wrote the letter as a last ditch attempt to try to get you back. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Fucking hell, Abi. Your mum has to be the worst person to ask for relationship advice.’
‘It was a stupid, rash decision,’ she said through tears. ‘I thought that if I said I was seeing someone else, you’d come back to me, that jealousy would get the better of you,’ she said, turning her head away from me and looking at the floor in despair. �
�I made it up. There wasn’t anyone else. Only you.’
‘Fuck, Abi, I was devastated. I can’t tell you how much it crushed me.’
‘Don’t! I can’t hear it. I can’t deal with what happened next because of me!’ She continued to cry as I crouched down in front of her.
‘Clara was just a distraction. A way of clearing my head. I don’t even know how we got to that point. She was interested in my mate Mark, and the last thing I remember was saying it was time for me to go home.’
That was the fucked up truth. Clara had been invited to my birthday drinks by Mark. He was a man on a mission. They were supposed to get together that night, but deep down, I knew she wanted me. I tried to fuck away the anger, get the hurt out of my system and forget the memories, but all I did was increase the hate I felt towards myself.
‘Was it good? Better than us?’ she said with such a determined tone. She laced her fingers together and raised her hands to clasp them to the back of her head.
‘No, it wasn’t better,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I was drunk. I don’t remember any of it.’
‘So how do you go from a distraction fuck to marriage? I’d really like to know.’ She was so hurt it shone through her eyes.
I dropped my head to the floor as I sat down at her feet. My heart was pounding in my chest as we reached the moment I had dreaded for the last few months. ‘Don’t hate me.’
I heard a gasp of air and a loud sob as she stood and walked to the other side of the room, her fingers pressed against her mouth. She walked in circles next to the bed where I’d held her the night before. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ she said in fast bursts. ‘No, please, no.’ She continued pacing and wafting her hands repeatedly in front of her face as she cried. As she started to piece it all together, her voice was shredding me inside.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Abi, please, you need to hear me out. Please.’ I watched as realisation swept across her body.
‘You got her pregnant, didn’t you? Oh fuck. Fucking hell, no. Please tell me I’m wrong.’ She stopped dead before sitting on the floor beside me trying to lift my head with her hands so I’d look at her. I couldn’t face her and she became angrier. ‘Tell me I’m wrong!’ she shouted on a piercing wail.
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
Chapter Forty-Five
Abi
Now.
I launched myself at him, smacking my hands across his chest and back, pushing him. He took it all, every single piece of myself that I was letting out. Years of pent up hurt and upset were now charging live with anger. My lungs were screeching for air like a belt had been tied around my chest, constricting my ability to take in breath. Suddenly, all the madness we had been through swirled around and started increasing in furious pace and noise.
‘I can’t believe it. Why didn’t I realise before now? It makes total sense,’ I said, clutching my chest as it all started to settle in to my thoughts and feelings until I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do with the jumble of emotions I knew I’d never be able to name.
I pulled myself into a tight ball, rocking and sobbing and quickly falling apart in front of him. He was still sitting on the floor quietly crying into his arms. I didn’t know how much time had passed; we could have been there minutes or hours, but as I calmed myself down, I felt the tips of his fingers lightly brush mine as they splayed out onto the floor.
I picked up his hand and we held them together. No words or looks, just touch. Ironically, the man who had caused all of my pain was the one I needed to soothe it. We stayed like that until my legs cramped. I welcomed the distraction. It made me concentrate on something other than my intense disappointment.
I struggled to admit that even after hearing he was married, I still held on to the hope. Inside, I knew that made me a fucking awful person. There were so many times I thought we might still have a chance and he would realise he was still in love with me. I had dreamt that he would be heading for the divorce courts before Christmas. How could I have even hoped for that? I felt disgusted, but I still couldn’t stop my mind wandering through the fantasy. I knew a child changed everything. My fantasies were now just that—fantasies. Idiotic dreams of something that would never be part of me again.
Everything suddenly made sense.
Maths wasn’t my strong point, but I used my fingers to work out that Jamie had a son or daughter who would be well over a year old. The realisation of that was like a cold knife to the chest.
‘You were always so careful. We never…’ I shook my head repeatedly. ‘Even in the heat of the moment when you were pushing me against a wall, you never forgot to use a condom.’
‘I was out of it. I don’t know how I let it happen,’ he said, dropping his head heavily to the floor as I knelt beside him.
