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“You’re coming back home?”
“Of course.” He gives a little laugh. “Where did you think I was going?”
“Back on tour?”
“Seriously? You think I’d leave when Max has been this bad? What kind of guy do you think I am?”
It’s a good question, but not one he necessarily wants to hear the answer to. At least not in front of all these people. So I bite my lip, trying to remind myself where I am.
“Can I have a word?” I ask. “Outside.”
For the first time since I walked in, he looks shifty, a child waiting outside the headmaster’s office. There’s a part of me that wants to start shouting right now, tell him everything we've been through without him. That while he was lording it up with some blonde on his knee, I was watching our son struggling to breathe.
Okay, so maybe not at exactly the same time. But close enough.
We end up walking down the corridor and to the tiny waiting room at the other end of the ward. Thankfully, it’s empty. I sit down on one of the under-stuffed chairs, feeling the springs give way as my bottom presses into the cushions as Alex takes the sofa opposite, wisely placing a table between us.
When I look at him, I wonder how we got to this. How that girl and boy who fell in love ended up sitting here, their child lying sick in a hospital bed, with absolutely nothing to say.
No, that’s not right. There’s plenty to say, I simply don’t know how to say it. My anger feels as if it’s been packaged up neatly and stuffed to the bottom of my chest, something to be dealt with at a later date. If I unwrap it now, as I think I’m going to do, I’m not sure I can contain it. I feel sick, not only from the thought of confrontation, but the knowledge that we’re coming perilously close to hurting one another.
I don’t want to lose him, but we can’t go on like this.
While the thoughts rage in my head, Alex looks at me, his eyes dark and soft. The way he stares reminds me so much of those first few days we spent together, and it’s messing with my mind even more.
“Are you angry at me?” He finally breaks the silence. “For being away when Max got ill?”
Quickly I shake my head. “That’s not why I’m angry.”
“So you are angry?”
“Yes.” I take a deep breath. I can’t let myself explode, not anymore. If I want to be heard I need to say it, not shout it.
“Why?”
I start to count the ways, and I have to close my eyes, to block out that dark stare. The way he’s looking at me is unnerving.
“Because it took you so long to come home. Because you didn’t return my calls. Because I felt like a single parent, watching my child dying without the one person I thought I could rely on.” I bit my lip, trying to stop it from wobbling. “I watched our son turn blue in my arms. He couldn’t breathe. I thought he was dead.”
The small room seems thick with recriminations. For a moment, Alex remains seated. But when my breath hitches, he jumps up and crosses the room, wrapping his arms around me.
I freeze.
“Christ, Lara, I’m sorry. I got here as soon as I could. If they still flew Concorde I would have got on that. Fucking eight hour flights.”
“You got here four days late.” I try to shrug him off. Having his arms around me feels wrong, I can’t stand it. “I left you so many messages.”
“There weren’t that many.”
“And I spoke to Stuart…”
I feel him stiffen. When I pull my head back to look at him he says nothing. His face is blank. I wait for him to say something. To tell me how wrong he was. All I get is silence.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask.
His voice is quiet, a whisper. “I only got the message yesterday.”
“You’re lying.” I think of all the voicemails I left. The anguished wait for a call. The long hours of nothingness. “I called you four days ago.”
