Page 43 of For One Moment With You
I stared at him. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that.’ As I watched him, a defeated look came over him.
Coming over, he sighed. Looking up, he met my eyes. ‘I don’t want you to go, OK?’
‘Why is that, Gareth? Because you don’t want my parents to know how unsupportive you’re being – when they’ve bankrolled the deposit for the house we’ve just bought? Or because it shows you up as the weak, self-centred person you really are?’
Hurt flickered in his eyes. ‘Is that how you see me?’
‘Yes.’ I wasn’t going to lie. ‘It is. I didn’t used to. But now… Things have been said. Things we can’t undo.’ ByweI meanthim. ‘If we’re going to stay together, our best hope is to try and put the past behind us. We’re about to be parents. I want to give our children everything they need. Security. Comfort. Love. Hopefully, once they’re here, you’ll want that, too.’
‘So do I.’ But he didn’t sound convincing. It was clearly only the maths working in favour of me staying. ‘Look. I know I’ve let you down. I just wasn’t expecting to feel like this.’
It was the closest he’d come to an apology, but there was no sincerity, no emotion in his words. ‘We’re running out of time before the babies are born. We need to make a decision.’ My voice shook. ‘We stay here and do this together. Or we sell the house and I do it without you.’
I waited for him to respond, the length of silence telling me everything I needed to know. I was still convinced it was better to do this with Gareth. But even so, I’d reached my limit. ‘I love you, but I don’t need you, Gareth.’
Watching myself, I can’t believe that after everything he’d said, I was talking about love. But I can remember at the time, how desperate I felt.
It seemed to shock him out of his lethargy. ‘Are you sayingyouwant a divorce?’
I shook my head. ‘No. I’d prefer us to be a team and do this together – for the sake of the twins. But if you can’t…’ I shrugged. ‘Then I guess it’s inevitable that’s what comes next.’
* * *
There are many kinds of love. But oh, how foolish I was, for mistaking this as one of them; for not seeing that what he wanted most was a claim on the house. Now, it’s obvious. But what staggers me most about that time, is that when all this was going on, we’d been married less than a year. If only we could have been honest with each other; both of us must have known that as long ago as back then, there wasn’t enough between us.
12
A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually not having a dig at Gareth, this time. And I’m all too aware that I’m far from perfect, too. But when the twins made their entrance into the world, at least I was devoted, putting my babies first, something Gareth would forever have been incapable of. From those first moments of motherhood, those boys became my everything; compensated for what was lacking between me and Gareth. And once they were here, I couldn’t think about anything else.
* * *
‘Look at their tiny hands.’ Lizzie’s voice was filled with wonder. ‘And their tiny noses. And teeny little toes.’
‘I know.’ I couldn’t keep the pride out of my voice.
‘Don’t look much like Gareth, do they? Thank God,’ Lizzie added with feeling. ‘Oh, Tilly. They are the most adorable little creatures I’ve ever seen.’
Those first months of motherhood were both lacking in sleep and full of wonder. They were also taken up with washing. They were exhausting and they pushed our marriage to new limits, yet they were probably also the reason Gareth and I stayed together. Having two tiny humans entirely dependent on us meant there was little time to think about ourselves.
There were the most heart-warming moments – when a tiny Robbie gazed at Gareth and gave him a gummy smile that his father didn’t appreciate; when Alex first uttered the word,mum-mum.
‘He’s teething,’ Gareth said dismissively, as Alex thrust one of his tiny fists into his mouth.
‘That was definitelymum,’I said indignantly.
The presence of the twins in our lives had papered over the rift between us. There was no way of knowing how long it would last – whether the paper would thicken over time; if we would endure. Or whether the next row would gouge another split and be the end of us.
In other words, we were fragile. It broke my heart. I mean, we had these adorable babies. It didn’t get better than that, did it? But after Gareth’s self-confessed ambivalence towards parenthood, I felt a claim over the twins, as though my feelings about motherhood had decreed me a right that he had yet to earn.
I was grateful he supported us, that he slept through the nights meaning I had the dark hours with my babies all to myself.Why did I stay?I asked myself many times while the boys were growing up, only to push the question from my mind. But this wasn’t just about me; having children complicated everything a thousandfold.
Meanwhile, Adam was no more than a distant memory, ever since I’d discovered he’d moved away. It’s true about the lies we tells ourselves, our tangled webs that catch us out. I never told anyone at the time, but when I was twelve weeks pregnant, the morning of my scan, I went back to Adam’s house. I know how bad it sounds. I mean, what kind of pregnant woman does such a thing? My only defence being, and it wasn’t strong, that I wasn’t a happy one.
Apart from the time I glimpsed the back of his head, I hadn’t seen Adam since the days before my wedding. That day, I figured it was in the lap of the gods as to whether he would be at home or not. As fate would have it, when I knocked on the door, it was opened by a stranger.