‘Can I hold you?’ he asked tentatively, barely meeting my eyes.
I shook my hand at him as I tried to get some feeling back into my numb legs.
‘You held me as I slept and then you fucking bathed me knowing all this,’ I spat as I walked towards the door.
‘Abi, please, there’s so much more to say. I can’t let you go until I’ve explained it all.’ He stood and awkwardly clenched his hands at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. ‘Let me finish; then you can go.’
I stared at the door I was only inches away from opening. ‘Do you have a son or a daughter?’ I asked, still with my back to him. I couldn’t face him when he answered my question. I heard him pull in a shaky breath that developed into soft, almost silent sobs that worked their way through to my bloodstream.
There was so much sadness in those sobs I couldn’t help but turn to him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand moving slowly backwards and forwards across his forehead as he sat forward, his elbows resting on his legs.
‘I need to show you something.’ He took his wallet out of his back pocket and took out a small collection of papers and some photographs. ‘I keep photos of the three most important people to me in my wallet so they’re always close.’
He pulled two photos from the back of the pile and handed them to me. His mum, smiling and happy, exactly how I remembered her. Another photo was a picture of me taken the night before he left. I was sitting at the kitchen table holding my hands out to a plate of lasagne he had made, the light of the candle illuminating my face. ‘You look like an angel. The light just enhanced everything that was already so beautiful.’
I could feel my breathing getting tighter and my hands trembling slightly. ‘And this is my other angel.’ He lifted another photograph and passed it over to me. It was a black and white picture of two hands. I knew instantly that one of those hands belonged to him. Resting delicately on top of his palm was the tiny hand of a baby.
‘My daughter,’ he said sadly.
I put my hand to my mouth in shock.
‘Can I tell you about her?’
Chapter Forty-Six
Jamie
Seventeen months ago…
Then.
It was a brilliantly sunny but desperately cold day when she died.
Clara and I hadn’t spoken to each other since I’d made lunch the day before. She looked pale and tired and had withdrawn herself completely from me as well as from the plan we’d made to try to make more of an effort with our marriage before the baby arrived.
We were running out of time.
The birth was imminent and the plan to talk, laugh and share experiences that would bond us aside from the tiny life growing inside of her had completely fallen apart.
We went to bed separately most nights. I was lying on my back, my arms stretched above my head as far away from her as possible when she whispered into the darkness, ‘I want a divorce,’ and interrupted the thoughts of our inevitable defeat by adding that she hadn’t felt the baby move for the last four hours.
She pulled back the covers and turned on the light, which blasted me in the face with its unexpected sharpness in contrast to the dark. She s
tarted to get dressed calmly. Still silent and so matter of fact, she gathered the hospital bag she’d prepared weeks before. She had shut me out as she became distracted and deadened by fear.
We drove in silence, her head turned towards the window as she leant her face against the glass. I fought the conflicting pain of telling myself it would all be fine, alongside preparing myself to let go. I carried the guilt of letting myself consider what this could mean for Clara, for me and for us. I tried to push down the intensity of the feelings and sorrowful premonitions and move aside the sobs hiding at the back of my throat.
I saw the glare of the sun above the clouds and tried to convince myself that everything was going to work out fine. I would grow to love Clara once we’d welcomed our baby into the world. We would hold each other and cry when we heard their first sounds and the baby would immediately bind us, fix us, and create a foundation of newfound love and contentment. I held on to the steering wheel tightly and told myself to believe it, to let it guide me through this new chapter of our lives. But the ultrasound told me what I already knew.
Our baby’s heart had stopped beating.
A girl, a beautiful girl, who hadn’t quite come into our lives but was now the biggest part of it.
I knew this baby girl would never leave my side until my last breath mimicked hers.
We named her Lily Dawson.
She was so tiny.
Clara clung on to her like her only hope in the world had been taken away from her so cruelly.
She was perfect. Everything about her was perfect.
I did everything I imagined I would do when I became a father for the first time. I checked her toes and her fingers. Perfect. I checked her ears. Perfect. Her nose was like mine, her hair was light blonde, so much of it. Perfect. I struggled to take in how this amazingly perfect image of us could be gone before she was even ours to keep.
Clara died that day too.
The girl I had known for years, who was bright and raucous, was now lost and broken, crouching on the floor, choking on her sobs and pushing at the midwives as they tried to comfort her.
Let Me Be Your Hope (Music and Letters Series Book 2) Page 22
