Page 115 of Spiralling Skywards: Fading
“You want some time away? A break from us, from me? Just tell me, and we’ll sort something out.”
“No, no break.” She shakes her head as she speaks. “But thank you. Thank you for offering, for putting up with this, and for loving me. I honestly have no clue where I’d be without you.”
“Don’t thank me, Sarah. I’m your husband, we’re a team, and we’re in this together.
I lost sight of that once, and I almost lost her, I’ll never let it happen again. I was so wrapped up in setting up a business that I didn’t see what was going on right under my nose.
The past year or so has been fucking tough and almost cost us our marriage. We’ve seen counsellors, doctors, experts and specialists, but what got us to where we are now is our love for each other.
When it first happened, I had no clue it was happening. My wife was disappearing right in front of my eyes, and I never noticed a thing. It wasn’t until everything turned to shit that I took a breath, stood back, and looked at the bigger picture. I realised that her light had been fading for months, years even, until eventually, it had gone out.
In the beginning, it was so hard for me to understand what she was going through. In my head, she had everything—a beautiful home, a husband that worshiped her, and four healthy and amazing children. Yeah, our lives were busy, incredibly so, but we made it work. Between school runs, football training, playgroup, swimming lessons, and work, our lives were run with military precision. The problem was, we forgot to factor any time in for each other. I never saw that she was fading away.
When she told me in the hospital that she felt worthless and invisible, I was shocked and ashamed that I had no fucking clue she felt that way. Together we had worked hard to get back to us, and I wasn’t going to let her slip . . . not even an inch.
Our lives have changed immeasurably since then. We sold our home in England, spent three weeks in the States doing all things Disney, Universal, and Epcot. We then did a six-week long tour around Australia before settling here in Sorrento, Western Australia. My parents and both sisters live within a ten minute drive.
I’m still in partnership with Luke, but we’d moved our whole operation to Australia, and he is now living here, too.
Life is a lot slower here, the pace kinder. I work half the hours that I did in England and I’m earning twice the money. Our offices are based in Perth which means I have a longer commute but I don’t work weekends and rarely stay after five. Meaning, I get to spend more time with Sarah and the boys.
“Dad, can we have steaks tonight?” Flynn calls out to me from the pool.
“Sure thing, mate. If that’s what you fancy.”
“Can I help you cook them?”
“Yep.”
“Cool. Thanks, Dad.”
“No worries.”
“I don’t know where he puts . . .” Sarah trails off as she looks over her shoulder.
“Shit that kid’ll be the death of me.”
“Running forward roll into the pool?”
“Yep. He’s gonna crack his head one of these days.”
“I thought Mum told you no upsidedowning into the pool,” I call across the garden.
He surfaces from under the water and flicks his hair back from his eyes. Either oblivious to, or simply ignoring the fact he’s just been reprimanded—my guess is the latter. I know my kid. He throws Sarah a cocky smile, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“You hear me, Flynn?”
“What?”
“No forward rolls into the pool.”
“Sorry. I forgot.”
Flynn is our daredevil child. He’s not scared of anything or anyone. Carter is our leader and organiser. We never got to the bottom of his bullying phase in England, but we’ve seen no evidence of it here. Archer, our athlete, loves football and hates that it’s called soccer here. And Lucas, he’s the brains of the bunch, he’s not started school yet, but he sits and copies the homework that the twins bring home and sometimes finishes it before they do.
I sometimes wonder what our fifth child would have been like, if we would have finally got a little girl. I’d never admit this to Sarah, of course, but it does sometimes cross my mind.
James Arthur begins to sing, and Sarah climbs out of my lap. “Dance with me?” She holds out her hand and smiles down at me. I don’t hesitate. I stand and wrap my arms around her.
