Page 48 of Best Laid Plans
When he turned back to look at her the expression on her face was so full of sympathy it made his stomach drop.
‘Oh, Julien, I’m so sorry to hear that.’
He nodded to acknowledge her commiseration. ‘It wasn’t just the miscarriage that wrecked our relationship, though,’ he continued. ‘It felt to me as though Celine gave up her individuality as soon as we got married, as if she didn’t need to try at anything any more. She’d already handed in her notice at the place she worked, and I became her whole universe. It was stifling. She wanted my undivided attention, and I tried to give her as much as I could, but she’d phone me ten or twenty times a day and turn up when I had important meetings and make a scene if I didn’t have time to see her.’
‘Was this before or after the miscarriage?’ Indigo asked.
‘Before. It got even worse after it.’
Indigo didn’t say anything, just nodded as if she understood.
‘When we lost the baby, she didn’t want me to even leave the house. She became obsessed with trying to get pregnant again, to the point where there was no joy in our sex life any more. It was as if she only thought of me as a baby-making machine and would get angry with me if I said I was too tired or not in the mood. When I suggested we should wait a while before trying to get pregnant again, to give us both some time to recover, she was furious with me. So furious.’
He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the familiar tension mounting.
‘I tried to get her friends to talk to her, to give her the kind of support I couldn’t,’ he said, wanting Indigo to know he hadn’t been totally heartless about it, ‘but she froze them out, saying they couldn’t possibly understand how she felt. She hadn’t spoken to her parents in years – she and her father had had some kind of falling out when she was eighteen – so there was no support there either. And she refused to go to counselling. She wanted me to make things better, but I had no idea how to make her happy any more. It got too much. I started working later and later and ignoring her calls, just to get some space.’
The words seemed to be pouring from him now, as if the pressure they’d been stoppered under had finally found a release.
‘Then she stopped talking to me, to punish me, I think, and my life outside work became one long silent nightmare. So then I spent even more time away from the house so I didn’t have to face what had gone wrong with my life.’
‘Oh, Julien, that sounds horrendous.’ She put her hand briefly over his and he found comfort in the warmth of her touch. But only for a moment.
‘It wasn’t the best year of my life, that’s for sure.’
‘So who ended it?’
‘She did. She told me she wanted a divorce out of the blue one morning, then walked out and didn’t come back.’
‘That must have been difficult for you.’
‘Honestly – I didn’t try very hard to stop her.’ He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. ‘I didn’t love her.’
‘Oh, Julien?—’
But he didn’t want her sympathy right then, didn’t feel as if he deserved it. ‘She needed more from me. She needed my understanding. I knew she wasn’t coping well with the miscarriage, but I kept pushing her away because I didn’t know how to deal with everything that had happened either. I failed her.’
He felt Indigo move closer to him on the sofa. ‘You mustn’t think that. It must have been awful for both of you. You shouldn’t feel guilty for not trying harder. It sounds like you did everything you could think of.’
‘I offered her a very generous divorce settlement to get it over with quickly. At least she’ll never need to work another day in her life. I fixed her with money.’ He let out a long, low rush of breath. ‘And I feel relieved to be free of her. That makes me a terrible person, doesn’t it?’
He glanced over at Indigo and was relieved to see understanding in her eyes.
On his way here he’d been terrified about how she’d take all this. He’d almost turned back a couple of times, but he knew if he wanted her, he had to have the courage to tell her everything.
‘It doesn’t make you a terrible person. It makes you human,’ she said, giving his hand a squeeze this time. ‘And it doesn’t sound like there was much of a relationship to save after you lost the baby.’
He picked up her hand from when it lay in her lap and linked his fingers through hers, feeling her shiver at his touch. The discovery that she felt the same way he did gave him courage.
‘Oui. It became clear pretty quickly that we didn’t have a lot in common after we got married. We thought and reacted to things in completely contrary ways. When we found out she was pregnant I told myself it wouldn’t matter that we were so different because we’d have the child to hold us together.’
‘It sounds like there was a good chance the marriage wouldn’t have worked even if the baby had survived and then you’d have felt guilty about depriving him or her of a stable family background instead.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, letting her words wash though his mind. It felt good to have finally said all this out loud, after it had festered in his head for so long.
‘Have you talked to someone? A counsellor or a friend?’
‘Non.’
